The Shadow Dwellers (2018)
I am weighed down with sadness and tiredness as I lay awake most nights, not quite believing what these abandoned souls have been telling me these past couple of weeks.
A proud man with long, off-white, wiry wild hair and an equally long beard catches my attention. He is dressed smartly in clean green army-type combat trousers belted with a tarnished brass buckle stamped with a cannabis plant motif, thin cotton layers beneath, what looks like, a warm sweat top, and a multi-pocketed gilet. Sturdy shoes and, I guess, thick, suitable socks. He has a quiet confidence about him. He is watchful and alert but relaxed as he helps the soup kitchen volunteers set up the tables for those waiting outside the church doors. You wouldn’t guess he was homeless. But he is.
I approach him for a chat, but he politely apologises for “not being in the mood for talking tonight.” He tells me his name is Gary and may speak to me another evening. Patience and respect, I know, are required if I want these Shadow Dwellers to open up to me. I want to give them a voice, to find out who they are and how they ended up on the streets. I am told by a volunteer that Gary’s “home” in the woodland has today been destroyed by council workers under the Anti Social Behaviour Laws.
It would be hard to imagine a more responsible and undemanding citizen than Gary. The only anti-social behaviour I am witnessing is the lack of care and action and the incompetence of those in charge. This law seems to me to simply allow authorities to run rough-shod over these people – the vulnerable and the invisible. The ones whom no one wants to see or hear. The ones who have no voice.
They may not have a voice, but they certainly have a story to tell – a story we all need to hear.
I look around the church hall and think of the celebrations going on in schools and chapels across the country – the annual re-telling of the story of the birth of Christ and his message of hope and love for all humankind. It strikes me as ironic, and I wonder what would happen if all this festive energy could be diverted into a true message of hope and love for mankind by finding homes for the 80 or so gathered here.
Asking for socks. Asking for underwear. Coming to eat food prepared by volunteers, often with their own money.
A couple of days later, Gary is ready to talk, and we find ourselves a place in the bowels of this central Bournemouth church where someone points out that I should find time to admire the stained glass windows. I am far from being in the mood to admire the treasures of the church, however beautiful. I am weighed down with sadness and tiredness as I lay awake most nights, not quite believing what these abandoned souls have been telling me these past couple of weeks.
Gary cannot remember exactly how long he has been on the streets – time just flows without the usual dairies and markers of civilised society. He thinks a moment and decides it is “about five years.” He is an ex-serviceman, and it’s easy to tell when you watch him move deftly around his fellow street-sleepers checking on the most vulnerable. They and the volunteers recognise him as an unofficial spokesman. It is not a role he accepts. “I just help where I can. The charity helps us, and I just give back. I look out for the real ones, the ones who are vulnerable, the genuine ones,” he tells me.
He also runs Hope For Food’s wonderfully inventive, mobile Clean Machine. It is a converted van with a washing machine and a drier for the homeless to clean and dry their clothes. It is in operation twice a week, and Gary ensures it is managed and fairly run. It is also an opportunity for Gary to keep up to date with those using it, his watchful eye surveying this hidden street life, his ears to the ground.
The Clean Machine is one of only two in the country and is a vital resource, especially in bad weather where clothes can become so wet and muddy they have to be thrown away. Sleeping bags, blankets and duvets are often discarded when ruined by the harsh winter conditions and charities struggle to replenish supplies.
I ask Gary about his first night on the street. His answer is short. “I took a few things and a sleeping bag and went to find a place.” He tells me he is lucky because his 14 years of army training helped him to sleep outdoors. I ask why he left his home. He hesitates as he doesn’t like “sob stories.” There is not a hint of self pity in this straightforward man with a nice, direct gaze.
His answer, when it comes, shocks me. Gary had cancer, and after a tumour was removed, he struggled to work due to the chemotherapy and the aftereffects. The company he worked for gave him only three months pay. It was outdoor, physically demanding employment tarmacing, and he couldn’t do the “80 hours a week” he had been used to, and after a few months he was laid off. He was given only £600 per month from the Tory government coffers and had rent of £560. He tried to get more help and was passed from pillar to post. “They just bounced me around. I didn’t want to wait for the bailiff.”
He was aged 53, living alone and suffering badly from the effects of treatment, struggling with the painkilling drugs he was prescribed, and one day, in frustration with the lack of assistance, threw his keys on the table, took a sleeping bag, and bedded down in the car park in Boscombe. It was late September. I ask about an army pension and support from the ex-forces group SAAFA, but he is too proud to claim any help, and he would rather be independent of handouts and the indignity of begging for help, so he taught himself to live without money.
He smokes a few roll-ups, and his favourite brand, he smiles, is Roadside Virginia – the dog ends dropped by the wasteful. He eats at the soup kitchens and is passionate in his praise of the volunteers. “You won’t starve in this town – thanks to the incredible work of so many selfless individuals. I can’t praise them enough.”
I ask him if he begs. “Never.” I know it’s true.
At risk of upsetting him again I ask what happened to his “home” last week. His brow furrows a little but he chooses to tell me that his home was a tent, tucked away out of sight close to the beautiful beaches that make the town of Bournemouth famous. He has lived there, a stone’s throw from the millionaires’ mansions and second homes of the fortunate few, for three and half years. Then last week, without warning – council workers cut down the trees and told him they had been ordered to do so to prevent Anti Social Behaviour.
I jokingly ask him what he has been doing to outrage public decency. He throws back his head and laughs, “Well, I do make lots of tea!” Gary didn’t dwell long on having his tented home wrecked and is currently camped in a place the Shadow Dwellers call The Swamp. So named because it never gets dry, no matter the weather, and the council never goes there. He describes it as disgusting.
We talk about the people who have died. He mentions Nick. A 44-year-old alcoholic whom he describes as “the nicest man you could ever wish to meet” and who one day sat by the pier on a sunny day with a bottle of cider and “dropped off and never woke up.” There is Anna, who seems to have touched the hearts of many. She had a heart attack in the pretty town square not long after being discharged from the hospital.
I ask him what he needs. He levels his bright, honest eyes at me, “Absolutely nothing.” At my surprise, he elaborates: “What else do I need? I have two pairs of trousers and a change of clothes. I can wash at the open-air showers on the beach, clean my clothes twice a week in the van, and eat from the soup kitchen. I have a tent and can go to the library.” Other than a new, better pitch for his tent, which he is currently looking for, he is certain he has everything.
Gary has adjusted to life in the rough and says his dignity is what keeps him strong. He looks for the blessings and is grateful for all he has, however little. He says the plus side is being self-sufficient, independent, and free of the shackles of normal life.
Gary is unusual among the homeless I have met. He can look after himself. There is no fear in his eyes. He is trained for this life. Most others are not.
He has the calming demeanour of a leader, a reliable, honourable man, and I tell him he reminds me of the wandering Saddhus I saw in India. The spiritual men who have renounced worldly life in favour of asceticism, living in caves and forests and who walk with a pot for chai and nothing more. They are highly revered – no ASBOs for them!
We laugh together. The very idea delights him.
