Stuart (21 page)

Stuart was five to ten years old during these holidays. When he could be caught and forced into labour, his job was loading: ‘It was just…bosh! Trying to get the sack on the trailer with me hip and shoulder. Twisting me body to make it work. As soon as it left the ground I was…do-ing! Anything heavy, I've always had mad ways of doing things.'

When it was very hot Stuart's mother used to put a bottle of orange juice in the freezer the night before. The next morning they'd take the bottle with them, frozen solid, and by lunchtime it wouldn't even be cold. ‘You'd do everything you could, throw it under the van to keep it cool, but it didn't very often work. When you're out on the field it's like being on a motorway.'

Paul tried doing the work for one day, collapsed and never went back.

Stuart's mother kept at it, every summer for ten years, with (once Stuart's half-sister and brother were born) up to four children in tow, each day picking up to three tons of spuds. Scoop, shake, into basket. Basket full. Trudge basket to huge container. Tip basket in. Back to row, scoop, shake.

‘But they knew it was worth it, the kids,' says Stuart's mother. ‘My £8 a day bought their pens for school, bits of uniforms, exercise books, extras. And it put food on the table. We ate a lot of stolen potatoes in them days.'

In November, when the children were back at school, Judith went on to Brussels sprouts.

‘
Stu–you awake?
'

It was his brother Gavvy, whispering across the bedroom, half an hour after the last creak of the bed in his parents' room as his mother turned over into sleep position.

Stuart lay, eyes wide open, heart pounding.

‘
Stu?
Can I come over?'

There was a double creak from Gavvy's bed: one (Stuart imagined) for rising up on elbow to listen for dangers, another for throwing legs from under blankets.

Night was exciting time in those days. In the last half-hour a dozen things had happened, just in the form of noises, to liven Stuart's imagination. The neighbours had returned home, back from a party: their car headlamps had swung across the window as they passed the church, then away as they rounded the cul-de-sac, then back across the window as they pulled up to their house, three doors to the left. Two doors had slammed.

‘…told you not to fucking wear that skirt, you fucking…'

‘Don't you
dare
have a go at me! I saw what you were up to with little Miss…'

Ten minutes later, next door, on the other side, the three-bedroom house, there was a scuff on the path, then a stumble, a giggle and a moment later the bang of a door. The father, one of the two sons, or the lodger? This family did not like the Shorters, and made it known. They said the Shorters had jumped the queue to get a four-bedroom house. They said a lot else besides, most of it unprintable. But the woman at the council had told Judith they were talking rubbish. If they could fit an illegal lodger in their house, which the council knew all about, then they didn't need an extra bedroom, did they? The two sons made up for it by pouncing on Stuart.

Then there'd been one of those chattering birds that sounded halfway between a woman being attacked and an owl with beak-ache. It had come from the churchyard, and made Stuart think of the gravestones, peacefully trotting on through life, day to day, minding their own business, and the yews, hanging over the bumpy corpses, bathed in moonlight.

‘Stu?'
Gavvy again.

‘Come on, quick, yes,' Stuart breathed.

Gavvy clambered beneath the covers and filled up the room with stories about the rough and tumble of real school. Gavvy was the popular, easygoing joker of the class. ‘Not cruel jokes, nothing like that,' insists Paul. ‘He'd do Scotsman, Englishman, Irishman jokes, but never a cripple joke.'

Gavvy would leave school in a few years, at sixteen, and become a good workman in the press shop of the same car factory where Paul welded axles. If Gavvy had a subject, it was football. He loved the game. Mad about it.

‘…and then Mark, you remember him,' said Gavvy, insinuating his arm around Stuart's waist and pressing hard against him, ‘he was in the year above you? Ginger hair? Yeah, down the garage, he said, in Mr Carlyle's, what's now the biology teacher, his voice, fuck, ha ha, it was funny, he said, oh, fuck, I can't say it, he said–you remember how Mr Carlyle has a fucking stupid lisp?–he said, “I want to exsh-pell this boy because he took out the…”–Ha ha!
Don't
be so nervous, Stu, Mum can't hear, it feels nice, doesn't it?–“I want to exsh-pell this boy because he took out the axsh-olotl to beyond the sh-cool boundary and ssh-
tamped
on it!” '

Stuart would roar with laughter. That nightmare revolting, deformed axolotl: it had sucked around a fishbowl in the biology-class window even when Stuart was a pupil there.

Gavvy had to cram a pillow in Stuart's mouth to stop him waking the whole village.

Next, a scrap:

‘Yeah, so Adam tells Kev, “Do that again and I'll punch your gob in.” I mean, he let him know, it wasn't like it was–anyway, then Wilbur–you know, in my year, big fucker?–he reckons he's hard, and he comes up and Adam just gives him one, fwaack, right as he's getting close, right in the dial, heard it across the park, like a fucking twig snapping…'

Gavvy's stories kept Stuart in touch with the fine and busy world of winning. He could smell the vigour on his brother's chest. Gavvy's arms were stiff with new muscles and excitement.

‘What happened in your school?' Gavvy demanded.

Stuart tried to think. On the bus in to the Ascham he had seen a car by the side of the road with its bonnet dented and a woman standing on the verge, smoking. In fact, now that he considered it clearly, the woman wasn't really smoking, she was screaming. As the bus had gone by, he had spotted bodies in the grass, four at least, and the old wrinkled couple who lived by the golf course also. Arm in arm. Which made six. ‘There was more in the ditch, too, I reckon, still in the pile, what was
two
articulated HGVs, one from Marks & Spencer's, the other from the…pet fish factory, plus a coach,
and
a bicycle, and they was all burning.'

Ruby had refused to stop the bus, of course. She'd screeched round the corner and away before you could say ‘terrorist attack', but Stuart reckoned they had been the first on the scene. He'd spotted three helicopters–air ambulances–thumping over the horizon towards the carnage.

Gavvy hadn't heard about a road crash that bad in months.

‘Yeah, and another thing…' said Stuart, as if it had only just occurred to him. He broke out of his brother's arms and turned to face the wall.

Gavvy laughed. He found Stuart a bit difficult at moments like this, when the boy suddenly went ‘sensitive' on him. The very thing that attracted Gavvy–Stuart's undisguised, insistent vulnerability–also made him a bit of an embarrassment. ‘Not another incident? At this rate there'll be nobody left in the whole world! Well? Aren't you going to tell me? What is it?'

‘Nah. A friend. Remember the boy in the wheelchair what I told you about? What liked cars and told jokes, and I used to sit next to? What had what I've got? He died today.'

On the nights that Gavvy did not come over and press against him, Stuart lay awake listening to the lorries until one or two in the morning, imagining their lights cutting along the road, the gruff men in the cabs and the buffet of the airstream as they left him behind.

And this was when suddenly, aged eleven, Stuart ran away.

During the whole of the next five years, there was only one time when Judith and Paul recaptured Stuart once he'd got out.

It was ‘an awful night, absolutely bloody awful. Horrendous,' Judith remembers. Snow and sleet stormed down. Drifts blocked roads, broke telephone cables. By the war memorial an oak cracked and exploded against the street, gouging a crater in the Tarmac. ‘We'd been all round. Round and round and round, and when we came back we went an unusual way, because the tree was blocking the road, and we caught him in the headlights.'

‘Get in!' shouted Judith. ‘We've been up for two bloody hours looking for you!'

But, she says, ‘he never ever told us why he used to run away. You'd ask him,
Why, Stuart?
'

‘I don't want to live here.'

‘Why? Is it the new baby? Is it because you want to be at normal school? Is it your real dad, living in Portsmouth?'

‘I don't want to live here.'

‘But what's the reason? There's got to be a reason, Stuart.'

‘I want to go in care, I want to go into a children's home.'

20

‘No!' shouts Stuart, grabbing the pages of the last chapter (he is catching up with me) from my desk. ‘Don't you never learn?'

He storms around my study, kicks over a pile of books, waving fifteen sheets of typescript.

‘What you on about, Alexander? You say…“
This is the next surprise: they are excellent
.” That's me school reports, you're talking about, what isn't excellent. “
It's no wonder Stuart didn't trust them
.” It's not them what I don't trust, Alexander, it's you. “
Nobody could connect the man now loping across the city with two suicide scars around his neck with
…” Did you
read
them reports?'

‘Of course I read them reports.'

‘And
was
they all good?
Was
they?'

He has now snatched the original school documents and is flapping these about like a flyswat.

‘Not
all
.'

‘Exactly!' There is glee in his voice. ‘ “
Extremely disruptive
”…“
Very distractable
”,' he exposes. ‘And 'ere.' He gives the pages an extra stab with his finger. ‘ “
He can be most uncoo…prara…tive and unpleasant to his classmates and adults
.” Why haven't you put those fucking bits in?'

‘I di—'

‘You don't get it, Alexander, do you?'

‘Bec—'

‘You haven't been
listening,
have you?'

‘I bl—'

‘You haven't done no “research”.'

‘Whe—'

‘You can't even be bothered to fucking read a couple of school reports properly, can you?'

‘Yo—'

‘And now you're going to fucking make me out in this book like it was all good and then loads of things went wrong, that's–'

‘Per—'

‘Just talk, talk, talk with you, in'it? Yeah, you got the house, the education, the money, the fucking past what weren't full of abuse, you already got all that on me, and now you want me all tied up in explanations. That's what fucking people like you want, in'it? Because then it's all sorted, in'it? “Stuart? Done him. Stuart? Yeah, explained him.” But you can't.
I
haven't had it that simple. Why should
you
get to put reasons on it when I've fucking lived it and still can't? These two scars?' He clenches his fists beside his throat and puts on a poncey voice, as if mimicking some faux swagger in my writing: ‘These two fucking “suicide scars”, as you call them, is these “suicide scars” simple? Is that, oh, he was good, then he was bad, and here are the reasons, one to fucking five? Tick them off, make them into more numbers, put them in a government speech, put them on the telly.'

Will the madman never stop? Waving his fists around near my grandmother's china, just as he ranted at me at the Home Office, clanging on dustbins, peering in letter boxes, pretending to be me looking for ‘me simple fucking answers'. Now he's shrieking I haven't done my research! Three
years
of effort and a whole fucking
week
in the fucking university library reading Peter and Jane fucking
Ladybird
books,
Ladybird books!

‘Oh, for Christ's sake,' I suddenly explode. ‘So what? So there are one or two bad comments in those reports. All children have their bad days. That's not interesting. When did you lose the good, that's what I want to find out. When did you become fucking useless? Look at you now, why couldn't you spend just ten minutes of your time, even when you were ten, without turning it into a fucking world war?'

‘Alexander, it was
my
childhood,' Stuart spits, wrenching the study door open.

‘
Was,
' I yell back. ‘It's mine now.'

Stuart does not storm out of the house. A moment after going into the corridor I hear his heavy tread on the steps. He is clonking upstairs. Goodness knows why–there is nothing up there for him except the kitchen and the television. Perhaps he wants to test my telly out on the wall.

I sit back and listen to his slow progress: clonk, clonk, pause, clonk, clonk, pause. I imagine him hauling on the banister. When he was little, the effort of it regularly used to pull the handrail off the wall of his mother's house. Clonk, clonk, pause. The sound reverberates like someone banging on the central-heating pipe. Now I can hear him in the room above me: my housemate's office. He has a heavier tread on one side, I am surprised to notice. The left side? Because he is left-handed and his left side is stronger, like a prop? Or the right, because it falls to the ground with a greater thud?
Clonk,
clonk,
clonk,
clonk. He approaches the window.

I wish he'd throw himself out.

It would be messy and create a fuss, just when I want to finish writing this book, and to get to the window he would have to climb on my housemate's spare double bed, which is encrusted in Housemate's socks and underpants. In biography, most of the time, the real person is a nuisance. One wants them out of the way. If only they'd stop muddying the waters with inconsistencies, denials, forgetfulness and different interpretations of your language, you could extract their essence and be off down the publisher's. The heart of it is probably this: the subject fears that if you get what they are down on the page then you have debased them, so they flap about like aboriginals claiming photographs steal their soul. What, me? That's all there is to me? Fuck off! Biff! Take that!

I hear the squeak of the bed and start in my chair.

Then silence. I sit back again. Why would he want to jump? Because I've pinched his childhood? Because we've had a tiff? I
don't
think so.

The bed squeaks a second time.

But again, a long silence follows and I relax.

Then the rumble of the sash window shudders through the walls.

‘STUART!'

There's a smash, something bursts; the bed sears halfway across the floor.

‘STUART!'

‘Alexander…'

‘Stuart?'

‘Alexander…'

I look round at the wreckage of glass. ‘What?'

‘You want to speak to your landlord about that window, you do. That might have chopped me fucking head off.'

‘What a pity.'

I step across, crunching the fragments. The cords on this sash window are broken. Stuart had unlocked it, pushed the lower half up to look out at my balcony beneath, removed his hand, and promptly it had crashed back down again. Only one of the panes has shattered, but it's thrown glass splinters over the whole room.

Together we clear the nastier pieces out of Housemate's underwear. Stuart appears at a loss what to do with what he picks up, stuffs one or two big fragments in his pocket and piles the rest in his right hand in the same way that he stores cigarette ash until it's formed a tepee. Then he clumps to the kitchen across the hall. ‘Ooooh! It's disgusting in here. Don't you never wash up? This cooker–it needs throwing out. Aaauugh, the grill, what d'ya last cook on that? Dog food? Where's the bin? Alex
and
er, it's got mould on the
out
side, how'd you get fucking mould on the
out
side?' There is the sound of tinkling shards, then a pause as I imagine him peering closer. ‘Is it the same as the stuff on the inside?

Stuart!

‘It's a shame,' Stuart concludes. ‘You could do something with this house. Put foreign students in it. Chinese ones. They're small.'

Downstairs again, reseated in my room, Stuart says, ‘Sorry, Alexander, didn't mean to upset you, didn't mean to be rude. You know–memories.' He puts down my mug and gives a spiral gesture with his hand that suggests a landscape of bafflement. ‘It is hard for me sometimes.'

For the next half-hour, as happens only in the best moments, we sit in silence.

‘Meant to tell you,' he remarks at last, forcing himself up and arranging his jacket and goods. ‘I got a date for me hearing–it's only pleas and directions–about the incident in me flat. Remember, with the helicopter?'

Of course I remember. Forty police officers, knife fight, barricades…

‘That's a point.' It's suddenly dawned on me–the little fact that's been niggling away at the back of my mind during the whole of this interview. ‘Stuart, why are you here? Shouldn't you be in prison?'

The lobby of Cambridge Magistrates' Court part surrounds a huge, windowless, pale brick central block: these are the courtrooms, their entrances set out in an impressive, Orwellian line along one side. The crowd of accused slouching around in spivish suits is mostly young, male and lower class. Some have brought their families. A couple in a small recess are crying. Two women, just old enough to be out of gymslips, have prams. One group laugh and joke, and call out to each other as if they were just in the dining hall at school. Stuart thinks they might be part of the infamous Gypsy Smiths, cousins of his old mate Smithy. Every now and then there is a waft of alcohol and sweat.

Across the room a man in a baseball cap has slid so far down in his chair that his body pokes out parallel to the floor like a plank of wood. ‘Fuckin' this, fuckin' that,' he grumbles. ‘Fuckin' disgrace.'

‘They don't look very upset to be here,' I remark.

‘It's just the magistrates', in'it?' says Stuart absently. He has changed into a lime-green shirt and outsize tie, as if the brightness and scale of this propriety might hide a fraction of his offence. ‘Fines, setting Crown Court dates, pleas and directions, which means, like, if you plead guilty or not, bound-overs, stupid things. Wait till they get to the Crown Court. That's the next step–when they get sent down.'

‘How long before that happens?'

‘Months. It can sometimes be so long after that you've forgotten what you've done. With any luck, I'll get time for a spring holiday in Wales.'

In, out, in, out. All day long: in, out, in, out. The pistons of the law.

The oldest people are the wardens. Every few minutes they receive bits of paper from an usher containing notes from the court, and shake their heads in disbelief. The solicitors, fresh and sober, march between courtrooms and the lobby in a self-absorbed manner. Stuart's one looks as if he hasn't started shaving yet.

What happened that night in the flat, as far as I can make out, is this:

One evening, in the local pub, Stuart called his next-door neighbour a poofter.

‘Nah,' interrupts Stuart, ‘I
didn't
call him a poofter.'

Sorry. Stuart didn't call his next-door neighbour a poofter.

Stuart nods. ‘That's the whole point. He
thought
I'd called him a poofter but I didn't. He just sticks his head out his window and goes, “Who you calling a fucking butty boy, then?” Then he's come storming out, arms all in the way, eyes on fire.' Next-Door Neighbour is an army-loving man: the sort of lad who dreams of disembowelling disaffected members of the Saudi royal family with his teeth.

‘And you hadn't said anything to him of the sort?'

‘Nah.'

‘So what had you done?'

‘Just asked his mate if he was a poofter.'

There are times when Stuart has the emotional acuity of a frog.

‘But at the time,' Stuart protests, the mate ‘just laughed and said, “Don't be stupid,” and told me he suffered from premature ejaculation.' In fact, Stuart thought that this exchange improved everything wonderfully, because, as he readily admitted to the friend, ‘I suffer from the same complaint meself. It is quite interesting, really.

‘Did I tell you,' Stuart remarks to me as we're waiting in the magistrates' lobby, ‘they're considering upping the charge to “attempted murder”?'

‘On what grounds?'

‘Because the fella says I tried to cut his head off.'

‘Did you?'

‘Yes, and if the bastard hadn't of moved I'd have got him, too.'

Stuart's solicitor, carrying a clipboard, breaks free of the flow of officials, strides across the floor, and crouches on the floor in front of us.

Stuart agrees he is guilty of ‘affray' (‘I hold me hands up to that'), he denies everything and anything else, especially the charges of ‘threats to kill' and ‘attempted murder'.

‘Yeah, because at the end of the day, he's got no marks on him, so obviously I didn't cut him. I might have fucking lost it and gone a bit mad and smashed me flat up and got all them Old Bill out of bed, but the fact that he ain't got no mark on him proves I didn't go overboard.'

Solicitor Boy taps his list.

‘A couple of things I want to sort out before we go in. In one of the depositions, the police say they could smell smoking oil when they arrived at the scene. What was that?'

‘Chip fat.'

‘Ah, chip fat. Of course.' He taps some more.