It’s a plan. Martin John thinks he has a plan. He has made mistakes but now there’s a plan.
He did not fight me over it. Ever. He never questioned it. Just let me tie him in when I left the house.
We carried along that way for a while and he made no protest. I thought we had settled it. This was how it had to be. Sure he knew that himself.
The circuits were gone once Euston was gone.
There was never another circuit to be done or had or seen once Euston Station was closed to him.
He missed the circuits.
He went to the tracks for the circuits.
Never once did he say to me: What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Martin John was passive. It mighta been the only time he was passive. He made it easy on me.
Mam ties him in the Chair so that he can’t go to the toilet.
To make his bladder full again.
More pronounced.
It was thoughtful of her. Kind.
This is what Martin John thinks when she ties him in.
All mam’s worries live inside a teapot. One settlement within a colony of teapots. She has written them on pieces of paper, backs of receipts, parts of used envelopes—all tightly folded and pressed deep into the teapot.
The colony of teapots holds decades of anxieties. She calls each one Pot. Pot usually lives in a hard-to-reach spot, with a booklet or expired calendar stuck in front of him so suspicion will not be aroused, nor will she be tempted to overstuff him. Some of the notes contain dates/times of phone calls or things people have muttered in passing about Martin John. Or that which she suspects they want to ask beyond, How is he getting on in England? The odd prayer or quote lifted from the radio are also slid in. Often the quotes are from dead American presidents. There may be one in there from Einstein or Aristotle. One is from a mechanic, Joe, who gave instructions on what indicated your engine was failing during a Midwest radio phone-in.
Today she will write what will be the final note before she seals this teapot closed with strong tape. There are approximately 11 other pots, full and retired to the top cupboard not far from her bed, so in the event of a fire she might nab a couple and exit. But their population is grown too large now for the quick removal she intended. It has gone on too long. Even if there were a fire, would she even remove herself? Or might she simply burn alongside them?
Each lid has been taped closed and she can track the changes in tape down the years. How she chose thicker tape that year. Or used insufficient tape or tape that didn’t altogether facilitate the level of deteriorating dampness in her house. She hasn’t any emotional attachment to the teapots themselves. They are mere random ones that came her way.
One year she used a stainless steel one, but never again. She hated the idea she could accidentally catch the light or a glimpse of something in the side of it. It also gave her memories of very bad tea brewed in such teapots at weddings and funerals. Since life was a daily funeral, she didn’t turn out for many of them. She only went to funerals where she suspected the person had a good reason to have a grudge against her on account of Martin John. She knew that her absence would suggest guilt.
She always took communion at those funerals and she attended every stage of the mourning. She could imagine a slim crowd at her own funeral. She could see Martin John going to the grave with no one at his funeral. They might go together and make it easy on all.
But her thoughts are now disordered. She has a final note to place inside this grubby-looking teapot and she has to seal it closed. She won’t open another teapot this way she decides. That’s it for the pot, pot, pots as she calls them.
After she put Martin John in the Chair she knew there was no further use for the teapots. What would you be doing firing things into them after that? Ask yourself.
There aren’t so many details on what Martin John exactly and precisely did at an obscure railway station in Hertfordshire, England, but it is supposed by mam he was visiting Noanie or on his way home from visiting her when it happened.
Whatever he did—and mam suspects some kind of exposure or tip slip because of his proximity to the litter bin —led to his removal to hospital where the phone calls recommenced.
What did you do? mam asks him before squealing twice as loud, I don’t want to know. Save me from it, d’ya hear? Get yourself out of there. Get yourself out of there. Get out and visit Noanie on Wednesday.
Martin John was technically chased out of Euston Station by the oppressive forces of police and observant railway workers. He was forced further down the train line. They made him hop a few platforms away.
If they hadn’t chased him away from his beloved Euston station he never would have given the people of a somnambulant Welwyn North train station the fright they claimed he did.
A man in the car park, heading home to his bungalow with climbing magnolia on his mind, swore when he phoned him in that Martin John was tipping his nib towards a rubbish bin. That he saw him with his trousers open.
We’ve not long even had rubbish bins restored to the station, he complained, muttering about the IRA. I knew he was near the rubbish bin because yesterday I slipped my own sweet wrapper in it.
Martin John has routines. He calls the railway announcer’s recorded voice Molly or Annie depending on that station. Mainly he’s at Euston, where she is Annie. Annie speaks every few seconds. She speaks to him. She’s attentive, is Annie.
“The train standing at Platform 2 is the …”
“Please keep your belongings with you at all times. Unattended luggage could be removed and destroyed or damaged.”
Martin John has a relationship with Annie. He brings his notebook. Usually starts doing a line with Annie once he’s finished the crossword and the letters page. He does not like his news people, his word people and his train people to hover too close to each other.
Sometimes it distresses him to choose between Annie and the crossword, but Martin John has rules.
Don’t look at them direct.
Move in swift and out even swifter.
Don’t be greedy.
Bare flesh is dangerous.
A brush is but a brush.
Press up against her in queues. Quick. Hard. Into the hips. And out. 3 seconds.
When they give you the look—that look—by return, offer no look.
Even if they shout, stay calm and continue to write down Annie’s words sailing over their mutually distressed heads.
Mutually distressed?
Well yes, for if he’s interrupted then it’s not a ritual. If he’s interrupted, if he does not complete the brush or flash or rub, a circuit has been interrupted. If a circuit is lost he must calculate the probable impact of this.
BAD THINGS MAY HAPPEN.
Bad things may happen to the person passing. To the woman he failed to make contact with or to the person walking in the other direction.
In order to repair a bad circuit, he has to make a number of further circuits. When he makes continuous circuits the passengers, their luggage, their flow, interrupts him. Also, when he makes continuous circuits staff notice him, walkie-talkies are raised and the circuits have to speed up. He has been lifted from his circuits. That’s a fact.
Mam does not like the new talk. The new talk about Beirut. The talk he brought home from London. Mam does not like the new talk about Beirut that he won’t stop with. Dogs, women, heat, hills, entwined with weddings and daughters. He’d been blaguarding a bit about Beirut before, but now he’s gone away off into an entirely new gabbling orbit. He is driving her spare.
What are you saying? What are you saying?
Would ya stop!
What are you on about? You don’t have any children,
never mind four daughters married in Beirut.
You’ll have the pair of us locked up if you carry on this way.
This
was the gentler spot she started in.
Shut up.
Shut up.
Shut up.
Would ya
SHUT UP.
For God’s sake, shut up about Beirut. If I hear the word Beirut again I’ll hand you over.
I’ve enough. I’ve enough of it. I’m not for listening another word. It’s enough to drive a body to drink.
And still yet on he sang.
Beirut, Beirut, can you hear me Beirut?
Along with his other sin-cervating ramble about the rain and the harm and on and on, he scrolls out these sermons to himself and anyone unfortunate enough to be in listening distance. Finally she pushes a set of earplugs into his ears hoping the constant drone of himself unto himself might deliver him to a full stop.
Martin John believes mam is in league with Baldy Conscience and that’s why she’s telling him shut up, shut up, shut up every time he mentions Baldy or Beirut. She is very bothered by Beirut. Hot and bothered, yet no hills for her.
Baldy Conscience has succeeded. He has overthrown them. He is here with Martin John. Back here, in the back bedroom, where every backward fellow must dwell.
Martin John has a plan.
A plan to catapult himself from all this though.
Most backward fellas don’t have a plan.
They just stay put.
She tied him in. Mam tied him in the Chair for a reason she did not specify. She did not specify the reason because she had been told not to. We know who told her to tie him in. We don’t need to say it aloud. Martin John is watching us. His ears are open. If we say it aloud he may make ugly screaming noises and accuse us of things.
As soon as things are said aloud, accusations fly.
She tied him in, and it wasn’t too bad being tied in, not as bad as the newspapers might later speculate, but remember Martin John is ahead of the newspapers. He has studied them. He understands their consciousness. He knows how their columnists tick. Bin changes, wine glasses, poll tax, landlord wars and gilpy Jesus Janey freakery. He is ahead of them, but we are alongside him now. Pad, pad, pant, pant.
They’d label a man like him troubled. P words might be used. “In quotes though,” as a by-product of someone else’s mouth. Someone certainly fed by Baldy Conscience. Someone who said something aloud and now the accusations are in print.
He needed to reach a telephone. He must report Baldy Conscience. God knows the damage the man would have done to the house and to the others who had failed to meet Baldy Conscience’s demands.
Martin John could see a long line of them all under Baldy’s direction, wearing rain macs, all reporting to Baldy, all except those in Beirut, those who had the strength, width and wherewithal to withstand him. To resist Baldy’s summons, his lies, his domestic occupation and chronic borrowing of other people’s precious newspapers. They stood beside Martin John. It was only in Beirut he’d survive. Baldy Conscience could never take on the lads in Beirut. Except which lads? Which lads was he thinking of? Was it the green lads? Was it random lads? Was it lads he’d seen on the telly or on a poster? Any lad, any lad in Beirut would do, any lad in Beirut could tackle Baldy Conscience.
He needed to get to a phone. Mam was cute about the phone. Since that time he made them calls. It was them calls that she tied him in for. He remembers now.
He would have to be out of the Chair in order to reach a phone.
The roar.
Outta him.
Still he kept pouring.
The yelping.
Outta him.
Even as she tried to grab the kettle.
Tight
on
he held.
Then pushed the spout into his groin and poured hard. She didn’t like his eyes or the sound of him during it. Obviously.
He stood. He held the empty kettle and he howled and he howled and he howled. He bowelled in them howls meticulously, and she couldn’t understand how he could still hold the kettle so tight with all that growling noise coming out of him.
If he’d used the electric kettle it coulda been worse, she would later observe to the doctors.
He used the kettle that sat on the edge of the range. A chronically on-the-boil broiling kettle. The one she used for pouring hot water into dirty stuff that she wouldn’t put her good kettle near.
She did not take the trousers off him.
She left him in them for a very good reason.
You left them in their own puddles.
Puddles of their own creating.
She put him in the car and drove him to the hospital.
He was strangely quiet.
It’s a crime scene, she thought.
At the hospital she handed him over.
He told them only about Beirut and needing to get to a wedding.
Later she had to tell them the facts: he poured a hot kettle down on himself like y’know. She nodded her head in emphasis as she said it like they may have entirely missed the reason why he was here.
—Was it an accident?
—It was no accident, she said. He held the kettle tight. I couldn’t get near it. He held it like a gun and then scalded it into himself backwards.
They took him in straight away.
She washed her hands.
She washed her hands again.
As she pulled the paper towel from its holder she thought of the many times she had considered he was not right in the head and she thought that it was perhaps a surprise he hadn’t done it sooner and she wondered exactly when had he planned it? She wondered if he would tell the doctors that she tied him in the Chair and she felt confident that the doctors would agree with her reasons for doing so. What else could you do? And together they would all nod in agreement.
Only once did Martin John make a comment when she tied him in. It wasn’t even a comment as much as an observation.
—What if there’s a fire?
—There’s one fella here who’ll start a fire and it’s you. You are in this chair, so there will never be a fire.
She always talked through what she was doing while she tied him in. As she pulled the rope, she’d ask, is that too tight? We don’t want it to hurt you. We only want to keep you safe. Sometimes she turned on the telly for him. Asked him which channel he wanted. Sometimes he replied and sometimes he didn’t. She chose the channel that would excite him the least and went to work.
Of course she went to work. She had to work. How else would she have kept them fed? It was cleaning work, lots of hard mopping. Often when her shoulders pained, she knew it was atonement for all the hurt her body had inadvertently created. She would pray as she mopped, but she would never say the Hail Mary. She would pray in sayings. Let him who has not sinned cast the first stone. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. Kind Jesus, hear my prayer. Hide me within your wounds. Immaculate Heart of Mary. Pray for us. St Joseph. Pray for us. St John the Evangelist. Pray for us. Then she puzzled over how St John the Evangelist had ever snuck onto her list as she squeezed out the mop. But every time he was there. Every incantation he turned up. She couldn’t rid her tongue of the man.
Martin John needed no details of her work. Only that she must go out now for a while but would be back soon enough. He was dangerous when he got information. Any small bit could set him off. It had, she reasoned, taken years to restrain him safely in the Chair. She was only doing what the doctors and those in authority refused to do. She was only doing what needed to be done with bad men. Bad men aren’t good for us, she thought, resigned, the way you’re probably thinking about how long this is taking to read or how uncomfortable that chair is. Say it. Say it now. It’s uncomfortable. Time to shift the cushions behind your back.
She went to the hospital canteen and ate a very large tuna sandwich. She was never a fan of tuna and would not be making a habit of it. It wasn’t the sort of thing that
appealed to her, the smell alone, but she needed to be ready for the questions. The police might be involved. Surely they’d all come now. They were probably waiting upstairs.
There was no sign of the guards when she returned upstairs. Maybe the police were sorting out paperwork.
She contemplates using the word depraved to describe him, but stops short. She can’t be sure. Is he honestly depraved, or simply raving?
Is there any difference?
If she no longer has to deal with Martin John (if they lock him up in here or wherever it is they lock these people up), would she be able to go for her lunch or dinner now and again to Dunnes Stores? She thought of the Carvery deal where they give you a few vegetables and mash potatoes along with a slice of beef or a bit of chicken.
The doctor seemed surprised when she inquired about castration. She did not mess about, just came out with it.
—Do you castrate fellas like him? Is that what you do?
He said he was a burns doctor and they’d be moving Martin John to the Burns Unit.
Mam assumes him a Junior. They know nothing. They haven’t a clue and are just reporting to the fellas above them. He was being coy.
—Have they been in yet? she asked the Junior.
—Who?
—Who else? The Guards.
—I don’t think so, the doctor said.
—If he used the electric kettle it coulda been worse.
He did not say anything further to her after that. He has been told not to initiate any conversation. To keep the crime scene preserved, if you like, not to contaminate the evidence or complicate things, she assumed.
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