A light in the darkness

The generosity of a couple should inspire us all

With the exhausting pace of news these days, it is not often that an article reveals so much decency and humanity that it jolts the reader so completely they descend into tears as their eyes scan down paragraph after paragraph. This piece, though, on Rob and Dianne Parsons, who opened their door to a homeless former acquaintance a few days before Christmas in 1975, does so. 

Their response was not normal. Who amongst us would invite in someone appearing so apparently wretched and offer them shelter for just one night let alone, as it turned out, for 45 years. 

The generosity of the couple towards Ronnie Lockwood - a man they had remembered as a boy being awkward when he appeared at Sunday School, who was shifted between care homes rife with abuse, who spent time in an apparently educational establishment for "subnormal boys", who ultimately, in his youth, was left without help, support or love - was extraordinary. Ronnie became a loved member of their family, who proved himself to be loyal, affectionate, kind and helpful to them and others in their neighbourhood. It is a story that restores one's faith in the fundamental decency of so many of us and gives hope for the future of humanity. 

The contrast, though, is so easy to see. Just outside Victoria Station today, a skinny black woman is lying face down on the pavements. A dirty duvet is roughly piled on top of her. She is lying on a few pieces of cardboard. Perhaps asleep, more likely unconscious, maybe dead. Nobody knows. Nobody, including, to my shame, me, stopped to check on her wellbeing.  

It is not a rare occurrence. I witnessed an almost identical scene a few weeks ago in almost precisely the same spot. The only differences on that occasion were that it was a man in a catatonic state and a man, pulling cases towards Victoria Coach Station, had stopped to check he was still breathing. 

Victoria is, these days, a magnet for the homeless. It is not like Camden Town, which seems to attract drunks - was it George Melly who said something along the lines of Camden being as far as an Irishman could stagger from King's Cross? - and the deranged. They come to Victoria as it has several homeless charities operating, the Christian kindness of Westminster Cathedral close at hand, and support networks. Numbers currently appear to be high and growing. 

The local authorities aren't thrilled about their presence in the area. Burly, combat-geared security officers, patrolling in circuits around the station, move beggars at the top of Underground staircases on. The British Transport Police often stop and question individuals and hopefully point them in the right direction for assistance. Tents pop up but rarely last long, but at least we have moved on from the days when Westminster City Council wanted to use sprinklers to drive away people huddling in their sleeping bags along the covered walkways along Victoria Street. 

The assumption so many of us make, rightly or wrongly, with these wretched heaps around us, is that they are rendered catatonic through drugs of one sort and another and there is little we can do. People going through stations are busy, they don't want to disrupt their lives waiting for police or an ambulance to arrive, who are unlikely to be grateful for any call in the first place.  

The same day, on a train into town before 9am, a man boarded my train carriage begging for help to find shelter. I recognised him. He has been homeless for at least ten years. Probably in his early thirties but looking a decade older, he shuffled, his words were slurred verging on incoherence, evidently on some substance or other. But this was the person, five years ago, who told me Dave had died. Dave was a man who found himself homeless after divorce and helped me when train doors closed on me whilst I was pushing a baby in a pram on board. For several years, Dave became something of a friend. He was incredibly decent. We chatted regularly, I helped him along the path towards securing a flat. At one point he had been allocated one but, through some bureaucratic mix-up, he never got the keys. On the streets, his health deteriorated; COPD, cancer, and he was killed by his second, at least, heart attack. He was failed by the lottery of life and the system that simply does not manage such individuals efficiently or effectively. I didn't have the opportunity to talk to his former colleague on the train; he shuffled off through the oblivious commuters. 

But for the open door of Rob and Dianne Parsons, it isn't hard to imagine that someone like Ronnie could have ended up as one of those unfortunate individuals at Victoria, or Camden Town, or Dave. We can’t all be like this wonderful couple but they can still inspire us to try harder.

The article about Ronnie Lockwood and Rob and Dianne Parsons is here

A Knock at the Door, by Rob Parsons is out on November 21