No Place of Safety by Robert Barnard Page A

at.
    â€˜Yeah,’ mumbled the young man.
    â€˜Where’s your pitch?’
    â€˜Near the station. Don’t get much.’
    â€˜Oh?’
    â€˜They think I’m fat and don’t need it. I need it more .’
    The last was said fiercely. Ben nodded calmly.
    â€˜You ought to talk to some of the others about techniques. I think your clothes are too good. It’s obvious that you haven’t been on the streets long.’
    Simon looked down at his oversize coverings – grey flannels, a clean blue hand-knitted pullover, uncracked shoes – with apparently no thought beyond the identifiable one that time would cure that. He turned to go to the door.
    â€˜You could help prepare the evening meal this afternoon,’ said Ben. Simon stopped with his hand on the knob. ‘The food for supper. Peel vegetables, chop up, that kind of thing. I told you about it last night. We start preparing the meal about five.’
    There was the faintest of glimmers in Simon’s eyes.
    â€˜Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I’ll help.’
    But when he came down and settled his bulk on the three-legged stool in the kitchen it was evident he would be no help at all. His mother had obviously done everything for him, making him quite incapable of fending for himself. He was set to peel potatoes for the shepherd’s pie (and a great number of potatoes needed to be peeled for one of the Centre’s shepherd’s pies), but he had no idea how to go about it, and more potato seemed to be hacked or scraped on to the newspaper than into the saucepan. Alan tried him on carrots, to no better effect. Then Katy suggested he cut up the braising steak she had cajoled out of the Dewhurst’s manager at a knockdown price (he thought she was one of a large family, and would probably have been quiteunforthcoming if he had known she was feeding a refuge for the homeless), and then feed it into the hand mincer which Ben had brought along with his own effects to number twenty-four. When this proved to be just about within his power Katy opened the cupboard and took down a packet of custard creams. This was what helping had been all about. For form’s sake she put them on a plate, but she and Alan had no more than one each.
    â€˜Is this the problem with your family?’ she asked. She could not yet manage the neutral tones that Ben did so well.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Eating?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    She tried again.
    â€˜Were they trying to get you to slim?’
    â€˜Yeah . . . That and the cost.’
    â€˜Didn’t you have a job?’
    He shook his head slowly.
    â€˜Never had a job. Mum’s just a housewife, and Dad’s a caretaker. Not much money coming into the house. Then the doctor said I ought to slim, and they started laying down rules.’
    Ben had been doing work on the plumbing in number twenty-two – he was a supremely handy odd-job man. Now he came in, stood in the kitchen doorway and said: ‘Wouldn’t it be better to obey the rules than live rough on the streets?’
    â€˜Yeah,’ said Simon slowly. ‘But there were other things.’
    And with that gnomic utterance they had to be content. The set of the body was one they all knew, it said he would answer no more questions. Ben will find out eventually, thought Katy. When Simon had finished feeding the mincer with chopped meat, he took the last couple of biscuits and sloped off to his bedroom without another word.
    Most of the people in the refuge had changed by now, though Tony, the young boy, had been given an extra week’s grace, because Ben was hopeful he could get him to go back to his parents’ home. Bett Southcott had been and come back, more willing to help this time: Ben’s policy of patience and quiet sympathy seemed to be paying off in her case. Theyhad a new dog – Queenie, a humorous jet-black mongrel, the pet or friend of a girl who called herself Jezebel.