BC is undeterred. He is unaffected by Martin John’s instructions and diligent labelling.
The ante must be upped.
The telephone is a great weapon.
The telephone is a great weapon in the battle with Baldy Conscience.
He knows the man works someplace. He has something of a job. He can’t remember exactly what. Maybe it’s cleaning he is. Is he a janitor? Does he clean drains? He rings every cleaning company listed in the telephone book and leaves threatening messages. Sometimes people answer. He reads aloud his threat with his mouth covered by a handkerchief. Sometimes the person simply answers What?
And so he must repeat his threat that if they employ a person by the name of “Baldy Conscience” terrible things will happen to their company, including the damaging of property and the endangering of human life.
He edited the threat speech a few times, to make it more concise and intimidating. It merely ends up sounding more and more formal and confusing to the phone responder.
— Wot?
— Who is this?
— I think you’ve got the wrong number.
— Are you fucking kidding me?
— Who is this?
— I think you’ve got the wrong number.
Once someone blew a whistle in his ear. He didn’t like that.
Another time a woman said he’d already rung her because she also worked at another cleaning company.
The one that really scared him was the man who said his number had flashed up and he knew where he lived and he was going to come over there to fucking burst him open and not clean up afterwards.
Martin John does not like this woman.
He does not like this woman opposite him at the lunch table in the unit. He does not like what she is saying about Beirut.
She is saying she is from Beirut.
She is disputing what he says about Beirut.
She says there are no golden-shod women in Beirut.
She says the dogs are like dogs everywhere.
She says people are not always moving house in Beirut.
She repeats the word Beirut over and over again.
It’s his word. His Beirut.
It’s my Beirut, he says.
It’s not your fucking Beirut, she says.
You’ve never been there, she says.
She says shite she doesn’t know about.
Golden-shod, Martin John says.
Shut up.
I won’t. Golden-shod.
You’re crazy, she says.
There was another such run-in with a woman on the bus. He cannot recall the number of the bus and this bothers him. He searches for the number. It’s gone. Yet he knows it’s there. In there, somewhere, amid the mass of worms gradually eating away at his various cortexes. In there is a number, it could be a single- or a double-digit or even a triple-digit number. Was it an express? It could have been an airport bus. A double or a single-decker? His mind is seized with buses from two countries. Buses that have drivers with concrete feet that slam brakes suddenly and announce the destinations. Buses with ding-dong bells. Buses with no bells. Buses with smells. Buses with no smells. Bus hell. Which bus was it? It’s gone. Gone. The way it goes when he takes the drugs as they’ve told him to. Gradually more and more information being drained, pulled away — seep, seep, seep.
It began on the bus. The bus, Beirut and these women telling him what to do. The women telling him how it is. He has fought with women on buses before. There was the time, the other time, nothing to do with the Beirut time, that the woman accused him of treading on her ankle. Actually he’d been trying to rub against her leg. She didn’t even have it right.
The woman shouted at him. Mam had not said no to the buses. Mam has said no to the Tube. Mam has said he’s only to be on the buses in London. Mam has said. He doesn’t remember what mam has said.
He phones her.
— What did you say?
— About what?
— About the buses?
— I didn’t say anything about the buses.
— You did. Before.
— Before?
— Before.
Then he gives her a several-minute loop of before, before, before, before, before. She’s gone then when he stops.
He phones her again.
— Don’t start, she says.
— Don’t be starting with me, Martin John. I haven’t the patience. Did you take your tablets?
He’s silent.
They’re all after him with these tablets. In the tablets are the bus numbers, the bus colour, the bus shape. In the tablets are the golden-shod women that this unshod woman disputed. She, who is sitting here, in this dining room in the place they brought him because they said he didn’t take his tablets. She who is wearing slippers. The way they are all wearing slippers in this ward.
The nurse offers him the tablet in a cup.
He says he doesn’t like the colour of the cup. She says it’s a colourless cup, but she’ll see if there’s any other.
She returns with another colour cup.
He says it’s too big. He wants the tablet in a small cup. He says he won’t read the Daily Telegraph. He says he wants the Beirut woman gone. The nurse says there’s no Beirut woman. There’s just Tonya. Tonya, it’s Tonya, that’s who it is. Tonya from Peckham. Tonya has a Walkman and is sat quiet. She has a magazine.
The next time the nurse returns, she brings four others with her and they inject Martin John in his flank or it might be his thigh. They certainly have him by the thigh. They push him flat on the bed to put the jab into him and in that pushing act they remind him how he likes to feel his bladder full. Bladder full against the mattress. He likes that he remembers. That is nice. Thank you he says to the five of them as they stream from his room. One person lifts his leg into bed and he stays there on his side. Just waiting. Waiting for he’s not sure what: someone to lift his other leg?
Martin John can go home if he agrees to the team. The team will come and visit him. He agrees to the team without realizing that the team means a woman whose name begins with P. Patrice is his home care/mental health worker. He does not like words that begin with P so he will not answer the door to *atrice. Baldy Conscience answers the door to *atrice and says what he always says to anyone who comes to the door for anything, that he is the only person home and it is only he who lives in this house. He has heard Baldy Conscience say this before and back then he was alarmed. Now it is very convenient.
Each time *atrice returns, Baldy Conscience asks her questions. What does she want? Why is she calling? Baldy Conscience asks *atrice if she is his — Martin’s — girlfriend. He has halved his name. Half-eradicated him in one question.
Is that why you want to know when the last time I saw him was? Martin John does not hear what *atrice says next but BC says Fuck you’re kidding and Martin John does not like the sound of the you’re kidding. The note in it is low. Too low. It’s a deep-sounding word. Like Baldy Conscience is excited by what he has heard and he is going to do something with this information. Like erase his remaining half, the “Martin” in Martin John.
There were to be no P’s. He had decided that when he made the lists of words from the *aper. He had seen the *roblems with P words and he was finished with them. That was how it would be. No P’s.
He goes to visit Noanie so that if the hospital makes a fuss they will phone Noanie, who will say What harm? He was here. He is here. Noanie will say, What harm?
— You’re here, she says. Where were you?
— I was there.
— You were.