Stuart: A Life Backwards. Alexander Masters

people I know, who, like me, have become friends with him during the campaign, are frightened by him. Even his addiction counsellor isn’t scared and he’s thrown a chair at her.

      Working at a hostel, one gets used to bold comments about violence and self-destruction from the homeless. The first three or four times they alarm you. By the fifth or sixth, they’re becoming old hat. You learn to try to change the subject, tell a joke, treat the person like a petulant schoolboy: ‘Now, Tom, I don’t think it’s really a good idea for you to pick a fight with Jenny this morning. She’s already beaten you up three times, and that’s quite enough for one day.’ Or, ‘No, Adam, if you slit your wrists with that razor it will not be “all my fault”. It will be your fault, because they’re your wrists and you’re the one who’s spent the last ten minutes breaking the blade out of your Bic shaver.’

      Little clarifications like this are important in hostel life.

      ‘And remember to slit along the vein, not across it,’ you sometimes feel like adding.

      Even so, a niggling concern remains. One has heard that suicides and violent men frequently need to work themselves up. Big boasts, little trial runs – like sprinters doing exercises in the last minutes before the start gun bangs.

      ‘But I’m still confused on this point,’ I say, changing the subject as we return down the A10, along a narrow little lane beneath the rowans, back towards his housing estate. ‘Why did you put yourself on the streets?’

      ‘I told you. I was already stealing money off me mum to pay for me smack at the time. So one night, after I lost me job cos of the kiddy-fiddler I took a lot more money and come to Cambridge.’

      ‘But why put yourself on the streets?’

      ‘Alexander! Why, why, why!’

      ‘But it’s important. I want to understand.’

      ‘I dunno – because I’m part Romany, I wanted to live like my roots. I liked the Romany, independent lifestyle.’

      ‘But that’s what I’m getting at. That’s exactly what you weren’t doing. You just slept on the pavements of the nearest city and never moved.’

       7

       ‘Stop asking why, Alexander. I don’t know why. I was so off-key, half the time me mind had a head of its own.’ … Psycho! Aged 29

      Lion Yard Car Park is a boat of a place. Its cargo hold, nine concrete storeys of smog and tyre burns, is topped by the glass-covered, centrally heated magistrates’ court – the galley, so to speak. The prow of the boat – an eighth of a mile further south, under the Holiday Inn – thrusts towards the university museums of geology and anthropology.

      Stuart aged 29 fetched up in this car park after leaving his mother’s pub, meeting Asterix and Scouser Tom, being kicked out of Smudger’s flat and messing up his chances at Jimmy’s and the day centre. He’d been told that ten to fifteen people ‘skippered’ there every night, but wherever he looked he couldn’t find a single one of them. He took his blankets and rags and walked up the circular staircase to the top storey, just under the magistrates’ court, where the pigeons sleep. It took him four days to find the place for people.

      Between the magistrates’ court end and the Holiday Inn end of the building are ramps and an aerial walkway, plus a mezzanine basement dug, it seems, into pure concrete. HUMANS NOT ALLOWED indicates an accompanying sign. Another notice reads TO LEVELS A-B-C-D. A little stick man with a ping-pong head marches behind the letters in an encouraging manner, guiding you along a narrow pavement. Grey drops of chewing gum splatter the way, congesting towards a stair door and lift door at the other end. Then Ping-Pong Head pops up again, on a sign hurrying back towards TOILETS. The pillars supporting the ceiling here (we are now under the Holiday Inn) are stencilled with the letter A. IS THIS [A]RT MUMMY? someone has scrawled around one.

      By the lift other signs fight for attention. A bewildering list of charges. More funny round-headed stick figures explaining how to stand in a lift. ‘Get into your car or get a move on,’ they appear to say. ‘Stop being such an uncertain quantity.’ A dulled brass honorarium:

      To Commemorate the Opening

      of the Lion Yard Car Park Extension by The Right Worshipful the Mayor COUNCILLOR DR GEORGE REID on Friday 10 August 1990

      Dr Reid, the main university force in our campaign to release Ruth and John: a fine humanitarian, conservative to the ends of his toes (which have gout).

      The lift is boarded up. Recently, a student leant against these doors, they opened accidentally and he plunged into the dark down the shaft.

      ‘PLEASE BE AWARE,’ declares a bill on the door by the stairs, ‘if approached in this car park by someone claiming to need money for petrol or to replace a broken car key please do not give them any money and immediately contact a member of staff at the exit.’

      On the other side of the door is the concrete staircase: cinder grey, regular. The banister is red. The smell is dust and disinfectant. Go down two flights. The walls still show the grain of the plywood moulds that once held them when they were poured. If you peer hard through the dark perspex window in the door of this floor – Level B – you can often spot something interesting. Couples kissing passionately in the front seats, couples in the back seats, couples shouting. Depth, in this building, quickly gives a conviction of privacy. Down two more flights and Level C begins to show the strain. The walls are laterally cracked, like an exposed vein of a leaf. Occasionally, the smell loses its warm chemical hint and a waft of urine insinuates itself instead. There are still currents of air.

      Down the final two staircases, forty feet under ground, to the lowest subterranean floor. You could take off all your clothes and do handstands down here and you’d be safe any time between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.

      The cleaners have been at this piece of graffiti with their scrubbing brushes many times. Six inches to the right, beneath a picture of a falling bomb, some more:

      Above you, the noises could be of people just leaving the staircase at the top; or, equally, stomping across the floor directly above. Sound is impossible to place.

      Push through this door, out of the stairwell into Level D, and you will see in front of you 15,000 square feet of car park that is completely empty.

      This is where the homeless sleep.

      ‘’Ere, Jonny, stop pissing on that bloke, he’s trying to snooze.’

      ‘Can I have another sarnie, pleaaase? I’ve only ’ad three …’

      ‘Coffee with five sugars, love, ta.’

      ‘Jonny! Get over here and tell Linda …’

      

      This is where the homeless sleep.

      ‘Aww, that’s not fair. Penny’s had six. And she’s nicked a burger and chips from that geezer outside Gardenia. Gooo on, jus’ one more …’

      ‘Is that five? You sure? Put another one in, just in case, pet.’

      ‘JONNY! He don’t want ketchup poured over him neither! He’s not a frigging hot dog! Come here, it’s important, tell Linda about Psycho. Honest, Linda, not joking, he’s a nutter – he’s taking over Level D. A danger to everyone. Giving us a bad name. Like, we don’t even dare go down to Level D no more. You don’t know him? Where have you been the last five months? JONNY!’

      Linda was one of the two members of the Cambridge Homeless Outreach Team in those days. Her job was to walk round