No life

Chance bedfellows

Jeremy Clarke Spare some change,' said a figure crouching in a doorway in Tottenham Court Road last week. It was gone midnight and cold enough to freeze the tits off a brass homelessness tsar. I took him at his word and gave him a 50p and some coppers. Then, as I was feeling pretty lonely myself, I asked him if he would like to share my three-star West End hotel room for the night.

A small invitation will serve a beggar, says the proverb. This one picked up his sleeping bag and followed me without a second thought. I couldn't have sex with him, he warned me apologetically as we negotiated the crowded pavements around Cambridge Circus. He wasn't gay for one thing and for another he had Aids. 'Not a problem,' said Mr Generosity, dismissing it with an airy wave of the hand.

By my standards, let alone his, the hotel room, which I hadn't seen yet, was luxurious. Dimmer switches, mini bar, satellite TV, cotton duvets, and enough room in the bed for at least three more vagrants. On seeing only the one bed, the beggar — Robert he was called — humbly stated that he was more than happy to doss down on the carpet in his sleeping bag. But I was having nothing to do with such a feudal arrangement and insisted he shared the bed. So while I got into my pyjamas and quickly ran the electric toothbrush over my railings, Robert carefully hung up his greasy jacket in the teak-veneered wardrobe and climbed under the covers with his wet boots on.

I climbed in beside him and turned the light down. Before going to sleep, we had a brief conversation in the darkness. Robert told me he'd been 'on the streets' for seven years.

'Why don't you get a job?' I said. This irritated him.

'That's what everyone says. "Why don't you get a f—ing job?" they say as they walk past me. Sometimes I say, "All right, then, give me a f—ing job and I'll do it." And they'll say, "It's not my f—ing job to give you a job, get one your f—ing self." And I say, "If you can't give me a f—ing job, don't f—ing tell me to get a job." It's not that easy to get a job when you're living in a door way,' he added on a plaintive note.

'You could always be a door-man,' I said helpfully.

We went on to discuss his CV, his health, his criminal convictions (for vagrancy and possession of this, that and the other), and his financial affairs.

'It must be quite lucrative, all this begging,' I said. 'What do you make in a week?'

He said he hadn't been that scrupulous about his book-keeping, lately, so it was hard to say. I pressed him for a ballpark figure. He refused. `Go on. Roughly,' I said. (Whilst taxing him with these impertinent questions, I am ashamed to say I had both hands on my wallet, which I'd stuffed down the front of my pyjamas.) Robert thought again, and without much conviction said, 'About twenty quid a day, I s'pose.'

'What do you spend it on?'

'Normal things,' he said defensively. 'You know: socks, underwear, tobacco — maybe a bit of puff now and again.'

I was homeless once — for a month. Having no money and nowhere to go wasn't so bad. But the growing realisation that I was somehow being held culpable for being in that situation filled me with unutterable horror. Until then I thought the lines 'It's the same the whole world over/ It's the poor wot gets the blame/It's the rich wot gets the pleasure/Ain't it all a bleedin' shame' were nothing more than light-hearted parody. After his seven years without a home, Robert's 'bit of puff now and again' struck me as a prodigy of asceticism.

I changed the subject. 'Why don't you get a dog?' I said.

'You do need a dog to watch your back,' he agreed. 'Two blokes were stabbed to death through their sleeping bags the other night. And they're company, dogs. And warmth. I did get offered a pup not long ago, but it was all-white and I prefer black ones.'

'Beggars can't be choosers,' I said.

Robert had a good night: I didn't. His snoring kept me awake and drove me mad. In the morning I was up before him. When I came out of the bathroom his eyes were open. 'Why don't you get a f—ing job?' said.

After his full English, Robert returned to our cold, wet, broken pavements with his pockets bulging with tropical fruit and complimentary shower gel. Happily for both our dignities he didn't thank me for putting him up.