And then he didn’t care what she liked or didn’t like. It switched from the pounding of enticement to only his solo delectation at delivery. If violence followed, so be it. He considered violence celebratory now. That, she, whoever she was, would find cause to report on him, that she’d have to repeat something of what she saw and what he did. That she’d need to pass along details sufficient that it would anger a father, a brother, a boyfriend. Spring him to fury. Ultimately then, he’d nabbed two of them. She had to open her mouth and speak of him, even if she would not speak to him.
When things were bad he felt they were coming for him. He felt it every minute of any day when things were bad. He made signs that indicated this and placed them all over the house. Another reason he needed the house empty of tenants. The signs had to be written out and they needed to be hung up or left in corners so they’d catch his eye.
He wrote these instructions often during the bad times. He wrote them in black marker on the back of double LPs. He wrote them on abandoned lumps of hardboard. He wrote them on the covers of his Eurovision videos. He listed what needed to happen for him to be good. He placed one such sign in the front window of his house. Once he ran out of things to make signs on he would settle and watch the same videotape over and over. In between he would pace to the front window, and if he wasn’t satisfied, would open the front door, step out and read the sign aloud. Sometimes he left the front door open after he did that, like someone passing might come in and agree with him. They’d settle down and he’d be guarded.
When things are not good, mam was right, he had made them this way. It’s a mess entirely of your own creation, she’d say. He tried to keep writing instructions, but at number 4 often became confused and lost his way. He wrote instructions that were not relevant. No smoking, no drinking, no smoking, no drinking, no fizzy drinks. Then the instructions puzzled him. He felt pursued and would lift the phone and begin making calls.
Martin John is amazed at how thoughts of Baldy Conscience can provoke him to a dark and low place. He’s darkly amazed, sinister amazed, razed amazed. Take today. Martin John has not been able to move. That man and all he symbolizes have him stewed. Stuck to the edge of his barmy-looking bed surrounded by his towers of videotapes and Eurovision memorabilia like a battlement. He sits. He seethes. Sometimes in the night the piles topple in on him. He has a reflex for removing them. He can gently push them off with a foot if need be. They incur no damage.
Last night, and late last night at that, and maybe even this morning, when he should have been sleeping, he was roused instead by the gargle above. The howlin’ and hootin’ of that man still going long after the moon himself had gone to bed. Baldy Conscience has been going all night. He’s up there. There are guitars up there. There might even be a brass band up there. There’s men up there and Martin John doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it because where there’s men, sometimes there’s a woman even.
Among the violent possibilities that occur to Martin John as to how he should deal with Baldy Conscience, the possibility of slamming a tambourine down on his head and allowing that bullocky dome to split the skin until it sinks, tinkling round his neck. The tinkling would settle a humiliation upon Baldy Conscience that another man might not notice. Martin John had noticed him big on sounds: the cunt word on the telephone, the carping sounds in the bathroom, the sniffing and strange caulking sounds in the back of his throat. Baldy Conscience was always on the brink of a sniff. There was never a sniff far from him and yet he exhibited tremendous control. Martin John could tell because he emitted his worst sounds outside Martin John’s bedroom door as though he saved them up for him. Thus the sound of chronic tinkling each time Baldy Conscience shifted his neck would scupper his hole all right.
He has strong urges to pound Baldy Conscience, but he lacks the means to enact them and becomes distracted conjuring up scenarios of imagined humiliation for him, which only makes Martin John angrier because he realizes, as he concludes plotting each one, that he has still neither pounded him nor humiliated him. He is energized by thoughts of what he must do to Baldy Conscience and yet is stopped still in his tracks. That he cannot execute any active means to stop this man ruining his life or occupying his home. Never has he been so violently allergized to another human. Each and every time the Baldy Conscience moves or opens his mouth it inflicts an itchy discomforting plague on Martin John. Baldy Conscience is under his epidermis like scabies. Specks of him and his awfulness have lodged themselves into Martin John. Baldy is a new Cromwell for this South London landing.
Martin John is sleeping less and less.
He is afraid of what Baldy Conscience is up to. That which he cannot see. He lays traps to monitor and track him. Mossad-type tricks. A piece of thread here. (Movement confirmed Baldy certainly uses the bathroom.) Markers on the teabags and the kettle. Again, he’s stealing Martin John’s teabags. He buys an extra lock for his room that he can secure from the inside and outside yet he’s still convinced Baldy has been in and is moving things about. A deliberate taunting. He can see items appearing like that powder puff — how did that find its way into Martin John’s room?
One Thursday Baldy Conscience returns a videotape to him which Martin John swipes hastily and disappears. He does not recall lending him it and a heightened panic lands that Baldy has breached his bedroom door and acquired the videotape from his intrusions. He opens the bedroom door again.
— Where did you get it?
— You lent it to me.
— I don’t remember.
— You fookin gev it to me ya numpty.
Too many words, Baldy Conscience is releasing too many T-sounds and numpty doesn’t sit well with him. These sounds are dementing. He must take cover from them. Under a blanket, moths and muck. But the voice volume increases and he can hear Baldy repeating fookin gev, fookin gev. Remember. Lent. Remember. Numpty, numpty, numpty.
Martin John does not want to look at Baldy Conscience anymore. When he sees him he squints, yet Baldy Conscience, bold as you like, holds his own and stares him down.
Startle-stares him down, nearly takes the underpants off him in that stare. He is out to destroy him. Baldy Conscience will take him down where the others until now have failed. Mam is right. They have come for him.
He phones mam.
— They have come, he tells her. They are here. A man is here.
— Where are you Martin John? Are you in the pub? Put the head down and get on with it and stop with this nonsense. Don’t be ringing me ever about no men. There’s no men, she says. It’s only women. Women you’ve to watch. Do ya hear me Martin John? Don’t start again. For the love of God don’t start again. I’m not for listening another word. I haven’t the time or the patience.
Martin John knows that Baldy Conscience set up the robbery which is why he’s not giving you any details about the robbery because he knows that you’ll take it back to Baldy Conscience first chance you get. You’ll write it up here and there and you’ll say this and hint at that and he won’t have it. He won’t have you sending Baldy Conscience to take a slice off him.
He is gathering evidence.
He is gathering evidence on Baldy Conscience before he makes his final move.