Martin John

by Anakana Schofield

  That night things were terrible for him, the worst he decided. As the hallucinations came and came and never ceased, just more and more of them, he was visited the way he’s always visited by her voice in his head.

  Get yerself out of there Martin John, get the head down, for God’s sake stop with this and put the head down and look at your feet and follow those feet Martin John, would you for the love of God follow them and stop all this nonsense. D’ya hear me now Martin John? I want you to listen and I want you to visit Noanie next Wednesday or so help me God I’ll land you Martin John and I’ll tear you from the place Martin John. I’ll drag you by the collar out of there. I don’t know what I have done to deserve this Martin John, but I’ll tear you from there and I’ll redden your arse before I am a day older.

  It’s her voice. But it’s his head. Always her voice in his head.

  He has made mistakes.

  The phone calls were a mistake.

  He nodded, agreed, signed. Nodded, signed, agreed and they let him go.

  After the Eurovision incident, he was calmed.

  They let him go, until the telephone calls.

  Baldy Conscience drove him to the phone calls. If they’d done the right thing and popped Baldy Conscience into the ward or into a river, the phone calls may never have happened. He might never have lifted the phone. I would not have lifted the phone, he told the police who came for him.

  It’s not right to blame another man for your own carry-on. That’s what mam would say. He can hear her say it, even though he’s not sure she ever said quite that. He can hear her. He can hear that said.

  The fuss over the Eurovision was a mistake.

  Nobody liked fuss.

  Fuss had put him back in this ward.

  It wasn’t his fault that the other patient wasn’t interested in chatting about the Eurovision. It wasn’t his plan that that particular insert about a woman in the circus falling from a hoop high in a tent would be on the six o’clock local news. The other parts were his fault. They were definitely his fault. All of them. All his fault. But not the patient and the hoop. Nor the patient distressed by the hoop story, who did not want to talk about Beirut. Beirut was not on the news. Now he remembers that was where it started.

  —Beirut’s not on the news, do you see that?

  He had told the patient in the chair over there inside the useless room they all sat or became angry in. He had carried on a bit about Beirut and about all the lies that have been told and he was leading up to describing his own joy in Beirut, when that patient started screaming about the hoop, the hoop and that the woman was going to fall from it.

  He moved back, put his arms up and said he didn’t contribute. I don’t contribute. I don’t contribute was what he said. He left the room with his hands up still, remembering that trouble always started when the television went on.

  Rain will fall, he said, Rain will fall. Rain will fall when the television goes on.

  Because she was a woman in that room there’s bound to be a problem. Whenever he is alone in a room with a woman a problem follows. He waits for the problem to come and follow him. He waits for the knock.

  Perhaps they won’t come for him any more because they have sent Baldy Conscience to annihilate him slowly?

  Ah they come for him now in the form of Baldy Conscience, or Barely Conscious as he’s begun referring to him. That hoor could be sleeping in his bed. Or smashing his video­tapes or pissing in his coffee jar, while he’s stuck in this ward with a nearby woman angry about a hoop. That hoop woman is about to cause trouble, he can feel it.

  Hoop woman told them he used a cushion to cover up what he was doing to himself with his right hand while she was sitting near him in the common room watching the news. He used a pillow, she said. He had his hand on his John Thomas. He was perving out. I could see it. Trapped! Martin John caught her. Was it a cushion or a pillow? At first it was a cushion, now it’s a pillow. She was confused. How can you trust a woman confused about a pillow or a cushion? They banned him from the common room. It was no loss, only a useless room in which they went to sit and be angry with each other.

  Outside the ward he started slowly. He hoarded in. He stacked papers high. He closed all in and around himself. He lived on tins. Avoided the cooker and told himself Baldy Conscience was Barely Conscious up there and one day soon he’d die. Martin John would roll him out of the house in a wheelbarrow or a trolley borrowed from Tesco.

  He imagined depositing his body in the street.

  I’d leave it by the kerb.

  Half-on/half-off.

  I’d hope someone might run over his legs, sever the bottom half of his body. It would equal only half the trouble he has put me through.

  The big struggle is time. Where is time and where was time and how has he lost it? Where did the time go in the places he does not remember being? Where was he at the times he cannot account for? What was he doing? Tell it to them slowly. Tell it to them precisely Martin John. Slow it right down or they’ll hop ahead of you. The circuits are the only activity that help him record time. Record it absolutely. Tell you absolutely where he was and what he has done. Now they forbid him or intrude on his circuits, he is having more and more trouble accounting for where he has been and what he has been doing.

  With no day shift or night shift or circuits, time has become strange, neither protracted nor squat. Just strained. Strange. Estranged. Estuary ranged. There are days, inside in the room, that because the windows are blacked out, he can’t tell you if it is day or night. He can’t tell if it’s night or day? He can’t even tell you how he wants to make this statement.

  All part of his plan you see. His plan to starve Baldy Conscience into remission. To see him disintegrate like a flea with no blood to feed upon. But as with all plans progress will be slow and tepid. A Baldy Conscience takes a lot of weathering. They don’t wilt easy. Will his inquiry take him to Euston? Oh yes it will. He will walk this inquiry around his favourite station. He will visit the flippy ticket window. He will walk and walk until the answer unto Baldy seeks him. Everything comes when he walks on it. When the circuits are intact. When the letters and the circuits add up to an equal.

  We’ve to get you out, mam said.

  It was surrender that sentence.

  He was back there again.

  Harm was done.

  But he liked it.

  It was hard to credit that harm could be done when you liked it.

  It was hard credit why something you liked could be harmful. Harm was done.

  He knows this.

  I had it in my mind to do it and I did it.

  He had a mind to do it and he did it.

  That’s a fact.

  He knows this because people in the psych ward group told him.

  They told each other. Not just him. It was the code.

  Did they agree it was the code?

  He cannot remember if it was officially the code.

  The same way they’d tell you it was Monday.

  It is Monday.

  Harm was done.

  They had come for him after the incident outside the SuperValu shop, down the lane with the girl.

  They had come for him with the one on the bus.

  They had come for him that time with the girl who said he put his hand down the band of her skirt.

  The other girl where he put his hand between her legs.

  They had come for him.

  They were her brothers. It was brothers who usually came. Well their fists mostly.

  Inside (t)his London house, they couldn’t see him. They couldn’t come for him anymore. This is why he locked them out. But they’d sent Baldy Conscience in.

  Which one has Baldy Conscience come for him over?

  The Estonian? The Ukrainian? The Brazilian? Or the one on the Tube?

  The one
on the Tube sitting next to him right now.

  I had it in my mind to do it and I did it, he told the British Transport Police as they carted him away. They were waiting for him at the top of the escalator. Four men. Four policemen. No women. They never sent women for him. He rode up the escalator and sailed into their arms. Except they were not waiting for him and had no idea what he was talking about. Until they did have an idea what he was talking about and chased him all around Euston Station. Technically, he said, I’ve already reported to you. I’ve done it twice today. It took two of you to come for me. Two of you ’til you heeded me. That’s a fact.

  He had been arrested for sitting at the top of the escalator and refusing to shift until they removed him. The first few people had said excuse me, excuse me, stepped over and around him until they arrived with suitcases. These had to be lifted over his head.

  Finally though it was a woman with a buggy who raised hell. Get out of my fucking way, she said. I mean it, get the fuck outta my way. He didn’t budge but the police arrived. His old nemesis the British Transport Police who took so long to arrive despite the “transport” in their name.

  I had it in my mind to do it and I did it, spoken again as they dragged him away.

  Martin John has refrains.

  His fifth refrain.

  It put me in the Chair.

  This is his number five.

  It can be a he, she or they situation. A situation did not put him in the Chair. A collection of situations did. A collection of situations caused by she’s and he’s and sometimes even them’s. That’s not true, mam put him in the Chair.

  Things outside himself. He has no control. Mostly it was a she that put him in the Chair. She put me in the Chair, he would bleat to the doctors.

  Perhaps he gave her the idea for the Chair?

  The Index does not tell us whether we will know how she conceived of the idea to put him in the Chair. We will not be told with whom she conceived Martin John. It’s none of your business, she’d reply to both them questions. (That would be a them situation. Them asking what’s not theirs to know.)

  (From the doctor’s notes:)

  The patient believes external forces are putting him “in the chair.”

  There are whispers. Three times a whisper. What they don’t know, what they know and what they can’t know because Martin John doesn’t tell them

  He is whispering now. You may find it hard to hear him. Lean in. Try to breathe quietly. You may kick the leaves between the whispers.

  What Martin John doesn’t tell the doctors, doesn’t tell mam, doesn’t tell a soulful sinner, wouldn’t tell you, except for this Meddler letting you know, is his knowledge Baldy Conscience is after him FULL-TIME, OVERTIME AND DOUBLE TIME. The man is dedicating his life to humiliating and eviscerating Martin John. He must patrol his home, as well as his work, from which he is presently barred, but this has not deterred his patrols. Security will report on the presence of the non-desired former security guard. You can suspend him, tell him he has no job, but you cannot stop Martin John from patrolling. HE MUST GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO DO. HE MUST BE ALERT. The moment Baldy Conscience has plotted will unroll. He is determined to be a witness to this plot. THE MAN IS COMING FOR HIM. THE MAN IS HERE. ALMOST.

  He put me in the Chair, he will eventually tell them when they find him. He will be pointing upwards at the roof when he says it. What will follow is howling protest about the pain in his knee as the firemen try to lift him.

  Technically it was mam who gave him a full bladder.

  The full bladder thing. That pressure thing.

  The pressure from the full bladder thing.

  That full bladder pressure that he liked the sensation of. That he never wanted to empty.

  That becomes a sexual turn-on.

  That forces him to walk even more circuits on the job.

  The actual reason he is walking circuits.

  To avoid going to the toilet.

  To keep his bladder full.

  His bricked up bubble.

  Right above his exit hose.

  The power in the discipline that such control provided: the agony and high of harbour. Every twinge. Each pressure a pleasure. Each demand he piss—refused. Sent to the back of the line. Then, when he eventually did piss—it wouldn’t come out. Gah the beauty in that! His bladder’s refusal to perform until finally it gave way to an aaah. Sometimes when it would not come out, he would hold it longer. If he could have held ’til it came back up his throat, he would have tried.

  After came cramps. He welcomed them. Like he had boiled the pan dry and waited to hear crackled confirmation.

  IF MAM TOLD HIM TO DO IT

  IT WAS RIGHT

  RIGHT?

  He was forever not listening to her. He had failed to latch. She told him that. You didn’t latch on then and you don’t latch on now.

  Now he had listened.

  STOP going upstairs, she said.

  She was right.

  He liked his bladder full.

  Steaming full. Ah Ah Ah Full. Up that hill full. Further full. Further. Further. Further.

  His bladder would be plenty full if he never went upstairs. If he never went upstairs then he never went to the toilet.

  Eventually he would have to let it out because of the other thing, but even the other thing can be kept at bay he has discovered.

  You know, the fella at work said.

  You know, the fella at work who had just caught Martin John with his pants down to his ankles claiming he’d spilled a bottle of HP sauce on them said.

  You know, the fella at work, who returned to the toilet, claiming he’d left an umbrella said.

  —That’s a serious spill. How did it happen? I’m keen to avoid it.

  The man is seeking an explanation as to why he, not five minutes ago, found Martin John with his trousers not just down, but very, very down with his dangles dehors the usual standard Y-fronts that housed them.

  It’s drying out, Martin John had said calmly. I have to keep it out until it’s dry. Once it is dry I will pack it all back up.

  —You know, the man said, I don’t understand how it soaked all the way through to your skin when there is a double layer of cloth. He is indicating Martin John’s hands, which surround-pound his member and make little effort in the supposed quest of mopping up a complete absence of any sauce spill whatsoever.

  Umbrella man was lying. Umbrella man was digging. A digger. Martin John knew the signals. What none of this lot knew was he was living with Baldy Conscience, the sneakiest pig on this earth, so there was nothing that could travel past Martin John. He was Baldy Conscience trained. BC Certified. He wasn’t fooled. This was no Innocent Inquiry. It was in his arse. He was angry. Rain will fall, he told himself.

  Rain will fall was what he said when he was angry. Rain will fall, he told the fella.

  He, misplaced umbrella man, moved away with a look that Martin John trusted even less. Rain will fall, Martin John shouted after him.

  I was in the men’s toilet, how would Sarah have seen me so? Is she there often? How would she imagine she’d come upon me if she had to go in and clean? We never work the same shifts.

  In reply to the question by the Manager fella, Martin John assured him he was not in the habit of spilling a bottle of sauce on himself, so it was unlikely to be a regular occurrence.

  But, he added, in the event the Manager fella might be having concerns about him, what would the Manager fella propose he, Martin John, do if, say, his access to bathing facilities was temporarily or for a period of time unavailable? Such as was the case in this circumstance.

  The Manager fella would go to the sports centre. London is full of them. Look at the state of people after they play squash. Martin John has his answer and his solution and would hold the Manager fella in ever-rising regard. The man was a ri
ngmaster of solution.

  He could see him (the Manager fella) lassoing Baldy Conscience and making him ride stood up on a horse ’til his face turned green and his eyes popped as he surrendered Martin John’s front door keys. He imagined eating Christmas dinner with the Manager fella and his family. He felt they understood each other. The Manager fella clattered him on the back and reminded Martin John he was the most punctual person who’d ever worked for him, but there was only so much he could turn a blind eye to. Martin John assured him militarily that whatever had concerned him would only get worse. There was a blank pause where both men nodded and neither man addressed the puzzling adjective. It went the way such meetings always went. For Martin John, any new information, even if it were robust criticism, was a victory. For the Manager fella, worried Martin John was increasingly unhinged, but still he appreciated a reliable worker. Plus the woman who complained about this Irish man also complained about every other man in the place. It was a mistake to hire a woman in these circumstances, but the equal opportunities person had rung and threatened she’d turn his twisties if he didn’t do something about the sorrowful state of the workforce on that site. He had deliberately hired the fattest woman he could find because he felt fat women were the right people to sort out problems. It had proven true. He now realized he was a manager who did not want to sort out problems. Just wanted staff to behave so he could be at home by 8 pm and the phone would not keep ringing.