They say the night tube will open up the London night, that four newly launched night lines will reveal it. No chance. The night is not what’s out there. The night is only what we want to see. Just ask those who know the night like no one else, the thousands of Londoners who sleep on the streets.
A few weeks ago I slept on a flattened out cardboard box with two Roma beggars in the tunnels under Hyde Park Corner. We had two thin, used blankets they had brought with them from Romania. One of them was fake leopard print, the other had a silvery sheen.
We settled down for the night – as swaying couples, loners and party boys echoed down the tunnels searching for the tube – talking about the Queen. The Roma wanted to know: how many horses did she have? Did she really have the whole palace above us all for herself? They told me, as we nodded off, that they wished they could spend one night in Buckingham Palace – just to see what it was like in her bed.
All of us were invisible to the dozens of people who strolled past. Laughing, shouting or sulking – they hardly saw us. The Roma told me they could not see us. Because the night is when Londoners are at their most blinkered, seeing only what they’re hunting: sex, drink, skunk, home. Beggars, they laughed, have zero chance of a few quid or a 20p after dark. Better to sleep through this party.
The night tube can’t change this. Because the night is when Londoners do their best not to see what’s around them. They rush into restaurants and bars, each of them themed little worlds – Vietnam, Brooklyn, Cocktail Land – anywhere but right here, in the real night.
At night, society disappears and we only have eyes for each other. Lovers kiss, knowing things are going wrong in the glare of Waterloo station, as down the road two drunks start squabbling over who should have paid for the last round as they are turfed out of the Wetherspoons. The Roma I roughed it with don’t judge us for this. This is exactly the kind of night they crave most of all. That’s the London they dream of – blazers, taxis and mojitos.
There is only one essential for sleeping rough in the summer: cardboard. That is what I went looking for with my Roma friends in the streets round Hyde Park Corner. Without cardboard, they said, it would be a matter of days before we got sick. A few weeks and our faces would sweat strangely and turn sallow, like those of junkies.
We went hunting in Belgravia round and round stucco streets of candy-coloured mansions, looking for building sites with cardboard turf-outs. This was early evening – and the Roma kept pointing out that almost all the lights were out in Belgravia. These streets, they told me, didn’t belong to the English. They belonged to the Russians and the Arabs, and they were hardly ever here. This was a stroke of luck (one Roma don’t get in Paris) as beggar gangs, and whole families, were sleeping in the doorways, and in the basement areas under the railings. These, they told me, were the choicest spots.
The night tube changes nothing for them. Their London at night is not the 24/7 playground that the night tube promises, with more bars and more fun. Their London is a kick in the teeth. As we bedded down, ripping and flattening the scavenged boxes, they told me what we had to watch out for. No 1, a “Polish attack” by drunken labourers who “Gypsy bash” in the London night. No 2, an “Arab attack” by coke-fuelled rich kids from the Gulf states on their way back to Mayfair. As long as we didn’t get woken up by either of those, they said, we’d sleep just fine. This, in Hyde Park Corner, is the London night. Hiding in plain sight.
• Ben Judah is the author of This Is London
