Stuart (28 page)

We reach the pub down a couple of backstreets and I pull over as near to the door as possible.

I turn to face him, rather hoping that he'll suddenly remember that his sister has invited me to the wedding, too. I'd like to see him got up in shirt and tails like a penguin, tattoos poking out beyond the cuff links. But if she has asked him to invite me, he's forgotten about it.

‘You know,' I remark as he prepares to haul himself back on to the pavement, ‘we have come to the end of this book, and there's still one question left.'

‘What's that, mate?'

‘Can't you guess?'

‘No, mate,' he says, squeezing around on the seat to pick up the infernal Rizlas that have dropped out of his pocket once again. I love that word, ‘mate'. Stuart uses it with me very rarely.

‘What's your date of birth?'

‘Right,' he says, cheerfully, as if our hundreds of hours of conversation are about to start at the beginning again. ‘Right. I'm Stuart Clive Shorter, born 19th of the 9th, 1968…'

‘So you're thirty-three, aren't you?'

‘I'm thirty-three. Getting older, as they say. I lead a very controversial, unpleasant life.'

Stuart and Gavvy

EPILOGUE

Stuart's body was blasted fifty feet through the air when the 11.15 London to King's Lynn train hit him, just outside his home village of Waterbeach. His corpse spun across the upland tracks and crashed down among the scrub and discarded crisp packets in the cess alongside the line. A hundred yards further on, the train engine and its two carriages finally came to a stop in the midnight summer air.

For a moment, I believe, there was a stillness. A shocking realisation by all things–beetles, dormice, the spiders spinning their webs in the moonlight, even the hot metal of the tracks and the wind in the trees–that Death had just shrieked past like a stinking black eagle and made off with a remarkable man. Only the passengers in the train carriages did not know what had happened. The light from their windows fell on to the gravel in yellow stripes and lit up a hint of fields.

Then came the crunch of gravel as the Balfour Beatty workman who'd been checking signals nearby walked along the embankment, curious to understand why this train–known as the ‘graveyard' service, because it was the last one of the night–had come to an unscheduled stop. He discovered Stuart's shoe lying by one of the rails. Poking his torch beam among the brushwood, he spotted what was left of the man.

Stuart's trousers had split open and slipped to his ankles. His forehead was caved in. Out of an old-fashioned sense of politeness, the Balfour Beatty workman covered the body with his coat and then did what everyone has always done in matters concerning Stuart: he called the police.

Of course everyone thought it must have been suicide. There was a bitter, pessimistic satisfaction in thinking that his life had been melodramatic and tragic to its last split second. But in fact there was no good specific reason to believe that it was.

In the afternoon before his death Stuart had been at his sister's house, happily trying on the shirts for her wedding, and he'd told his mother that he thought at last his life was ‘coming together'.

The major injury, to the left side of his forehead, also argued against suicide. They suggested that he had been walking right to left when the train hit him, which meant that he had been heading home, in the direction of his flat. The coroner's rather heartless contribution to the debate was to observe as well that Stuart had not been ‘splattered' when he died. The coroner had seen train suicide cases before and in general they were ‘splattered'. Some people, for example, simply kneel between the tracks and watch their death pound up the line to hit them. They are the sort that are ‘splattered'.

Sitting immediately below the coroner as he kept repeating this appalling word, Judith did not appear to flinch.

Stuart's mother is another hero of this story. Throughout the horrors, Judith has kept her head up, remained loyal and protective, even when that has meant tearing herself into two contradictory positions, such as over the urge to defend and love both her eldest son and Stuart–the predator and the prey. To me, this explains why a sort of glaze comes over her when, during interviews, the conversation gets deeply into the subject of Stuart's misfortunes. Where else, except in vagueness, can a person hide from thirty years of failed justifications and untenable arguments?

Some discussion was also occasioned by the fact that Stuart's hands were lifted to shoulder height, suggesting, perhaps, someone about to push something away–a 150-ton train, in other words. This gesture, the coroner seemed to think, might have been preserved from the moment Stuart had been hit, undisturbed by his entire flight through the air and crash landing.

‘He had raised his arms, like this?' asked the coroner, putting up his own hands, pulsing them back and forth and looking up with a grimace. ‘Perhaps to protect himself?'

‘Yes,' agreed the train driver, who repeated the gesture, except that his arms were still and his expression almost blank. He recollected that just before the collision Stuart had looked up and caught his eye.

The jury returned an open verdict: neither suicide nor accident, but unfathomable.

The homeless and the addicts came to Stuart's funeral, even though it was held in Midston, which is ten miles out of Cambridge, and a number of the more befuddled ones got scattered about in villages elsewhere because they'd got into the wrong buses.

After the service, a crowd gathered by the grave. It is not a pauper's grave. It is the sort of grave that ordinary people dream of: under the boughs of a horse chestnut, in the company of yews and flocks of rooks, in a Norman churchyard. Beyond the aged wall that borders this blissful cemetery the hills and copses rise like waves. Stuart had made himself a popular figure during the last three years of his life–and the homeless and the addicts paid their respects by throwing on to the coffin lid the things they said he'd need for the journey ahead: a packet of Rizlas and a pouch of tobacco containing some cannabis.

It is to these good friends of Stuart's that the last scene of this book must go. They stayed behind long after the rest of us mourners had left the cemetery. From the nearby primary school they pinched a bench and dragged it to the graveside, then they opened up a full crate of beer and had a party. There was dancing and singing and speeches. One of them took off his T-shirt and passed it round; all the celebrants scrawled farewell messages on it then laid it across the mound. There was a ghetto blaster playing Stuart's favourite punk music from the 1970s.

Over the road, Judith could hear this primordial fiesta from her bedroom until late in the night; it must have kept dozens of her neighbours in despair of ever getting to sleep. But they all knew Stuart and had followed him and his exploits from birth. So no one complained.

The next morning, before the vicar could spot her, she crept up to the grave and removed the cans and needles.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My deepest and most important thanks are to Dido Davies. She has read the manuscript of this book a thousand times and agonized over every aspect, from the overall structure to the nuance of each word. Without her inventiveness, encouragement, and our endless boozy battles on my balcony in Cambridge–come rain, sun or snow–I would not have got past the first pages.

How many other people there are! To Stuart's mother, Judith, I owe thanks for Stuart himself. To her daughter, Karen, Stuart's half-sister: I understand Stuart's pride in you. Both Karen and Judith allowed me to interview them extensively about often difficult subjects. Their information has been essential to the book. To Stuart's grandparents, I am grateful for much of the material in Chapter 24. My mother, Joan Brady, has been marvellous with professional literary advice, delightful enthusiasm and a gift of a laptop computer.

Ruth Wyner's defiance, relentlessness and refusal ever to be knocked down have been an inspiration. Gordon Bell, the kind, subtle manager of Willow Walk hostel for the homeless, has given me a great insight into homelessness (as also have, of course, the many residents–the friendly, the fascinating and the not so friendly–who live at Willow Walk, and the other staff I worked with during the time I was writing
Stuart
). John Brock was nearly destroyed by the judicial attack on both his reputation and his belief in fairness, and from him I got my greatest and most eloquent sense of impotence and fury that injustice inspires. Andrew Grove, the unstoppable lawyer who has done so much to get compensation for children who, like Stuart, were abused in ‘special' schools around Cambridge–he deserves applause just for what he does. Austen Davies: I am forever in his debt for his legacy of £10,000 that enabled me to take time off work to run the Campaign to Free Ruth and John, and then to start work on this book, four years ago.

Havovi Ankelsaria, Linda Bendall, Judy Brady, Lorrie Bunn, Sarah Burbidge, James Cormick, Jane Denby, Maureen Earley, Denis Hayes, Cathy Hembry, Catherine Hurley, Jenny Mace, Stella Mansfield, Graeme Mitchison, Catrin Oliver, Rodney Palmer, Chris Ratcliffe, Molly Schlick–all read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions. (Catrin read it twice.) Xanthe Dennis (aged 13), for picking up my spelling mistakes. I am also grateful to Wynn Turley, QEST, and Anabel and Andrew Turtle for their help with information and advice.

In 2003, The Arts Council awarded me a Writers Award for the first three chapters of
Stuart
. This startling recognition (and £7000) did more than almost anything else to boost my confidence in the last year of writing and helped me to secure my agent, Peter Straus, who is responsible both for the subtitle,
a life backwards,
and for capturing the attention of my calm, shrewd editor at Fourth Estate, Nicholas Pearson. I am also grateful for the support of Mitzi Angel. Julian Humphries arranged the cover and Vera Brice designed the elegant page layout.

Both the Society of Authors Contingency Fund and the Author's Foundation have provided valuable encouragement, in the form of hardship grants of £500 and £1000. I am particularly indebted to the excellent Cambridgeshire Collection at Cambridge Central Public Library for research material, and to Cambridge University Library for providing a pleasant place to work when my own study became too sickeningly familiar.

The people who were involved in the Campaign Committee to release John and Ruth enabled me in different ways to understand that a book about Stuart was important: Louise Brock, David Brandon, Jim and Angela Brown, Julie Crocker (the invaluable Campaign secretary), John Hipkin, Michelle Howard, Sarah Jones, Rodney Keen, Hilary Johnys, Sharon Khazna, Bob Lucas, Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt, David Mckay, Pat McCafferty, Nicky Padfield, Drew Park, Colin Shaw.

Diana Allan and Curtis Brown: it was while staying at their house in Cortona that I realised how to do Chapter 11, which had been causing me endless trouble. My landlord Dr Simon Norton was ceaselessly tolerant about my always-late rent and my messy habits; Robin Sarin has been a constant support. Clare Sproston did splendid work typing up many of my initial interviews with Stuart.

Finally, and with my love, Flora Dennis: from Milford-on-Sea to Florence to Springfield, Illinois (where we sorted out the chronological difficulties of Chapter 3) she has filled my time away from the manuscript with excitement and happiness.

Grateful acknowledgement is made for the use of the following:

‘Three questioned following robbery' (29 June, 1993) and ‘Bubblegum king stuck behind bars' (24 September, 1993), both from the Peterborough Evening Telegraph.

A short passage from From the Inside: Dispatches from a Women's Prison, by Ruth Wyner, published by Aurum Press, 2003.

‘Liquor trouble at jail', published in The Times, 23 December, 1993.

‘Jailed man told: Illness no excuse for crime' (2 January, 1973) and the portion of the final edition headline ‘FREED' (11 July, 2000), both from the Cambridge Evening News.

‘Charity pair are freed to appeal over heroin case', published in The Daily Telegraph, 12 July, 2000.

‘Punk does a bunk to join Mullah's army', by Fiona Wyton, published in The People Magazine, 3 December, 1989.

Stuart and Alexander in a car, with a devil in the back.

Stuart lecturing, with Alexander behind.