Wednesday, every week, Martin John catches the train — the 2:30 pm — to Hatfield to visit his Aunty Noanie. Noanie is blessed to live in a council flat that stares out onto another block. She has fabric and doilies under everything and this suggests to him she’s done well for herself. The place hums with old cooking smells that follow him home and remain inside his nose for days. Noanie has a man, but he’s never about and Martin John never asks after him because mam warned him not to.
He’s always on the 5:30 pm train back and they share an exchange as he’s leaving, that he’d better go, you wouldn’t know what way the trains might be, but he knows exactly the way the trains do be. He knows them down to their slide and squeal and hiss and beep, beep, beep, and huss again and that slide, the diligent tug back to London.
And for Martin John, the tug doesn’t come a minute too soon. For if he were trapped at Noanie’s by bad weather that wouldn’t do at all. If it snowed, that would scupper him, or if there were leaves on the line that could interrupt things. The thought of staying the night with Noanie frightens him more than catching TB. There’s no inoculation against Noanie and the thought of her dislodging the distributed fabric to put down a bed for him.
So each Wednesday he checks the weather before he departs very, very carefully and examines the sky, to help him predict whether rain may fall or if he might need to cancel the visit.
If it seems that Martin John leads a regimented kind of existence, it’s because he does lead a regimented existence, where he leaves nothing open to the palm of possibility. He does not suit possibility. He learnt that during the difficult time. He’s better now, smarter too. He’s careful now.
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He doesn’t like Meddlers. A Meddler got Martin John into trouble. More than once. If you are a Meddler, he won’t like you. That’s the way it is. How will you know if you are a Meddler?
Check my Card.
The Boss likes Martin John. He likes him for one reason. Martin John is reliable. He is never late and rarely off sick.
Martin John knows this. His onion is on the pan.
If Dallas hadn’t stacked the papers that one way, that one time, things might well have turned out differently on the job.
Who knows?
A few times he did make it back to the job when the situations took over.
He could turn up after a day of being assessed. Learnt his rights, right. A man at the bus stop told him this. Pete, he said I’m Pete. If they ever try to hold you, tell ’em Pete said they can’t hold you. Pete sat with his back against the glass of the bus stop, a poster, a car beside his ear. Pete had company, a dozen carrier bags: one read Patient’s Belongings and Name on it.
They could not forcibly keep him without holding him under the Mental Health Act. Martin John can repeat the section aloud. (Went to the library, looked it up, like Pete told him to.) Not now, he can’t repeat it right now because he is sat at the desk. If you repeat things aloud at the desk it never goes well. You know that. We all know that. Martin John knows that.
He can discharge. He did discharge. He has discharged. Many times has he discharged. To stop him, they’d have to prevent him under the Act. Was he a danger? You never quite knew with Martin John. He was persuasive, solid like a crow who could persuade you he was a crow.
When he returned to work after being discharged the previous day or night — he usually felt better if he discharged, fine just fine — it surprised him he could feel so fine, while some contemplated him close on a danger. Perplexing.
These were his better days.
Those were his better days.
The days he discharged.
The days when he could discharge.
Today though is strangely NOT A GOOD DAY. This is unusual. Not doing the best is Martin John. Not a good sign. A sign of change. Martin John is worried.
Tell us why, Martin John. Tell us why.
He’s worried about the pile that Dallas has stacked.
I don’t like the way they sit. Why would he do it, knowing only that I was on the way in? He did it because he believed I would not and could not make it in. He expected me not to be here this evening for my shift. He expected me never to return. They have given away my job. My job is given away. I have no job. Stop asking me questions. Stop inquiring. You’re in on it. You probably told him I was in the hospital last night.
You were in during the day on the short-stay ward, remember? That’s right: day, night, what harm is in it?
Plenty harm is in it Martin John.
Plenty harm when the papers are looking at you stacked that way. They’ve been stacked deliberately that way.
They’re sending a message.
I’m getting the message, says Martin John.
I’m fucken getting it, is right.
The only thing to do when he’s getting the message is to take the message on a walk.
He is staring at the papers that Dallas has stacked in a different way and he cannot tackle the rearrangement until he completes a circuit or 17 circuits because today’s number is 17.
17 P words is what he read in the morning paper before work. This will require 17 circuits if he is to follow the sequence. He intends to follow the sequence if there are no interruptions. No interruptions by Meddlers. The plague of his life. If there are interruptions there’s another plan.
The 17 P/p words included a high volume of repetitions of the words political and part. Do your part, he can hear us telling him. Do your part in this story. Everyone wants a story. Everyone has a story. Everyone is a story. He believes we are telling him to do his part, do his political part. He won’t be your story. He won’t be your political story or the part in your story.
Shut up, would ya. He cautions us.
Over there by the door enters the postman. Normally he wouldn’t be troubled by the postman but on account of the arrangement of the words and the P in postman he’s keen to avoid him because it’s trouble. But he wants a signature for a delivery.
Martin John knows this *ostman is trying to get his signature because they’re *robably trying to *rove he’s here. He *uts his two hands on his head and *ulls at his scalp. He has to think fast. How fast can you think, Martin John?
Stop, he says again. Stop.
You could scribble your name in a way he cannot read it. We tell him this.
Shut up, he says, knowing we are right.
I can’t write, Martin John tells the *ostman.
Fuck off and sign this says the postman.
Martin John signs. I don’t know what I’ve signed, he says to the postman. He fears trouble ahead.
17 words with the letter P today.
Poorest, public, perilous, price, parliament, products, purse, people, partner, pay, people, prices paid, pink, pre-boomtown, paving, powersharing,
There were P words the day Martin John was discharged: pointed people peaceful put prescribing psychiatrist.
Mam warned him about Meddlers. Not exactly. That wasn’t it. Mam warned him about getting his photo taken.
That was it.
Precisely.
Be careful. Duck. Don’t ever let them take a photo of you. Someone might see it. Someone from home could recognize you. They’d come for you and it’ll be over.
It is never defined.