No Place of Safety (4 page)

‘Yes. Everything's ready.' He turned on the large electric frying pan. ‘You know, they
ought
to come and help with the cooking when it's their turn.'

‘Of course they should. This isn't a hotel.'

‘Cooking's a skill,' said Alan, in his serious, thoughtful way, ‘a survival skill. It's just what they need, and it's not difficult to learn. Just think – three weeks ago I couldn't have cooked a stew to save my life. Now . . . even if it is a bit basic, it's perfectly good food.'

‘Basic is what it should be. The more frills there are, the sooner Ben's money will run out.'

It was true they rang the changes on a fairly small repertory when preparing supper. For a start, they tried to cook meals that the young people could take to their rooms and eat off their lap if that's what they preferred. Some of them were not into socializing, as they put it. So there were stews, meatballs, lasagne, shepherd's pie, casseroles. A lot of mince was consumed. Alan was confident in about three of the variations, and preferred it when it was mince. Cutting up meat for eight plus the three of them had been hard work, and it had taken time. Katy was a lot better, and could manage all of the dishes. She even had plans for some new ones. She'd done a lot of cooking for herself in her time. Alan always watched her when she was cooking something he couldn't manage, and then decided which one he would try his hand at next.

The smell of onion began to fill the kitchen. It had always been one of Alan's favourite smells.

‘The sad thing is, most of them would prefer hamburgers anyway,' said Katy.

‘To quote Ben: “Junk food is what they get when they're on the streets, not what we give them when they're here.” '

‘He's right, of course.' They looked at each other and grinned. ‘He generally is.'

So that day they prepared the meal without any help and listened to the comings and goings in the house and from the house next door. Many of the temporary residents begged in the centre of Leeds, or busked, and Ben had set the mealtime for seven thirty to enable them to get what they could out of the commuters going for their evening trains and buses, and then get themselves home. Many of them preferred to walk, as they were not welcome on public transport. They were allowed a fortnight's residence, then had to go, and they could not get back unless they had been gone for at least a fortnight. They could use the address for purposes of receiving mail, however – important in the matter of receiving benefits, those few of them who did, and now and again of resuming contact with their families. This did not often happen though. Sometimes, heartbreakingly, the
young people themselves tried to make contact, but got no response.

Ben had said he would be busy all afternoon, and didn't know when in the evening he would be back. At twenty past seven Alan took the frying pan through to the big front room of number twenty-four, and Katy followed with a big saucepan full of mashed potatoes, and then fetched the plate with a large pile of bread. To get the maximum number sitting down to a meal there were two small tables, one by the window, the other by the door. Five could be squeezed on to each of them, but it was usually unnecessary: if no one wanted to eat in their room, most of them were perfectly happy to sit around the wall and fork in the food. Many of them were unused to proper mealtimes: once when they had had pork chops (because they were on offer) several had had to be taught how to cut them up. At least, Alan thought, we sat round to a proper meal on Sundays at home.

Zak was the first through from number twenty-two, with his dog Pal and the new arrival, who looked around him very unsure of himself but got a sparkle in his eye when he saw the food on the table. He clearly hadn't eaten for some time. Pal settled down with a sigh close to the table by the window. Dogs were allowed, but only one in each house unless they were dogs who were already well acquainted from life on the streets. Pal was Zak's best friend, and nobody doubted Zak when he said that he went hungry before he let Pal want for food. Pal was a lean, two-toned mongrel, but his leanness was in his metabolism, and it was worth its weight, or lack of it, when Zak sat in Albion Street with his capacious beret in front of them. Zak wasn't his real name. Nobody knew what his real name was, and nobody asked.

Rose came in next. Rose came from what was conventionally called a ‘good' family – one which was bad in every human sense of the word. Katy identified with Rose, and tried to get close to her, but that was nearly impossible. Rose said almost nothing, drifted along inside or outside the Centre as if in a dream, and generally gave the impression that her mind was busy constructing a novel system of metaphysics.

Gradually they all wandered in. Alan served the stew, Katy
the mash, and everyone helped themselves to bread and marge. Alan and Katy made sure they gave a bit extra to those who would be going back on the streets in the next day or two. They needed fattening up, though less now that the nights were warmer than they would in the viciously cold winter months.

Katy served the last of them, and then took the empty chair next to Tony. Tony was younger than her, only fourteen. He was not even old for his age, certainly not vicious. He was chattering away now about the events of his day, begging in Leeds, how he'd dodged the occasional policeman on his beat, about the ‘silly old git' who told him he should be in school. Katy had never heard from him the reasons he was on the streets. Others, particularly the girls, had horrendous home backgrounds, histories of sexual or physical abuse, but she had never heard any such thing from Tony, or had any impression of terrors in his past. But he was something special to her, and if she had been able to analyse her emotions with the sophistication of an adult she would have seen her concern for him as maternal. On his other side sat Splat, with the rings in his nose and ears, his tattooed neck and hands, his red-and-blue-dyed hair. Splat only came occasionally for a day or two. His natural home was the streets. There was nothing particular wrong with Splat, but when the thought occurred to Katy that he was Tony's future, she shivered.

They were all of them getting to the end of their main course when Ben came home. He pushed open the dining-room door, greeted them all cheerfully, then quietly took a plate and helped himself to stew and mashed potatoes.

‘There's a bit left,' he said. ‘Anybody want it, or shall we give it to Pal?'

‘Pal's done all right,' said Zak, tweaking his ears. ‘With twelve to beg from he always does.'

The stew was claimed, a spoonful each, by Tony, by the new arrival, and by Bett Southcott, a tall, thin girl with a discontented expression, who always seemed to be hungry. Ben took his plate and sat down against the wall, quite relaxed, forking the food in. Alan suspected that basic food
suited Ben because he had never been very interested in what he ate. Ben's great quality was stillness. Alan could imagine the Centre being run – and run well – by a genial sergeant-major type, for example, with a rod of iron. But Ben was quiet and reserved, listened when people wanted to talk, tried to be always there but only to be noticed when he was needed or could be of help. Alan wondered, not for the first time, what he had done with the first forty-odd years of his life.

The meal ended with fresh fruit. ‘Why stew it when it's much nicer fresh?' Ben always said. It was Zak's turn to wash up, and he and Pal went off quite happily with piles of plates and cutlery to the kitchen. The others dispersed: a couple to a pub where they could drink outside without arousing hostility, most to their rooms.

‘That lazy cow Bett Southcott ought to help Zak,' said Katy to Ben. ‘She refused to do the potatoes, but she came down soon enough to eat her share and anything else going.'

‘She's resentful about something,' said Ben equably. ‘I expect she'll talk about it one of these days. Could I have a word with you two, alone?'

They went round to number twenty-two and upstairs to Ben's bedroom – the only room in the two houses that had not been redecorated, and the only room that was really his in the two adjacent houses that he owned. It was like a monk's cell with a few modern additions. It had a bed, a desk, a couple of chairs and a collection of books and LPs – Ben hadn't caught up with the CD revolution. Katy thought there ought to be photographs, and wondered why there weren't. Ben lay on the bed, and Katy and Alan took chairs. They liked it when Ben talked things through with them.

‘I went to see Dickie Mavors today,' he began, talking quietly and unhurriedly. ‘He's the Leeds City Council member for the Bramsey district.'

‘Why did you go?'

Ben paused.

‘Someone rang from the Bramsey Tory Party headquarters. Said there was beginning to be talk.'

They took some time to digest this.

‘What's he like, this Mavors?' asked Katy.

‘Amiable enough old body. Bit of a dodderer. Getting past his sell-by date electorally, and is beginning to realize it. Still, responding to local pressures has been his life. He's been where he is for the past twenty years or more, and probably politically active before that. I don't think we can look to him to take a stand on our behalf.'

‘Why should we need someone to do that?' Alan demanded with adolescent belligerence.

‘I don't think we do – yet. But he naturally asked questions. Safety. Did they pay for their bed or their food? What kind of young people did we take in? Drugs, of course.'

‘Well, he can't get us there. That's one thing you've always been firm on,' said Alan.

‘Yes,' said Ben, reflectively. ‘For one good and simple reason: we're not capable of facing the problems that drugs involve. I have no experience of it, and the good advice of a well-meaning amateur is worse than useless. If they have a drugs problem they don't come here. Frankly, that rules out a large proportion of the young homeless in Leeds. Sad, not at all what I'd like, but inevitable at the moment.'

‘But it means the ones who do come here are fairly new to the streets,' Katy pointed out.

‘Yes. Not all, but a good number.'

‘I just don't see how anyone could object to what you're doing!' she protested passionately.

‘Oh, property values, undesirable influence on the local kids – there are any number of reasons you can think up when what you mean is you want your little spot to remain as it always has been, and that whatever needs to be done about the problem people of this world, it shouldn't be done in your back yard.'

‘But where does all this leave us?' Alan demanded.

‘I don't know . . .' Ben remained silent for a bit, his deep blue eyes focused on a distant prospect that was not the peeling wall of his bedsitting room. ‘Maybe register the place as a hostel,' he said at last. ‘Maybe form a charitable trust, have more rules and regulations.'

‘But being unofficial and having no rules to speak of is
what makes them feel safe in coming to us!' protested Katy.

‘I know. I'm certainly not going to try to get us accepted into the System if I can avoid it. But rules and regulations can be unofficial, known only to us . . .'

‘That sounds underhand,' said Katy, and Alan nodded. ‘What kind of rules and regulations are you thinking of?'

‘Maybe we have to be careful about the underage dossers we take in,' Ben said, reluctantly.

‘But it is people like Tony who are just the ones who need us most!' Katy said, and again Alan nodded.

‘Yes,' agreed Ben. ‘Or so we like to think. Maybe I should talk to them more, find out where they come from, what their background is. For example, I never heard of any reason why Tony couldn't go back home. What if we are just prolonging things for them by making a life on the streets more bearable? I certainly wouldn't encourage them to go back to be abused all over again, but obviously if they've got a good home and their parents are sick with worry that's another matter . . . And you two should ring your parents regularly.'

Katy pushed out her lower lip.

‘It
looks
better, if anything comes up,' insisted Ben. ‘If what you say is true, your mother won't do anything about it.'

‘We'll do it,' said Alan firmly, looking at Katy. She nodded. ‘Meanwhile?'

‘Meanwhile, I suppose we go on as before,' said Ben, stroking his chin. ‘But we'll be more careful – who we take in, for example. And we'll be especially nice to neighbours. If we're beginning to be a “problem”, it's the neighbours who are making us one.'

 • • • 

When Katy rang her mother later that evening, she was very conscious of the thumping of her heart.

‘Hello, Mum.'

There was a second or two's pause at the other end of the line.

‘Well, this is unexpected.'

‘I just thought I'd let you know I'm all right.'

‘Yes – I had the message from that Coughlan man . . . Am I allowed to ask what you're doing?'

‘I'm doing something useful.'

‘Well,
that
could cover a multitude of sins!'

‘Oh,
Mum
! I'm helping people.'

‘That could be taken several ways, too . . . Oh, all right: forget I said anything. Well, your room's still here – I haven't let it or anything.'

That was a concession, and Katy recognized it as such.

‘That's good, Mum. I'll be back to see you when we're less busy . . .‘Bye for now.'

Katy's mother had often said ‘I'm all right on my own', usually looking hard at Katy when she said it. After the phone call Katy wondered if she was finding it quite as pleasant as she had expected, being on her own.

Alan's phone call to his parents was altogether more relaxed.

‘Hello, Mum. Glad you're up and about again.'

‘Alan! Well, now I know you're all right . . . You are all right, aren't you, Alan?'