‘What arguments are there?’ he says. ‘I mean, these people are…’
‘I know, I know. You don’t have to argue with me. But that’s not the point, is it?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘There are never any arguments against anything you want to do. People are hungry, give them food if you’ve got it. Kids have nothing to play with, give them toys if you’ve got too many. I can never think of anything to say to you. But that doesn’t mean I agree with you.’
‘But it has to.’
‘That isn’t how the world works.’
‘Why not? OK, I know why not. Because people are selfish and scared and… and brainwashed into thinking that they have no alternatives. But they have. They have.’
And what am I supposed to say now? That people have a right to be selfish if they want to? That they don’t have any alternatives? And what’s the Greek for ‘Please shut up and leave me alone’?
The next morning I sit eating cereal with Tom while GoodNews and Molly and David clear up around me. I’m not moving. I’m selfish, and I have a right to be. In the Guardian there’s an article about a gang of youths who beat a man unconscious and left him under a hedge in Victoria Park, where he died of hypothermia. Unless he was dead already—the coroner doesn’t know. Three of the youths were homeless. OK, I accept that I shouldn’t have read the story out loud, given that our children are relatively young, and we have a homeless youth coming to live with us imminently (I presume that still to be the case—no one’s mentioned anything to me) and they will have nightmares for weeks about the poor and almost certainly harmless kid who’ll be sleeping underneath them. But I’m feeling bolshie, and the ammunition was just sitting there, at the top of page five, waiting to be fired.
‘Oh, great,’ says Tom. ‘So now Dad’s going to get us killed.’
‘Why?’ says Molly.
‘Weren’t you listening to what Mum was reading? A homeless person’s going to come round here and rob us and then probably kill us.’ He seems quite phlegmatic about it all; indeed, he seems to relish the prospect, possibly because being murdered would prove a point, and make his father sorry. I suspect that he’s being naive, and his father would be regretful and sad, but not sorry. Not the kind of sorry that Tom needs.
‘That’s not fair,’ David says to me angrily.
‘No,’ I say. ‘One against five! He didn’t stand a chance.’
He looks at me.
‘What? It’s here, in the paper. It’s nothing to do with fairness. It’s a news story. A fact.’
‘There are so many other things you could have read out. I’ll bet there’s an article about, I don’t know, changes in the benefit laws. I’ll bet there’s something about Third World Debt.’
‘David, Third World Debt isn’t coming to live in our house. Third World Debt hasn’t killed…’ I stop dead, knowing that I’m wrong, that I’ve lost, that Third World Debt has killed—has killed millions and millions, a zillion more than homeless youths have ever killed, I know that I know that I know that, but I’m going to hear all about it anyway, for hours and hours and hours.
10
The homeless kids all arrive on the same day, in a minibus that their hosts have hired for the morning. It’s a sunny June Saturday, a little hazy because of the early heat and last night’s rain, and a few people have gathered outside their houses, either to gawp or to welcome their new housemates, and suddenly I feel as though our street is, after all, special. No other street in London or Britain or the world is having a morning like this, and whatever happens hereonafter, David and GoodNews have, I can see now, achieved something.
The kids are loud and giggly as they get off the bus—‘Er, look at her, I’ll bet she’s yours’—but it’s bravado, and a couple of them are clearly scared. We are all scared of each other. David talks to each one—three boys, three girls—as they stand on the pavement, and points them towards their new houses. He shakes hands with one of the boys and points at me, and a couple of minutes later I am making tea while an eighteen-year-old who wants me to call him Monkey rolls a cigarette at my kitchen table.
‘What are you doing?’ asks Molly.
‘Rolling a cigarette.’
‘Do you smoke?’ says Molly.
‘Duh,’ says Tom, who promptly disappears to his bedroom. Molly, however, is awestruck. Her father Has Views on smoking, and her mother is a GP; she has heard that people smoke, but she has never seen anyone prepare to do it in front of her. For my part, I don’t know whether I want Monkey smoking in my kitchen, in front of the children. Probably I don’t. But asking Monkey to smoke outside in the back garden might get us off on the wrong foot: it might give him the feeling that he is not wanted, or that we do not respect his culture. Or it might serve to accentuate the differences between us—he might think that passive smoking is essentially a bourgeois fear, presupposing as it does the sort of long-term future he might feel he is currently denied, which is why he doesn’t worry about smoking roll-ups. Or asking him to go outside might simply make him angry, and his anger will compel him to steal everything we own, or murder us in our beds. I don’t know. And because I don’t know, I say nothing, apart from, ‘I’ll find you an ashtray.’ And then, ‘You’ll have to use this saucer.’ And then, when I replay that last sentence in my head, and hear a) a note that could be perceived as tetchiness and b) what could be construed as implicit disapproval, the buried suggestion that there are no ashtrays in this house FOR A REASON, I add ‘If you don’t mind.’ Monkey doesn’t mind.
He is very tall and very thin—not like a monkey at all, more like a giraffe. He is wearing (from the bottom up) Dr Martens, combat trousers, a khaki jacket and a black turtle-neck sweater that is smeared with mud, or what I hope is mud. He has spots, but very little else: the rest of his wardrobe is contained in a plastic carrier bag.
‘So,’ I say. He looks at me expectantly, which is fair enough, considering that the word I have just used clearly induces expectation, but I’m temporarily stuck. I try to think of something to follow up with, something which won’t patronize or offend, but which might indicate sympathy and curiosity. (I feel both sympathetic and curious, by the way, and so the question is not merely for show. I care. Really.)
‘When was the last time you sat in someone’s kitchen?’
That’s not offensive, surely? Because if you’ve been sleeping rough, it’s likely to have been a while, isn’t it? And maybe the question will help to draw him out, get him talking, and I’ll be able to understand a little more, learn something of what he’s been doing, and where. The only danger, I suppose, is that it could sound smug—haven’t we done well, we’ve got a kitchen, nah nah nah nah nah.
‘Dunno. Ages ago. Last time I saw my mum, probably.’
‘When was that?’
‘A couple of years ago. Is Ali G really funny?’
‘Who’s Ali G?’
‘That comedian on the telly.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen him.’
‘He isn’t,’ says Molly, who is drawing at the table.
‘When have you seen him?’ I ask her.
‘I haven’t. But I’ve seen a picture of him. He doesn’t look very funny. He looks stupid. Why are you called Monkey?’
‘I dunno. That’s what they call me. Why are you called Molly?’
‘Because Daddy didn’t like Rebecca.’
‘Oh. Have you got digital?’
‘No.’
‘Cable?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sky Sports?’
‘No.’