The street is dark and empty and he turns back a moment to check the name of it. It’s the right one. Why shouldn’t it be? What’s he expecting: drunken, toothless scaffers spilling about over the road? A giant arrow — down and outs, this way? Further on there is a smaller street off the side, and down it, a church. He goes toward it in a kind of daze, without considering what he is doing; all he knows is that he’s definitely way too fucking sober to be doing it. It is the cold that pushes him on, chibbing like a gun between the shoulder blades.
The great wooden door of the church is closed, no sign of anybody about, so he carries on round the side to a single-storey, modern kind of a building. A light through the ribbed glass above the door. He presses on the button, but nobody comes out, so he tries the handle and goes in. A small, dark foyer. Old books on a shelf; a poster on a noticeboard — Sunday service crèche club. Fucksake. What is he doing? Nay turning back now but, because a door is opening; the Hallelujahs are coming.
A tall man with close-shaved hair and glasses is looking at him from round the door.
‘Hello. Can we help you?’
‘I was told there’s a bed.’
‘Come in.’
He follows him through into a large hall, the lights turned out, but he can see well enough the humped shapes in bags across the floor. They go into some kind of office, and the man sits down at a table, motioning him to a chair opposite.
‘Now, we require very little here by way of paperwork. We provide a place to sleep for the night, a hot evening meal and breakfast. All we ask is that you treat the church and the other guests with respect. That, really’ — he smiles, holding up both hands in mock surrender — ‘is as complicated as it gets.’
Guests. He serious?
‘What is your name?’
He tries to think up something, but he isn’t quick enough. ‘Mick.’
‘Hello, Mick. My name is Yann.’ He is smiling again and Mick wonders if maybe this is the hallelujah bit coming. ‘Whatever has brought you to us tonight, Mick, nobody here is going to judge you, and anything you tell us will be treated in confidence, as is the case with every one of our guests.’
‘I’m no a homeless, just I’m in-between things, is all.’
Yann smiles. He isn’t buying that one. ‘That’s alright.’ He starts to get up. ‘Let me get you a cup of tea. I’m afraid it’s too late now for the evening meal. We don’t generally allow admissions after eight, but we do have a space and I know how cold it is tonight.’
‘I’ve already ate, thanks.’
‘Good.’ He goes to the door. ‘Now, I need just to tell you, we don’t allow any drugs, alcohol or weapons in here.’ He smiles. ‘We’re pretty relaxed, otherwise.’ He goes out the room. Drugs? Weapons? What does he look like to this guy?
A few moments later the Hallelujah comes back in. A small cup tinkling with a spoon and sugar lump on a saucer. He gives it to him and leans down to pick something up outside the doorway. A sleeping bag, and a rolled-up mat. He puts them on the table. ‘Finish your tea, then I’ll show you through.’
There is a couple dozen bodies. The room honks with feet and drink and urine. Cabbages. He is being shown to a space against the wall in between two humps, and all he can think is — no, he cannot do this. Leave, well. Remove yourself from the place and slam the door firmly shut behind — thank you, oh dear Lord, for no judging me and for the tea but that’s me offski the night, goodbloodybye.
‘Breakfast is at six thirty,’ the voice is whispering, the mat getting laid out for him, ‘and all guests are asked to vacate by seven.’ Mick sits and takes off his shoes, a pure blessed relief, and even if the brain doesn’t want him to be doing it, there’s no chance the body is going to listen now as he slides into the warm bag. He will be up and out immediately as he’s swallowed down some breakfast. Guests are asked to vacate by seven. What a fucking place. Hotel Hallelujah.
He is facing toward the wall. The bag pulled right over his head. Still but he can’t shut out the sounds. Farts and wheezings all around him. Cabbages. He sleeps in fits. His chest cramping each time he wakes and then strains the bag tight about him, but the smell, that smell, it’s inside the bag, inside him, right into the windpipe and the lungs, until he is pure desperate for some other smell that he knows, something familiar. But he can’t mind any. Impossible to imagine that any other smell exists. It’s just this.
A noise wakes him. A shout, somewhere in the room, followed by a long wail. For a moment there is silence but then it comes again, a loud scurling sound. Like a fox; no something human. He closes his eyes, wanting to shut it out, but he can’t, even in the quiet in-betweens, because he is braced, the heart tromboning, waiting for it to come again. He inches the bag down from his face and props up onto his elbow to try and see over the hill of whatever he’s next to. There is no movement anywhere. Only the dim shapes of all these others, who don’t seem to notice this desperate wailing noise, merging it instead into their own nightmares.
A hand on his shoulder. There is activity in the room, voices, light streaming in through the large, high windows. Somebody stood above him; walking away. He lies there rigid and watches as the cocoon next to him squeezes itself out. No a butterfly, that’s for certain. He is old and scarred, the hair clotted, deep trenches in his face. Mick doesn’t move, watching from inside his bag — all these hopeless creatures stooping and coughing, gathering up their beds. There is one pair that look young enough they could be schoolweans. Blacks too, Asians, the whole circus. Yann is there, chatting with a few of the other Hallelujahs, who bring out long tables and unfold them at one side of the hall. Women start appearing. Broken-looking women, worse gone even than the men. He sits there in a stupor taking it in. He’s seen plenty enough scaffers before, in bookies, the park, on the street, but this is something different, seeing them all together in a room. Yann is coming over.
‘How did you sleep, Mick? We have breakfast now, so if you want to queue up, they’ll have it out in a moment.’ A line is already forming by a table at the other side of the hall. ‘Here.’ He hunkers down beside him and hands him a leaflet. ‘Each of these churches opens for a different night of the week. You can self-refer to any, but you’ll need to book your place first.’
He half listens to the rest of Yann’s spiel before joining the back of the queue, behind a woman with no socks on, her baries scarlet and bloated. None of it is registering properly. He sits down where there is nobody next to him. Staff food all over again. Except this is a better meal at least: scrambled egg, bacon, beans. Head down, he eats fast, ravenous and wanting to get out. Somebody is pulling in opposite him but. Mick keeks up, then back to his food. A man in a red woolly hat. His giant bawface blistered and shot, a drinker. If he can just get eaten up, leave this place, no talk to any of them. But this guy is staring at him.
‘Ye don’t always get the beans, know. Serious, ye don’t.’
A bloody Weegie. Unfuckingbelievable. Mick doesn’t look up. He resolves no to let a word slip out of his mouth.
‘See the bacon is always — ye always get the bacon but the beans is hit and miss. Believe that? I’m telling them, get more beans. Beans is cheaper for them and it fills ye up the better.’
Mick nods, picking up his plate and standing.
He puts the plate and cutlery into the buckets on the table. How can somebody like that look at him and think — aye, there’s a guy that’s on my wavelength? No point dwelling on it but. Probably a headbanger. He goes warily over to his bag and then makes for the door, getting out the building before any other nutter can clamp onto him.