Passengers left the train. She did not. Two seats either side of her. He moved over with a plan, but she was onto him. He doesn’t recall exactly her words but something along the lines of fucking, bursting, pervert. She put an elbow up to his throat and it threw his head back. He scrambled towards the door. Exited at an unintended station. He didn’t think women could do that.
Only women on Baldy’s team could do that. Baldy’s plants were closing in on him.
Once he has them with the spout of the water bottle above his trousers, he inches another step further. He lowers his zip. Leaves his fly undone.
They see it.
Of course they see it.
He registers the gaze, the eye-corner glance to confirm. I have you now, he thinks.
Next he removes his underwear before the zip is lowered.
Easy: hide it behind his coat, reveal and let them have it. Give what is wanted.
They have it. They have what it is they want.
Coats can drift. Open. That’s what coats are like. That’s what women like, open coats and a quick face full of him.
He likes it too. He likes what they like.
Sometimes though if it’s raining, it’s not enough. He wants more.
The other thing is at him again. The thing his mother won’t say aloud. So he’s not saying it aloud either. The thing she says he has stopped.
He’s doing it again.
Now it’s feet. He’s started pulling slip-tricks with his foot and their foot, your foot, woman-foot and women-feet and sometimes even woman-legs. Legs are daring. Legs are especially daring on the Underground. Mam told him I don’t want you on the Underground, don’t go on the Underground. She wants him overground where he supposes she can see him. People make things up on the Underground, she told him cryptically.
Martin John is back on the Underground. It cannot end well.
He wants to go between their legs.
He wants to post a letter there.
A letter P, not a B.
There are certain types of footwear it proves easier with. Boots. Flip-flops and sandals he does not like. He likes that they show flesh, they prove there is a foot, but you cannot allow your foot, or his foot, to drape against a foot or leg without acknowledging it. It will hurt. It will hurt if you wear solid work boots like Martin John wears. All year. All weather. Same type of boot. It’s the lower leg he is after; he wants his calf against her calf, whoever she is. Or knee to her flesh. Doesn’t matter who she is. Doesn’t matter who you are, love. You’re incidental. You need only be on the Tube when Martin John’s on the Tube, if he decides it’s the day to cadge a rub. His leg against a woman’s leg. You need only be a woman with a leg. You aren’t special, you aren’t chosen, you are a woman with a leg. That’s it. A leg he finds access to. A leg that happens to be available. That’s all you are.
If he doesn’t manage it on the Tube, he will attempt likewise on a bench. Sit down beside a woman, fumble with his bags as distraction — Tesco carrier bags with ready-made meals work best, they topple perfectly — and drape his leg out so that, for a bitter fraction of a second, before she registers it, his leg will touch hers. Whoever she is. That’s it, that’s all he wants. Just to smear along her. A light buttering. A smudge. Or at least that’s where it starts. Then inevitably he becomes greedy.
If he gets away with small contact he begins to want more. He wishes for summer and shorts and bare flesh. He begins to want to put the palm of his hand on her flesh, whoever she is. (He wants to push his hips up against her.) Ultimately he wants his hand between her legs like a letter.
Often he is curtailed. A head-swiping set of eyes. Her leg will immediately remove from his. Sometimes her whole body will up and depart. Once she was sitting beside her boyfriend. That did not go well. He never ever puts his foot or leg there if a woman is beside a man. Unless the man is old or young, so young he is her child. If she is travelling with a child, he is even more likely to sit down beside her and try it.
Two factors: avoiding Baldy Conscience and if she’s with a child. Those are the two distinct, determining factors.
That time when the British Transport Police cautioned him, how they waited for him on the platform and snuck him away. That was sneaky. That time when they cautioned him he told them he wasn’t long back from Beirut. They seemed to buy it. They asked what he’d been doing in Beirut. Things are different here, they said blankly. In Beirut I put my foot on the bus beside a woman’s foot and she made no fuss about it. We’ve had reports about you, they said. You aren’t to be lurking around the stations. If we catch you we’ll arrest you.
Again, he persisted that he wasn’t long back from Beirut. I was fighting in a war there, he said. I went over for my brother’s wedding and I was dragged into battle. He didn’t like the word arrest. I am like you. I am a military man he wanted the officers to know. You and I, we have been in battle. I am in battle and you too are in battle. We are embattled. They repeated the warning about arrest. They lied and said there had been four complaints about him.
That time when the British Transport Police cautioned him it was the most scared he’d been. If he could not go to Euston it would be very serious. Euston was where he figured many things out. But they couldn’t stop him going there. I’m only going to catch a train, he would tell them.
He started buying train tickets. He had to buy train tickets. He was not allowed to stand in the station without a ticket they said. They were after him. Ever after him. They had caught him. Cautioned him. He had been primed.
It meant he had to ride on trains to places he’d rather not be, but he couldn’t give up on Euston. He bought a rail card to make the tickets cheaper. He noticed they were chronically looking out for him and he contemplated wearing disguises. I only want to walk around a train station, he reasoned. I only want to walk around Euston Station to be away from Baldy Conscience.
Without Euston Station he couldn’t do his circuits.
Nor his crosswords.
He had his rituals.
He knew what he needed.
Pork and pies.
Crosswords and circuits were what he needed.
Euston provided all that he needed.
He concluded Baldy Conscience was directly behind it. He probably had friends in the force. He paid attention to their accents to see whether they sounded like Baldy Conscience. If they did then they were probably related to Baldy Conscience. They all sounded different. Every one that stopped him had a different accent.
Each time they requested his ticket, which was every time they spotted him at Euston, he told them a little more about his time in Beirut. If they were taking his ticket near the train, he would take up their time. He enacted serious efforts to ensure that he took up their time in the hope it might cull their desire to keep approaching him.
It didn’t.
And then it did. It began to keep them away once he talked about the houses and the bread in Beirut. Then he added pigeons and dogs. No one wanted to talk about pigeons nor bread nor moving house. He had the perfect cocktail.
He could cause very long queues with such talk as he pretended to hunt for a ticket that didn’t exist. Trains were delayed. Passengers pushed past. People said mate. They waved tickets at the ticket person and careened by. Still he talked. He was inexhaustible on Beirut. He even surprised himself how much the place was providing in the way of queue-forming conversation.