The other problem was Martin John was going back upstairs again.
Back upstairs meant he was using the toilet again.
Back upstairs meant new danger.
She’d warned him.
And another thing,
Shut up, she’d said.
SHE
Remembers
How
he crawled across the carpet on his knees, like a strange creepy cat, and coiled his cold hand firmly round the top part of her leg, way up under her skirt. This is the motion she remembers.
That is why it was not a mistake. He did not hesitate. He said he didn’t remember.
Nobody saw.
When she told them they shook their heads and asked, was she sure?
She was sure until they asked.
Get off! She said.
He did not get off. He held on harder. Tighter. He had her by the leg. She was his.
More questions.
Until it was reduced to, So he only put his cold hand on your leg you are saying?
We’ve to be very careful accusing people in these situations.
Situations where nobody sees are complicated.
Witnesses, you need witnesses.
A report like this could ruin a person’s life.
Unless someone saw.
I saw.
He saw.
He says he doesn’t remember.
And she became confused about what was and was not meant to be. Until it was all reduced to, if he didn’t do anything other than put his hand on you was there any harm done?
Harm was done.
Harm was done and further harm would be done.
Get off, she repeated. She shook her encased leg hard. She kicked at him.
He did not get off.
He moved in with his other hand. Balled up into a fist. Punched her. Right there. In the vagina. Thunk.
Pain. Sharp pain.
Again. Harder. Stronger. He pounded. That balled-up right fist.
Smack. A hard hit to her pubic bone. It was as though he’d ironed that fist to achieve the perfect flat shape, to achieve the perfect hit.
He didn’t speak a word.
It hurt.
Soar.
Sore.
She roared.
The reception woman came around to see.
The reception woman definitely saw his fist up by her skirt because she shouted at him to stop it, let her go. Leave her alone.
The phone rang, which dragged her back to the window.
Did she, the girl, remember?
Because he didn’t remember and remember, if he didn’t remember, then how could they ascertain who did remember? And who would be more likely to remember? There was a thesaurus of vagueness about remembering. Between all the remembering she grew anxious, weary and retreated. Maybe she didn’t remember either? It was easier not to remember.
But now she remembers.
His mother’s visit.
The threats.
The hinted threat.
The hint beneath the threat.
The hinterland of threat.
That intra-land of threat.
How she has lived in it.
Today, a 32-year-old mum with two kids, she was still living in it. She was living in it as she put the washing on the line. As she picked up the phone at work. Once when she sent a text, it came to her. Who was this guy anyway? Who was this guy to be putting his hand on her leg? What the fuck was his hand doing there? 20 years later, as she is sending a text, she is still asking questions that may not be answered.
Whenever she is nervous for her children, she remembers.
She remembers when she is nervous for her children. Never lets them alone. Calculates each and every situation for potential. The presentation of a smidgen of opportunity never evades her. She sees it widescreen, close up, speculative and resolute. It’s never just a dismissed or shrugged-off possibility; it is an imminent, immediate probability.
She never lets her children sleep the night at any house, apartment, bunk bed but hers. This is how she remembers. It is within those decisions she remembers. Every person she comes into contact with she must assess for danger. This is how she remembers it. Within the cracks of possibility she remembers.
Her husband she chose for his gentleness. He does not inspire passion in her. But he is safe. Non-paroxysmal. (His name Mick.) He is exactly what her granny told her to look for in a partner. A nice man, she said. Find a nice, decent fella. No drink or drama, granny said.
She does not remember whether granny said that before or after the thing happened. She does not remember whether granny too asked if she remembered. She only remembers granny said nice, decent. Her husband never puts his hand on her ’til she invites him to. That’s why she chose him.
The pain revisits her like a phantom limb. Never quite gone.
Sound too.
She remembers that sound years beyond, high up under her skirt. The smacking thunk.
The way bone reverberates if you hit it with direct force. How pain shoos along it. And the way his other hand tightened around her right leg in victory.
It was in restraint he achieved his victory. It was his eyes. He wanted to be there and he wanted to do what he was doing, that was what she read in them. A sadistic spark. If eyes could laugh those eyes were smirking.
She still did not understand how he landed the punch. So specific, even though she had thrashed his force off. The precision—was that the worst? Or being pinned?
It came down to who remembered and when they remembered. He maintained he didn’t recall and then he began to recall and add perplexing details into the mix to throw them off the trail.
The girl, which one? There had been a few. A few complained. A few he was surprised didn’t complain, a few he knew would never complain. He became more adept at figuring out which girl belonged to which group. He became more adept at getting closer to them through anonymous means. You could bump up against them on the bus. You could rest your hand on places accidentally. Feet were good this way. He could move them close. Very close ’til they nearly touched. Then tap the stranger’s foot or leg and retract suddenly. It gave him a spritz. A buzz. It was a bite.
The woman saw. The woman from the reception saw. She came around. She saw him with his hand on her leg.
Stop that messing! She said. Before I have to call the dentist out to deal with you two. Did she think them siblings?
She blurted. He hurt me, he hurt me, he hurt me. Hiccupy pleading. Stop now, she said again.
The woman behind the reception—a nice woman who chatted to her mother and every mother and could even be seen at the shops, at church, at a school sports day—brought her behind the desk and gave her sweets from her bag and told that young fella, him, to sit in the chair and if he moved again his mother would hear about it. The nice woman who chatted to mothers did not ask what he had done because the phone rang. She did brush the hair out of the girl’s eyes. She did call out an instruction to the dentist on an unrelated matter.
He had had to thump her through her skirt. He did not manage to get a direct hit. Even though he’d tried. He fought that fabric and she kicked him with whatever small leg she had available.
This was the small thing she held onto, that her flesh was still hers, because he had only managed to assault her through fabric. Years later, this would be consolation.
But how it stung. The pain hovered underneath/beneath her. Each time she sat on her bicycle it came back. There was no dispute among the bruises that lined her pubic bone about who remembered what. Nor who saw what. It was stamped onto them.
It was a time when people didn’t see stuff. That was the time it was.
When his mother came, the nice woman who could be seen at football, at the shop, at
church and always at the dentist, asked how was she getting on. They talked about the weather. The nice woman said he, her son, had grown. He’s a grand tall lad, she said. She said nothing about what had happened.
Mam said if this was only being sprung on her now, so many years later, it was very suspicious Martin John and where something is suspicious, suspicion can be calmed for there’s never been a man convicted on suspicion unless he was planting bombs and Martin John had planted no bombs. She could be sure of that, she said lightly.
Nobody said anything to me when I entered that room. If there were things to be said, they would have been said, but the guards coming round now or rumours of questions going to be asked were not good. They are not good Martin John. They are not good for any of us now, you know that?
And for the forty-fifth time she would ask, as she always did ask, tell me again what you remember. It certainly wasn’t for the lack of asking.
Mam said I can’t save you.
She never said the truth. The truth is THEY ARE COMING FOR HIM. How long has she known about Baldy Conscience?
Did she maybe send him? Have they met?
Did they meet at Euston?
Was it mam who told him to go do the circuits at Euston?
No. No. That’s not it. She said keep the head down. She said she didn’t want him on the Tube. She said Keep the head down, Into bed at night, Don’t mind anybody and they won’t be minding you either. She said other things. He cannot remember the other things. Did she warn him about Baldy Conscience? How did she know about Beirut?
He is confused. Painfully confused. He must walk. He must settle this question of what mam knows.
It is in walking that opportunity presents.
He sees her. A her. He sees a tree. It’s tempting. He can put his back to the tree. He can swing round at her when she passes. He lets this one go though. She has too sad a walk. Her hair is too long. She might hide her face and that would be a waste. Also he does not know who might be lurking on the Elephant & Castle Road waiting to batter him between his eyes.
He takes it instead to King’s Cross station.
A nice metal seat. In the Underground he sits on it, solid beneath his trap. Hands in pockets can climb down below and release the sneaky out to be peeked at. It’s a gurgle, a gurgling thrill, a r-rr-rrr, as they step off the Tube and he sits there on cold metal, his lower back supported. Moves hands to his two thighs and lets it sit out there, open-air trousers, orbiting just above the seat. It is out. Out and it’s all for them. The more people who descend, the more of it he reveals. Leans further back. Lounges. Arms wide behind his head. Them all penetrating him with their eyes. In-between another train, he hoists his balls up and out of his underpants. Leans back, all of it displayed. His tubey swollen. Ha!
He does not close his legs as the transport police approach him. Sits there and stares out at them, like they have imagined the flesh and protrusion he’s displaying. Like everyone else, they want him too.
He does not say much when they bring him in for questioning. Even when they ask him to fasten his trousers he is very slow to respond. He says he can’t close his trousers and he needs her, the policewoman, to close them for him. Martin John feels out of it and tells them he has no idea where he is or what his name is. They tell him they are aware of what his name is. They warn him. They caution him. Next time he’s going to be charged.
He phones mam and tells her that the police have arrested him and he is being cautioned and released and will maybe go to a prison or a clinic.
She tells him to stop talking rubbish and above all to get out to Noanie on Wednesday.
—You aren’t capable of getting arrested. They are not interested in you. So get over yourself and stop dreaming, would you.
It is true that he has phoned her a number of times to tell her he is in prison and she is fed up of discovering that he is not in prison.
Once he phoned her from Beirut. That did not go so well because he was at Waterloo Station and she could hear a man at the phone box roaring Fucking hurry up or I’ll burst you.
She does not believe him anymore. He would be in a coffin before she’d believe he could be dead.
He likes trees.
Trees could entice.
Trees were good for lolling against.
Where there was lolling it urged his up. Even the sight of tree bark made him nervous, because he could put his back against it and if his back is against something, there’s more likelihood he’ll take it out and swing it around on them. Once he lolls it is like sitting into a car seat. Clunk click, on goes the belt. Or, in this case, off comes the belt and down goes the zip. The early fumble, tip, mutter, gave urge to surge, a shout from below at the sight of her, any her, but especially the one he’d selected, with her eyes on him, on it specifically. Now. Because the women love it and in those moments lapped up that he’d chosen them and that he’d share it with them. They were mad for it until they realized they were not mad for it and that was when the trouble started. But nothing could take from the early part. The first nub. The introduction if you like. Nub to stub to engorge. Persist tenaciously ’til she looks. She must look. She shall look. She is looking. Big wide smile beside his eyes, up by his head bone. The delight could have expanded his skull.
And then he didn’t care what she liked or didn’t like. It switched from the pounding of enticement to only his solo delectation at delivery. If violence followed, so be it. He considered violence celebratory now. That, she, whoever she was, would find cause to report on him, that she’d have to repeat something of what she saw and what he did. That she’d need to pass along details sufficient that it would anger a father, a brother, a boyfriend. Spring him to fury. Ultimately then, he’d nabbed two of them. She had to open her mouth and speak of him, even if she would not speak to him.
When things were bad he felt they were coming for him. He felt it every minute of any day when things were bad. He made signs that indicated this and placed them all over the house. Another reason he needed the house empty of tenants. The signs had to be written out and they needed to be hung up or left in corners so they’d catch his eye.
He wrote these instructions often during the bad times. He wrote them in black marker on the back of double LPs. He wrote them on abandoned lumps of hardboard. He wrote them on the covers of his Eurovision videos. He listed what needed to happen for him to be good. He placed one such sign in the front window of his house. Once he ran out of things to make signs on he would settle and watch the same videotape over and over. In between he would pace to the front window, and if he wasn’t satisfied, would open the front door, step out and read the sign aloud. Sometimes he left the front door open after he did that, like someone passing might come in and agree with him. They’d settle down and he’d be guarded.
When things are not good, mam was right, he had made them this way. It’s a mess entirely of your own creation, she’d say. He tried to keep writing instructions, but at number 4 often became confused and lost his way. He wrote instructions that were not relevant. No smoking, no drinking, no smoking, no drinking, no fizzy drinks. Then the instructions puzzled him. He felt pursued and would lift the phone and begin making calls.
Martin John is amazed at how thoughts of Baldy Conscience can provoke him to a dark and low place. He’s darkly amazed, sinister amazed, razed amazed. Take today. Martin John has not been able to move. That man and all he symbolizes have him stewed. Stuck to the edge of his barmy-looking bed surrounded by his towers of videotapes and Eurovision memorabilia like a battlement. He sits. He seethes. Sometimes in the night the piles topple in on him. He has a reflex for removing them. He can gently push them off with a foot if need be. They incur no damage.
Last night, and late last night at that, and maybe even this morning, when he should have been sleeping, he was roused instead by the gargle above. The howlin’ and hootin’ of that man still g
oing long after the moon himself had gone to bed. Baldy Conscience has been going all night. He’s up there. There are guitars up there. There might even be a brass band up there. There’s men up there and Martin John doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it because where there’s men, sometimes there’s a woman even.
Among the violent possibilities that occur to Martin John as to how he should deal with Baldy Conscience, the possibility of slamming a tambourine down on his head and allowing that bullocky dome to split the skin until it sinks, tinkling round his neck. The tinkling would settle a humiliation upon Baldy Conscience that another man might not notice. Martin John had noticed him big on sounds: the cunt word on the telephone, the carping sounds in the bathroom, the sniffing and strange caulking sounds in the back of his throat. Baldy Conscience was always on the brink of a sniff. There was never a sniff far from him and yet he exhibited tremendous control. Martin John could tell because he emitted his worst sounds outside Martin John’s bedroom door as though he saved them up for him. Thus the sound of chronic tinkling each time Baldy Conscience shifted his neck would scupper his hole all right.
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