Martin John Read online

  Even if they’ve no rules Meddlers’ll make some up while you are standing there. A Meddler is trouble brewing, trouble half-cooked, trouble that’ll come back and bite him in the ear. There’s a stoic quality to Meddlers.

  Meddlers won’t rust in the rain.

  Meddlers order off menus.

  Martin John does not eat out.

  He doesn’t trust kitchens.

  Fuck the Meddlers.

  It was always the Meddlers who interfered and turned him in. It was the Medlers who turned him in the first time. It’s the Meddlers who’ll turn him in the next time. It’s the Meddlers who’ll bury him.

  His Meddler research, the videotapes, all sit up, tower-­wards, in a lifting stack, until they beach at the ceiling, end. There is no abrupt interruption from floor to ceiling. Neat. Precise. Up. Identical. Up. Identical tapes up. Identical red-and-black cases up that give no indication to their contents. No scribbled titles, no scrawled-upon stickers. No blue biro. They separate from the 9 years’ worth of Eurovision Song Contest recordings, which rise and archive themselves in the identical manner, along the parallel wall. His cell is walled tapes. His wall is cells of tapes. There is no voluntary wall space unoccupied. No section available. Also, the titles are not labelled. He keeps them stowed. Secret. Un-de-code-able. Martin John has binders full of numbers that correlate to his tapes. He studies the tapes from time to time. More obviously, he studies the streets. He is out walking by day. Watchful.

  Inside things are safe. Except for the one big problem.

  His best weapon for observing Meddlers is the puddle. He can stand by a puddle and wait for them to pass. He can stand in their way. Just. Like. That. Stop! Stop hard and abrupt in the middle of the pavement. Sometimes people bump into him. He likes that. They apologize. The Meddler will claim not to have seen him. They call him mate. Instead of bait. He is bait. Baited to them. But subtracted now because of a puddle. A puddle is the most successful way to separate from a Meddler.

  All Meddlers and the noticeable increase in Meddlers can be traced to the arrival of Baldy Conscience. There have always been Meddlers but never ever at this volume. It was Baldy Conscience who brought the maximum Meddlers out.

  He has a prepared statement to deflect them. He raises his hands carefully in front of his eyes and repeats, “I don’t contribute, I don’t contribute to these things.” He takes no chances since the advent of palm-held video cameras, which are regularly found on Tower Bridge Road in the hands of Italian tourists. No distinction is practiced. He practices no distinction: if it is a camera, he performs his declaration. It matters not who possesses the camera because as his mother has long told him you just don’t know in whose hands these things might end up.

  A photo has put him in the situation with Baldy Conscience, he must remember this. He must not have a camera near him. Ever. No cameras ever. No women ever. No Meddlers ever.

  All photos have been removed and burned. If they come they will find no photos.

  If Ralph says he gave him the picture Martin John will say No picture. Never no picture.

  Mam warned him about getting his picture taken.

  Be careful, she said. Duck. Don’t ever let them take a picture of you. Someone from home might recognize you. They could come for you and it would be over.

  It is never defined.

  With the help of God or no God—Martin John finds it unlikely any God would take pity on a man such as he—he continues not to heed her. These days, instead, he heeds the Meddlers.

  The Meddlers I have no choice over, he has told mam. They’re not just coming for me, they’re here, gunning for me, stamping all over my head as I speak to you. They will get to me before the guards. I’ll be dead before the guards come for me.

  Whenever Martin John talks of the Meddlers she drills him for information and—should he spew any small bit—disputes and dismisses it. So he has begun to withhold the information, but he’s withholding it in the only way he’s ever managed to withhold anything from his mam—a wriggling withhold. I wouldn’t tell you for it would put the fear of God in you and we wouldn’t want that. He speaks to her like she is a fragile imbecile. She gets cross, demands to know what he is waffling about. Make sense would you, make sense before I come and make sense of you.

  But what is the point, for as soon as Martin John begins detailing the ascent and assailing ways of his nemesis Baldy Conscience, mam retreats into pleading that he shut up, shut up, shut up. For Christ’s sake shut up with this old shit would ya. And she is back drilling him again on the details of his day and night.

  Has he work?

  Is he working?

  Are you working?

  What’s he spending his money on?

  What time is he home?

  Is he getting out to Noanie each week?

  And most of all: the women—has he been careful? Has he been careful around the women? We don’t want it happening again. It’ll be over for you if you slip again. And she finishes with the promise it’s prison he’ll be and she’s closing the line now and so he should think careful. I’ll hand you over, I’ll tell them all—you’ve given me no choice.

  She is usually saying this as the pips on the line declare his money is gone. Pip. Pip, pip, pip. Dead.

  Harm was done.

  Harm was done and further harm would be done.

  He had done it before, but he never did it again.

  This is what he tells them.

  The ones who ask.

  Like mam.

  When they come for you Martin John it’s at night. They wait ’til they know you’re home. Then they swoop. They want to bring you out quiet and without a fuss. Go quiet and without a fuss. All they want to know is they’ve got you. They want to say they have you.

  They never come for you at work.

  If you’re at work they can’t get you. Say it aloud now.

  If I am at work, they can’t get me.

  (Martin John repeats.)

  Nights. It only happens on the night shift. Martin John, his torch for company and his stride. His seat, cheap soup and cold thermos that sometimes leaks. He has the station, it’s all his and he’s safe. The threats are to a building that he is in and they could get him, but they won’t. One of the reasons he works nights is because if they are going to come for him, he figures it will be at night and he won’t be home to be lifted.

  It has to be difficult for them to come for him. To find him. If it’s difficult they’ll go for someone else. He gives the daylight a wide berth. Mam told him it is only at night they come for you. They’re too busy with other criminals during the daylight to be bothered. But it’s at night they grow curious about the like of you, the ones who they cannot be sure have done it or not.

  Martin John understands perfectly what she is not saying in what she’s saying. She’s saying that night is when they review the tapes. The tapes that they have been taking of him all day long.

  Night was the time the funny stuff happened with Martin John.

  Night was the time when he felt her wrath more keenly.

  She had strong rules about night. She said they would have to show darkness in the house at all times or suspicion would be attracted. She said they must act ordinary. She said people did it during the Blitz. They couldn’t risk a knock at the door. No inquiry Martin John, she said. We don’t want to encourage it. It made everything harder, her obsession with not encouraging inquiry. It was never defined. Every single action they undertook (once he had fouled things up) was completed under the jurisdiction of not attracting inquiry. Shopping would be done far from the nearest town. Necessity. A seized state of forced normality prevailed. Perspicacity. However, she made choices that did attract attention. She (sometimes) kept him from school. He (simply) disappeared from the system. It was as though she thought they’d fail to notice.

  Who knew? He k
new. He knows he knew but did you know?

  At night, after the incident or that incident, for there were more incidents than she knew about, she locked him in his room.

  He was a danger to himself and her and it was for the best that she lock him in.

  So she locked him in.

  In she locked him.

  You’d have locked him in.

  Until she could get him out of the country. She’d to get him out.

  There was the matter of the bathroom. She never addressed it. He learnt to use the bucket. He learnt to wait for morning to come. Sometimes it came and she didn’t always unlock him early. Once she forgot him ’til 11 am. She said sorry. She said he needed rest. She said Get down now, duck! Because the postman was at the window. She said there were no eggs. That day she said a lot all at once and Martin John was dizzy.

  They’re closing in on you, she told him, Friday’s the day will do for us. We’ve to get you out. Now she no longer asked him what he had done. She would not touch it. No, she said nothing other than get down and we’ve to get you out.

  Not long ’til she planned his exit.

  Not long ’til she planned his exit then.

  We’ve to get you out.

  That’s how it was.

  She said they’d left it too long. She did not ask him whether he’d done it anymore.

  Only that it could have been a misunderstanding and he could have apologized but they’d left it too long and they were coming for him.

  I’ll try, she said. I’ll try to save you.

  I think I know the kind of girl she is.

  Martin John has made mistakes. He went exactly where mam said. He did as he was told.

  Except the small, crampy house in London. She does not know about the crampy house. He minded it. Well it was another fella’s. Ralph’s. But him gone “away” to prison. They met briefly. Martin John was the landlord now. Sorta.

  He shouldn’t have because if she knew she’d explode. He minded the house from back before the new trouble started. It was a sort of borrowing arrangement. A man in a spot of bother who needed his rent paid and eventually he’d come back once his bother was spotted. Because Martin John had a clockwork pay packet he got it and managed to hang onto it, with a few close blips on the rent radar. Located in a handy but grungy location, it was a cereal-box house with butter-dish-sized rooms and a kitchen not much bigger than a school locker.

  Periodically Martin John rents to Lithuanian cleaners or Danish students or Polish taxi drivers and this is dangerous. He tried to find the quiet ones who don’t proffer information, don’t wash so often and won’t boil the kettle dry.

  He prefers the ones who don’t stay long—especially the illegals. He can tell them when they ring the bell because they dress smarter than needs be, but their socks and shoes never match and they have a jittery look about them. He always offered the room to an illegal first. They don’t realize they’re getting it because they won’t stay.

  The Spanish?

  Never!

  Too fond of the night and too heavy on the floor above his head.

  A Brazilian? Yes!

  Rosalie, her lips were incredible—no woman should be bestowed lips that beautiful was his first thought. He almost didn’t give it to her because of the lips: they’d be a distraction to the business of his day. He regretted Rosalie because she still wrote and there was that time he had to go to Heathrow to the Immigration and swear blind she was his and she said she’d never forget what he did, and he wished she would forget because she still writes, though he replies infrequent. The Christmas card he allows her. The card he allows them all. Signed only with his surname Gaffney and MJ dashed after like he’s the single Gaffney there is. (The tin of biscuits at Christmas, that he ceased because he did not want tenants needing to speak to him such as to say Thank you.)

  No nationality has permission to knock on his bedroom door. Ever.

  They could leave correspondence in an old dustpan screwed upright to the left of his door frame. They never complain. He encourages them to report repairs knowing they never will. They were told never knock at the door, leave a note, the pan was ever empty. It’s why he liked the illegals. They don’t dare ask.

  He knows how they think, how they feel, because they always think someone is coming for them, like he does.

  He has made mistakes.

  There was one (recently) who slipped by him. A Lithuanian or an Estonian—he can’t tell the difference between the Baltic states. She wanted to be caught because she left the tablet bottles in the bin and gradually the volume of them made him suspicious. Against his better judgment, which is not to be involved, never to inquire for inquiry leads to involvement, involvement leads to questions and mam has warned him of that.

  Stay out of it Martin John, for the love of God stay out of it, I cannot save you now you’re in London, get yourself into bed early and stay out of it. D’ya hear?

  The day he made the mistake, she, the renter, was unnaturally quiet, so Martin John gave in to curiosity. Up he went, contemplated briefly that he ought to put carpet on the stairs because it’s irritating. It’s irritating to hear them, the tenants, climbing around him and today he didn’t hear her and that was irritating too. That was why he was up to make this inquiry. An inquiry he would later regret. Maybe she could hear him climbing, he doesn’t want to be heard, he didn’t want to be climbing, but he was climbing and this was not what he should be doing. Knocked. No answer. Retreat to kitchen. A cup of tea drank, three minutes marked on the clock and the decision to check one more time before he left to his late shift.

  This time, door tried and it opened. She wanted someone to come in. He continued knocking as he pushed it. She was sleeping.

  Sorry now.

  No reply, no movement.

  He put his hand on the cover and her leg but couldn’t wake her. He put his hand up and down her leg considerably longer than was needed to ascertain anything. Furious, more than concerned she might be dead, he placed a 999 call on the coin phone, up there, beside the door, stoic and informative. The way the ambulance men looked at him confirmed what mam said. It didn’t do for a man of his vintage to be renting to a young woman like that. He finally understood the potency of the word allegation.

  I couldn’t wake her was the only information he provided. Her name, obviously, did not match any papers about her room and no, he could tell them little about her. I only rent to them, I am not involved with them. They’ve no reason or need to tell me anything and I don’t encourage it. When the ambulance men packed her and her stretcher into the van, they inquired if he was to ride with them. No, he’ll wait. Should he say she was not his relative? Did he already say? What is it they’re thinking about him? Do they think he did this to her?

  I must phone her family. He offered this blank. After they left he watched a video and waited for the phone call. No call. On account of the look the ambulance men gave him he went to visit her. He walked to St Thomas’s where they had taken her and all along the walk mumbled stay out, stay out, stay out of it for the love of God Martin John stay out of it.

  He phoned all right.

  Outside St Thomas’s Hospital he phoned.

  He phoned mam.

  —I only put my hand on her and she was cold, he stuttered.

  What have you done Martin John? What have you done? Oh not again, the Lord save us not again.

  —No, not again, not again. He repeated. I only put my hand on her and she was cold. I didn’t do it. I don’t remember the moments before or after. I didn’t hear her say anything. I didn’t do it. I was only covering her leg.

  He has made mistakes. All his life he has made mistakes. He continues to make mistakes. By Christ if he could only stop with the mistakes.

  The hospital was a mistake.

  The hospital came after the phone calls.

&nb
sp; The hospital was a mistake.

  The hospital that came after the phone calls was a mistake.

  Ah, he knows the hospital system well does Martin John. In and out. Oh God he does. The way he is himself. The social worker will be called and will be talking to the girl and he’s to be ready now, must have the old thoughts in order. He has it in his head now, present like a friend, say little to them and they’ll be none the wiser. He’s worried about the social Meddlers as he calls them—the social workers—he cannot have them put the Estonian, who may not be an Estonian, in the notebook (as he calls it). He has it now. He has fouled up, he knows it, but he has it in his head now. Up there installed. Beside his mistakes.

  Do everything you can to keep the Estonian out of the notebook. Do everything you can to keep the social workers back. Do everything you can Martin John. Do everything you can.

  Only the Estonian is miffed at him for delivering her over to them. The Estonian who might be a Latvian is disappointed in him. It is in her eyes as he hands over a box of Roses chocolates, having considered Quality Street too garish for the occasion. Roses were right, he thought. Were Roses right?

  —Why did you call them? A plain inquiry in her crickle-­crackle accent.

  Was she angry because of the Roses or because of him saving her life? Did it matter? He gave her his copy of today’s paper, The Financial Times, adding he’d like to get it back from her once she’s finished. No rush, he put his two palms up. I’ve done the crossword. She asks in her broken English if he can bring her a magazine tomorrow.

  He had no intention of visiting her tomorrow for it would draw further attention to him. This magazine is going to be a problem.