Last night she barely slept, her tongue locomoting its way around the words-upon-words that must accumulate to form her exhortation. She’s spent seven weeks waiting to strike at Satan. In spite of the fact that she’s merely been asked to talk lightly on a reading of Mark 5.9, she has tasked herself to wholly and vigorously rev up the Watford Women’s Ministry. To go beyond the polite sharing of readings, biscuits and the passive desire to repent amid side discussions on waxing and buying a washing machine on tick. There must be more! She wants to inspire! She has fasted in anticipation of more.
Usually no sister stands up. Heads down, they struggle to find the line in the Bible, they mutter apologetically, they mumble out more apologies and eee-nough. Enough! Tonight will be different. It’s time to bust out the Lord. She knows where and how her crescendo will land. Boom! She has left nothing to chance. Bust him out! Boom! BUST HIM OUT is where she’ll terminate. For dramatic effect her arms will lift to the ceiling, her Bible will drop to the floor. This is her plan. Except this duffer lying on the railway track of Platform 6 is threatening the primary lift-off from that folding chair. Without a launch there can be no landing. Also, she needs to wash her hair. How can she be urging the five other women to bust the Lord out if she’s stood with lackluster hair. Lackluster, she rumbles to herself.
Gone, gone, gone, get Satan gone. Satan get gone. Get gone Satan, Satan get gone. Mary pecks out in guttural whispers. Bust him out. First, though, bust him in. The Lord is in touch. This is real. This is it. This is why she slept so lightly last night.
I am open, Mary thinks. I am open to whatever the Lord sends me.
Here it is, craven-curled before her. In this surprising location the Lord has sent her a numpty-headed nutter whom she must raise from the rails. It is unfortunate. Inconvenient. But Minister Janice has warned that the Lord strikes in mysterious ways and here he’s striking beyond mysterious, here he is boldly challenging Mary to tread the turbulent water, canoe through and defeat the prospect of the 4:12 pm train to Watford Junction being further delayed.
It has been a long shift since 6:30 am. She’s been fasting for 36 hours ahead of tonight’s meeting. Caged and overheating in the cramped bakery, she is tired of invisible interactions with fleeing passengers, endlessly frustrated by the limits of the human hand. She is irked by Florence, her supervisor, who today potted Mary up at the back, washing baking trays clamped in grease and burn. If Mary is to reach into the hearts of heathens, God’s unbelievers, no matter that they are rude, distrustful, dismissive and, not uncommonly, demented, she must be out front, handing over paper bags. Her plan to inscribe biblical quotes on a stack of them during her first tea break had been punctured by Florence informing her that, because they were a person short on the late shift, there will be no breaks, unless Mary wants to work the double shift. We have to get ahead, said Florence after Mary had told her no, no way, not as long as there was air in her lungs can she work a double shift today because tonight she has an important event.
“What’s that then?” smirked Florence, “you rushing off to get married or something?”
Florence is an unbeliever. Florence doesn’t have Jesus in her heart. Mary’s compassion that Florence could one day be saved diminishes the longer she has to share this kennel of a bake house and endure Florence’s unrepentant digs at her faith. There are only three topics she can discuss with Florence and one of them is Debenhams. The other is Flo’s grandkids and the third The Menopause. Flo uses the latter to argue she can’t stand too close to the oven or she’ll melt. To prove her point Flo once faux-fainted and Mary had the brilliant idea to kick her in the kidney to find out if she really was a-faint. The kick brought a howl: Why’d you do that? I thought you were dead, said Mary. I wanted to wake you up. Her slick response further solidified Mary’s faith because she had never been this quick in the past. Florence takes her supervisory role very seriously when it comes to ordering Mary to take the giant rubbish bin down and empty it. No disrespect, she’ll say. I went to Catholic school and it was shit and I’ve had it up to here with the Pope, can you take the rubbish down for me, love? My back’s bad and you’ve got Jesus on your side.
“You,” she called.
“You,” she called again at the distant pale green bundle below.
“You,” she shouted.
Nobody heard Mary.
Nobody saw Mary.
Mary saw Martin John.
Him. She told herself. Him. Again. She knew he’d come again. She’d warned him that time he’d grabbed her hand if he ever did it again she’d cut it off him. But he’d come back often and they’d talked about the Bible and she felt he was making progress.
The train standing at Platform 5 is the delayed . . .
The train standing at Platform 9 is the train for Crewe. Always keep your luggage to yourself. Unattended baggage will be removed and destroyed.
Trains are backing up. Mary does not like the train at platform is the delayed . . . People drift. Stop to look. Cops cop on. A white man with a skinny, misshapen head is moving into position with his loudhailer. Some white men have the weirdest heads, thinks Mary watching him.
“Please move away from the area,” Head intones. The more he please move aways, the more people come closer and escape around him, determined to get into the train, determined that the train will depart because they have somewhere to go, no matter there’s a man wedged underneath it.
“What happened?”
“How’d he get down there?”
“Did he jump? He must have jumped.”
“Did he go out the wrong door?”
“Probably a pissed-off train driver.”
“What happened?”
“Is he pissed?
“No, he’s mad.”
“He’s not mad. He’s lonely.”
“Crap. He’s not lonely. He’s mad.”
“Everyone’s mad these days.”
“Some are madder than others.”
“What’s going on?”
“Oh my God!” A woman says. “Look, his gown is open. Eww. His bum. That’s disgusting.”
“Cover him up.”
“They should cover him up, that’s not right.”
This shifts a few people away. A third woman paddles off stating to no one in particular that this has got to stop. Whatever is up with these people has got to be stopped and Irish bombers cause it all. She’s going to stop it. At the word terrorist, the other two women abruptly depart.
“I know him,” Mary says.
“Who is he?”
“Just a guy. Hangs around inside where I work. He’s harmless.”
A policeman loudhails in her right ear.
MOVE PLEASE. EVERYONE MOVE. WE NEED YOU TO CLEAR THE AREA.
“I work here,” says Mary. “I’m not moving. I know him.”
She knows him, the passengers endorse.
“I know how to get him up. I can get him up. He’ll listen to me.”
No one accepts that Mary can levitate Martin John the way no one accepted Jesus could heal the sick. No one accepts the Lord because they have not found the Lord. Mary has. Mary knows. Mary, wearing her apron, will galvanize this crowd of lugs to repentance. It’s bigger than a prayer meeting. Any prayer meeting. Anywhere. Ever. Jesus has called her at Euston.
Utters a curse does Mary. Acts like she intends to move back and comply. Retreats to the giant parked bin. Mary has had enough. They are in her way and her train home is threatened. For each time she has not been seen, for every rude and disgraceful customer, for every extra minute spent not being compensated, for every evaluation endured by that annoying supervisor and for the hundreds of times she has struggled with this intractable, smelly bin—Mary has had it.
She observes the backs of the police muttering, mithering and moving matters no place. She pushes past them with the rubbish bin ahead of her.<
br />
HEY!
STOP!
Mary protests, while pushing deftly on, that she works in the station and is just doing her job.
Mary walks steadily. She lifts the handles of this impossible wheeled skip up above her shoulders. She about-turns the contraption, checks left and right for people in her path and parks the bin near the top of Platform 4, where the reformed croissant perv is crunched below on the rails opposite. For now there is no train between them. Down she kneels by the platform edge, camouflaged by the giant bin.
“You!” she says. “It’s me Mary. Mary from inside.”
He bunches his body up further.
A slight roll away from her, he folds his arm in and puts his hand between his legs.
“You know. Me from the bakery.”
She has some idea about negotiation. She heard an interview on the radio with Terry Waite seven years ago. “Cast off Satan and get up here now,” she whispers. The bundle moves. He may be moving. Is he going to look at her? This has prospects if she’s rapid.
“Look, whatever sin took you down there, let it bring you right back up! Come on. Rise!”
Rise curls him up noticeably tighter. He pulls his knees up. Stay calm, thinks Mary. Let him know there’s help.
“Talking can help. At least talk to me . . .”
Alleviate hopelessness, thinks Mary.
“Everyone feels like shit. It’s Monday. It’s pissing rain. We’re all miserable. Come back up and be miserable.” He has not spoken. But he also has not moved. This is better.
“Fasting can help. I’ve been fasting. Devil gets nervous when you’re fasting. He can’t reach you if you’re not full of food. . . . ‘And Jesus asked . . . what is thy name? And he said Legion: because many devils were entered into him.’ Luke, 8:30, remember?”
“We’re all sinners. Devil’s on the loose. You’re just the biggest sinner right now in this station. But in five minutes there’ll be another sinner. It’s what he does. He hops, he spreads, he congeals. So release him. Bust him out! Let others take the burden. Do not hold him in. Share!”
Behind her, the wheels of an arriving train make tightening, ever tightening, whuh whuh vrrrar va-vrrar sounds. Sounds that close in on her, metal-on-metal registering in the roots of her teeth, a screech that forces her to raise her voice. Passengers will descend. Passengers will see her down here. Passengers could sink her progress.
“You think you’ve gone too far, right? You think it’s all impossible. But you haven’t gone far enough. That’s the problem.”
At this, his body, unfortunately, shifts to join his bunched-up legs. He’s gone. Completely obscured under the train. Damn. She can’t see him. Damn. They’ll blame her. Damn. Damn. Damn. Behind her, train doors open. Passengers descend. Passengers are looking at her queer, down on her knees pleading with the bottom stripe of paint on the train opposite. The sudden spread of passengers conceals her though, offering vital negotiation time. Police are flooded: she can hear them diverting, directing, declaring.
“Don’t make me come down there.”
“DUE TO AN UNFORESEEN INCIDENT WE ARE EXPERIENCING DELAYS. UPDATES WILL BE POSTED ON THE BOARD.”
“That’s it. Up here now or I am coming down to get you up.”
“DUE TO AN UNFORESEEN INCIDENT WE ARE EXPERIENCING DELAYS. UPDATES WILL BE POSTED ON THE BOARD.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Get up here now.”
“DUE TO AN UNFORESEEN INCIDENT WE ARE EXPERIENCING DELAYS. UPDATES WILL BE POSTED ON THE BOARD.”
If I miss my fucking train because of him . . . she thinks. The combination of fury and hunger push Mary further to the platform edge, but she cannot see a thread of him. Down she lies to squint. Where is he? The concrete presses on her breastbone and squashes her mammaries. If she could just see how far under the train he has gone. Maybe poke him decisively. Grab him by the arm. Then he’d move. She’s getting ideas. The Lord is giving them to her. She’s never been this motivated to deliver salvation unto another before. He needs disturbing. She can disturb him. She has mere seconds before they rumble her. Mary slides down the wall a little bit, the way you might dip your foot undecided into a swimming pool then retrieve it. Part way down, she changes her mind and tries to tricep back up, but her hand slips, which lurches her forward, feet stutter-shock onto the strange pick-axed-apart-looking stones. A left-inclined tumble to crunch, ouch, fuck as she planks onto the side of her left hip, elbow smacking off a rail. Ow! What in the shitting hell of mercy is she doing down here? This was a very bad idea. How’s she going to get back up? No way she’s going over there. She immediately strikes to clamber back up onto the platform, but her too-tight pencil skirt impedes her. Left knee scrapes ugly against the wall. Very pissed off, she turns, squats, to emit a final yell.
JUST COME OUT HERE RIGHT NOW.
He turns his head a touch. He can definitely hear her.
“I’m fucking stuck. Help me right now you moron. I have a child. They’ll arrest me. Quick. I swear they’re coming. Fuck. You’ve got to help me.” She has lost Jesus down here, she has found only a tirade of F-words and the desire to see this man extinguished and herself airlifted to glory.
Something’s moving under there. She can hear the stones shuffle.
The worst part of it, from Mary’s point of view, is that the policeman with the misshapen head is now heaving under one of her armpits to get her back on the platform. It’s been a long, sweaty shift and she does not want this particular man in her armpit. I’ve got her, I’ve got her, legs, someone grab the legs. Someone get her other leg. Push. Two others are clawing at her other armpit and there’s another jumped down to the track and his hand is pushing up her bum, which is pure unnecessary chancery. Shameful, she would later say aloud. One voice remarks on how heavy she is, as some kind of reassurance they are all doing a great job. Her knee scrapes along the platform edge as the punishing thought an Intercity 125 train might arrive from Manchester any second and crush her. She doesn’t care if Martin John lives or dies at this point. She doesn’t care about tonight’s meeting. She just wants back up and out of this swollen volume of manhandling.
On the way back up the platform, pain revisits her palms from pressing on the concrete and there’s a slicing sting beneath her tights from the knee gash. Head lectures onward and upward in undulating clips about the danger of doing such a stupid thing and how she needs to listen when police tell her what to do and they may yet arrest her for obstruction.
“Obviously I didn’t want to go down there, it was an accident,” she says. “I slipped. Innit.”
The better part is it takes two police officers to move the bin along behind her. At the top of the platform while they are asking Mary how to spell her name and writing it into three different notebooks, Martin John is led away by a group of people near her. He is barefoot. His gown is open at the back. His hand reaches behind to hold it closed in some desperate stab at a dignity he’d long lost.
“THAT is the saddest thing,” she declares to Anthony nearby, ignoring her as he fiddles with a button on the side of his digital watch. “Totally unnecessary. Never need happen. People are so isolated. That’s why they should go to church.”
“What’s the date today?” Anthony, still jamming at his watch.
24-HOUR CCTV RECORDING IS IN OPERATION AT THIS STATION FOR THE PURPOSE OF SECURITY AND SAFETY MANAGEMENT.
“I told you I could get him up,” Mary says to no one in particular. “I got him up,” she says triumphantly as she trundles off with the bin.
Martin John has left the food court. He flew it hurrying. He more than flew it hurrying. He is in bolt. No one, except him, is quite sure why this half-dressed man has taken up such speed.
A situation, a situation is boiling/bubbling, a situation that must be burst. He must circle it. If he can circuit the station, the situation will be circled. Harm was done, ha
rm was done, so the loop gnaws. Did he or did he not just grab her? Did he lift his gown? He did lift his gown. His hands were under it.
The nun put Martin John in a bad way. This is the refrain he’ll give us. A circuit. A circuit. Only a circuit will erase it. He is barefoot. He is green-gowned. But a circuit, an absolute circuit, which will need to be a square circuit because the station is a box.
He did not touch the nun. He knows he did not touch the nun. Harm was done. He is covered in tea. His arm is wet. His shoulder is wet because Harm was done.
Martin John has told us about the nun, but she never was the sole captive of his attention. He has lied to us about this. He has lied to us about much. Has he lied to us about Baldy Conscience?
Her, over there, sat next to her parents, she’s the reason he sat down here. The nun may be here too. That’s her choice. But Martin John’s choice was towards the young one with long brown hair. She lifts a burger up and down to her mouth. Her eyes do not initially notice him. He diddles about with the tea, but his hand has slipped/passed under the table over his groin. At first he applies pressure from the heel of his palm to his general bulge but as her mouth moves and munches, his subtle mounding movements become strong, flat-palmed, insistent. Up and down. Until he resists no more and macerates it. He’s waiting for her to register him. He’s patient, though. Her hair shades her face and she’s concentrating on her burger. He watches her lips and how she wipes them with the back of her hand mid-sentence. He likes it. She’s somewhere around fifteen or so. Maybe more. Maybe less. Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe he doesn’t care. Her head moves between her food and the conversation to her left. Martin John’s hand below remains firmly with her and he likes what she’s doing for him. He’s lost (in)to it now. He doesn’t notice the man who has joined him at the table to his left because his right hand has found it’s way under his gown and his legs have parted and he’s leaning backwards and focused hard on his task.
People do what people do. They wonder. They elbow. They lean and whisper. They nod. They query. Do you think? Is he? Each other. Doing that? They stand up and look about for someone to report it to. They look for someone to report it to using their arms. They might even walk towards someone panicked and point. They may wave a hand and indicate the problem. Excuse me there’s a guy over here who . . . or they may just up and move away from what’s happening and allow that someone else will deal with it. Very occasionally there’s a decisive someone who sees it. They have seen it and they know exactly what it is they are seeing.
Martin John Page 16