Baldwin describes how his father’s illness led to him “hating and fearing every living soul including his children who had betrayed him, too, by reaching towards the world which had despised him.” As my father’s illness took over his brain, he would tell my mother that he was going to kill himself. Slamming the door shut, he wandered out of their flat and into the heart of the market town where they lived. Sometimes he would return, usually with cigarettes, within ten minutes, but there was a period when he took to sitting with the local drinkers and homeless men and women. He wanted to sleep on the streets, he explained to my mother, and he wanted to help these people who had nothing, something which had always concerned both my parents.
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