Martin John Page 5

  It has been enough years that Martin John knows he can keep it up. Gary has no idea the sorts of things Martin John is used to keeping up nor what he’s using to keep it up. He does not comprehend the self-imposed pressures Martin John lives by. If Gary had to live with Baldy Conscience, Gary would realize that the circuits are necessary to survive him.

  The only deal I can do with you involves you hurting a man. Martin John says it straight, direct, and stares at Gary when he says it. Gary shakes his head. I really don’t get you, he says.

  —There is a man living in my house and if you can get rid of him, I will do fewer circuits.

  —Throw him out, Gary replies.

  This conversation is going nowhere. Conversation with Gary never goes anywhere. His brain is the final bus stop on the route.

  Another problem with Martin John’s endless contested circuits is that Martin John ignores the cleaning schedule. The cleaning schedule that all the guards are meant to adhere to. The cleaning needs to be done. Martin John does not believe in the cleaning schedule because Baldy Conscience has views on cleaning and each time he puts a mop into a bucket, Baldy Conscience comes to mind. He has solved this problem by trading with the Bosnian. He allows the Bosnian to sleep and does double the loops. The Bosnian wakes at 5 am and does Martin John’s cleaning. Martin John does two buildings’ worth of walking. The Bosnian does 2 hours’ worth of cleaning. A good trade. A co-operative European union. The Irish man, the Bosnian. Understood by both men. In two languages. No argument. Ever.

  Except when one is off sick.

  The Bosnian appears to manage his circuits. Martin John, however, just ignores the cleaning. This is fine.

  Unless it rains.

  Given it is South London it regularly rains. As eggs are eaten, so it rains. It is the kind of rain that makes its mark. Especially in the hallways. Rain will fall, Rain will fall, Martin John mutters out the windows to the weather. Rain will fall is his code word for I am screwed. Still he doesn’t want to go near the bucket. Still he doesn’t want to deal with the bucket. Rain does not send him to the bucket. If he goes near a bucket Baldy Conscience looms and all is ruined. He is reminded what none of them know.

  BALDY CONSCIENCE IS AFTER HIM FULL-TIME.

  Baldy Conscience wants the house. Baldy Conscience wants to be the landlord.

  When Martin John ignores the cleaning, Dallas is waiting. He fills up the forms that say the cleaning was not completed. When Martin John arrives for his shift, Dallas leans over the top railing to greet him with the announcement, pointing to the floor that Martin John is walking upon—Cleaning wasn’t done man. Cleaning wasn’t done.

  Martin John is always apologetic to Dallas but claims his stock excuse that he became distracted reading the Bible. Dallas then asks, which part has he been reading? Martin John repeats whatever he has read because when Martin John does not want to do the cleaning he reads the Bible knowing that if he has done so, Dallas will tear up the form and they can carry on. (Like good Christian men carry on.)

  In anticipation of meddling he also brings Dallas cheap pies. The man is a pussycat in the midst of a pie. The cleaning in this instance can be overcome.

  Yet Dallas is not the only guard who objects to Martin John doing the dodge on his cleaning. There’s that woman guard. There’s the woman guard that none of the men like because she is bigger than them, rounder than them, more careful than them, and all things considered, more frightening than doing the cleaning.

  Because none of the men like the woman it is easy to escape her accusations. Let’s say Sarah, the woman, or the witch as the men call her, reports Martin John has not done his cleaning. Despite the fact the floor and bathroom on the cleaning list remain uncleaned, despite the overwhelming evidence to support this fact, Martin John can opine to the manager—a man whom they never really see unless there’s a problem—that Sarah has a vendetta against him. That she constantly reports on him. She hates me. I don’t know what her problem is.

  She hates us all, the manager once replied.

  Sarah’s problem is merely that she wants to do her job properly and she wants the guys to do their jobs properly. The guys have other plans. Sarah does not understand people who do not do their jobs properly. It is a serious business having a job. She doesn’t like slackers. Yes she eats too much but it’s none of their fucking business. They are not paid to guard the opening to her stomach nor calibrate its contents. She does her job properly. She doesn’t understand those who don’t. You can see the problem the guys have with Sarah. You can see the problem Sarah has with the guys. The manager is stuck in the middle. He likes that Sarah does her job properly, but agrees with the men she is disgusting for no other reason than they insist she is. The manager does nothing. The men call her that fat bitch. One calls her a slag. Sarah only ever talks about the fact they don’t do their job. She doesn’t mention their waists, or their wives, or the way they smell. And they do smell. Of course they smell. All men in uniforms, indoors, smell because Sarah has the United Nations sense of smell. Her smell is funded by NASA. They could lock me in a lab and ask me to sniff and I’d be useful, she once told Martin John. Sometimes they forget to flush the staffroom toilet. That bothers her bad. They’ve stopped doing that because she screams if she comes across it and will stand in the middle of the place and say RIGHT. Fucking Right Now whosever arse put that lump of shit in the staff toilet get it down here now and get rid of it before I put your fucking head in there with it.

  Martin John can easily find his way around Sarah. (For one, he never ever shits on duty.) Go and check my card, he’ll tell her.

  Go and check my card in the machine and then check your card in the machine and see how many circuits mine registered yesterday, then we can talk about cleaning.

  —My card has nothing to do with cleaning. Your card has nothing to do with cleaning. Cards don’t do the cleaning. A fucking mop and bucket does the cleaning.

  —Your card never leaves the desk.

  —Where my card goes is none of your business.

  —Where my mop goes is none of your business.

  —It is my business. Look at the state of the fucking floor.

  —I cleaned it. Then a man walked on it.

  —You are the only fucking man in here at 5 am. She has him at that. This is true.

  —Check your card, he repeats. Check your card. Then check my card. I have the most circuits.

  She walks away talking to herself. She wonders how she came to be sandwiched this way between a bunch of fucking apes. She threatens him. She threatens him by speaking ahead of herself. She does not turn around and threaten him. There would be no point in that.

  —There are no cards, she says. You know there are no fucking cards to check.

  Everyone knows there is a machine in the office where the cards are rumoured to be checked except no one has ever seen the machine. Nor has anyone seen the cards physically get checked. But it’s enough. If the manager says there’s a machine in there that checks, they buy it. They believe it. They believe in the machine they have not seen.

  There are also technically no cards, but each guard has a badge or someone somewhere convinced someone somewhere that this badge is the card that the machine checks.

  The manager dissolves the tension among the guards by allowing them to have a small black-and-white telly on the desk. He is giving them the one that his family used in his caravan in Great Yarmouth because he says they recently obtained a colour one.

  But he warns them: any disputes over the telly and it will go. Also, any cleaning not done or any circuits not walked and it will go.

  For a time, peace reigns, Martin John walks the others’ circuits, the others do his cleaning, they watch telly while he is chronically walking.

  All is well until all is not well.

  When all becomes not well it has nothing to do with the cleaning. It has ever
ything to do with Baldy Conscience.

  Mam has warned him the only thing keeping him on the straight is the job.

  Mam has repeated the only thing he has going for him is the job.

  No matter what he does he should never threaten the job.

  The job, she points out, stopped you doing the other stuff. The other stuff no one can save him from.

  She speaks of the job in the singular as if it’s the only job Martin John will ever get. (He is the The in The Job) As far as she is concerned it is The Only Job. The only job between him and the manhole. If he goes down he’ll never come up.

  Get to work, get into bed at a good time and nothing will befall you. Don’t threaten it all now. Don’t do it. And get out to visit Noanie on a Wednesday, she wrote to him in a letter. The world will fall apart. His world will fall apart if he does not visit Noanie every Wednesday. Mam has registered this calculation with the Office of Evaluations. Every time he is admitted to the hospital there has been an interruption to his consistent Noanie visits. She knows because the only time Noanie ever phones her is if Martin John misses a visit. The next phone call that generally follows is from whichever hospital or police station have picked him up. Mam now makes notes on any phone call from Noanie. She notes the time and the date and she puts it inside an unused teapot on the dresser. One day she will open the teapot. She will pour all those receipts onto the table. She will take Martin John’s finger and she will trace his history of not listening to her by banging it on top of each receipt four times to match I told you so. Nothing I can do. Can’t save you now. Over for you.

  It’s true that he’s not been at the other stuff as far as mam knows or is concerned. This could have something to do with the matter of him living in another country and long being of an adult age, whereby the authorities do not report such things to your mother. Mam does not live with Baldy Conscience.

  This is the difference in mam’s reckoning and the actual reckoning.

  She has not put Baldy Conscience onto the map of reckoning.

  Baldy Conscience has taken over the other stuff.

  Or has he?

  Or is he just noisier?

  Increasingly, all Martin John’s roads lead him back to Baldy Conscience. Increasingly, all Martin John’s problems begin and end at Baldy Conscience. When he shares this information finally with mam by phone outside, predictably, reliably, she doesn’t take it well.

  —Don’t mention him again to me. Don’t mention him. Whoever he is keep away from him.

  —Well I can’t do that now can I?

  —You can and you will.

  —He’s upstairs.

  —Stop going upstairs.

  Before he can fudge a reply, three times mam chimes.

  —I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear it.

  What they don’t know.

  THEY DON’T KNOW THAT BALDY CONSCIENCE IS AFTER HIM FULL-TIME. HE IS ON THE RUN FROM BALDY CONSCIENCE EVEN IN HIS OWN HOME. HE IS ON THE RUN. HE DOESN’T GO UPSTAIRS BECAUSE MAM SAID SHE DIDN’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD ABOUT HIM. GARY TOLD HIM TO TELL BALDY CONSCIENCE TO MOVE OUT. THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND BALDY CONSCIENCE—HE WILL NEVER MOVE OUT.

  It was identical when the police picked him up by the tree with his trousers undone. They asked him, What are you doing with your trousers open by this tree?

  Three times he replied:

  Check my card. Check my card. Check my card.

  Martin John has refrains.

  At this moment in his life he has five refrains.

  We have already met two of them.

  His number three:

  Rain will fall.

  That was rain.

  Did you hear that rain?

  This is what Martin John will ask.

  Rain will fall was his refrain.

  Rain will fall is his third refrain.

  The refrain that he used when he knew he was about to do the thing she said she was glad he was done with.

  He wasn’t done with it.

  He did not know when he’d be done with it.

  He was waiting for the signal. The signal that would come when he knew he was done with it. He wasn’t done yet.

  Mam has refrains.

  You’ve to stop this nonsense.

  Give over Martin John.

  You’ll be the death of me.

  He knew they’d come for him one day.

  Mam had said they’d come, hadn’t she?

  I can’t save you. Keep your head down.

  Rain will fall. Rain will fall on it.

  In nearly every situation there is a Meddler. Martin John has noticed this. Sometimes it can be the same Meddler and sometimes it is a brand new Meddler and sometimes there’s a band of Meddlers. He has learnt to identify them vocally. His response is to announce “I don’t contribute, I don’t contribute.”

  Hands up, eyes down.

  Stride, stride, stride.

  He has a big problem now that a Meddler is inside his house. A Meddler has been in his house for a long time and he cannot get him out. He has meddled his way in, as Meddlers will do. The Meddler might have been sent by the man who owns this house. A man Martin John should never have gotten involved with at all. A man who said no women. Or was it mam who said no women? A man who’d sent a man to test him. All men become a man.

  All men become the road that leads to Baldy Conscience.

  If he had heeded mam, there would be no man.

  There would be no Baldy Conscience.

  It is too late to heed her.

  Once Martin John did contribute. He let up and the Meddlers caught him. The Meddlers trapped him, so they did. In a hospital ward he was. Lambeth maybe. Not North London anyway. There weren’t enough roundabouts for it to be North London. They picked him up by the flyway. They said he said he was going to fly away onto the flyway. Martin John actually said he planned to kill Baldy Conscience and was waiting to push him onto the flyway.

  Why do you think they have chosen me, he asks a couple of people on the ward. They assure him they’ve no clue what he is on about. But how would they when it is he who has been chosen? If you are chosen you are alone. You are blessed, but mainly you are alone. He has a brief picture of how lonely it must have been to be Jesus or any man chosen for a big book.

  He has a new list of situations where being chosen doesn’t suit him.

  Wedding, having to give your daughter away.

  Wedding, having to make a speech.

  Moving house. Driving the lorry to move people. To decide where people’s sideboards or bunk beds must go inside the van.

  Plumber, replacing a U-bend.

  Speaking to a visitor on the ward, usually his mother, his only visitor.

  Was the Eurovision fuss a fuss or a situation?

  He’s not sure.

  It was a fuss and a situation.

  A fussy interrupted situation.

  He should not have done it and he knew better, but every year the compulsion of the Eurovision came around. Those two weeks he took holidays from work or pulled sickies. He’d eat, breathe and definitely not sleep for his pet The Eurovision Song Contest. He journeyed each day of those annual two weeks to a particular newsagent’s, where the man Mr Patel told him to “take your time, take your time” going through the newspapers because he knows Martin John’ll end up buying them all—nearly 10 quid each day for a week in paper sales.

  When interviewed, Mr Patel—the most gentle of souls, arthritis in his left knee—could not credit the fight that took place and the bags of sugar that flew, and the tinned steak and kidney pies that were toppled in that brief five-minute bare-knuckle dust-up over the last copy of the Daily Express.

  The Eurovision pullout special issue was what unhorsed Martin John and the man with his fingers on it
. The ordinary Jim Smith of Clapham, who was never in these parts, only that he was calling to his mother and bringing the paper for her. And when it was something for his mother he’d fight to the last and he socked Martin John as Martin John silently stamped on his foot and tried to rip the paper from his hands. Much what the fuck and mate and come on then? And Mr Patel wasn’t sure what they’re at, but it was loud and his single, central food shelf was wobbling and people crowded the doorway and the police must be called. As Martin John was dragged away, victoriously clutching the Daily Express, Mr Patel defended him.

  —He’s a good man, I known him for years. Not a violent man. A good man.

  Meanwhile, Jim Smith was in the doorway regaling the crowd as to how this fucking lunatic tried to rip his arms out. He had my throat, he gasped. He showed them the scratches. The Irish are savages, one man remarked. Martin John is the victor. He’s the victor all the way back to the psychiatric ward and that night he slept, injected, still clutching the Daily Express under his armpit, rolled up tight.

  The next fuss or situation was a fight in the ward over the television. It’s the Eurovision song contest rehearsal and a Jamaican fella and another fella with his leg draped over the arm of his chair in an unbecoming manner have the telly tuned to the football and Martin John is not taking it. Sorry now lads, he waltzes over and switches stations and Jamaica roars and the leg-draper springs from chair to television, while Ireland and Jamaica come to blows and security and nurses invade the frenzy with Jamaica landing a few nice lugs to the Mayo jaw while only sustaining sore toes when Martin John resorts to his best tactic, the heel-to-toe grind. And he’s off to have his face repaired, his chart now marked for seclusion. He wails like a baby as they X-ray him. Seclusion means no television. Seclusion means another day’s loss of Eurovision coverage. He has notes to make. He has observations to record. He has yet to decide whom he is backing. It could be Yugoslavia or Denmark but he hasn’t seen Belgium or the Netherlands. He’s worried about Turkey because the newspapers said they were swaying their arms in a whole new way and have never improved on their 1977 entry. Switzerland is wearing a worrying swan skirt. Spain is wearing two more such skirts. Greece he’s not backing. Greece has produced a doomed song and it’s criminal. The German singer prune-tightened his eyes and contorted his face like he was constipated, which makes Martin John think of bathrooms and Baldy Conscience. The thing that has almighty unsettled Martin John is Ireland is hosting the event and he harbours a deep suspicion of Pat Kenny because his name begins with P. He’s anxious about the combination of Pat Kenny and Terry Wogan’s voices but it all begins and ends with the P, which is why he puts his fingers in his ears to blot out Portugal.