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Saint Erasmus

Contributed by georgelondon on 25/01/10

I was born here. Hell, before even that I was conceived here. This is where I was for most of a year. Day and night. Right here.

And whether it was light or dark, it was pretty much always damp and stinky and cold. However warm it was outside, my bones never once in nine months warmed. Scratch that; when it was really cold it wasn’t damp.

The hows and whys that put me there seem relevant only as a warning to others. For me, it just wasn’t important. Some days of course it was so unimportant that it was all I thought about.

So I sat here and thought. Or just sat here. Some days I slept for the entire day. I woke up to find some money in my lap. Or half a sandwich. Or a flask of coffee with a couple of sugar sachets next to it. I always put the large coins in my shirt pocket and slid the notes into the back of my rucksack but the change always stayed there.

I always wanted to tell the people that left food that they could have bought something cheaper for me and it would have gone further, or they could have saved some of their money, but you can’t say that because it just seems ungrateful. So I smiled, however I was feeling, and thanked them.

The coffee would be from Paul. I don’t actually know that’s his name; he never asked mine so it seemed only polite not to ask his. I heard someone say that name just before he turned up one day and he just looked like a Paul to me.

Anyway. Paul would pass through just after 8 every weekday morning and around 10 on a weekend and bring me a little flask of coffee. He’d leave it with me and then the next time he came, he’d bring a different coloured one and take a dirty one away. And whenever he noticed my shirt pocket bulging he’d give me a note for the coins and I’d slide it away.

I don’t know where he went each morning. Some days, if I was in the mood he’d sit and we’d talk about nothing and drink our first coffee of the day together. He never seemed in a rush. Some days he’d still be here a couple of hours later.

I told him once that this is my earliest memory of her and that this is also where I lost her. I don’t think he believed me but it was good to talk that day. Most days I couldn’t handle the conversation. Like I said, I was always polite to anyone who came through and tried to maintain the facade. It was mostly facade with Paul too, but the truthful kind.
Weirdly, I think it was the facade kept me tied in to everything in the end. That and Paul, who was always more real than anyone else. When it was time, I was still connected.

I worked out afterward how long I’d been here and it made me smile. A rebirth. Losing everything that matters and then destroying the rest.

One Tuesday morning in March, we were sat together and it just felt like Spring. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’d sat here for months and that morning I just felt like getting up. He laughed and told me not to rush. Then he asked how many notes I’d saved and I didn’t know so we counted it together. I reckon there was probably around two hundred. Two-fifty maximum, but somehow when we counted it, it was over nine hundred. I didn’t know what to do and he told me again not to rush. He asked me whether I was ready to come back.

At the bottom end, just down there, I saw three people walking out into the light and for the first time I wanted to find out what was out there; what my life would be now. And I left him there to finish his coffee. And I walked out and paid two months in advance for a flat by the old docks. Three streets down from where you and me grew up. And I got a job and worried about bills and even went for a coffee sometimes with folks I worked with and talked about nothing. I’ve learnt not to rush my coffee.