All men become the road that leads to Baldy Conscience.
If he had heeded mam, there would be no man.
There would be no Baldy Conscience.
It is too late to heed her.
Once Martin John did contribute. He let up and the Meddlers caught him. The Meddlers trapped him, so they did. In a hospital ward he was. Lambeth maybe. Not North London anyway. There weren’t enough roundabouts for it to be North London. They picked him up by the flyway. They said he said he was going to fly away onto the flyway. Martin John actually said he planned to kill Baldy Conscience and was waiting to push him onto the flyway.
Why do you think they have chosen me, he asks a couple of people on the ward. They assure him they’ve no clue what he is on about. But how would they when it is he who has been chosen? If you are chosen you are alone. You are blessed, but mainly you are alone. He has a brief picture of how lonely it must have been to be Jesus or any man chosen for a big book.
He has a new list of situations where being chosen doesn’t suit him.
Wedding, having to give your daughter away.
Wedding, having to make a speech.
Moving house. Driving the lorry to move people. To decide where people’s sideboards or bunk beds must go inside the van.
Plumber, replacing a U-bend.
Speaking to a visitor on the ward, usually his mother, his only visitor.
~ ~ ~
Was the Eurovision fuss a fuss or a situation?
He’s not sure.
It was a fuss and a situation.
A fussy interrupted situation.
He should not have done it and he knew better, but every year the compulsion of the Eurovision came around. Those two weeks he took holidays from work or pulled sickies. He’d eat, breathe and definitely not sleep for his pet The Eurovision Song Contest. He journeyed each day of those annual two weeks to a particular newsagent’s, where the man Mr Patel told him to “take your time, take your time” going through the newspapers because he knows Martin John’ll end up buying them all — nearly 10 quid each day for a week in paper sales.
When interviewed, Mr Patel — the most gentle of souls, arthritis in his left knee — could not credit the fight that took place and the bags of sugar that flew, and the tinned steak and kidney pies that were toppled in that brief five-minute bare-knuckle dust-up over the last copy of the Daily Express.
The Eurovision pullout special issue was what unhorsed Martin John and the man with his fingers on it. The ordinary Jim Smith of Clapham, who was never in these parts, only that he was calling to his mother and bringing the paper for her. And when it was something for his mother he’d fight to the last and he socked Martin John as Martin John silently stamped on his foot and tried to rip the paper from his hands. Much what the fuck and mate and come on then? And Mr Patel wasn’t sure what they’re at, but it was loud and his single, central food shelf was wobbling and people crowded the doorway and the police must be called. As Martin John was dragged away, victoriously clutching the Daily Express, Mr Patel defended him.
— He’s a good man, I known him for years. Not a violent man. A good man.
Meanwhile, Jim Smith was in the doorway regaling the crowd as to how this fucking lunatic tried to rip his arms out. He had my throat, he gasped. He showed them the scratches. The Irish are savages, one man remarked. Martin John is the victor. He’s the victor all the way back to the psychiatric ward and that night he slept, injected, still clutching the Daily Express under his armpit, rolled up tight.
The next fuss or situation was a fight in the ward over the television. It’s the Eurovision song contest rehearsal and a Jamaican fella and another fella with his leg draped over the arm of his chair in an unbecoming manner have the telly tuned to the football and Martin John is not taking it. Sorry now lads, he waltzes over and switches stations and Jamaica roars and the leg-draper springs from chair to television, while Ireland and Jamaica come to blows and security and nurses invade the frenzy with Jamaica landing a few nice lugs to the Mayo jaw while only sustaining sore toes when Martin John resorts to his best tactic, the heel-to-toe grind. And he’s off to have his face repaired, his chart now marked for seclusion. He wails like a baby as they X-ray him. Seclusion means no television. Seclusion means another day’s loss of Eurovision coverage. He has notes to make. He has observations to record. He has yet to decide whom he is backing. It could be Yugoslavia or Denmark but he hasn’t seen Belgium or the Netherlands. He’s worried about Turkey because the newspapers said they were swaying their arms in a whole new way and have never improved on their 1977 entry. Switzerland is wearing a worrying swan skirt. Spain is wearing two more such skirts. Greece he’s not backing. Greece has produced a doomed song and it’s criminal. The German singer prune-tightened his eyes and contorted his face like he was constipated, which makes Martin John think of bathrooms and Baldy Conscience. The thing that has almighty unsettled Martin John is Ireland is hosting the event and he harbours a deep suspicion of Pat Kenny because his name begins with P. He’s anxious about the combination of Pat Kenny and Terry Wogan’s voices but it all begins and ends with the P, which is why he puts his fingers in his ears to blot out Portugal.
That night things were terrible for him, the worst he decided. As the hallucinations came and came and never ceased, just more and more of them, he was visited the way he’s always visited by her voice in his head.
Get yerself out of there Martin John, get the head down, for God’s sake stop with this and put the head down and look at your feet and follow those feet Martin John, would you for the love of God follow them and stop all this nonsense. D’ya hear me now Martin John? I want you to listen and I want you to visit Noanie next Wednesday or so help me God I’ll land you Martin John and I’ll tear you from the place Martin John. I’ll drag you by the collar out of there. I don’t know what I have done to deserve this Martin John, but I’ll tear you from there and I’ll redden your arse before I am a day older.
It’s her voice. But it’s his head. Always her voice in his head.
He has made mistakes.
The phone calls were a mistake.
He nodded, agreed, signed. Nodded, signed, agreed and they let him go.
After the Eurovision incident, he was calmed.
They let him go, until the telephone calls.
Baldy Conscience drove him to the phone calls. If they’d done the right thing and popped Baldy Conscience into the ward or into a river, the phone calls may never have happened. He might never have lifted the phone. I would not have lifted the phone, he told the police who came for him.
It’s not right to blame another man for your own carry-on. That’s what mam would say. He can hear her say it, even though he’s not sure she ever said quite that. He can hear her. He can hear that said.
The fuss over the Eurovision was a mistake.
Nobody liked fuss.
Fuss had put him back in this ward.
It wasn’t his fault that the other patient wasn’t interested in chatting about the Eurovision. It wasn’t his plan that that particular insert about a woman in the circus falling from a hoop high in a tent would be on the six o’clock local news. The other parts were his fault. They were definitely his fault. All of them. All his fault. But not the patient and the hoop. Nor the patient distressed by the hoop story, who did not want to talk about Beirut. Beirut was not on the news. Now he remembers that was where it started.