Martin John

by Anakana Schofield

  He has strong urges to pound Baldy Conscience, but he lacks the means to enact them and becomes distracted conjuring up scenarios of imagined humiliation for him, which only makes Martin John angrier because he realizes, as he concludes plotting each one, that he has still neither pounded him nor humiliated him. He is energized by thoughts of what he must do to Baldy Conscience and yet is stopped still in his tracks. That he cannot execute any active means to stop this man ruining his life or occupying his home. Never has he been so violently allergized to another human. Each and every time the Baldy Conscience moves or opens his mouth it inflicts an itchy discomforting plague on Martin John. Baldy Conscience is under his epidermis like scabies. Specks of him and his awfulness have lodged themselves into Martin John. Baldy is a new Cromwell for this South London landing.

  Martin John is sleeping less and less.

  He is afraid of what Baldy Conscience is up to. That which he cannot see. He lays traps to monitor and track him. Mossad-type tricks. A piece of thread here. (Movement confirmed Baldy certainly uses the bathroom.) Markers on the teabags and the kettle. Again, he’s stealing Martin John’s teabags. He buys an extra lock for his room that he can secure from the inside and outside yet he’s still convinced Baldy has been in and is moving things about. A deliberate taunting. He can see items appearing like that powder puff—how did that find its way into Martin John’s room?

  One Thursday Baldy Conscience returns a videotape to him which Martin John swipes hastily and disappears. He does not recall lending him it and a heightened panic lands that Baldy has breached his bedroom door and acquired the videotape from his intrusions. He opens the bedroom door again.

  —Where did you get it?

  —You lent it to me.

  —I don’t remember.

  —You fookin gev it to me ya numpty.

  Too many words, Baldy Conscience is releasing too many T-sounds and numpty doesn’t sit well with him. These sounds are dementing. He must take cover from them. Under a blanket, moths and muck. But the voice volume increases and he can hear Baldy repeating fookin gev, fookin gev. Remember. Lent. Remember. Numpty, numpty, numpty.

  Martin John does not want to look at Baldy Conscience anymore. When he sees him he squints, yet Baldy Conscience, bold as you like, holds his own and stares him down.

  Startle-stares him down, nearly takes the underpants off him in that stare. He is out to destroy him. Baldy Conscience will take him down where the others until now have failed. Mam is right. They have come for him.

  He phones mam.

  —They have come, he tells her. They are here. A man is here.

  —Where are you Martin John? Are you in the pub? Put the head down and get on with it and stop with this nonsense. Don’t be ringing me ever about no men. There’s no men, she says. It’s only women. Women you’ve to watch. Do ya hear me Martin John? Don’t start again. For the love of God don’t start again. I’m not for listening another word. I haven’t the time or the patience.

  Martin John knows that Baldy Conscience set up the robbery which is why he’s not giving you any details about the robbery because he knows that you’ll take it back to Baldy Conscience first chance you get. You’ll write it up here and there and you’ll say this and hint at that and he won’t have it. He won’t have you sending Baldy Conscience to take a slice off him.

  He is gathering evidence.

  He is gathering evidence on Baldy Conscience before he makes his final move.

  Evidence is what he’s gathering. In order to gather evidence he needs the tools. The tools for evidence gathering are his work. Whatever you do now Martin John don’t jeopardize the job or Baldy will come crumbling down on you.

  More and more people are visiting Baldy Conscience in the house. It’s hard to gather evidence with all these people.

  The evidence is taking a while.

  He examines Baldy Conscience’s toothbrush and, using a set of tweezers, tries to find anything that will prove the theft of one of his biscuits. He buys a variety of biscuits, adds them to his tin marked Gaffney MJ. He scrawls a sign that reads Landlord and Home Owner on the back of the tin. He even places sticky tape on the bottom of the tin so he can monitor whether or not it has been moved. In a more inspired moment, and such moments join, breeze and buzz Martin John hourly, he imagines using Super Glue to adhere it to the shelf. He imagines Baldy having his arm ripped out of its socket and this image calms him down. Calms him to a place of satisfaction where he imagines that fucker suffering and it brings him peace.

  The small cluttery house is getting taken over by young men wearing black donkey jackets and dark red Dr Marten boots. They’re everywhere. They are stamping all over his life with their bloodied hooves. The house, which he has to remind himself he is in charge of, has become the Butlins Holiday Camp of Damp Indie Bands. Martin John wonders how they all fit up there in the bedroom. Every now and again, between the guitar bashing and worse than a bag of cats singing, he hears one of them thump, thump their boots down to his toilet. He tries to count based on these thumps how many men might be up there. Each time the door opens he can hear them laughing and the smoke seeps under his door downstairs.

  The knock comes.

  Martin John knows it’s him. Doesn’t answer.

  The knock keeps coming.

  And coming.

  And coming.

  He opens the door.

  —Toilet’s blocked.

  Away he walks. Fortunately Baldy Conscience doesn’t dally, for Martin John would have to lunge at him to save himself. For days Martin John has not been near his own bathroom. He has urinated into bottles and buckets and put them down the kitchen sink. Whoever has blocked the crapper up there it is one of the Radar Love boys. Now he must go up and face what the Butlin boys have done to his bathroom. He is terrorized in his own house. He fears the enemies. The infidels up on the landing. It’s obvious Baldy Conscience is dirty. He’s probably infected and discharging. Martin John does not want to tread where he has trod, which becomes very challenging when they both share the same stairs, carpet and kitchen.

  Martin John constructs and hangs a fallacious Wet Paint sign. He sticks it to the hallway wall and then, much further along, another, which reads Paint Wet and between the two a Don’t Tred Here sign. He officiously adds a fourth notice that reads Gaffney MJ, LANDLORD. Since Baldy Conscience is a chancer he adds a BLOCK CAPS BY ORDER sign before the Wet Paint, Don’t Tred Here, Paint Wet, Gaffney MJ, LANDLORD. Even though he is pleased with how it looks and wishes to remain and admire it longer, he forces himself out of the house because Baldy Conscience is stirring and he does not want that fuckface to come and sneer or he may just have to strangle him. Also, he has not fixed the toilet because he has no intention of fixing the toilet because, after all, Martin John is not even a fan of using the toilet to begin with. Mam told him to stop going upstairs.

  It’s morning and he, Gaffney MJ, is thunderous.

  The books he so carefully laid out in the hall to create two passages, in order to separate from Baldy Conscience’s occupying plague, have been moved. Not just moved. Kicked. They form a toppled trail, zagging down the hallway. A correction has been added to the sign on the word Tred. TreAd it reads and his name has been changed to Daphney.

  Worse, there’s an ashtray in the middle of his kitchen table. This is the final desecration. He returns to his room and puts on a Flash Gordon video to try and calm his nerves so he might think. He must move on Baldy Conscience. He must do something. Because Baldy is crushing him.

  One morning, Baldy Conscience enters the kitchen, throws open the window, pushes out the back door and says, It’s too fucking dark and hot in here.

  Martin John closes the door and lowers the window. He doesn’t speak. He just infuses silence. He stands at the window with his hand keeping it firmly shut.

  —Wha?

  —It stays closed.
<
br />   —Wha?

  —It stays closed.

  Strangely, Baldy retreats, boils the kettle, stabs his teabag and departs without a word. His ankles look angry.

  Martin John has figured out he needs to be more terrifying. The more terrifying he is the more likely Baldy will repent.

  He commences the labelling. Incessant labelling. Forensic labelling. He employs gaffer tape and a marker. Plus he purchases an identity stamp. It costs him 26 quid to have the rubber prepared with precisely the long-worded warning he wishes.

  Code 1066 sounds formal and legal. In fact it’s the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. One of the few dates that has stayed with Martin John. Oh 1066 he’ll say, wasn’t that 1066? Everything worth anything took place in 1066. Once he told mam he was in a 1066 type of situation. Shut up, she said. For the love of God, shut up with the numbers.

  The warning, though rambling vague and rectangular, is stamped onto every copy of every newspaper, every cassette and every possession he has. He considers stamping it onto the cutlery, but the sticker would wash off and block the sink.

  He labels his cloth bag in bold marker GAFFNEY MJ SECURITY GUARD until he notices people staring at him on the Tube and bus, and then he places his hand over the word GUARD. Only SECURITY is visible and it ensures he always has a seat empty either side of him.

  He has learnt something has Martin John. He has learnt when people are afraid of you they move away, they move back, they back away off. They only need an inclination that you’re someone to be afraid of. He sees now where he failed with Baldy Conscience. He did not establish that he was fearsome. He has not yet unnerved him. He will not do that again. In future he will be fearsome. He will display behaviour that is to be feared.

  Martin John has a problem. And it’s a sleep problem. All day, when he should be asleep after working the night shift, he’s crouched in bed, attentive, listening for every squeak Baldy makes upstairs. Baldy’s room is directly above him. Martin John’s sleep is reduced to the two hours the BC sleeps in during the morning that coincide with Martin John knocking off his shift.

  Increasingly he sleeps very little. This is not good. Things are not good when Martin John doesn’t sleep. He’s like a hunted mole, crouched behind the door, on edge of constant anxiety, jumping to at any ding. Even in the streets a piece of litter blowing ahead of him takes on startling proportions. Everything startles him. Everything startles him now that Baldy Conscience has his claws firmly inserted into his brain.

  He worries a great deal about the nights does Martin John. The nights he’s not in the house. He worries about what’s happening and each morning he returns from work he carries a nagging fear that the Baldy Conscience will have burned the place down.

  He worries a great deal about how much power the BC must know he has and what he might do with that power.

  BC is undeterred. He is unaffected by Martin John’s instructions and diligent labelling.

  The ante must be upped.

  The telephone is a great weapon.

  The telephone is a great weapon in the battle with Baldy Conscience.

  He knows the man works someplace. He has something of a job. He can’t remember exactly what. Maybe it’s cleaning he is. Is he a janitor? Does he clean drains? He rings every cleaning company listed in the telephone book and leaves threatening messages. Sometimes people answer. He reads aloud his threat with his mouth covered by a handkerchief. Sometimes the person simply answers What?

  And so he must repeat his threat that if they employ a person by the name of “Baldy Conscience” terrible things will happen to their company, including the damaging of property and the endangering of human life.

  He edited the threat speech a few times, to make it more concise and intimidating. It merely ends up sounding more and more formal and confusing to the phone responder.

  —Wot?

  —Who is this?

  —I think you’ve got the wrong number.

  —Are you fucking kidding me?

  —Who is this?

  —I think you’ve got the wrong number.

  Once someone blew a whistle in his ear. He didn’t like that.

  Another time a woman said he’d already rung her because she also worked at another cleaning company.

  The one that really scared him was the man who said his number had flashed up and he knew where he lived and he was going to come over there to fucking burst him open and not clean up afterwards.

  Martin John does not like this woman.

  He does not like this woman opposite him at the lunch table in the unit. He does not like what she is saying about Beirut.

  She is saying she is from Beirut.

  She is disputing what he says about Beirut.

  She says there are no golden-shod women in Beirut.

  She says the dogs are like dogs everywhere.

  She says people are not always moving house in Beirut.

  She repeats the word Beirut over and over again.

  It’s his word. His Beirut.

  It’s my Beirut, he says.

  It’s not your fucking Beirut, she says.

  You’ve never been there, she says.

  She says shite she doesn’t know about.

  Golden-shod, Martin John says.

  Shut up.

  I won’t. Golden-shod.

  You’re crazy, she says.

  There was another such run-in with a woman on the bus. He cannot recall the number of the bus and this bothers him. He searches for the number. It’s gone. Yet he knows it’s there. In there, somewhere, amid the mass of worms gradually eating away at his various cortexes. In there is a number, it could be a single- or a double-digit or even a triple-digit number. Was it an express? It could have been an airport bus. A double or a single-decker? His mind is seized with buses from two countries. Buses that have drivers with concrete feet that slam brakes suddenly and announce the destinations. Buses with ding-dong bells. Buses with no bells. Buses with smells. Buses with no smells. Bus hell. Which bus was it? It’s gone. Gone. The way it goes when he takes the drugs as they’ve told him to. Gradually more and more information being drained, pulled away—seep, seep, seep.

  It began on the bus. The bus, Beirut and these women telling him what to do. The women telling him how it is. He has fought with women on buses before. There was the time, the other time, nothing to do with the Beirut time, that the woman accused him of treading on her ankle. Actually he’d been trying to rub against her leg. She didn’t even have it right.

  The woman shouted at him. Mam had not said no to the buses. Mam has said no to the Tube. Mam has said he’s only to be on the buses in London. Mam has said. He doesn’t remember what mam has said.

  He phones her.

  —What did you say?

  —About what?

  —About the buses?

  —I didn’t say anything about the buses.

  —You did. Before.

  —Before?

  —Before.

  Then he gives her a several-minute loop of before, before, before, before, before. She’s gone then when he stops.

  He phones her again.

  —Don’t start, she says.

  —Don’t be starting with me, Martin John. I haven’t the patience. Did you take your tablets?

  He’s silent.

  They’re all after him with these tablets. In the tablets are the bus numbers, the bus colour, the bus shape. In the tablets are the golden-shod women that this unshod woman disputed. She, who is sitting here, in this dining room in the place they brought him because they said he didn’t take his tablets. She who is wearing slippers. The way they are all wearing slippers in this ward.

  The nurse offers him the tablet in a cup.

  He says he doesn’t like the colour of the cup. She says it’s a colourless cup, bu
t she’ll see if there’s any other.

  She returns with another colour cup.

  He says it’s too big. He wants the tablet in a small cup. He says he won’t read the Daily Telegraph. He says he wants the Beirut woman gone. The nurse says there’s no Beirut woman. There’s just Tonya. Tonya, it’s Tonya, that’s who it is. Tonya from Peckham. Tonya has a Walkman and is sat quiet. She has a magazine.

  The next time the nurse returns, she brings four others with her and they inject Martin John in his flank or it might be his thigh. They certainly have him by the thigh. They push him flat on the bed to put the jab into him and in that pushing act they remind him how he likes to feel his bladder full. Bladder full against the mattress. He likes that he remembers. That is nice. Thank you he says to the five of them as they stream from his room. One person lifts his leg into bed and he stays there on his side. Just waiting. Waiting for he’s not sure what: someone to lift his other leg?

  Martin John can go home if he agrees to the team. The team will come and visit him. He agrees to the team without realizing that the team means a woman whose name begins with P. Patrice is his home care/mental health worker. He does not like words that begin with P so he will not answer the door to *atrice. Baldy Conscience answers the door to *atrice and says what he always says to anyone who comes to the door for anything, that he is the only person home and it is only he who lives in this house. He has heard Baldy Conscience say this before and back then he was alarmed. Now it is very convenient.