Stuart (7 page)

‘Wha! I found him! Make a film about Ruth and John! Wha! I'm gonna be in it!'

I decide the little man belongs to the Anomalous Class of homeless: the collection of oddballs who really have
no
reason to be slumming it on the streets, yet aren't doing it because they like the image. They seem to prefer life this way. Living in the ordinary manner of housed people is to them like walking around with a stone in their shoe.

‘Wha! Wha!' bleats the inane Deaf Rob until I feel like punching him. ‘Film! Film!'

‘It's true. I've got these television guys following me all over. Everywhere, except at the weekends. London Weekend Television and they don't work at weekends. Having a laugh, aren't they? Have you got anything to eat?'

He tells a joke: ‘A man begging at Victoria Station calls out to a young woman, “Please, miss, got any spare change? I haven't eaten in four days.” “Really?” says the woman, suddenly interested. “What's your secret?” '

‘Wha!' laughs Deaf Rob. ‘Wha! Wha! Wha! Film! Film!'

For a nice boy like me, sitting with the homeless is a bit like Miss Marple and St Mary Mead: in order to understand any fraction of what they are talking about I must relate everything back to my own world. For example, earlier this afternoon, after I'd stomped off from Camden in disgust, Linda and I were petitioning in Chiswick and I fell behind to read a good-looking restaurant menu pasted in a burnished brass box.

Boccata roll with onion chutney

Goat's cheese, spinach and tomato pissaladière

Panzanella salad

Baked pancake roll with a Cephalonian salad

Baked honey-glazed Magret of duck

I couldn't let this list of dishes alone.
Boccata? Pissaladière? Panzanella? Cephalonian? Magret
–isn't he a French detective?
Piss
aladière? £11.95 for goat's cheese and urine dressing? But it bothered me. Thirty-six hours on the street and already the world had rushed so far ahead that I couldn't understand a menu. Then I noticed the sign-off line: ‘Most teas and coffee's available.' Thickos! Halfwits! These prancing pseuds couldn't even spell a plural in their own language. My self-confidence restored, I marched off to catch up with Linda.

My conclusion? When you are homeless it takes between a day and a half and two days to discover ways to protect yourself from feeling cast out–in my case, by abusing menus in poncey restaurants that I would, but for my newly adopted campaign ‘principles', probably patronise.

Another thing: this feeling of homelessness is insidious and creeping, because, of course, by no stretch of the imagination am I actually homeless. I will do this for three nights (I will not disappoint Stuart on that score), then I will go home and be admired. But, even so, I already feel a sort of pull, a sense of outsideness beginning to form. What's more, I rather like it.

I have learnt also that sleeping in a cardboard box is not uncomfortable. In fact, last night was the first time in months that I've slept more than six hours. ‘I don't know what you bums are complaining about,' I tell Stuart.

9

‘Three minutes: in, cigarettes, out.'

Ram-raids and other hard work:
Aged 24

Stuart, aged twenty-four, living in a bedsit on the east side of Cambridge: this was five years before he fetched up on Level D, six years before I first met him, seven years before we found ourselves camping in a cage outside the Home Office. Not the most stable period of his life.

When Stuart moved into this room he closed the curtains immediately. He wanted mopey darkness. The front door of the house was smashed up; the kitchen furniture, cracked and bloated. The wind pushed in off Newmarket Road, depositing leaves and biscuit wrappers in the hallway. In the backyard, plastic flapped among the debris. Stuart began chain-drinking: vodka, lager; lager, vodka; vodka, vodka. ‘Two bottles a day, reglier.' The couple downstairs packed their bags and ran off within a week. ‘Could have been cos of me, I suppose. Too drunk to notice.' Stuart moved into their old living room. In the morning he would find himself lying across the floor or over the arms of the sofa, the television still on, his cuts and bruises healing, and finish off whatever was left in the nearest unspilt can for breakfast. When he did go out, it was to the Co-op by the roundabout to buy frozen sausages, vodka and peas.

‘I believed that if I didn't get involved with people, there'd be no one to wind me up and set the fireworks off.'

Once Karen came by the house unexpectedly and he rushed at her with a hammer thinking…

…God knows what he was thinking. He started to have visions of the Devil. John Smith saved him from this growing madness.

‘A travelling fella,' Stuart explains, with pride. ‘Part of the Gypsy Smiths of the Hertfordshire/Cambridgeshire borders. He was like the brother I never had. Respect, trust and honour, that's what keeps us together.'

Stuart takes a fastidious interest in words (except mine). Official ones, especially when they appear in brown envelopes, give him the quakes. He ponders their meanings to death. Gypsy ones, because of Smithy, he holds in the greatest esteem, though he hardly ever uses them himself.

‘You see, the thing with travelling fellas is that they're a very close community. They're like Indians, they stick with their own–the only time they normally step out is with what they call “rattlies”, a non-Gypsy bird who's willing to open her legs, who's up for a good shag. And, if they're serious about a gal or they going to marry a bird, a lot of them call them their “maud”. And because I've never lived in a trailer or lived the Romany way or nothing, even though I've got Romany blood in me, I'm a “gorgia chappy” and I live in a “kennel”.'

‘What's a kennel?'

‘A house.'

‘What's wrong with living in a kennel? I live in a kennel.'

‘They don't trust people who live in kennels.'

‘What does Smithy live in?'

‘Well, he's in a kennel as well, only he ain't, because he's most the time in jail.'

One day, Smithy drove Stuart to visit a Gypsy relative who gave Stuart a funny look. ‘And Smithy jumped up,' recalls Stuart, voice rising an octave with pride, ‘and said, “No, mate, he's ‘kushty' [OK], he's safe with the ‘gava' [police]. Ain't got to worry about this man in the ‘gavakel' [police station].” '

Smithy took Stuart on drives to pinch things from village shops.

At a village supermarket they stopped off one day to buy cigarettes. It was just after closing and they were the last two customers. They asked for twenty B&H. The young cashier, who was on her own, had to leave her position by the grocery till where she was counting the day's take and step into the cigarette cubicle.

The cigarette display was locked.

Stuart and Smithy kept up a playful banter.

‘Bit quiet round here, is it, love?'

She had to bend down.

‘Where's your husband then–left you to do all the work as usual, eh?'

She laughed, hitched up her tight skirt, inserted the key in the lock of the secret storage cupboard.

When she re-emerged, Stuart paid and they left.

At 3 a.m. that night they smashed the door off the supermarket with a car stolen in the next village, broke open the revealed storage cupboard and filled two sports bags with cigarettes.

Driving back across the fens, they were as excited as spring lambs. Whooping and punching the air, they pulled the car over at a lay-by near the Tate & Lyle sugar factory and set light to the front seat. By the time the fuel tank caught they were halfway across the second field, Smithy carrying the two bags of fags and Stuart doing his best not to stumble in the ruts.

Over the next week they sold the cigarettes–£1.50 a pack (‘£1 for the shittier brands') or £5 for four. Twenty went to Stuart's mum and stepdad. Ten to his sister. Her boyfriend wanted five. Smithy's Gypsy connections were like a black hole for the remainder. They'd stolen two hundred packs, risked a year in jail and made £183.

Another time, Stuart threw a TV at a policeman.

PC Shedding: ‘As a result of information received we had reason to attend H——Junior School, H——.

Upon our arrival at around 2.47 a.m., we approached the school on foot and due to the nature of the call began to check for any insecurities…I heard another door begin to open about five yards away to my left, I moved towards this door and it opened further. I saw a dark figure appear at the door and shouted, “Stop, Police!” As I did so the figure threw a large object at me, which I later discovered was a television set. Then I ran round to the front of the school and as I rounded the corner, I saw two white males running from the front of the school towards the entrance to the playground. I managed to grab hold of and restrain one of the persons. I brought him to the ground and he began to struggle, as a result of this I restrained him using Home Office–approved restraint techniques.'

‘I ain't got much of a run in me,' admits Stuart. ‘I used to do the eyes and the ears, and Smithy'd do the graft, because I needed a head start if it come on top. And I was good at that. I've always been the eyes and the ears, but it was hard work.'

‘So, was it Smithy you did the school with?'

‘Not saying. No use asking twice. No. No comment.'

‘I was on duty with Police Dog Shadow,' the second officer at the scene remembered. ‘When PD Shadow indicated a track, he continued tracking out of the school gate and turned left travelling adjacent to the pond.' Shadow chased the scent right up to the high street but it had vanished down the quiet, lamplit macadam.

‘All I can say is you caught me bang in the act and I've got nothing else to say on the matter,' Stuart grumped at his interrogation.

It was Smithy who heard about the post office.

He shouldered into Stuart's fetid living room one day at about noon, when Stuart was still on bail for the school burglary, snapped off the TV, wrenched back the curtains. Sunlight flooded in.

‘Wake up, you lazy bastard. I've got it. I've got it!
Twenty
…Wake up! Open your frigging eyes.
Twenty fu
…Fuck me, are you dead or what? All we gotta do is…Stu!
Twenty fucking thousand knicker!
'

Coates village post office.

PD Shadow
‘You muppet, Alexander, it was an Alsatian not a pug.'

Stuart opened his eyes and felt round for the Stella. Half a can later, he spotted the weakness. ‘Smithy, fucking brilliant, wicked. Just one small thing. What about the owner?'

‘An old woman, on her own.'

‘It don't matter if she's 104 with no legs. She isn't going to want to give it to us. She won't be able to give it to us. It will be in her safe, on a time lock.'

‘Exactly,' crowed Smithy. ‘We do it
before
it gets in her safe, on delivery day. I've got the times, everything. Every fortnight, Monday, 10.30 a.m.'

It was early in the day, but Smithy was usually a bit brighter than this. ‘Smithy, on delivery day there'll be guards. Remember them? The big fellas what likes hitting people with truncheons?'

‘No, Stu, that's the point. A friend worked there. The old dear doesn't lock the money. She puts it under the counter until closing time. It's down there, four, five hours, asking to be nicked. Twenty fucking grand. Then we'll go back to my missus' and have a proper party.'

In the swirls of dust and summer leaves, Smithy and Stuart cracked open another round of cans and celebrated. A big winner. Twenty grand! Arabic riches! Stuart would be able to buy a caravan, and retire somewhere quiet and sympathetic, like Swansea.

Three questioned following robbery
^*

DETECTIVES were today questioning two men from St Ives and a third from Whittlesey in connection with a raid on a sub-post office near Whittlesey.

Two raiders smashed their way into the post office at the Green, Coates, in broad daylight yesterday morning.

They broke open the door and made off with an unknown quantity of cash. One raider, believed to be carrying a screwdriver, forced open the till and grabbed the money.

The pair headed towards Whittlesey at 11.13 a.m. in an X-registration red Ford Cortina estate. It is believed they dumped it between Coates and Eastrea, changing to a red Escort car.

He and Smithy figured it out afterwards, as they lounged in remand. ‘We were set up. How'd the Old Bill know it was us? We got away. We weren't followed. The descriptions from the witnesses were terrible. Every one was different about the two assailants. How'd they get to your missus' house so quick?' said Stuart.

‘The police were waiting outside, hidden, when we got back,' he repeats to me, shocked by their duplicity. ‘They didn't jump on us straight away. His missus–he was bang in love with her, and she had expensive tastes–she was looking right excited, then, crash. Loads of Old Bill on me back. Like insects. Old Bill crawling up the curtains, Old Bill under the sofa. Wherever you looked, fucking everywhere. Old Bill in the sink.'

Stuart refuses to be drawn on the name of who set them up. He is old-fashioned about such things.

‘Let's just say it was funny the way as soon as we was sent down Smithy's missus moved in with the fella who'd told us about the job. I'd only been out six months from my previous when I got banged up again for a five-stretch for this, and the joke was the old lady didn't get no money that day. There wasn't £20,000 there. The police had gone through the fucking routine of pretending she'd got a delivery, hadn't they? Left a few hundred quid in the till. Didn't want us to be put off, did they?'

‘Five years. That's pretty strong for stealing nothing, isn't it?' I ask.

‘Not really. I'd been doing loads of silly things. Stupid things. They was getting pissed off with it.'

‘Were you armed?' I suggest.

‘No,' replies Stuart. ‘Well…only with a crowbar.'

Stuart has forgotten to tell me something. (Perhaps, in fact, he does not remember. He does not keep a scrapbook of the newspaper reports of his notable moments as an ordinary person would. Any cuttings he might own have long since been destroyed in one of his periodic rages that purge his flat of possessions.) What Stuart has forgotten to tell me is that Smithy was no ordinary blagger. He was a multi-talented man.

ARMED RAID:
Pair jailed for post office robbery
^*

BUBBLEGUM KING STUCK BEHIND BARS

BUBBLEGUM-blowing champ John Smith is starting a five-year prison sentence today after an armed attack on a post office.

The city's Crown Court heard how the British bubblegum-blowing record holder and his accomplice staged the attack on the post office at Coates, near Whittlesey, earlier this year.

The pair made off with more than £1,800 in cash and postal orders, after terrifying the elderly staff who ran the shop.

The court was told Smith fell into a life of crime after a series of TV appearances ground to a halt.

The 25-year-old is named in the Guinness Book of Records as the young

British record holder after blowing a 16 1⁄2-inch bubble in 1983 at the age of 15.

But by his late teens, he found his fame was drying up.

Brendan Morris, representing Smith yesterday, told the court how success at an early age had affected him.

He explained: ‘He had a taste of the high life but no skills to sustain it.'

Poor fellow. Who can blame him for turning to a life of crime and terrifying little old post-office ladies?