Stuart (27 page)

I think about knocking on the door of number 30. It would be interesting to see where Stuart slept. I could stand on the stairs that Stuart's brother leant over and cracked their dad, the unspeakable bully, across the head with a broom. A great moment.

But I don't knock. What would I say? ‘My friend, a homeless thief, lived here, and I'm writing a book about him. Do you mind if I come in and spread myself around a bit?' If it had been Newton's old home or Bertrand Russell's or…but Stuart's? Suddenly conscious that I have just betrayed my friend, I get off my bike to do a drawing as a compromise. Stuart is waiting on the steps of my front door when I get back.

Stuart's mother carrying Stuart. Gavvy scuffing behind.

‘Your gran wants a visit,' I tell him, locking up my bike.

He extracts a tobacco pouch from his pocket. ‘Me old nan used to make me laugh, because she used to love a fag, and if she hadn't a fag, she'd roll tea leaves. Did she tell you much about me as a little 'un?' he asks politely, but without considerable interest. ‘She'd know. She was old “old” even then.'

He pauses. ‘I'm in court tomorrow. This time for real.'

How does he know that it's not another bluff? It has been a year since Stuart destroyed his flat and tried to burn himself alive. The magistrate said, because of Stuart's state of mind, that this matter should be resolved in ‘weeks not months'. Since then, 3 per cent of Stuart's life has passed while he waits for the case to come to trial. Apart from when we took the train to King's Lynn together, Stuart has had one other appearance in Crown Court about the case, and that was also a false alarm: the witnesses didn't show. The Crown Prosecution Service had messed things up, contacted the witnesses too late, or sent the summoning letters to the wrong address. ‘Look on the bright side,' the judge had said to the jury when he let them go without apology, half an hour in to a wasted day, ‘at least you've got the afternoon off. It's nice and sunny out there. Have a sunbath.'

But Stuart is adamant. ‘I feel it in me bones this is the one. Pray to God it's not Howarth.' (‘Cambridge's answer to hanging Judge Jeffries'–
Private Eye
.)

Stuart has asked that the judge in his case not be Howarth. Please, Your Honour, not Howarth. No chance of fairness from Howarth. The next morning, Stuart and I go to the court together. It is Howarth.

For some reason I expect drum rolls and banners and flash photography. A man's life is at stake. A family's happiness, a little 'un's paternal influence, our friendship, my future as a writer, Stuart's role in biographical history–profound matters are up for question today. Perhaps the press have just rushed away for a moment, like the ornithologist who waits through hail and storm, sun and snow, to photograph a rare bird only for it to flash past when he is peeing behind a tree, or campaigners sleeping outside the Home Office hoping for three days and nights to see Jack Straw, and missing him because for five minutes they'd popped off to get radio batteries.

Before we push through the absent press corps and invisible banner-waving crowds, we wander twice around Market Square, saying, in effect, our goodbyes.

In the waiting room, I work myself up into a little rant. The last time I was in this dingy lobby with empty offices along one wall, which looks like a border crossing into an East European dictatorship, was when Ruth and John had just been jailed. As the sentence was read out, a homeless woman had stood up and clamoured, ‘These people saved my life!' Then Ruth's son had shouted loud enough to rattle the cells, ‘You bastard, you fool, you fuckwit!' Or words to that effect. Whereupon Judge Howarth promptly had him arrested and made to apologise. People said Howarth had been ‘visibly shocked' at the vehemence of it all. He didn't know what he'd unleashed. And we'd showed him–got Ruth and John out in seven months. Then ‘The System' showed us. Two weeks ago the Appeal Court upheld the convictions. A clumsy, terrible, unjust moment in the history of law.

‘Stuart Shorter!' The usher's call.

Inside the courtroom, the visitors' benches are almost empty. There are three reporters on the press seat. The police benches, set off to one side, are nearly full. I recognise a number of faces from the Ruth and John trial.

‘All rise!' calls the usher, and Howarth-cum-Jeffries enters.

An hour later it is all over.

Howarth has thrown the case out.

He was, he said–we can hardly remember what he said–who cares what he said?–we are dancing!–it is beyond understanding–isn't the justice system delightful?–what a nice man that Howarth is, what a clever, fine, insightful man!–here, you, yes, you, sitting on the pavement there, here's a fiver from me and Stu! Take it, go get high! Make sure you get Howarth when they catch you!

Howarth said the case should have been dismissed months ago. He said that the police attempt to add and subtract charges in King's Lynn so long after the incident was against all good practice, and, in short, that the whole thing was a ragtag of mismanaged nonsense.

Howarth the Understanding! Howarth the poor man's friend!

I am even a little alarmed.

Are people like Stuart to wield knives and take on the police with impunity?

25

‘Whooah! Alexander, you're a maniac! Can't see your fingers!'

I haven't heard Stuart knock. My landlord must have let him in. He's standing in the doorway of my study, legs curved as if he's just galloped here on an Arab steed (not capsized in the back of a Megarider bus), mouth agape, staring at me, typing.

Pleased with the compliment, I hit a familiar phrase and speed up a little more to show off. I imagine my hands blurring across the keyboard.

‘Whooah!' Stuart cries again. ‘You don't even look at the fucking screen! You just look at the keyboard!'

I stumble to a stop in a pile of spelling mistakes.

He has got that wrong, I say tetchily. A good typist (such as myself) never looks at his keyboard.

He flops into the armchair, beside the pink fan, dropping a thin sheaf of papers on the floor. ‘Yeah, sorry', he nods, extracting a beer can from his pocket and drinking half the contents in one giant snatch. ‘Aaaaahh!'

Outside, my Alexander Giraud rose, imported specially from Peter Beales in Norfolk, is sprouting pretty pink-red suspicions of petal. I have decided to experiment with artichokes and sweetcorn this season. Three sturdy plants of each are growing in a dustbin next to the larkspurs. Next door, I can hear the clink of glasses and rich laughter: the Professor of Theology is entertaining a visiting bishop in his garden.

The months since Stuart's acquittal have been mixed for him. On the plus side is his girlfriend, the psychiatric nurse. At last, with her and Viagra, sex is good again.

‘You only need one pill,' he reminds me. ‘A mate of mine said it worked even when you've been out on the piss, though not very well. But the next day they'd gone shopping and the trolley vibrating gave him an erection in the car park what stayed on him for twelve hours.'

Another mate in Swansea says he knows someone who might be able to sell Stuart two or three proper tablets (not Internet rip-offs; not herbal), and there's a rumour that there will be a large stolen batch available at the Cambridge Strawberry Fair music festival, £10–15 a pill. Stuart knows for certain that his stepfather has some put away somewhere in the pub flat, but he can't think how to bring the subject up.

‘What do I say? “Oooh, Dad, will you sell us your hard-on pills?” '

He worries that it'll do more damage to their relationship than the attempted stabbing.

On the minus side is Stuart's muscular dystrophy. Because of his record, the doctors still refuse to prescribe him proper painkillers–all he has to get him through the wrenches of his dying muscles is Nurofen. He remembers now a reason why he used to take so much heroin: it is one of Nature's best painkillers. Also on the bad side: his new girlfriend. The relationship is tainted by ambivalence. Her night-time energies remind him of the pin-down measures that the paedophiles in care inflicted. Her tenderness suggests someone about to eat a meal. Stuart begins to brood and feel resentful; he wonders if their affair might end in violence. Val is not as close to the homeless world as Sophie was, she is not a hostel worker. Homelessness is not her ‘kick'. But one still has to wonder
why
she wants to be with a man like Stuart–a man so like one of her patients.

So, all in all, the conclusion of his trial–the long anxiety, months of speculation, constant repetition of familiar facts in new interpretative guises, 3 a.m. nightmares that it might all come out worse than ever conceived in the quiet rationality of day–is akin to finishing a manuscript: obsessive rearranging of details, restructuring, dreaming for a few minutes of fantastic success, fretting for the rest of the day about abject failure. Result: when the trial/manuscript is over it's not joy and liberation as people expect. Tension gone, ennui, loss of purpose and a herd of difficulties rush in to fill the gap. The day after his celebration party, Stuart fell promptly into a tedious gloom and said he was going to leave Cambridge altogether. His mind was made up. He was off to Wales to bore them with his problems there.

To be honest, at the moment, none of this particularly interests me. What matters is the pages he's dropped at the edge of my round rug. I know what they are. The first two chapters of my latest version of my attempt at his life: backwards, present tense, ‘Tom Clancy' style. He nudges them with his foot. He's started from the beginning again.

‘Yeah, I read 'em.'

Ever gracious, our Stuart.

He's read 'em, but he's still not happy. There are bits he likes. My description of his diary, for example:

Pages stiff with Tipp-Ex…indicate appointments made too far ahead, subsequently cancelled, because events take place with startling swiftness in Stuart's life and he can never be certain that, though happy and full of plans on Monday, he won't be in prison, or in hospital, by Friday.

‘That's me–you got me there, Alexander,' he laughs. He is also pleased by my account of his furniture:

There is a single bed in the corner, a chest of drawers, a desk–sparse, cheap furniture, bought with the help of a government loan…A 1950s veneer side cabinet, with bottles and pill cases on top, is against the inside wall, and in the corner a big-screen TV standing on an Argos antique-style support.

Stuart likes his TV. He has thrown it at the wall twice and it still works.

‘That's good, that. I like that. “Thrown it at the wall twice.” It was three times, actually.'

The thing he objects to is that my sentences don't make sense.

I frown.

‘They begin on one thing and go to something totally different,' he explains.

‘A completely un
related
subject?'

‘Yeah.'

I am perplexed. First the way I type, and now every line of what I type. ‘You've got to have got that wrong. I don't
ever
do that.' To put it bluntly, I am offended.

‘Yes. All the time. Like, at the beginning of a paragraph. It's confusing.'

Stuart squeezes down and picks through the pages. ‘Look–there! That bit!' He taps his finger just under the chapter number triumphantly. ‘See what I mean!'

Homelessness–it's not about not having a home. It's about something being seriously fucking wrong.

‘I put meself on the streets this last time,' Stuart says firmly. ‘Just come out of prison: robbery, a post office. Done four and a half years out of the five-stretch be cause

I hardly know whether to guffaw or beat him over the head. ‘That's an
epigraph,
you silly duffer.'

He's been reading it as the first line, and thinks the fact that it is removed from the body of the text is just an accident, and considers me an idiot.

Stuart shakes his head suspiciously. ‘Epi-
what
? You sure? Looks fucking funny to me.'

I grab a book from my shelf:
Adventures with Insects
–but it doesn't have epigraphs. There aren't any in
The Official Theory Test for Drivers of Large Vehicles
either. But
Mauve
has them! Stuart's favourite! Good old
Mauve,
biting back at last! I bang through the chapter heads. ‘See,
epigraph
. There,
epigraph
. Another one,
here
. There, again,
epi
graph. Don't you ever even
look
at a book?'

In the end I glance up and see that he has started to laugh again. ‘Never seen you that angry before, Alexander. It's quite funny, really. Yeah, that's me only objection, your sentences don't make sense. Otherwise, you done well. Yeah, I'm proud of you, Alexander.'

‘How about–I mean for the title now–think about it for a moment once I've said it, Stuart, because I think it has a nice ring to it, I mean, it'll make people perk up when they read it, and think “I wonder what this is about?”, which is what we want, after all, so don't just dismiss it out of hand…'

‘Get on with it, Alexander.'

‘
Stuart Shorter: Stabbing My Stepfather
. You've got to admit, it has shock value.'

Stuart shakes his head emphatically. ‘Definitely not. Me and him are getting on really well at the moment. He's had enough of me stabbing him in real life without me doing it on the front of a book as well.

‘Something with “madness” in the title, I reckon,' he proffers. ‘
Living with Madness
.'

‘Too bleak.
Life and Deaths on Level D
.'

‘That's cheerful?'

‘I can't bear books called “Madness”,' I admit, determined to cure him of this weakness. ‘They're such types. Like books with “Daddy” in the title, which drone on about how the author's father was too busy with his prize dahlias to notice them during their youth. I know:
Stuart Shorter: Lock Him Up!
'

Warming to the theme I sip my coffee and stick my feet on the table. ‘Then we could have a sequel:
Keep Him Locked Up!
'

Stuart laughs once more. He has a good, dirty laugh, like Sid James, except it's a short burst rather than a continued lewdness. I have decided to put his drinking (an unusual thing for him to do in my room) down to tension, though heaven knows why at this time, when he says he's happy and ‘getting it all together' and just about to go out to his little sister's house to try on some shirts. To his delight, he's to be best man at her wedding later this month.

Encouraged that he is starting to relax at last I get carried away. ‘What about
The Ten Best Solitary Confinement Cells of Great Britain
or
How to Screw Your Life Up in Three Easy Lessons
? I know:
Knives I Have Known
.'

Why I Dangle Me Little 'Un Out of Me Kitchen Window
–I manage to stop myself in time before I say that one.

‘Nah, don't like any of them. Let me think about it. I'll write some down for when we next meet, OK?'

Out comes the squashy diary and we decide on next Wednesday. ‘I'll tell you what, I wanted to ask if I could borrow £20.'

‘Of course you can.'

‘I'll pay you back.'

‘Of course you will.' He always does.

‘It's just I need…'

‘No need to explain, Stuart. You borrow money off me when you need it. I borrow money off you when I need it. What's the fuss about?'

‘Thanks. Appreciated.'

I hand over the cash and he stands up to go through his usual departing ritual of returning the odds and ends of cigarette papers and tobacco and diary into his pocket, together with the items that have spilt on to the armchair seat during his stay, then in goes the opened beer can, too, into the other pocket.

I offer to give him a lift.

‘Yes, if you don't mind. Thanks. Feeling a bit weak today. Not too much trouble?'

‘Depends where you need to go.'

He knows full well I'd drive him to Edinburgh if he asked. This is not just friendship speaking, but the fact that I now own his old car with the sticky blobs, which he has sold to me for £275, plus alloy wheels, a £25 discount on what he was planning to raise.

‘Only into town. The King's Street Run.' A pub.

Going outside, Stuart grapples down the steps through my buddleia, edges into the car and drops the last few inches with a bounce.

‘You know, Alexander, I don't know meself how I got to be like this,' he remarks as we drive beside the river, then cross the bridge past the Wintercomfort Day Centre where, at that Ruth and John campaign meeting, years ago, Stuart first encountered his ‘middle-class people'. ‘It's too easy to blame, in'it? Sometimes, I think I'm the child of the Devil. Honestly, I do believe that. I've invited the Devil in, and now I can't get him out. I've tried burning him out and cutting him out and he don't take no notice. Why should he? He doesn't want to be homeless. He's got me. Little, skinny, violent me.'

We drive by the public toilets where Keith Laverack was once caught soliciting, at just about the time when he was headmaster of Stuart's old school. Stupid man, he tried it on with an undercover policeman. Not that that stopped the council employing him as an overseer of young boys.

‘Do you think,' I ask, not knowing quite how to phrase the question at first, ‘do you think–is your unpleasant lifestyle due to something particular about you?'

Stuart juts out his jaw to consider the idea. ‘I don't know. It's something I'm quite philosophical about. Some people have grown up, have learnt to cope and accept and have been very successful, and led a very, in brackets, normal competitive life. And then I've met so many people who've led the same sort of lifestyle as I have and had the same sort of childhood and experiences and they're torn to pieces.'

‘So, if you had to change one thing, just one thing to make it right, what would it be?'

‘Same answer. Don't know. Changing one thing? How much is one thing? Change me brother–does that change me getting rageous? The muscular dystrophy? That don't change the nonces, the System, do it? It's such a mess. Not being funny, change one and you got to change them all. Be easier just to change me.'