Stuart Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 onto Bad Guy’s windscreen, which promptly smashes, sending Bad Guy soaring off the side of the road. In the next shot–car midair, 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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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 got’. 2
×
‘cheap and cheering’ tins of tomatoes–Aldi, Sainsbury’s or Tesco. Mushrooms, sweetcorn, ‘anything like that’. Mixed spice. Ground cumin.
    Fry the onions and the jar of curry paste together ‘until you feel satisfied’. Throw in your two tins of tomatoes, mushrooms, sweetcorn, and chicken. Rinse out the curry jar and add the water, sprinkle in the mixed spice and cumin, stir, bring to a splattering boil, and simmer for two and a half hours.

4
    â€˜When and how did you become…’
    â€˜This horrible little cunt?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Sorry.’
    â€˜We’ll get to that later.’
    â€˜Sorry.’
    I check the tape recorder and discover I have to begin again anyway because I’ve forgotten to release the ‘pause’ button.
    â€˜When and how…’
    Again we have to stop. This time my landlord interrupts. Stuart has come to my rooms today and sits, squashed between the arms of my comfy chair, his legs curved and folded like a cross between a cowboy and a grandmother. Landlord stomps up from downstairs and pokes his head around the door.
    â€˜Hullo,’ he says, blankly.
    â€˜Hello. Me name’s Stuart. Pleased to meet you.’
    â€˜Hullo.’
    Twice winner of a Mathematics Olympiad Gold Medal, coauthor of
The Atlas of Finite Groups,
my landlord is