Even while struggling with drink problems and a chaotic, hostile environment, one homeless couple are proving it is possible to forge a long-term relationship. CARL O'BRIENreports...
IN MANY WAYS theirs is a love story like any other. They sleep in each other’s arms every night and share every meal. They offer each other support and protection. They even finish off each other’s sentences.
But in other ways it’s the most improbable of love stories. Both have been homeless for the past five or six years. For much of that time they’ve had to live apart, in the rough-and-tumble world of emergency beds and shelters. Both have had to pick up the pieces of chronic drink problems and broken marriages. Somehow, though, amid the chaos of life on the street, their relationship has blossomed and endured.
“She’d do anything for me – you know?” says Dave, who’s in his mid-50s, and wears a wooden cross around his neck. “Life on the street is rough. To have someone who cares for you means a lot. There’s a lot of love there. Since getting together, I’m changed.”
“I’m happier. Many’s the time he’s helped me out and supported me,” adds Marie, who has just turned 60. “We talk about everything. I’d get married to him, I would.”
As if the streets aren’t a tough enough environment for a relationship, homeless services, ironically, can be even more forbidding. Most shelters are single-sex facilities. As a result, couples tend to stay on the streets instead of being split up.
“We couldn’t stay together, so we used to just meet up on the corner,” says Dave. “I’d just hope she’d be there. We might have a drink or two, not bothering anyone.”
“It’s difficult,” adds Marie. “A plainclothes garda came along once and tried to arrest us. Someone must have complained. We ended up being fined €75. But we’d nowhere else to go. So we had to pay the fine, or end up in court. And we were just talking.”
THEY'VE BEENtogether for three years. As times goes by, their old lives often seem like distant memories. Dave grew up in Ballyfermot, the eldest of nine children. He got a job in the parks department of Dublin Corporation at 18. After marrying, he moved into a house close to home and fulfilled his dream of owning a car: a white Sierra.
“But when the marriage broke down, I just walked out,” he says. “I was bad on the drink then – vodka and whiskey by the bottle. Spirits didn’t agree with me . . . It would get me so, so drunk . . . I was on the street and ended up in hospital with cirrhosis of the liver. I can’t touch the stuff now. I’d just end up back in hospital.”
Marie grew up on Gardiner Street in Dublin’s north inner city. Her father was a bus driver and her mother raised the family. She left school early, working in a succession of jobs, from watch- making in a factory to cleaning.
She got married at 21 and started a family. She has fragments of warm memories of her four children. She talks of going shopping together as a family and going away on various half-remembered trips. But her relationship with her husband was a rocky one which descended into rows and, occasionally, violence.
“He hit me once, and then apologised the next day and bought me a gold ring,” Marie says. “He was good to me, but he had a fierce temper. I left eventually. I just walked out. He said to me, ‘If you walk away you’ll have to come back’, but I didn’t. That’s how I ended up on the street.”
Despite being toughened by life on the street, Dave and Marie are surprisingly shy of talking about their relationship. When you ask what attracted them to each other, they laugh awkwardly.
“Well,” says Dave, haltingly, “when I seen her first, I took a pure liking to her. She was across from me . . . I just took to her. I had no time for most of the others. Her? I was just . . . attracted to her. There was just something there.” And as for Marie? “Well, he’s thoughtful,” she says. “He gets me a card for Valentine’s Day and my birthday . . . I get him things too – I bought him a belt for his birthday. It was €70, but reduced to €10 in the sales.”
The street, though, can be a highly charged atmosphere, a world of boredom, jealousy and insecurity. Relationships don’t tend to last.
“We prefer to keep to ourselves,” says Dave.
“I don’t mix with strangers any more,” adds Marie. “We’re able to do our own thing.”
Recently, things have begun to look up for them. They live together in an immaculately kept en-suite room at Sundial House in Dublin’s inner city. It’s a relatively new homeless centre which caters for couples, as well as single people, with alcohol problems. While emergency shelters offer little in the way of support or stability, Sundial House is different. There’s an air of permanence, with pictures of residents on walls, and mementos visible in individual bedrooms.
“We promote the idea that this is their home and we just work here,” says Barbara Corcoran, project manager with De Paul Trust, which operates the centre. “Dave and Marie’s relationship is very positive. They help and support one another. Everyone wants to have the experience of being loved. Homeless people are no different. That’s something we should all remember at Valentine’s Day.”
STAFF ARE TRAINEDto help minimise the alcohol-related harm residents do to themselves and to others. It's no easy task. Dave and Marie are still trying to get to grips with their addiction problems, but they are now able to take part in activities that are not drink-related. They paint together at the art classes provided, they listen to music (she's a Dolly Parton fan, he likes Hendrix and Dylan) and go shopping at Penneys and Dunnes every so often (he carries the bags). They're beginning to share hopes and dreams for the future.
“I’d love if we could get a place of our own,” says Dave. “Life has been rough on the street. The staff here are great, although I’d love if we had our own house.”
“Me too,” says Marie. “I’d get married to that man, if I had the choice. I want to be with him, I don’t want that to change.”
See depaulireland.org for more on the De Paul Trust/Sundial House
