Finally the psychiatric people came. You took a while, she said.
We understand there are some issues, they said.
We’ll wait for the guards, she told them warmly. I don’t want to have to repeat myself.
The psychiatric people added another woman. As if we need an interpreter, she thought, but things were bad enough and she didn’t want more time to be added to whatever sentence he would be facing.
The psychiatry people did not wait for the guards though. They asked her questions.
She asked them questions. The same question she’d asked the other fella.
Would castration be an option?
—How long has he not been himself?
—It’s about thirty-five years since he was absolutely normal, she confirms flatly.
—Thirty-five years?
—That’s right.
—And has he been in hospital before?
—Oh God no, no no. Never before, doctor. I wouldn’t let them near him.
—And what was it that made you bring him up today?
—Oh he’s taken very bad doctor.
—How has he taken bad?
—The things he’s doing.
—What’s he doing?
—I’d rather not say.
—OK. What’s he doing that he doesn’t usually do?
—He’s not speaking sense doctor. He hasn’t said a proper word, just old gabble.
—How long is it since he spoke?
—Ah it must be going on four months.
—Four months?
—Whatever you gave him before when he was here with ye stopped him speaking.
—So he has been in hospital before?
—Oh he has, but it wasn’t me who put him there. Only for what he done I never would have brought him today.
—Who was it brought him in the last time?
—I forget now. One of the shops, the security, and in London he was never outta the hospital. He’s much worse doctor, much worse this time.
—How has he deteriorated?
—I’d rather not say, but he poured the kettle all over his trousers. He probably wanted to get a stain out of the trousers, she adds as an afterthought.
But the doctor isn’t listening.
—So you witnessed it?
The doctor exits the least comprehensive interview with a family member of his career and nods to another.
—Nothing doing, he says. We’ll have to have his hearing tested to rule out mutism.
Martin John is in his hospital bed and opposite is a new woman who wants only to hear about Beirut. He has found her. They lie on corresponding sides of the ward and exchange words throughout the day and night on an ever circling/recycling loop. Beirut and the dogs and the shoes and the women and the bread and Beirut and back.
It’s lovely, he thinks. And then it ends.
She does come back. The woman. And she goes again or maybe it is that he goes? Somebody goes.
His mother comes back, but her visits are interrupted by all the travel required. Mam leans down to his ear by the blanket and hisses.
—You’re a filthy creep.
She may or may not have said they were going to execute him. It was hard to hear because someone down the ward was yelling and that bed over there with the yeller was suddenly surrounded.
The woman in the bed opposite is brilliant. She shouts that mam is trying to kill him.
One night she crawls in beside him.
Her feet aren’t even cold.
They lie there. He rigid.
They stare up. They don’t look at each other.
Really.
Her feet are not cold because she is wearing socks.
A nurse discovers her.
I wasn’t here, I wasn’t there, she says.
Neither here nor there is where she was.
Martin John keeps his eyes shut.
Until it passes.
He doesn’t like Meddlers.
The nurse smells like a Meddler.
The woman was only visiting is all.
Was it strange?
It mighta been.
The visiting woman is stirring Meddlers.
Martin John does not like Meddlers.
He moves a pillow to the side of each ear like barricades to keep the Meddlers back.
How to keep the woman back who brings the Meddlers?
The next time the woman opposite visits him in his bed it is even stranger. Very strange altogether.
He doesn’t like it.
—Nurse, nurse, she’s in my bed, he shouts. Get her out.
—What are you shouting about? the nurse says.
—Get her out, he says.
—There’s no one in your bed. Stop, would you, before you wake the other patients.
The nurse says if he isn’t going to go to sleep, she’s going to have to put him to sleep. Or did he mishear her?
Martin John, again, finds the woman opposite him on the ward in his bed.
—There isn’t enough room, he protests.
Nonetheless she rolls in beside him, shoving him over.
She asks him questions this time.
Questions he is tired of answering.
She is very interested in Beirut.
Perhaps a bit too interested.
We don’t know yet, he thinks. We don’t know what way she’s going to go. We don’t know whom she may be in touch with.
He doesn’t answer.
She calls out again.
Can you hear me Beirut?
The woman across from him is brilliant.
The problem is she attracts Meddlers.
She is brilliant until she visits him in bed.
Until she attracts Meddlers.
Martin John does not like Meddlers.
He has made mistakes.
But he has never liked Meddlers.
That’s a fact.
The woman in the opposite bed must stop bringing Meddlers.
Her Meddlers are a problem.
Martin John tells her this.
Very loudly.
He tells her this after she has told mam she is going to kill her for the way she’s treating Martin John.
Mam is very nervous and leaves the ward.
People surround the bed.
Both beds.
She has done it now, Martin John thinks.
She had brought Meddler Bedlam upon them.
She has brought Meddlers to their pillows and to peer inside their eye sockets. He can’t help her now, he thinks.
She’s gone too far.
She’s too far gone.
Martin John is removing his pyjama bottoms and walking about the ward with only his top on, allowing his bits to be wobbly and loose below.
At first the other patients suggest he’s forgotten his trousers. Then the man in the bed who once went to Spain says, Put your fucking trousers on, I don’t want to look at your cock.
“Mate, you alright?” Silence.
The police have a problem. The suspect lies curled below, by the wheels of the train, wrapped around them. They can only see the back of his head and neck. His legs are under the carriage.
Who let him down there?
How to get him up?
“Mate you can’t be down there. So I need you to come up.”
Silence.
“If you are not going to come up we’ll have to come down and get you.”
Martin John has wedged himself, somehow, no one watching entirely sure how, below on the track by the train wheels. He looks to be underneath the train, but a part of him is showing. Enough to indicate: A man is down here.
“Mate, can you hear me? If you can hear
me, wave your hand.”
Silence.
For Martin John, where there are police there may also be firemen.
The police are gathering pace, unrolling Tactic Number Two.
“There are a lot of people on this train who want to get to Wales to catch a boat. The longer you stay down there the more likely they’ll miss it.”
Silence.
He’s lying. The copper is lying. Martin John knows you have to change in Nuneaton. What sort of an eejit do they take him to be? The only prick that wouldn’t know that would be Baldy Conscience. Baldy probably told them that Martin John’s a simple fella, maybe a backward fella. Maybe a fella who doesn’t know stuff, the sorta fella who watches the Eurovision. He knows stuff. He knows things that you don’t even know. He knows the fucken train timetables backwards.
The police seem to think Martin John is making a suicide pitch.
He is making no such thing.
He is down here because his circuits were interrupted.
He is down here because they have not taken his charges against Baldy Conscience seriously.
He is down here because he is fed up with the metal bedside table in the hospital ward, where they have been keeping him since the firemen, knee abrasions and the tip-slip.
But most of all he is down here on account of that nun he met 15 minutes ago, and it did not work out well between the two of them. It’s the nun’s fault.
There’s some confusion over Baldy Conscience being the nun. They are not clever, these police officers. I mean, how, with her habit, would you even begin to tell if a nun was a Baldy Conscience?
They tell him the nun is gone. It’s safe for him to come up now.
They don’t know exactly where. But this man Lee here swears she’s gone.
They always tell you their names when they are lying to you.
They always tell you they are just like you.
They are not.
They always tell you they know how you feel.
They do not.
They do this.
It’s what they do.
What they are paid to do.
Lee, though, says he’s looked the entire station over and there are no nuns. If there were one, Lee would see her. If there was one before, she is gone. She’s probably gone on a train.
“Give us your hand. We need you to come back up. I’ll give you a hand up. Just move away from the wheels and come over here.”
Silence.
Martin John had his domain and his territory organized. He’d lain his napkins out across the table. 4 x 4. He had his tea—teabag still in cup—and it was only upon its removal and his strange dunking routine, where he anoints every corner of the table (wherever he sits), that he caught her attention and she is the reason he is down here now.
Sort of.
Not exactly.
See, she chastised him.
Just a look. But it was enough. He’s been here before with them. He does not like those authority looks that nuns and not just nuns, but also women, can give. He has a bit of a history and a backlog of them. He’s gotten them on buses, on the Tube, on escalators and in queues. There was one that caused quite a bit of trouble; she made loud ugly noises in his face and tried to scratch him.
He also noticed the nun’s leg, her brown, stocking-wrapped leg, strapped into, if not imprisoned inside, shoes you would put on a horse. Everything from the sternness up top to the rigidity down below set him off. He had not even looked at her face. He had not even said hello to her the way he was trained to do. To acknowledge it’s either hell or hello there Sister. How were you even meant to make contact properly with the bride of Christ?
You were not to be sitting here with your fat bladder paddling itself and appealing for the release Mother Nature expected when she formed it inside you. You were not to be eating overpriced dry scones and flat fizzy drinks that were going to give you a heart attack and make you want to piss stronger, louder and forever. The normal and natural and necessary thing to do was ask And where are you on your way to today, Sister? The normal, natural and necessary thing to do was to act normal and natural rather than dolloping your tea bag über alles. This was especially necessary when, like Martin John, you’re wearing a hospital-issued green gown and you forgot to take your coat when you left the building during a moment that wasn’t supposed to happen.
And yet they do happen.
Martin John is offered these moments.
Here is one now.
Like every other moment where the flesh of a woman had been within his reach, Martin John does not demonstrate much that would make any woman entirely comfortable sitting beside him. Women have to have their flesh around Martin John and they must accept, unbeknownst, it’s going to be difficult for them if they are in reaching distance. Except this woman is a nun and she’s trained in accepting unacceptable people and making them accept certain things in her presence. She has a stern social contract in her footwear and eyewear. She’s no messer. She means business. The business of retreat from the greedy valley of man and unto the restorative replenishment of Christ. She eats brown rye crackers. She has her own flask of tea. And, no thank you, she would not like to share Martin John’s teabag that he’s bounced around the table, although it’s generous of him to offer it. Not at all, he said.
The teabag is not his; someone left it at the table because they were running for a train because people never stop running these days. He’s making semi-normal sounds. He can hear these sounds and he can hear her tutting agreement. She is not short, the nun. She is ample-sized and wearing silver glasses. She has a bowling-ball bag in green and now she’s reading material. Martin John would like to ask her to share this material, but he knows she will not share.
They keep asking him what his name is.
He does not tell them.
Ask him. Ask him. Ask him is all he’ll say. He knows. Him who you are all protecting.
When they ask who is he? Who is it that they are all protecting?
He laughs at them and says he is never coming up from the train wheels.
They continue to negotiate.
He wants unfettered access to Euston Station.
They offer him the pork dripping of come up here and we’ll talk about it.
But Martin John is on to them. Come up here until we cuff you.
Martin John is still down here beside the wheels of this train. It’s cramped, metal-smelly, and he will not rise up to their clamps. They probably have one that will go around his neck, one that they can use to lead him out of this station, like a dog or an unruly horse, into the back of a police van. He’s surprised they have not yet come down to collect him.
They move the other train. There’s a woman now talking to him. She has lain down on the platform. He can only hear her voice. He will not look at her, even though she has asked him to.
“How are you feeling?”
“It doesn’t look very comfortable down there.”
“Did you have any breakfast?”
She does not mention Baldy Conscience.
“I’ve heard you like the station. We could take a walk together around the station.”
She talks about Annie. The announcer. She says she likes Annie’s voice better than Jennifer’s. Martin John hasn’t ever heard Jennifer’s voice.
“Are you feeling bad about anything?”
He knows she’s lying.
He knows they have the young girl waiting to identify him behind that train.
He knows there’s no Jennifer.
She doesn’t mention Baldy Conscience.
Martin John has made mistakes.
He’s feeling bad about a couple of things all right. He hasn’t read the paper today. And he knows they are coming for him. And he knows he cannot stop it. Stop doing it.
“Can
you move your fingers?”
“Can you show me your hand?”
“Are you hurt?”
He raises one arm.
“We have ambulance men here to help you.”
Martin John does not like ambulance men.
He does not respond to her again.
Outside on the station concourse Annie the announcer is telling the hundreds of delayed passengers that due to an incident, delays are expected at this time and certain trains will not be departing.
A man in a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up says Oh for fuck’s sake. Several others defeat-drift to misery-gate the food court. They buy food they would not have otherwise eaten. Approximately twenty-five exit to smoke. Word moves around the station that there’s a man barricaded himself down by the train. The Holyhead train. All sorts of descriptions fly. He’s barmy, wearing a hat, he has a weapon, he’s barmy, wearing a hat, he might already be dead or electrocuted. He’s barmy and he’s wearing a hat. They are trying to get his body out now. The NHS is failing mental cases. Thatcher is responsible. If they’d never shut down the asylums . . . You don’t know who is going to randomly stab you these days. A woman wearing a camel-coloured coat knew a woman who killed a man because she thought he was Satan. Or maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe she killed him because he’d been violently abusing her for years. Which case? That case and this case and the other case all add up to train delays and lock them up or lock them in. One fella says just run him over if he’s stupid enough to lie down. In China they’d run him over is another floating point of view. I wish I had the time to throw myself in front of a train, another exhales. And there’s the one quiet person always who pretends not to hear or notice because that’s the person whose uncle went into the river when the quiet person was fourteen. It’s a pretty sad day when someone goes to the line, takes the line to his problems, takes his problems to the wheels of a train. A cousin, a brother of a friend, a young woman—I didn’t know her, my friend knew her—all threw themselves in front of trains. Jumpers, they call them jumpers. Is he a jumper? I’m not being rude but I wish he’d chosen another train. Why is it always one that has a boat to meet? People will be waiting at the other end. How to get word to them? How long is this going to take? We’re doing our best, Madam. Sir, I don’t know. No you cannot go through the barrier. Wait for an announcement. Watch the board. Stand back. No, you cannot talk to the police. No one’s allowed down there. Is he armed? We don’t know, we just know you can’t board the train.
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