Has he work?
Is he working?
Are you working?
What’s he spending his money on?
What time is he home?
Is he getting out to Noanie each week?
And most of alclass="underline" the women — has he been careful? Has he been careful around the women? We don’t want it happening again. It’ll be over for you if you slip again. And she finishes with the promise it’s prison he’ll be and she’s closing the line now and so he should think careful. I’ll hand you over, I’ll tell them all — you’ve given me no choice.
She is usually saying this as the pips on the line declare his money is gone. Pip. Pip, pip, pip. Dead.
Harm was done.
Harm was done and further harm would be done.
He had done it before, but he never did it again.
This is what he tells them.
The ones who ask.
Like mam.
When they come for you Martin John it’s at night. They wait ’til they know you’re home. Then they swoop. They want to bring you out quiet and without a fuss. Go quiet and without a fuss. All they want to know is they’ve got you. They want to say they have you.
They never come for you at work.
If you’re at work they can’t get you. Say it aloud now.
If I am at work, they can’t get me.
(Martin John repeats.)
Nights. It only happens on the night shift. Martin John, his torch for company and his stride. His seat, cheap soup and cold thermos that sometimes leaks. He has the station, it’s all his and he’s safe. The threats are to a building that he is in and they could get him, but they won’t. One of the reasons he works nights is because if they are going to come for him, he figures it will be at night and he won’t be home to be lifted.
It has to be difficult for them to come for him. To find him. If it’s difficult they’ll go for someone else. He gives the daylight a wide berth. Mam told him it is only at night they come for you. They’re too busy with other criminals during the daylight to be bothered. But it’s at night they grow curious about the like of you, the ones who they cannot be sure have done it or not.
Martin John understands perfectly what she is not saying in what she’s saying. She’s saying that night is when they review the tapes. The tapes that they have been taking of him all day long.
Night was the time the funny stuff happened with Martin John.
Night was the time when he felt her wrath more keenly.
She had strong rules about night. She said they would have to show darkness in the house at all times or suspicion would be attracted. She said they must act ordinary. She said people did it during the Blitz. They couldn’t risk a knock at the door. No inquiry Martin John, she said. We don’t want to encourage it. It made everything harder, her obsession with not encouraging inquiry. It was never defined. Every single action they undertook (once he had fouled things up) was completed under the jurisdiction of not attracting inquiry. Shopping would be done far from the nearest town. Necessity. A seized state of forced normality prevailed. Perspicacity. However, she made choices that did attract attention. She (sometimes) kept him from school. He (simply) disappeared from the system. It was as though she thought they’d fail to notice.
Who knew? He knew. He knows he knew but did you know?
At night, after the incident or that incident, for there were more incidents than she knew about, she locked him in his room.
He was a danger to himself and her and it was for the best that she lock him in.
So she locked him in.
In she locked him.
You’d have locked him in.
Until she could get him out of the country. She’d to get him out.
There was the matter of the bathroom. She never addressed it. He learnt to use the bucket. He learnt to wait for morning to come. Sometimes it came and she didn’t always unlock him early. Once she forgot him ’til 11 am. She said sorry. She said he needed rest. She said Get down now, duck! Because the postman was at the window. She said there were no eggs. That day she said a lot all at once and Martin John was dizzy.
They’re closing in on you, she told him, Friday’s the day will do for us. We’ve to get you out. Now she no longer asked him what he had done. She would not touch it. No, she said nothing other than get down and we’ve to get you out.
Not long ’til she planned his exit.
Not long ’til she planned his exit then.
We’ve to get you out.
That’s how it was.
She said they’d left it too long. She did not ask him whether he’d done it anymore.
Only that it could have been a misunderstanding and he could have apologized but they’d left it too long and they were coming for him.
I’ll try, she said. I’ll try to save you.
I think I know the kind of girl she is.
~ ~ ~
Martin John has made mistakes. He went exactly where mam said. He did as he was told.
Except the small, crampy house in London. She does not know about the crampy house. He minded it. Well it was another fella’s. Ralph’s. But him gone “away” to prison. They met briefly. Martin John was the landlord now. Sorta.
He shouldn’t have because if she knew she’d explode. He minded the house from back before the new trouble started. It was a sort of borrowing arrangement. A man in a spot of bother who needed his rent paid and eventually he’d come back once his bother was spotted. Because Martin John had a clockwork pay packet he got it and managed to hang onto it, with a few close blips on the rent radar. Located in a handy but grungy location, it was a cereal-box house with butter-dish-sized rooms and a kitchen not much bigger than a school locker.
Periodically Martin John rents to Lithuanian cleaners or Danish students or Polish taxi drivers and this is dangerous. He tried to find the quiet ones who don’t proffer information, don’t wash so often and won’t boil the kettle dry.
He prefers the ones who don’t stay long — especially the illegals. He can tell them when they ring the bell because they dress smarter than needs be, but their socks and shoes never match and they have a jittery look about them. He always offered the room to an illegal first. They don’t realize they’re getting it because they won’t stay.
The Spanish?
Never!
Too fond of the night and too heavy on the floor above his head.
A Brazilian? Yes!
Rosalie, her lips were incredible — no woman should be bestowed lips that beautiful was his first thought. He almost didn’t give it to her because of the lips: they’d be a distraction to the business of his day. He regretted Rosalie because she still wrote and there was that time he had to go to Heathrow to the Immigration and swear blind she was his and she said she’d never forget what he did, and he wished she would forget because she still writes, though he replies infrequent. The Christmas card he allows her. The card he allows them all. Signed only with his surname Gaffney and MJ dashed after like he’s the single Gaffney there is. (The tin of biscuits at Christmas, that he ceased because he did not want tenants needing to speak to him such as to say Thank you.)
No nationality has permission to knock on his bedroom door. Ever.
They could leave correspondence in an old dustpan screwed upright to the left of his door frame. They never complain. He encourages them to report repairs knowing they never will. They were told never knock at the door, leave a note, the pan was ever empty. It’s why he liked the illegals. They don’t dare ask.