Stuart: A Life Backwards. Alexander Masters

he opens a packet of no-label, super-economy frozen chicken quarters. Pallid and pockmarked, they look like bits of frosted chin, as if he did over a fat Eskimo last week. He extracts an onion from behind the toaster and begins hacking at it with one of his knives.

      I finish my survey of his bedsit room.

      The picture on the wall is of a place with mountains and a lazy blue lake. The plaster it covers is gashed down to the brickwork from one of his periodic bouts of ‘losing it’, when he gets into a sort of maelstrom of fury and – highly private occasions, these, he does not like to think about them – takes it out on the furniture and fittings. On the floor beside the desk is an empty carton of Shake n’ Vac, decorated in pink flowers.

      ‘Good stuff, that. Use it for anything. Like, see round the bed there? There should be a huge stain because I overdosed there last week. But just put Shake n’ Vac down. All the spilt cans and vomit – cleaned it up really well. Leave it for a week first though, before you hoover.’

      The bills on the bedside cabinet are red.

      No, Stuart does not mind if I rifle through them.

      Cable: he has five extra channels, none of them sport, and no telephone. The reason homeless people use mobiles is because they’re much cheaper than ordinary phones if you take only incoming calls. In fact, with pay as you go, they cost nothing. It’s when the homeless start hanging around the public payphones that they’re doing what ordinary people suspect them of doing on their mobiles: ringing their dealers. Stuart never uses anything but public phones for that sort of call.

      Water: Stuart receives a hardship grant from his water company, and has a number of slow-paying arrangements that are taken off his dole cheque at source. As with Latinate medical names, he is an expert at these pathetic calculations – much more in control of them than I am of mine. They are part of what is unpleasantly termed ‘life skills’. Not unreasonably, a person sleeping rough must display ‘life skills’ to his support workers if he is to be found a flat, otherwise he’ll simply fall into arrears, annoy everybody and get evicted.

      ‘On the street you get the same money as you get on housing, but now it’s half-grant, half-loan to furnish your flat,’ he explains, and gives the curry an encouraging prod. ‘You could be £15 a fortnight down paying back the loan. So, instead of £102, it’s now about £85. The water was fucking £26 a month before they remitted all me fines when I had the meter put in. And that was without electric and the gas and my TV licence. So out of £85 a fortnight I was paying £9 TV licence, £20 in electric because it was winter, £14 food minimum. Then you’ve got all your toiletries. I was making £49 outgoings go into £42.50. Even on pay day, your money don’t do the bills because as soon as you cash your giro you just want to go out. So first thing you do if you’ve been on the street is fuck the bills. The only thing I made sure is that I had leccy. Spices?’

      ‘How can you live on that, even without the bills?’

      That’s the point. I don’t.’

      Stuart rattles through the shelves above his draining board: economy tomatoes, economy baked beans, economy corn flakes – everything, except the beer, in white packaging with blue lines. Economy raisins, economy powdered milk, economy spaghetti; finally, at the back, Sharwood’s high-expense, in-a-glass-jar, multicoloured-label Five Spice, essential for Chinese cookery. He empties in all of it.

      Court fines – imposed for drunkenness, driving offences and refusal to pay previous fines – he disregards. ‘Just go back and get resentenced, won’t I? Do three/four months inside to wipe them off. At the minute, me head’s that off-key, I could actually do with going away for a bit.’

      Stuart also has the ex-con’s mathematical knack of immediately calculating release dates. ‘Alright, Ruth got a five,’ he says, dipping his finger in the sauce and licking thoughtfully, ‘but it’s John what I feel really sorry for because he got a four. Anything under four years and you only got to serve half before you automatically get released. If the judge had made it one day shorter – three years, 364 days – John could be out in two years. The extra day is the next bit up. It means he’s only up for parole. He could get the full two-thirds: two years and ten months. Look, Alexander, if you want to do something useful, why don’t you wash up some plates?’

      His kitchen is a bombsite. Environmental health should close it down. I am committing an offence by not reporting it. The slats suspected of containing microphones are above the sink. The sink is invisible. Its rough location is marked by a swarm of dishes trying to escape down the plughole. Disgusting.

      The purple sauce burps and splatters. Stuart does not like hot food himself. The first time in his life he ever sat in a restaurant was when he and I and another campaigner, Cathy Hembry, went to Leeds to berate Keith Hellawell, the Labour Party’s ‘Drugs Tsar’. Stuart ordered a chicken tikka masala, which, he claimed, pushing the plate away and fanning his mouth, was ‘kuu-aaah, uneatable!’ That night in Leeds, he also stayed at his first ever hotel. Since then he has become an expert on Indian restaurants in Cambridge (non-spicy dishes only).

      The purple sauce burps and splatters.

      The Convict Curry is served late in the evening. Rich, hot, oily, profound, and infused with powerful flavour when cooked by a master – even if the accompanying rice tastes like builder’s slurry – the cheapo-chicken-shaped Eskimo chins become tender, beautifully moist and pull back reassuringly from the bone.

      Stuart picks up his plate and drops himself in his chair in front of the television. ‘There, where’s the remote?’ He takes a bite of mushroom and chews breathily.

      The Dukes of Hazzard, Starsky and Hutch, Knight Rider – these are his favourite programmes: anything with muted 1980s colour, an atrocious plotline and car chases.

      We watch The A-team for five minutes. Another car crash. George Peppard dropping watermelons from a helicopter on to Bad Guy’s windscreen, which promptly smashes, sending Bad Guy soaring off the side of the road. In the next shot – car mid-air, heading towards disaster – the windscreen is intact again. Stuart bursts out laughing. ‘That’s why I love it. It’s brilliant.’ The car flops into a shallow lake.

      ‘Let’s go, partner,’ mimics Stuart happily.

      A moment later he flicks through the channels again and finds what he really wants. ‘This is the best.’

      We settle down to watch a programme about archaeology.

      The last bus into Cambridge is the 11.10.

      ‘We’ll do some book tomorrow, yeah?’ says Stuart. ‘Get to see what your gaff is like, can’t I? Give it the third degree like you just done to mine.’ He pokes out his tongue in concentration and squashes his diary over his knee.

      In the dark alley out of the estate on to the main road, I discover that I have forgotten to bring enough cash for the bus driver. Stuart pushes a fiver into my hand.

      I protest and shove it back. I know that he’s been saving this money for a visit to a lock-up pub after I’m gone. ‘I can’t take your drink money. I’ll get a taxi and stop at the bank on the way.’

      ‘No, honestly, Alexander.’ Stuart forces it on me a second time. ‘I’ve had enough. You’ll be doing me a favour to stop me having any more. You’ll be doing society a favour.’

      Convict Curry – Recipe

       To feed four

      7 × economy chicken quarters. (‘There’s always someone what won’t want two.’)

      4 × onions.

      1 × jar of curry paste, ‘whatever sort they’ve