Martin John

by Anakana Schofield

  If he doesn’t manage it on the Tube, he will attempt likewise on a bench. Sit down beside a woman, fumble with his bags as distraction—Tesco carrier bags with ready-made meals work best, they topple perfectly—and drape his leg out so that, for a bitter fraction of a second, before she registers it, his leg will touch hers. Whoever she is. That’s it, that’s all he wants. Just to smear along her. A light buttering. A smudge. Or at least that’s where it starts. Then inevitably he becomes greedy.

  If he gets away with small contact he begins to want more. He wishes for summer and shorts and bare flesh. He begins to want to put the palm of his hand on her flesh, whoever she is. (He wants to push his hips up against her.) Ultimately he wants his hand between her legs like a letter.

  Often he is curtailed. A head-swiping set of eyes. Her leg will immediately remove from his. Sometimes her whole body will up and depart. Once she was sitting beside her boyfriend. That did not go well. He never ever puts his foot or leg there if a woman is beside a man. Unless the man is old or young, so young he is her child. If she is travelling with a child, he is even more likely to sit down beside her and try it.

  Two factors: avoiding Baldy Conscience and if she’s with a child. Those are the two distinct, determining factors.

  That time when the British Transport Police cautioned him, how they waited for him on the platform and snuck him away. That was sneaky. That time when they cautioned him he told them he wasn’t long back from Beirut. They seemed to buy it. They asked what he’d been doing in Beirut. Things are different here, they said blankly. In Beirut I put my foot on the bus beside a woman’s foot and she made no fuss about it. We’ve had reports about you, they said. You aren’t to be lurking around the stations. If we catch you we’ll arrest you.

  Again, he persisted that he wasn’t long back from Beirut. I was fighting in a war there, he said. I went over for my brother’s wedding and I was dragged into battle. He didn’t like the word arrest. I am like you. I am a military man he wanted the officers to know. You and I, we have been in battle. I am in battle and you too are in battle. We are embattled. They repeated the warning about arrest. They lied and said there had been four complaints about him.

  That time when the British Transport Police cautioned him it was the most scared he’d been. If he could not go to Euston it would be very serious. Euston was where he figured many things out. But they couldn’t stop him going there. I’m only going to catch a train, he would tell them.

  He started buying train tickets. He had to buy train tickets. He was not allowed to stand in the station without a ticket they said. They were after him. Ever after him. They had caught him. Cautioned him. He had been primed.

  It meant he had to ride on trains to places he’d rather not be, but he couldn’t give up on Euston. He bought a rail card to make the tickets cheaper. He noticed they were chronically looking out for him and he contemplated wearing disguises. I only want to walk around a train station, he reasoned. I only want to walk around Euston Station to be away from Baldy Conscience.

  Without Euston Station he couldn’t do his circuits.

  Nor his crosswords.

  He had his rituals.

  He knew what he needed.

  Pork and pies.

  Crosswords and circuits were what he needed.

  Euston provided all that he needed.

  He concluded Baldy Conscience was directly behind it. He probably had friends in the force. He paid attention to their accents to see whether they sounded like Baldy Conscience. If they did then they were probably related to Baldy Conscience. They all sounded different. Every one that stopped him had a different accent.

  Each time they requested his ticket, which was every time they spotted him at Euston, he told them a little more about his time in Beirut. If they were taking his ticket near the train, he would take up their time. He enacted serious efforts to ensure that he took up their time in the hope it might cull their desire to keep approaching him.

  It didn’t.

  And then it did. It began to keep them away once he talked about the houses and the bread in Beirut. Then he added pigeons and dogs. No one wanted to talk about pigeons nor bread nor moving house. He had the perfect cocktail.

  He could cause very long queues with such talk as he pretended to hunt for a ticket that didn’t exist. Trains were delayed. Passengers pushed past. People said mate. They waved tickets at the ticket person and careened by. Still he talked. He was inexhaustible on Beirut. He even surprised himself how much the place was providing in the way of queue-forming conversation.

  Then he changed the conversation. Near to Christmas he changed the conversation. He talked instead of a suicidal brother whenever they asked him for his ticket. He would talk about his suicidal brother and being on the way to visit him and if they held him here his brother would jump. The passengers behind forced to listen would not push through so fast, nor say mate. They were hungry to hear this story. A story of a man about to jump. Until finally they said things like it was really cruel not to let him on the train. They threatened to buy him a ticket if he wasn’t let on since obviously he had a ticket.

  The women, it was the women who always stuck up for him, said it was cruel. In a way this puzzled him, until it did not puzzle him—like all of it he grew used to it. He became what it needed him to become in order to enact what he felt he must enact.

  The next time he saw that particular guard he told him

  —He died you know. He died that day. He died waiting on me. He jumped from the top of a car park in Birmingham. It did not ever occur to Martin John that no train went to Birmingham from Euston.

  —Sorry mate. Sorry to hear that. Have you got your ticket?

  For that conversation, without fail, he would have a ticket. He’d buy the cheapest ticket on whatever route. Ride the train. Step off next station and turn right back around on the next train.

  They forgot to look for him exiting the train.

  He could manage a few circuits when they were not looking for him. That was how it was if he was to manage to do the circuits.

  The circuits are the only thing keeping me sane, he’d exhale as he swerved into the corners of the station. Rain will fall, rain will fall—he spoke aloud to diffuse his anger.

  Once he took the suicidal-brother story so far that he crumpled down on the floor in front of the ticket man and started heaving. He cried hard. So hard he had no idea what he was crying about. When they, the public, asked him what was wrong, he shrugged and stood up. He knows what’s wrong, he said, indicating the perplexed ticket collector as he began to leave the station.

  If he found a girlfriend who worked at the station and who would vouch for him, then they might never be able to ban him from Euston entirely. He likes Mary who works at the bakery, whom he talks to about God and the Bible.

  It was a thought he had once. It passed. He remembered the warnings. The many, many warnings. He recalled why it was not a good idea. She would probably be a plant sent by Baldy Conscience. She would probably torment him. She would never ultimately agree to be his girlfriend. She might pretend she was interested and that would be it. Until she’d laugh. There would be a moment where she’d laugh at him. To his face. He’d created alternative moments. Fearful ones. He liked women afraid of him. If they were afraid of him, they were his. If they were afraid of him Baldy Conscience could not prevail. He would only send the kind ones after Martin John, for they’d be bound up in his convoluted and exceptional plan to sink him. The way they had all been, all the way along, from the moment he stepped off that ferry, going as far back as his mother. He firmly believed that Baldy Conscience must have been sourced and solicited by mam. She could call him off. At any point she could say surrender and call him off. Why didn’t she do that?

  He phoned mam for the first time outside Euston.

  —Call him off, he said. Call him off.

 
; —Call who off?

  —Him upstairs.

  —If I have told you once I have told you a million times, what did I tell you—stop going upstairs.

  —Call him off. Tell him to stop.

  —Tell who to stop? What are you saying? And while we are at it, she added, enough with the parcels. Stop sending that filth. It’s disgusting.

  —Call him off, he repeated, or Rain will fall.

  —You’re telling me, she said. Well that’s the one thing I can guarantee: there’s never no shortage on rain.

  After that, he knew they were in cahoots. The way they both made light of the weather. One day early on when Martin John warned him of approaching rain and the need for a hat, Baldy Conscience had laughed at him. Umbrella Man was likely also sent by the two of them. Who’d bring an umbrella to the toilet? Who would do that? Only somebody wearing an umbrella as a uniform. A uniform that had a story attached.

  They had lost him his job.

  What was the final chapter so? Would it end at Euston?

  Mam has been receiving strange brown packets containing a travel brochure with pornographic pictures taped inside them. The pictures are folded into small squares. To properly see them there are flaps she must unpeel first. Even though she knows what they contain she opens every one of them for proof. It’s the signal.

  They can only be coming from one person. The next time he phones, she’ll let him have it.

  He does not phone.

  She waits.

  He does not phone.

  Another brown envelope lands.

  She waits.

  He does not phone.

  The time has come.

  To go over.

  And bring him back.

  It’s finished.

  There’s also the letter in her hall.

  From the solicitor.

  From the girl.

  He can come back and face it.

  The pictures confirm the letter.

  Her doubt has evaporated.

  There’s only one way to deal with such fellas.

  The people in the Daily Mail are right.

  HE IS CONVINCED THAT BALDY CONSCIENCE WANTS TO SHOOT HIM, PROBABLY AT EUSTON STATION. HE HAS NOTICED ALL THE STORIES IN THE NEWSPAPERS OF HARM DONE. HARM WAS DONE. THERE ARE REASONS ENOUGH HARM IS DONE. BALDY CONSCIENCE HAS FOUND THE REASON TO HARM HIM. HE HAS FOUND OUT THAT HARM WAS DONE.

  Martin John has decided that wherever Baldy Conscience lives, beside whomever, however he lives, he will, inevitably, put someone in a hospital. Therefore he is committed to suffering him until Baldy Conscience is defeated. It is rabidly unfair that one man can inflict so much misery on an unknowing population. Martin John has come to know this. He knows about these things. He is ahead in this loop. The rest of us are behind him. He has the knowledge. He won’t say it aloud but this is a vision. He is a visionary in regard to Baldy Conscience. Therefore it’s up to him to deal with the BC.

  Baldy Conscience has arrived at him in order to be dealt with. Baldy Conscience was sent. Baldy Conscience is now doing the sending. Martin John is the post office in this transaction. He, Martin John, is being transacted through. Evil going in, evil going out, evil going in-­between his organs. He will be made an example of one way or the other. He has been made an example of. He conveniently forgets what brought him to this city. He conveniently forgets they are watching out for him at Euston. All these incidentals are spliced inside the Baldy gallop which consumes him. All appetites that govern him are likely controlled by Baldy Conscience. How many more are being controlled? Everywhere he turns he can see elements of Baldy Conscience’s control. The man is legendary in his ability to spread distrust, despair and detritus. On the streets, the buses, the television, the damage that Baldy Conscience is doing becomes apparent.

  He, Martin John, will do what the world has requested of him. He will do what ’til now every man and woman has shirked from. It will be unpleasant and it will smell, but it must be done before this man undoes one and all.

  He will make it impossible for Baldy to stay. He will sabotage the plumbing, the sink, the sewer, whatever it takes. Back it up, up there, and that will send Baldy tumbling down and out.

  He takes a spanner, some carrier bags, and a big onion up the stairs, bolts himself into the bathroom and thinks. The bathroom, a limited rectangle with the basic apparatus included, has suffered in his absence. Baldy Conscience has created a volcano of a towel and sock pile. He’s draped his dirty clothes, spent plastic razors, empty deodorant bottles, sweet foils, crisp wrappers, cigarette cartons and newspapers all over the floor. There is no sign of toilet paper, which registers immediate alarm for Martin John. How is the man wiping his arse? This may not be his business, nor does he wish it to become his concern—he is aware of the dangers if he ponders it too long—but he lifts up the newspaper from the bathroom floor to discover Badly Conscience has been using his archive of Eurovision newspapers in the place of the common man’s approach to bathrooming himself, the sane person’s employment of a fucking toilet roll. The stuff manufactured for the task.

  Carefully, slowly, he retrieves what remains of this paper, examines the date and tries to calculate how many years’ worth of his treasure Baldy has been balling, searing, tearing up to wipe himself. It’s devastating to discover the depth this uncultured zombie will sink too. Tonight, tomorrow, any night that has not yet approached, the battle is on. If he cannot force Baldy Conscience to exit, he will bar him outside. He will replace the exit push with an entry bar. This will mean he, Martin John, will have to remain inside the house, until he, Baldy Conscience, pushes off or gives up all hope of ever gaining entry again.

  Like all his plans, Martin John must execute this one with careful attention. If he wants Baldy Conscience out and permanently out, Martin John must ready up to remain permanently in. The man who refuses to budge will prevail. If he has learnt nothing from Baldy Conscience he has learnt that.

  Inadequate: The inadequate molester is the sex offender who least resembles social and behavioural norms. He is characterized as a social misfit, an isolate, who appears unusual or eccentric. He may be mentally ill and prefers non-threatening sexual partners.

  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.

  They beat him. They beat him hard and relentless. Then they beat him again. It was because of the incident outside SuperValu they beat him. That’s what he thought. But it could have been another incident. The incidents backed up, formed a retroactive queue. He longed to know which incident had sent them because a response, whatever form it took, was victory. He derived pleasure from their aggression. They desired him. He noticed this. He liked the desire. That they desired to pummel him, secondary to the reasons they felt they needed to.

  There was a baring incident outside the SuperValu Supermarket in the small town. She was the one that took him out. Or was it the other one, the later one? He longed to know, to have a chart, a recording, to indicate which girl or young woman had knocked him off the island precisely.

  He had kept going and going. He had made it seem to mam that he’d stopped, but all the while he was still at it in slow and pin-sticking ways. Small rubs here, a nudge there, a hand over the line, all leading up, leading on, leading under the band. He wants under the band of skirts and trousers. Hand down. Hand up. He was watching. He waited. Sometimes he moved.

  It was rough calculating who might let out a yell or raise hell or ream him yonder. He was random. Mostly random. But there was one girl he went back at a few times. She was the only one who ever really seemed scared. Martin John would say he went back as contrition to let her know he wasn’t so bad and hadn’t meant it that way, the way it seemed. But instead he found himself back with abandon, trying harde
r to go further, trying always to re-raise that first alarm he elicited from her. Those eyes. She had no brothers he was sure. He did the worst stuff to her and no brother ever came after him. Was this why he went back? He couldn’t tell you. It doesn’t do for Martin John to get too active in the thinking around all this. It is rooted in defiance. In the back of his head, he has his mother’s face primed. Each and every time he makes such a move—and there have been more incidences than his fingers and toes could count thrice—he is catapulted by his mother’s gaze. It is the band that fires him. Or that is what he’d have us believe. But we’re not fooled. We’re onto you Martin John, more than you may realize.

  Maybe 12 years of age this one, the age where early bumps of flesh are filling out, and he, the elder, can imagine small mounds of her in his mouth. Inside the shop he had breezily followed her about, noted her selection of chicken breasts and rashers. When she stopped at the fridge and examined packs of sausages, he watched her turn the packet over with her fingers and squish-/squeeze-/squelch-/press-even the tips of them. She peered in at them.