Martin John Read online

Whether she was angry and about what she was angry faded to interest him. He was angry. She had cluttered up the bin. Thoughtless. He only emptied it every few weeks. Given him strife with the two ambulance men. He thought of mam. He could hear her. He could hear what she’d say. She’s taking the roof down from over you one slate at a time. She’d talk about the greyhound track. She’d talk about the depravity of the country. She’d talk. That was the problem with mam. Mam talked and he couldn’t stop hearing her. Yet could he heed her? No he couldn’t. He could not.

  Mam’d tell him. She’d tell him alright. Martin John, what is a man like you, a man with an allegation, doing near a woman like that? They’re out there Martin John, waiting for you, they want to trip you and they want you to trip. You’re a fool. You’ve to be onto them. You’ve got to get ahead of them. D’ya hear?

  Mam called him a man with an allegation. He was a man with an allegation. But there was more than one. The others were not out loud yet. But they could come out and if they came out, well then they’d come for him. That’s how it is Martin John, that’s how it is when you’re a man with an allegation.

  He knew what to do.

  When the time was right he’d let her go. How many days out of the hospital could he leave it, before telling the Estonian she’ll have to move out? If a woman tried to top herself above you on a single divan how many days might you give her before you told her she had to go? Should he tell her now, here in the hospital? Could he whisper it over to her or put a note in the magazine she’d requested? He didn’t know. He didn’t have the answer to this question.

  He returned with a magazine and handed it to the nurse who, confused by the instruction could she keep it from the girl ’til tomorrow, tsks there’s no need for that, I’ll take it over straight away (and obviously intends to deliver it straight to the girl in a we’ll-say-no-more-about-it practical manner).

  He must now return and visit her tomorrow, a move abjectly necessary because of the predicament this young one has thrown at him. Because of the way the nurse has looked at him.

  Two days after she was discharged from the hospital he told the Estonian his sister needed the room. The sister who was married in Beirut? She asked. No, he said, another sister altogether. She was on her way from Ireland and needed the room for a few months. A pregnant sister. A pregnant sister in trouble needed the room.

  The Estonian appeared not to hear him correctly, so he repeated: two weeks, if she could find herself another arrangement in two weeks it would be best for the pair of them. A house where there would be someone to keep an eye on her. She cried. He exited to eat a pork pie. When he returned she was still red-eyed.

  —Do you mind, she said, do you mind to bring me to the bus stop? I am confused. I don’t remember where it is.

  He pulled on his old coat and as he walked with her, she held his arm tight. Past them, the cars mutated into each other, a noisy blur that put paid to the obvious silence. He stood beside her like a leek, counting to 40 and preparing to excuse himself.

  —There’s enough room for all of us, she stated as the bus approached. He resisted the urge to ask about Russia’s 1984 Eurovision entry.

  Mam was right, always right. He was trapped now. She was trapping him. Not even a pregnant sister in trouble could shift. We can share the room, she said before stepping onto the bus.

  To be rid of the woman who may be a Latvian, an Estonian or a Lithuanian (he should know them all, from his frantic Eurovision studies, a further failing not lost on him: the first failing he let her in, the second she forced him to visit her in hospital), he sought unofficial help from the Department of Immigration. It was a cruel swipe, a dirty one, but since he hadn’t heeded mam’s warnings, he had been scalded. He knew precisely what his mam would do.

  In the middle of his shift—and thus in the middle of the night—he phones their tip hotline and leaves a description of her and his address. He adds matter of fact that he didn’t know was she an Estonian or Latvian or Lithuanian but these were the hours they could find her there. He adds another line about respecting the laws of this country and Glad to be of service, which, when he hangs up, he regrets. He sounds like an MP on Newsnight: pious and prompt, while his accent gives his origins away.

  He was unhappy with what he had done. It might have felt right before he did it, but once he’d done it, an overwhelming urge to reverse it hooked him. It was always this way when he made mistakes.

  He kept a careful eye out for the immigration people coming for her. He told her he had seen them snooping around. He assured her that he’d do everything to prevent them access.

  —You’re like my family, she sighed.

  —Not at all, he rebuffed.

  —You’re a very good man, she added.

  —I am not, he assured her.

  One morning, weeks later, he returns to find her room cleared and she’s gone. He’s puzzled. It was what he wanted, but now she is gone something is wrong.

  There would be no tip line to remove her replacement: Baldy Conscience.

  He has made mistakes:

  Martin John has made mistakes.

  Baldy Conscience continues to be his biggest mistake. He has been a five-year mistake. A repeated spade-to-the-back-of-his-head mistake. Baldy Conscience lied when moving in. He cannot remember the exact shape of the lies but Baldy Conscience is not who he said he was. He said he was a quiet man. Baldy Conscience said he liked building ships out of matchsticks.

  Baldy Conscience was when all the latest trouble officially started again. He is at the bottom of his current situation and he knows it. He even tells the Doctor in the hospital about Baldy Conscience. He fucked everything up for me. I think there’s legions of people out there bothered by him. He’s probably causing the trouble in Beirut. If you killed him now or tomorrow all would be well. He doesn’t smile when he says it. The Doctor looks down at his paper and etches something onto it.

  He has made mistakes.

  Baldy Conscience was a terrific mistake.

  Baldy Conscience was a turbine of a mistake.

  He was a tubular bell of a mistake.

  A Chernobyl-fucking-cloud of a mistake.

  It was a grave error, an awful grave one.

  He was swayed by the accent, by the good boots on the young man and the thinning hair on his head. If a young man had boots like those, there couldn’t be much up with him.

  And he was in. Baldy Conscience was in to his house and it was only on the second day he realized the man had guitars, and there was to be no guitars.

  There could be no guitars because where there’s a guitar there’s people and didn’t he tell the fella he could have the room all right, but no visitors? No people coming around. Ever. Did he use the word ever?

  He did.

  How many fucken ways were there to say No people comin around. Ever.

  Baldy Conscience was not an illegal. He hadn’t the fear of an illegal. He was fearless. Disgustingly so.

  They all want the room as soon as it is advertised because it is cheap and there’s nothing cheap in London. He’ll have to be shut of him, but how will he get him out? He was not an illegal like the Brazilian and he was not a woman like the Brazilian. All good. All fine. He didn’t want any women, nor Brazilians, after that young one pouring pills into herself.

  Mam told him, no Martin John and be careful Martin John and keep away Martin John and for the love of God Martin John, into bed at 9 Martin John, if you’re not in the way of trouble you’ll not meet it Martin John.

  And he was in the way now. He was well away in the way. He had scored a hat trick of being in the way. Snookered. Scuppered. Sunk. A scattered, sloping skunk.

  But the problem of the Baldy Conscience—his guitars, his blokes with guitars who kept coming around—is not away. They were cute all right, cute in the brain, cute hoors they were. They were cute way into tiny
dimensions and holes he couldn’t locate, with their wiggling an’ worming and almighty fucking burning. Of Him. They had him cornered there below them and were torching him. They were pissing on his head up there. They had him all right. Fuck they had him. They had him in ways he couldn’t have foreseen it was possible to be had. They wore hats and tight jeans and black boots like disguises.

  Knock the front window, not the door, and the window above shook with the house so old and draughty. He could not go out and confront them with: Who are you and why are you at my door? Couldn’t go out and yell at the little gobshite that nobody means no-fucking-body, nobody did not mean a young fella with a sackful of guitar. And it was not just the one, they were all the same, only difference was the length of their hair, the bags under their eyes, the depleted heels on their shoes. Do these gobshites not know the shoe repair, the shoe repair on every street and railway station in this confounded city from Baker’s Street to Battersea? A man stuck in a hole in the wall with cylindrical machines to resurrect the British shoe and these hairy eejits not willing to shell out two pounds for a repair. This was one of so many things that frustrated Martin John about this hapless young fella and his unwelcome entourage.

  Cunt, the Baldy Conscience says cunt. Upstairs on the pay phone he says it. So often he said it. Cunt this and cunt that and he’s a cunt and she’s a cunt. He doesn’t like the word. Cunt makes him think of thunk. The sound his thump made. Martin John doesn’t like the word, he doesn’t like it at all and he closed his door each time they rang the phone. But still the accent, the gutteral c-c-c and the swallowed unt. Martin John kicked the skirting board when he heard it to be shut of it. But it wouldn’t go. There was usually a pile of videos in the way and the pile took the kick and made a clatter. It was a bad word, a bad, bad word, an awful word that made him think of the women and the woman and the girl and he won’t think again of the girl because if he remembers that day then he’ll go through it in his mind and wonder about where he was. Was he on the edge of the plastic seat as he remembered or was he at the edge of the box beside her, as her mother stated? He can’t recall the small of her back. He can recall the thump. The thump he gave her. Sometimes it is there and sometimes it is not. He can see the fabric of her skirt. He remembers the woman at the reception who pointed her finger at him. He remembers where he gave the girl the thump. That is why he doesn’t like the word cunt.

  But it’s what they said Martin John, it’s what they’ve said, and when it’s what they’ve said Martin John, said mam, there’s no way you can change it. There isn’t a way it can be changed. It’s all over when they’ve said it. They’ve said it you see. Now it’s said.

  And he remembered now how she negotiated his exit, when he preferred for it to go to trial. Put me up there and I’ll tell what happened. But no she said. She said no, no, no Martin John. We’ll atone with God, not the law. We’ll atone with the man who knows you best.

  Because mam said he hadn’t done it, right? That’s what he heard. Because mam said she knew the kind of girl she was. That’s what he heard. Mam knew him too. And that was the reason he hadn’t done it. Because mam knows him and tells him what he’s done, right? She told him long and wide and repeatedly and never did she say, you did it Martin John. You’re a dirty bastard and you did it. She hasn’t said it. Did you hear her say it?

  The Baldy Conscience drives him out of his own house. The house where he is in charge. He is no longer in charge. Baldy Conscience is in charge.

  Every time that skanky-headed lute Baldy Conscience uses the cunt word Martin John must immediately walk and let him know he’s walking. How he cracked that fucking door closed. Let that signal reach up to them with their amps and pedals penetrating the foundations of his, well, Ralph’s tiny brick house and them ensconced in his cheap-room-rent with no carpet nor wallpaper and now he’ll have that fuckwit in the kitchen in an hour frying sausages for the other fuckwits and it is all too much. Much too much and he was having none of it and yet it is having all of him. It is consuming him.

  And Jesus fucking Christ, tonight, tomorrow and the week after as well, the sneering outta that fella would crumble a statue. He had a disgusting way of conducting himself. The way he spoke, the way he thought, the way he looked, there was even something sinister about his breathing. He was possessed. Even beyond the guitar strings, Baldy Conscience was a sight.

  As he walked down that road, beneath and between and beside the concrete overpass and down to the Elephant & Castle and past the flats, those endless flats, with their identical boxy window, ditto door and traipsing family of three to five to seven, all their extras weighing down the buggy and the arms and the hair of the women struggling—at every window he cursed. He cursed all who lived behind those windows or any window, for where there were people, he would have problems and he put his two hands over his ears to indicate it should all go away and on he walked ’til he reached the silly pink shopping centre, where food and sofas on tick are to be got and watery tea upstairs and he’ll go to the woman by the Tube station entrance in her doorway with her papers and he’ll buy two of the same paper and he’ll do that crossword sat on a wall, opposite the gospel church, or if it’s raining he’ll slip inside and kneel and sit back and complete his clues until the pastor comes or the black women clean their church and add a flower to the sagging bunch.

  Once he was sat there when the church was hoovered and it was a mighty sound, whoooming around the Lord like that, sucking up the dust like a chorus, in a way that was so out of place it said the Lord had failed, that his house should never get dusty or need a hoover. You’ve failed! he called out to Him and the cleaning woman came with the polish and cloth in her hand and told him get out, waving the can of polish like she might spray him in the mouth for his disrespect.

  Sometimes, when things got very indescribably bad, he fled as far as Euston Station. Euston is his ultimate destination. It is the only site of paradise in the pigeon-shite- soaked, clogged-up drain of a city. The time of the day is what decides it. If Baldy Conscience uses the c-word in the morning, that’s shite. As a precaution Martin John wears earplugs inside his own house. This means he never hears the doorbell or the kettle whistle and twice it boils dry and twice Baldy Conscience screamed that he left the kettle boiling, you’ve left the kettle boiling! except Martin John couldn’t hear a word, only the lips on the face are moving in his doorway and his arm is pointing to the kettle, a step down from the hall in the kitchen. Martin John was wearing industrial strength earplugs. He nodded. Baldy Conscience walked back up the narrow narrow staircase.

  While he considered ways to evict Baldy Conscience, he suppressed the urge to do him damage by avoiding standing in the same spot as him. If Baldy Conscience moved to the kitchen Martin John remained in his room. He took out the earplugs only to decipher the movements of the man. He has his routine down. Baldy Conscience rises late, normally at 10 am, takes a piss, makes a cup of tea and then makes for the telephone. The most dangerous time for Martin John is around 10:45 am. When he works days, he’s gone.

  On days after the nightshift he puts the earplugs in and does not leave his room ’til 2 pm by which time Baldy Conscience has left to his cleaning job at the market.

  Sometimes this means he cannot obtain his 2 newspapers.

  Mam wants him to hurt Baldy Conscience. He can hear her, even with the earplugs in. He can hear her telling him what to do about him. If it’s you or him, Martin John, then for God’s sake let it be him, let it be him, take the brush to him, take a stick to him. He longs to beat Baldy Conscience, to crack him in the brain, perhaps with a cricket bat or an old tennis racket with the square press around it like he’s seen at the car boot sales, to drive him out of this house. But he must not and he cannot. Instead he must leave his own house, he must leave his house wearing earplugs.

  You’d be amazed how many Kit Kats get eaten at the market. And Jelly Tots are popular too. It’s crazed how many people thi
nk that everyone smokes B&H. And yet when you clean up, it’s Silk Cut Blue all the way to the black-bin-liner.

  I found half a pie today. Apple. Someone ate only the top off the pastry. I ate the rest.

  These are the kinds of snips Baldy Conscience shared.

  Baldy Conscience was his worst mistake, but there were others. Martin John knows that. Things have become very bad since Baldy Conscience.

  I’ve a few good years, he said. I’ve had a few good years alright. Oh but they’re over now. It’s finished. My best years were in Beirut. Things were the best for me in Beirut. This is what Martin John told them when they lifted him at Euston.

  Once mam was more direct with Martin John.

  I am glad it is finished, she wrote.

  I am glad you have stopped.

  I am glad you are done with it.

  Martin John finds value in repetition. He always has. As a child he liked to wander around lampposts in town. It drove his mother mad. It took perpetuity to move him anyplace for he would loop endlessly around every lamppost they passed. Mam could go into a shop and come out and be assured Martin John would still be there doing his lamppost loops.

  He takes this repetition to Euston. At Euston Station he does circuits. He walks corner to corner in a square. People look up at the departures board while their suitcases and trolleys interrupt his circuits. If one is interrupted, he prefers to recommence it. This is why he loves Euston. It’s an opera with an aria that never ends.

  It is concurrently why he is good at his job. Martin John does the most circuits in his job. All the guards know this and encourage him to do fewer circuits. Gary, a guard who does virtually no circuits, pointed out to Martin John he was making the rest of them look shoddy. Martin John agreed he’ll do Gary’s circuits if Gary does his cleaning. Gary looked blank and pointed out they work opposite shifts. Martin John said that’s grand: Gary needs to change shifts. Gary said he doesn’t need to change shifts because he has three children he has to take care of at night while his wife works at a factory. What he needs is Martin John to stop doing so many circuits and sit down and watch television instead. It’s what all the guards do. He makes this statement a question. You won’t be able to keep it up. He makes this statement a warning.