— Your card never leaves the desk.
— Where my card goes is none of your business.
— Where my mop goes is none of your business.
— It is my business. Look at the state of the fucking floor.
— I cleaned it. Then a man walked on it.
— You are the only fucking man in here at 5 am. She has him at that. This is true.
— Check your card, he repeats. Check your card. Then check my card. I have the most circuits.
She walks away talking to herself. She wonders how she came to be sandwiched this way between a bunch of fucking apes. She threatens him. She threatens him by speaking ahead of herself. She does not turn around and threaten him. There would be no point in that.
— There are no cards, she says. You know there are no fucking cards to check.
Everyone knows there is a machine in the office where the cards are rumoured to be checked except no one has ever seen the machine. Nor has anyone seen the cards physically get checked. But it’s enough. If the manager says there’s a machine in there that checks, they buy it. They believe it. They believe in the machine they have not seen.
There are also technically no cards, but each guard has a badge or someone somewhere convinced someone somewhere that this badge is the card that the machine checks.
The manager dissolves the tension among the guards by allowing them to have a small black-and-white telly on the desk. He is giving them the one that his family used in his caravan in Great Yarmouth because he says they recently obtained a colour one.
But he warns them: any disputes over the telly and it will go. Also, any cleaning not done or any circuits not walked and it will go.
For a time, peace reigns, Martin John walks the others’ circuits, the others do his cleaning, they watch telly while he is chronically walking.
All is well until all is not well.
When all becomes not well it has nothing to do with the cleaning. It has everything to do with Baldy Conscience.
Mam has warned him the only thing keeping him on the straight is the job.
Mam has repeated the only thing he has going for him is the job.
No matter what he does he should never threaten the job.
The job, she points out, stopped you doing the other stuff. The other stuff no one can save him from.
She speaks of the job in the singular as if it’s the only job Martin John will ever get. (He is the The in The Job) As far as she is concerned it is The Only Job. The only job between him and the manhole. If he goes down he’ll never come up.
Get to work, get into bed at a good time and nothing will befall you. Don’t threaten it all now. Don’t do it. And get out to visit Noanie on a Wednesday, she wrote to him in a letter. The world will fall apart. His world will fall apart if he does not visit Noanie every Wednesday. Mam has registered this calculation with the Office of Evaluations. Every time he is admitted to the hospital there has been an interruption to his consistent Noanie visits. She knows because the only time Noanie ever phones her is if Martin John misses a visit. The next phone call that generally follows is from whichever hospital or police station have picked him up. Mam now makes notes on any phone call from Noanie. She notes the time and the date and she puts it inside an unused teapot on the dresser. One day she will open the teapot. She will pour all those receipts onto the table. She will take Martin John’s finger and she will trace his history of not listening to her by banging it on top of each receipt four times to match I told you so. Nothing I can do. Can’t save you now. Over for you.
~ ~ ~
It’s true that he’s not been at the other stuff as far as mam knows or is concerned. This could have something to do with the matter of him living in another country and long being of an adult age, whereby the authorities do not report such things to your mother. Mam does not live with Baldy Conscience.
This is the difference in mam’s reckoning and the actual reckoning.
She has not put Baldy Conscience onto the map of reckoning.
Baldy Conscience has taken over the other stuff.
Or has he?
Or is he just noisier?
Increasingly, all Martin John’s roads lead him back to Baldy Conscience. Increasingly, all Martin John’s problems begin and end at Baldy Conscience. When he shares this information finally with mam by phone outside, predictably, reliably, she doesn’t take it well.
— Don’t mention him again to me. Don’t mention him. Whoever he is keep away from him.
— Well I can’t do that now can I?
— You can and you will.
— He’s upstairs.
— Stop going upstairs.
Before he can fudge a reply, three times mam chimes.
— I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear it.
What they don’t know.
THEY DON’T KNOW THAT BALDY CONSCIENCE IS AFTER HIM FULL-TIME. HE IS ON THE RUN FROM BALDY CONSCIENCE EVEN IN HIS OWN HOME. HE IS ON THE RUN. HE DOESN’T GO UPSTAIRS BECAUSE MAM SAID SHE DIDN’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD ABOUT HIM. GARY TOLD HIM TO TELL BALDY CONSCIENCE TO MOVE OUT. THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND BALDY CONSCIENCE — HE WILL NEVER MOVE OUT.
~ ~ ~
It was identical when the police picked him up by the tree with his trousers undone. They asked him, What are you doing with your trousers open by this tree?
Three times he replied:
Check my card. Check my card. Check my card.
Martin John has refrains.
At this moment in his life he has five refrains.
We have already met two of them.
His number three:
Rain will fall.
That was rain.
Did you hear that rain?
This is what Martin John will ask.
Rain will fall was his refrain.
Rain will fall is his third refrain.
The refrain that he used when he knew he was about to do the thing she said she was glad he was done with.
He wasn’t done with it.
He did not know when he’d be done with it.
He was waiting for the signal. The signal that would come when he knew he was done with it. He wasn’t done yet.
Mam has refrains.
You’ve to stop this nonsense.
Give over Martin John.
You’ll be the death of me.
He knew they’d come for him one day.
Mam had said they’d come, hadn’t she?
I can’t save you. Keep your head down.
Rain will fall. Rain will fall on it.
In nearly every situation there is a Meddler. Martin John has noticed this. Sometimes it can be the same Meddler and sometimes it is a brand new Meddler and sometimes there’s a band of Meddlers. He has learnt to identify them vocally. His response is to announce “I don’t contribute, I don’t contribute.”
Hands up, eyes down.
Stride, stride, stride.
He has a big problem now that a Meddler is inside his house. A Meddler has been in his house for a long time and he cannot get him out. He has meddled his way in, as Meddlers will do. The Meddler might have been sent by the man who owns this house. A man Martin John should never have gotten involved with at all. A man who said no women. Or was it mam who said no women? A man who’d sent a man to test him. All men become a man.