It is easy to dismiss good deeds as virtue-signalling self-flattery. The student who spends their first year at university talking about the school they helped build in Zambia on their gap year is good grounds to doubt moral sincerity, which I can red-facedly speak to.
Though you can’t always distinguish saint from signaller, it’s harder to argue with results.
Since 2013, the Order of Malta’s work with London’s homeless has boomed. The work that began with the Thursday-night Companions’ Café in the church hall of St James’s, Spanish Place, in Marylebone and the now defunct Monday sandwich runs at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, has added another half-dozen operations across the capital which see a roster of regular guests fed from Monday to Thursday every week.
St James’s now hosts a Monday café; Wandsworth hosts another on East Hill on Tuesdays; St Mary of the Angels, Bayswater, and Church of our Lady of the Assumption and Saint Gregory, in Soho’s Golden Square, run breakfast clubs, while also giving guests the opportunity for a shower (booked in advance).
In the years before the pandemic temporarily stalled work, the flagship effort at St James’s had gone from serving about 40 mouths with the leftovers from Pret à Manger to as many as a hundred. It is also a hub for donations, handing out underwear, socks and other useful kit to the guests – any unused items are sent to the other Companions projects throughout England and Scotland and local projects in London
I’d lent a hand to the Companions’ Cafés as a student but not the breakfast clubs, so a few weeks ago I went to Golden Square to see how it was done.
Setting out at 5.30am into a dark and drizzly autumnal morning, I thought I’d be there in good time. But as I entered, breakfast was already in full swing. The doors had opened a little early so the guests could get a reprieve from the pre-dawn showers.
It is mercifully warm, and the light rumble of friendly chatter lifts the simple room. The familiar breakfast smells of toast and coffee blend with the gamier tang of unwashed bodies. Curling around the kitchen, accessible across two counter tops, the small L-shaped room seats about 15 guests, 20 at a push. Three or four 20-somethings navigate the tables and chairs, serving tea, coffee, cereal and toast. In the kitchen, the Order’s more venerable chefs man the stove, overseeing a slowly-cooking gallon of porridge and the full English that is to follow.
The good-humoured murmuring dies down as voices raise by the door – one of the guests, a woman in her forties with an overgrown bob and wearing a long black coat, is lightly rebuked for getting on at one of the volunteers. The vigilant head of ops, who smoothed over the ruffled feathers of that guest, spots me and heads my way. Having just rocked up, with no respect for (and, in my defence, no knowledge of) the rota, I am quickly quizzed. Do I know the form: first names only, no contact details and limited physical contact when dealing with guests? I do. Formalities dealt with, I don an apron and get busy.
Tea, toast, jams and coffee give way to porridge. Volunteers go from table to table taking orders for the “double” breakfast – full English with a helping of fish (kippers, I think) to boot.
The guests are as diverse as one might expect of London in all things bar one, gender. The disgruntled female guest is one of only two women. As for the rest, there are a few English, some from London, one from the West Country; a couple of Frenchmen, two from the Far East, a well-turned-out German and a polite Eastern European.
As breakfast orders are fulfilled, the bustle of waiters gives way to chatter. Many of the guests sit in silence: some looking into the middle distance, one checks his charging phones while another reads the paper. Those who do speak are more open to the regular volunteers. Food, drink and toiletries are important but what is most striking about the Companions’ work is the respect they show their guests.
Before Covid, at the St James’s café, there was always one volunteer assigned to the door to shake the hands of each guest as they entered. It’s a small thing, but bear it in mind next time you or someone you see drops change into a homeless person’s hand, rather than risk touching them by handing it to them.
If you’d like to get involved in any of the Companions’ projects, visit orderofmalta.org.uk/companions
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