I smelled him before I saw him. Alcohol, nicotine, damp cardboard – and worse. Once upon a time, I would have shied like a skittish horse around people like this, avoiding eye contact, assuming that they got state aid and that what they did get was frittered away on booze, cigs and weed.
But now. Now I am ashamed of my arrogance, my lack of empathy, my lack of awareness of the many victims of circumstance – business failures, mental illness, kids with no families who had outgrown their children’s homes. Because not so long ago, the distance between me and the streets was a mere cat’s whisker.
My husband of twenty years had afforded us a charmed life. A picture-postcard country cottage, hedgehogs in the garden, nuthatches in the trees, salmon-pink sunrises from the front windows and golden sunsets from the back. Designer clothes, top-of-the-range cars and exotic holidays.
Until it happened.
I got the call at 9.47 a.m. I remember because he was working in Asia, and an international time clock was hanging in the kitchen. 5.47p.m. Singapore time, exactly three weeks before lockdown last year.
‘I’m not coming back.’
Had his flight been cancelled?
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I said. I’m not coming back. Ever.’
I staggered to the computer; the study whirled around me. Incriminating emails scorched themselves onto my retinas, a horror story unfolding before my eyes. A much younger woman, of course, declarations of love and commitment, plans for the future. But it was to get much worse.
Heaps of brown envelopes like collapsed packs of cards, unopened, in a cardboard box in the garage. Bills, reminders, mortgage payment demands. The bank manager, a lanky youth who would have made a good undertaker, wore an anaemic grey suit which matched his eyes. He heard what I was saying but didn’t listen. He declared in a patronising tone that he was oh, so very sympathetic, but ‘you have to understand, Mrs Pearce, that in his absence the liability, as his wife, becomes automatically yours.’
The nightmare continued as I functioned on autopilot, hidebound by a catastrophe of a credit rating and fielding unannounced visits from bailiffs until eventually the house was repossessed. My husband had severed all contact with me, swept off his feet on a cloud of cupid’s craziness. The local council found me a room in a hostel, and I found a foster home for my dogs.
***
‘How are you doing, John?’ I said. His chin jerked up as though he were a puppet on a string. As I bent down to hand him a food parcel. Although I was wearing a mask, I held my breath until it made me lightheaded. The food was provided by a charity, though it was harder to come by with all the cafes and restaurants closed. Although its nutritional value was inconsistent, it didn’t look too bad, and was better than scraps pilfered from bins.
‘Got any beer?’ he said, as he always did.
‘No.’
‘Well, piss off then, and take that fuckin’ muck with you,’ he rasped, thrusting it back at me, as he always did.
I got to know John pretty well last year, and we went through this charade on every visit. Of course, he took the food in the end, as he always did.
John was 64, same as me, though he looked at least a decade older. Wrinkles deep as a delta, stubble like a harvested wheat field, shadows under his eyes as dark as a forest. His face was his story, though he would never tell it. I recognised pride, the same pride that I had had not so many years before. Of all the homeless people I knew, John deserved better. I decided to share my story with him.
‘Fuckin’ silly bitch! What did you go trusting him for? A woman like you should know better.’
He was right. We laughed until we cried. His blackened teeth were punctuated by gaps.
‘I was a banker once.’ His rheumy eyes clouded over as he recalled distant memories. I waited.
‘Lost my job the same year I lost my wife.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Careless, eh?’ And we laughed again.
From his pocket, he drew out a card and handed it to me. It was grubby and dogeared.
John Mason, BSc, AIB
Regional Manager
His whole raison d’être was on this card. I had been afforded a rare privilege, humbling in its simplicity. He was telling me ‘I was someone, once.’ I could think of nothing to say, nor did he expect me to.
It was the same bank as my ex worked for, but I didn’t tell John. I handed the card back, fighting tears, and turned to go.
‘Next time you come, bring a beer.’
***
One day when I arrived at John’s usual spot, an imposing stone entrance to a former bank, he wasn’t there. His space had been occupied by a pregnant teenager whose parents had disowned her. Marie, fifteen years old, thin and hollow-eyed. I noticed that the handful of disposable masks I had given John were still there, screwed up in a corner, unused. Had he been taken ill? Had he moved on?
I never did find out. But there will always be a special place in my heart for John. Marie is another victim of circumstance, another soul to soothe. And I will do all I can to help her.
