Martin John Page 2

  Martin John how many times have I told you, give up the papers when they’re worrying you, you cannot be in them if they’re worrying.

  He never buys a newspaper if he notices a headline has petrol in it. Or pervert. He’s not keen on P words.

  The first page he reads is the letters page to see did any of his letters get through?

  In John Menzies at Euston, amid the wefty drift of chips and cooking croissants from next door, he takes thoughtful time to select exactly the newspaper he wants, unhurried by the arms reaching around to grab the pink and flush Financial Times, or those who fold the ­newspaper abruptly. Stare.

  The second thing he checks: the crossword clues. If they’re terrible—determined by reading 3 across and only 2 of the down (they’re always weaker on the down), then he chooses a different paper. The newspaper determines many things in Martin John’s daily life.

  You’ll only depress yourself his mother has warned him. This country is gone to the dogs. It’s beyond the dogs, there’s not even the brick of a dog track left. Sure they’ve lifted the dirt from under our feet.

  She never says specifically what’s wrong with the country, only offers the hint of cut-price airfares and suited-up Bucket-Air-gobshites and the price and rush of everyone. She blames it all on a man called Tony.

  At least the dogs have a number on them. It’s more than can be said for the humans creeping their way about and giving no hint to whatever they’re hatching. They’d never give you that bit of information about themselves them fellas. You’d have to take their number.

  She may be right about the dogs, but she’s lost the way with Martin John. She birthed him, raised him to obedience but never forgave the times he disobeyed.

  Keep your hands to yourself and you’ll know well where they are.

  He did not keep his hands to himself.

  He phones her every Sunday, in the phone box, outside Waterloo Station. Most of the weekly events in Martin John’s life take place outside or inside train stations. It’s always raining when he phones and she can hear it. His money’s religiously running out, but she never offers to phone him back. Not at all, it’d only upset him, be an insult to the man. Martin John is a proud son. Hold on, he’ll say, ’til I put another fifty pence in. She raised her son proud and she won’t upset him. She will not.

  She’s always been wrong about Martin John, it’s why the phone calls surprised her. Today she’s wrong about Martin John: he’s not buying the paper to study the news. It couldn’t possibly depress him any further, it has much more serious input than that. He’s dependent on it. Directed by it. He cannot calculate the depressive and improbable nature of mankind without it. For if he were to stop reading and thinking and wondering, then there’d be little reason to walk the streets at all. The newspaper is the only thing that cements his arrival at work each day or the raising of his head off the pillow.

  That need to go and buy it keeps him buoyed. Keeps him from the situations. Mam said only a structured daily life would achieve this. He’s keen to avoid the situations, a lot of trouble they caused and “shaming” for his mam. She doesn’t like it when he calls her from the hospital phone. Not at all.

  Keep yourself on the outside, Martin John.

  What are you doing in that place? What has you in there at all? Tell me what is happening, Martin John? And the only rabble that would come back from him down the line was that old religious rabble. A rabble she didn’t raise him to, she’d insist.

  I didn’t raise you to be saying this. Put that phone down right now. Phone me back when you’ve sense to make. But as soon as he’d go to replace the receiver she’d shriek at him in a vocal register akin to a buzzard’s.

  If you dare put down this phone on me Martin John as God is my judge I won’t be forgiven for what I’ll do. Come here to me and heed my words and if you don’t I’ll tell those fellas to lock you up. D’ya hear now?

  He heard, he never failed to hear, the bellow of incarceration and he was certain the paper, the walks, the guarding, every miserable minute of it was preferable to incarceration.

  Martin John has a personal relationship with several ­journalists writing in the paper. The capital letter of the first- and surnames he imprints to a shortened form, so Caitlin Boylan would be CB, or Barry Hutchinson is BH and Phil O’Toole is POT. During one situation he thought he and BH were having tea together, so he’s a bit wary of him since, doesn’t read his words too closely, lest they set him off again. He subsequently discovered BH had nothing to say. BH has gone away off to some hot place in Afghanistan the last few weeks, so it’s easy avoid him on the page. He was in China too for a while. There’s another strident Madam in the paper, Anna-something, who bothers him. She’s lovely hair, rides a bicycle, but complains non-stop and is ferocious over the fellas. Wants them expelled out of Ireland, the way that other writer (whose name he never says aloud) desires a cull on women. The two of them should be married and diminish the population, he thinks.

  This is the kind of chuckle and sustenance the papers give him—and words, he receives his daily words, sometimes they take him to the dictionary. He tallies up the number of words that commence with a chosen letter each day and records them in a line. At work he has a big dictionary hidden in the drawer. The other guard has a stack of filthy magazines that live under Martin John’s dictionary. He’s to use a handkerchief to lift his dictionary up and carefully replace the top magazine upside down, so the photos don’t set him off.

  Careful, careful, careful.

  Carefully does it, Martin John, the way mam has trained him.

  Caitlin might call him MJ if they were ever on speaking terms. He doesn’t think much of her harping on about her boyfriend trouble and her wine glasses and her dining-room table. But he has a file on her.

  He’s a file on all of them.

  The majority of his files though are on the Eurovision Song Contest.

  He has traced the ancestry of their names and he can see certainly a pattern in the (kinds of) people who put words on the newspaper page. He’d like to put a stop to it, but he accepts he can’t control everything.

  Martin John accepts. Martin John accepts.

  He accepted a lot in those days.

  He accepts a lot these days.

  (But does he accept the truth?)

  A strange week. One strange week, among the many strange weeks, was all it took for Martin John to change the rules on P words. It was incredible he could isolate it as a single strange week given the extended years of strange weeks. Did he have an ear infection perhaps? Instead of avoiding them P and p words, he isolates them. Isolates them into long lists. For you. Now. So you know he’s kept busy, so you don’t have to worry he might be beside you on the Tube, or following you about, or thinking about your body parts. He’s thinking only about words with P at the start. So you do not need to worry about what else he has been thinking about. He has only thought about P words.

  Here’s the evidence.

  POSSIBLE, PAISLEY, POLITICAL, POLITICIAN, POLITICAL, POLITICIANS, PEOPLE, PART, PAY, PARLIAMENT, POINTED, PILLS, PATENT, POTENT, PAIN, PLUMMET.

  Martin John focuses on those who employ the letter P excessively. He keeps score, tallies them up. It keeps him very, very busy. He needs to be busy. If he’s busy he won’t slip up. If he’s busy, they won’t come for him.

  Also, he is directed by the news, remember. If you are worried about what he might be up to keep your eye on the headlines. Potters Bar was where it all went sour. Note he did not ever see the P-word in Potters Bar.

  You’re involved now. You have a role. See? You are watching the headlines for him. You are forecasting like the Index forecasts.

  Wednesday, every week, Martin John catches the train —the 2:30 pm—to Hatfield to visit his Aunty Noanie. Noanie is blessed to live in a council flat that stares out onto another block. She has fabric and doilies un
der everything and this suggests to him she’s done well for herself. The place hums with old cooking smells that follow him home and remain inside his nose for days. Noanie has a man, but he’s never about and Martin John never asks after him because mam warned him not to.

  He’s always on the 5:30 pm train back and they share an exchange as he’s leaving, that he’d better go, you wouldn’t know what way the trains might be, but he knows exactly the way the trains do be. He knows them down to their slide and squeal and hiss and beep, beep, beep, and huss again and that slide, the diligent tug back to London.

  And for Martin John, the tug doesn’t come a minute too soon. For if he were trapped at Noanie’s by bad weather that wouldn’t do at all. If it snowed, that would scupper him, or if there were leaves on the line that could interrupt things. The thought of staying the night with Noanie frightens him more than catching TB. There’s no inoculation against Noanie and the thought of her dislodging the distributed fabric to put down a bed for him.

  So each Wednesday he checks the weather before he departs very, very carefully and examines the sky, to help him predict whether rain may fall or if he might need to cancel the visit.

  If it seems that Martin John leads a regimented kind of existence, it’s because he does lead a regimented existence, where he leaves nothing open to the palm of possibility. He does not suit possibility. He learnt that during the difficult time. He’s better now, smarter too. He’s careful now.

  He doesn’t like Meddlers. A Meddler got Martin John into trouble. More than once. If you are a Meddler, he won’t like you. That’s the way it is. How will you know if you are a Meddler?

  Check my Card.

  The Boss likes Martin John. He likes him for one reason. Martin John is reliable. He is never late and rarely off sick.

  Martin John knows this. His onion is on the pan.

  If Dallas hadn’t stacked the papers that one way, that one time, things might well have turned out differently on the job.

  Who knows?

  A few times he did make it back to the job when the situations took over.

  He could turn up after a day of being assessed. Learnt his rights, right. A man at the bus stop told him this. Pete, he said I’m Pete. If they ever try to hold you, tell ’em Pete said they can’t hold you. Pete sat with his back against the glass of the bus stop, a poster, a car beside his ear. Pete had company, a dozen carrier bags: one read Patient’s Belongings and Name on it.

  They could not forcibly keep him without holding him under the Mental Health Act. Martin John can repeat the section aloud. (Went to the library, looked it up, like Pete told him to.) Not now, he can’t repeat it right now because he is sat at the desk. If you repeat things aloud at the desk it never goes well. You know that. We all know that. Martin John knows that.

  He can discharge. He did discharge. He has discharged. Many times has he discharged. To stop him, they’d have to prevent him under the Act. Was he a danger? You never quite knew with Martin John. He was persuasive, solid like a crow who could persuade you he was a crow.

  When he returned to work after being discharged the previous day or night—he usually felt better if he discharged, fine just fine—it surprised him he could feel so fine, while some contemplated him close on a danger. Perplexing.

  These were his better days.

  Those were his better days.

  The days he discharged.

  The days when he could discharge.

  Today though is strangely NOT A GOOD DAY. This is unusual. Not doing the best is Martin John. Not a good sign. A sign of change. Martin John is worried.

  Tell us why, Martin John. Tell us why.

  He’s worried about the pile that Dallas has stacked.

  I don’t like the way they sit. Why would he do it, knowing only that I was on the way in? He did it because he believed I would not and could not make it in. He expected me not to be here this evening for my shift. He expected me never to return. They have given away my job. My job is given away. I have no job. Stop asking me questions. Stop inquiring. You’re in on it. You probably told him I was in the hospital last night.

  You were in during the day on the short-stay ward, remember? That’s right: day, night, what harm is in it?

  Plenty harm is in it Martin John.

  Plenty harm when the papers are looking at you stacked that way. They’ve been stacked deliberately that way.

  They’re sending a message.

  I’m getting the message, says Martin John.

  I’m fucken getting it, is right.

  The only thing to do when he’s getting the message is to take the message on a walk.

  He is staring at the papers that Dallas has stacked in a different way and he cannot tackle the rearrangement until he completes a circuit or 17 circuits because today’s number is 17.

  17 P words is what he read in the morning paper before work. This will require 17 circuits if he is to follow the sequence. He intends to follow the sequence if there are no interruptions. No interruptions by Meddlers. The plague of his life. If there are interruptions there’s another plan.

  The 17 P/p words included a high volume of repetitions of the words political and part. Do your part, he can hear us telling him. Do your part in this story. Everyone wants a story. Everyone has a story. Everyone is a story. He believes we are telling him to do his part, do his political part. He won’t be your story. He won’t be your political story or the part in your story.

  Shut up, would ya. He cautions us.

  Over there by the door enters the postman. Normally he wouldn’t be troubled by the postman but on account of the arrangement of the words and the P in postman he’s keen to avoid him because it’s trouble. But he wants a signature for a delivery.

  Martin John knows this *ostman is trying to get his signature because they’re *robably trying to *rove he’s here. He *uts his two hands on his head and *ulls at his scalp. He has to think fast. How fast can you think, Martin John?

  Stop, he says again. Stop.

  You could scribble your name in a way he cannot read it. We tell him this.

  Shut up, he says, knowing we are right.

  I can’t write, Martin John tells the *ostman.

  Fuck off and sign this says the postman.

  Martin John signs. I don’t know what I’ve signed, he says to the postman. He fears trouble ahead.

  17 words with the letter P today.

  Poorest, public, perilous, price, parliament, products, purse, people, partner, pay, people, prices paid, pink, pre-boomtown, paving, powersharing,

  There were P words the day Martin John was discharged: pointed people peaceful put prescribing psychiatrist.

  Mam warned him about Meddlers. Not exactly. That wasn’t it. Mam warned him about getting his photo taken.

  That was it.

  Precisely.

  Be careful. Duck. Don’t ever let them take a photo of you. Someone might see it. Someone from home could recognize you. They’d come for you and it’ll be over.

  It is never defined.

  In order to prepare for the Meddlers’ attempt to bury him, Martin John has done copious amounts of research to help him understand how they meddle, where and how they’ll attack. His research consists of endless hours of videotapes of people speculated on the news. He commenced with cassettes but found them too easy to destroy. He tries for local news programmes where the reports are more detailed and the Meddlers announce themselves.

  He’s alert to the weapon that is the camera. The spy tube. The eyewitness pry. Any camera hoping to seek him out will fail. He can dodge them with the speed a mugger takes flight. Any camera—whether student-, tourist-, or ITN-operated—and he is gone. He has a ritual for passing by a camera and letting the camera operator know he will not participate. That he is not giving them permission to capture his image.

 
; A Meddler with a camera would be the final clunk-click. He understands it was a photo that got him into trouble.

  Martin John does not like Meddlers.

  Meddlers don’t understand things can upset a fella and get him down.

  Meddlers can’t comprehend this.

  It’s why they’re Meddlers.

  You’ve to be doin’ jus’ right

  jus’ right.

  You’ve to be alright.

  Full fucking safe right.

  Exactly how they want you to be.

  Except you’ve to do their right.

  You’ve to be prepared Martin John. You’ve to be ready. You have put us in this situation mind. I warned you, I had you warned and you didn’t heed me. Not once have you heeded me, perhaps now with the help of God and the devil’s promise you’ll heed me.

  Rules have already been broken in this book. The index told us about refrains, not rules. There was no mention of rules early on. Martin John will not like this.

  Meddlers have rules. Rules have Meddlers. Meddlers do not tell you the rules until you’ve broken or filleted them.

  They’ve rules, Meddlers. Rules none of the rest of us are privy to ’til they tell us. Youse’ll do it this way, which is my way, Meddler way. Even if Meddler way is going through the cow’s mouth and out its ear to go up its arse, Meddler way prevails. Meddlers prevail at work and it troubles Martin John. He doesn’t like Meddler way. Mam doesn’t even know about Meddler way. She didn’t warn him. She shoulda warned him. She shoulda, he says that aloud so we, who might be sitting nearby, can hear it. We, who might be sitting nearby, find out-loud pronouncements worrying. We pretend the person, in this case Martin John, has said nothing and we stare ahead. Martin John is grateful for our avoidance.