by Andy Bailey
As is the way with everyone, Martin always had his own personal agenda – known or unknown – that veered between a sullen but sincere loathing of the many and various manifestations of human life and an impulsive delight at the diamonds to be found in the rough and, although there were many times when it seemed to him that Megan’s disorder of personalities aligned perfectly with that rosier world view, there were at least as many occasions when he came to view her antics as the epitome of all that he loathed.
And then Molly came along.
Two years younger than Martin, she was the daughter of her mother’s friends in the gypsy community that periodically showed itself in the area. Martin had only met her the year before Megan’s death, when he had come across his mother and her friends at a game fair in Launceston.
There was something about the young girl with the curly black hair and bright blue eyes that pulled on him. It didn’t harm that she was so unlike Megan (quiet and modest against strident and bold) but there was more to it than that and he gradually found that, in many ways, there was more to Molly than met the eye. Unassuming as she was, she knew her own mind and, privately, could be just as trenchant in her judgements as Martin (and Megan, if it came to that); it was just that she tended to keep it all to herself and this made the discovery of the character and intellect that lurked behind the shy demeanour so much the more arresting to Martin.
The more he saw of Molly, the more he could see of a possible future different from that which seemed to be mapped out for him with – and by – Megan Broad. And Molly, in turn, allowed Martin access to her innermost thoughts and feelings in a way that was never afforded to any other.
However, the whole affair had to be conducted with a certain degree of circumspection as Martin had, from the start, surmised that Megan wouldn’t have taken too kindly to the appearance of someone that, Martin knew, she would immediately identify as a serious rival. As it happened, his mother also appeared to be firmly in the same camp, her imprimatur solidly behind the Megan candidacy, or, at least definitely against any relationship with Molly and she voiced a complete range of logic for this – Molly was too young; he didn’t want to get involved with the traveller lifestyle; he’d known Megan all his life; and, by the way, her family wealth would set him up for life so that he would leave behind the indignities of pauperism that had stained his life thus far.
All this meant was that he and Molly would simply meet where no-one would know.
And Martin tried to explain all of this to Susan. But when he got to the fire, he found that he couldn’t explain. As he approached that night in his mind, a feeling of dread came over him, as though a black psychical gangrene was creeping from his fingers and toes, swiftly up his limbs towards his heart, cold as it came. To even turn his inward gaze onto that conflagration was to risk again the panic attacks, the paranoia and the downright fear that had ultimately hobbled his whole consciousness and turned him into the walking zombie that was Martin Dash for ten years.
This he did not want. He could not face it, so he simply turned away from it. And he struggled to convey this to Susan.
He told Susan that he had never seen Molly again – he believed her parents had whisked her away with them, no doubt from the natural fear of all the gypsies of being too close to the intolerant and vengeful machinations of the authorities.
And how he had finally fled the area for the anonymity of a bedsit in Bristol; got a job in the post room of a legal firm; and, in due course, undertaken the correspondence studies that ultimately led to his qualification as a solicitor, all the time handing off any emotional engagement with those around him, simply keeping his head down and working, just working.
“So, when were you diagnosed with the anhedonia?” asked Susan.
Martin looked rather sheepish; he hesitated but then admitted: “I sort of self-diagnosed, actually.”
Susan drew her head back and narrowed her eyes “What?! You mean you made it up? – you were faking it?!” But she instantly regretted blurting that out as Martin’s eyes flashed with an anger she didn’t like the look of and his cheeks flushed.
“No, I did not fucking fake it !” and he jumped out of the bed to pull on his jeans and then his t-shirt in furious, jerky movements.
In truth, Martin was still feeling wired from the excesses of the night before and, suddenly, what he most craved was a beer and a fag. So he headed to the door out of the bedroom. Having calmed back down again in dressing, he turned to Susan, still sat in the bed with the sheet pulled up to her collarbone, unsure of what to do, and smiled: “Sorry. I’m having a drink if you fancy one.”
This struck Susan as, simultaneously, a crazy idea and a great idea and, in any event, she was relieved that she hadn’t completely ruined the mood. “Yeah, I’m right behind you,” moving to exit the bed herself.
26.
Back in the living room, Susan flopped down onto the faded brown leather settee that backed onto to the kitchen area raised above and behind it. She was wearing Martin’s dark blue towel robe that she had found on the floor by the bed and smiled lasciviously at Martin, who was carefully reinstating the poor, roughly-treated coffee table to its rightful place at the centre of the action.
Feigning to ignore her creamy white legs stretched out, unabashed, along the settee, Martin strode to the big grey American-style fridge near the breakfast bar and, taking a can of Fosters for himself, asked what she would like, imagining that she might prefer a glass of wine – if, indeed, she wanted anything alcoholic at all. But Susan gave him a look of mock-indignation and shot back: “Same as you, thanks.”
Sat in the matching leather chair diagonally across from the soles of Susan’s feet, Martin lit up a cigarette from a pack of Silk Cut now retrieved – with an ashtray – from the window sill. Having not smoked a cigarette since a number of years past, Susan had declined to join Michael back in Soho but here in Kensington, with Martin, it seemed perfectly OK – if he was going to be Bogart, she’d be Bacall.
She tasted, with some pleasure and some recoil, the dulling acrid taste that was a reminder of younger years that now seemed an age back and, as the gunmetal blue smoke curled away through her line of sight, she realised that it was silhouetted against a pale morning light that was gingerly creeping into the room from behind the curtains. She glanced at the clock hanging on the wall by the window – 4.13 a.m. – and drank another slug of lager before offering up:-
“I’m sorry for saying that about you faking it Martin. I don’t think that. It’s just seeing you like this, drinking lager, smoking – and last night” (the words hung in the air for a moment before she moved swiftly on) – “I don’t know what to think. I mean, it’s been such a change, hasn’t it? What’s happened?”
Martin shook his head “I don’t know really. It’s not just one thing. But I think seeing Michael out of the blue like that shook something in me and it’s been like a rollercoaster ever since. But it was those two nights in the police cells that really did me, really woke me up. It took me right back to the trial in St Ives ten years ago – especially with Michael being there again. At that time I thought I was going to jail for murder; I thought my life was over – that I was dead before I’d even started.”
“While I was waiting for the trial, my state of mind deteriorated badly. The whole scene with me and my parents, me and Molly, me and Megan and Michael had already gone crazy that summer anyway.”
“How do you mean?”
Martin hesitated and cast his eyes down, looking into the past and was away there for a while before he dragged out, slowly, mumbling – “Parties. Drugs. Violence.” And then, looking back up at her, warily, self-consciously – “. . . Witchcraft.”
Susan narrowed her eyes, incredulously, “What?”
Martin shook his head and immediately tried to brush it off as if he realised he’d said something stupid. “God, it was all fucking ridiculous. Fucking Megan,” he spat the last two words out. “You don’t want to know.”
But Martin was moving on.
“I’ll tell you all about it sometime,” and he raised his glass by way of a ‘cheers’.
“. . . when I’m a bit more pissed,” and took another gulp and carried on.
“So everything was twisted already and then the fire and me being charged with it just pushed me over the edge. I spent many weeks before the trial, just on my own, going slowly crazy. I’d had bouts of depression before; seen the doctors about it. But all this sent me off on a whole different level. I’d always been thinking about loads of stuff anyway but now I just sort of got pushed further and further so that I had times when I felt completely out of myself. When I lost myself.”
“Thinking about what?” asked Susan. Martin wasn’t giving her much to go on and he was clearly struggling to explain himself. Then something came to him and he shot his head up and put his index finger in the air, triumphantly – “I know . . . the book !”
“The book?”
“Yeah, the book,” and he jumped up from the chair and into his bedroom. She could hear him rustling about in his drawers before returning with what was obviously ‘The Book’ in his hand.
He stopped before handing it to her as though wondering whether that was wise and he began flipping through pages at random, as if he was seeing it for the first time. He sat back down without giving it to her, still turning the pages.
“At a certain point, I started writing down what I was thinking.” He was speaking carefully now, measuredly.
“And that became something I did all the time until, eventually, I had a small book’s worth. I typed it all up, printed it out on A5,” he looked up and smiled, abashed, and held it up, “like a proper book.”
“The best way to explain is for you to read that,” he laughed, “if you can stand to,” and leant across the coffee table to pass the book to her. “You can read it at your leisure. It’s all in there.”
Susan looked at what had been handed to her – just normal, white A5 paper, numbering 100 pages, with ordinary black type on each side, all held together with red plastic ring-binding and a transparent plastic front and back sheet to protect it. It had a front cover – again black lettering on white paper – but here the type was a larger size and a fancier font; the title read: 'Stuff and Things' and, below that, 'Martin Dayton.'
Susan looked up at Martin, who appeared nervous (possibly showing someone his baby for the first time) – “Stuff and Things?”
He smiled and blushed slightly. “Yeah . . . well, you have to read it, really.”
“Now?”
Martin thought about this but said, “No, read it later, at your leisure, like I say.”
Susan looked inside at the first page which contained just a few lines before the first chapter:-
'All is futile,
But all I hope
Is that you think fondly of me.
All the beauty, grandeur, tragedy, despair and love of Eternity
Burns in and flows through me.
All I hope is that the Nameless One
– Nowhere in Space and Time –
Recognises me.'
And, below that:-
'My mind’s fucked,
I’ll never have peace and tranquillity now;
Indeed, I’ve never had it.
I’ve seen too many things;
I’ve seen too much of the same things.'
Susan reluctantly closed the book back up again. She really wanted to read it. Now. But Martin was talking again now, apparently wanting to unburden himself of his story to someone, finally.
“You can read it in the book but, ultimately, I’d analysed everything so closely and I’d broken down the reasons for everything so that those reasons no longer meant anything to me – they seemed to be no more than simple mathematical calculations. I looked at everything so closely, that, finally, it all fell apart in front of my eyes.”
“So, basically, I got myself into a state where I was totally disconnected from the outside world. Yes, I was walking around, I was eating, sleeping, all of that but it was like I was on autopilot. And it just got worse. Even the verdict at the trial didn’t seem to make any difference ‘cos by that time I was so far gone that nothing really mattered to me anymore. It would have been just the same to me if I’d have been found guilty.”
“No !”
“It seemed like that at the time.”
“Eventually, I just moved to Bristol. Virtually on an impulse. Lived in a hostel. And then, after a while, it was like I started making decisions simply on a logical basis. Again, virtually on autopilot but, you know, ‘I need money’, so I need to get a job. So I got some crappy job in a burger bar. Then I see adverts for this and that, got into the Job Centre and there’s a job in an office, a law office, as a paralegal but it needs qualifications – a degree. So, after a while, I realised that I had to get a qualification to get a better job, to get more money, to get a place of my own. So I did a Law degree – correspondence. In a bedsit by then, working in a warehouse, security guard, whatever. And, eventually, I’d got my degree and got a paralegal job with another firm. Did well quickly and then did the Solicitors Finals course – part time – and qualified when I was,” he paused to think, “about 25 . . . 26. Then moved up to Leeds to Chard Bone.”
“Why was that?”
“That was Cornel. Vine. I was working for him in Bristol; he took a shine to me” – at this Martin flicked a teasing glance at Susan, who wondered – “and he was offered Head of Real Estate at CB and asked if I’d like to go with him. To help him out. I knew it was a good move so I said yes. But – this is the thing – all the time I was doing this I was really just moving through the gears like an automaton. It was just like . . . well, logic. I wasn’t feeling anything. I didn’t really want to touch anyone, to have anything to do with anyone. I’d had the sessions with consultants when I was younger and I knew I was bipolar but I read an article by someone explaining their anhedonia and I decided – realised – that was me. And I told people about it.”
“I’ve always wondered why you did that.”
“It actually served my purpose – of keeping me apart from people. They knew I was doing the job well, so there was no issue there. And if I had some condition that meant I had no sympathy for people, well that was no major issue for a commercial lawyer !” They both laughed at the commonplace jibe at lawyers in general. “Some even got turned on to the idea.”
“Like Barry.”
“Exactly. Like fucking Barry.”
There was a moment’s pause now at the mention of the name that brought them right up to the present; the present where Martin was, again, in danger of going to prison and Susan’s father appeared to be at risk of the final disgrace.
“What has happened there, Martin?”
This brought Martin up and the words stopped flowing. He was looking at Susan but his mind was engaged on a calculation of what he might say and what he ought not to say. He was now torn between continuing the flow of self-revelation he had embarked upon, which felt so good, and the desire to not compromise Susan’s safety (and, frankly, the embarrassment at how far he had gone with aiding and abetting Barry’s nefarious scheming).
He decided that – as much as he didn’t want to withhold stuff from her now, to patronise her like that – there was a more critical imperative, outweighing that noble sentiment, to not pass information that would likely bring nothing but trouble for her and her father.
He knew what Barry had done to finance the Crack Harbour development. And others. But here knowledge did not mean power. Having that knowledge simply put him in danger (and not just from the police). And having that knowledge didn’t mean that he ought to give it to someone else. Especially a friend. Like Susan. And more than a friend now. No, it was like a disease and he should keep it to himself. Or
get rid of it somehow.
“It was like I said – I’d got to a stage where I was making calculations simply on the basis of how to make more money. For myself. I think my underlying rationale was to gather a whole load of money as fast as possible so that, in due course, I could stop working, have my own place, out of sight, and burrow myself away from the world. With no need to come out again. I think that was what was going on but, to be honest, everything had become so fucked up with me I’m not entirely sure what I thought I was doing in the end.”
“So, anyway, Barry Rogers steps up. Takes a shine to me” – another conspiratorial glance – “and starts talking about all sorts of deals. And commissions. And . . . you know.”
“Not really, but do go on.”
Careful, Martin.
“The basic allegation, which the press have by now anyway, is big time money-laundering. Which is obviously a problem. But they’re saying it’s from Syria as well – fucking definitely a problem. They’re on Bush’s 'Axis of Evil', Suze. Your dad’s mate’s mate.”
Susan felt suddenly cold and pulled her legs further up under the folds of the dressing gown.
“And is there anything in this?” her voice sounded weak and frightened as the question came out.
Careful, careful, Martin.
“Christ, I don’t know,” he grabbed the pack of cigarettes off the coffee table in a bid to appear nonchalant. “I don’t know. Money arrives from such-and-such bank; I sign off for money to go to this-and-that bank. I know we’ve been a bit lax with the ID-checking but I don’t know who these people are. Honestly.”
Martin looks Susan’s way again, hopefully. Shrugs his shoulders.
Susan leant forward and stuck out her hand for the cigarette packet to be tossed to her and struck another one up while she mulled this one over. Finally, she blew another cloud of smoke heavenwards, rolled her eyes and exclaimed: “Bloody hell Martin, what a fucking mess. What’s happening now, then?”