Snipers in the roof are already in place. They are possibly trained on the back of his head.
He regrets choosing to face the ground rather than the roof.
Would they also kill the horses to get at him?
~ ~ ~
He hadn’t even the good grace to come home directly. No, mam had to go over to England and collect him. But first she had to get him outta there. For wasn’t he inside again and this time with the Irish sea between them. He’d not just gotten himself in, he’d gotten himself stuffed so far inside she had to plead with them and makes promises to them so they’d let him out. She’d make her life only about him. She would. Oh she would. (When had her life not been about him?) It took weeks to convince them. He’s very ill, they said. Mentally ill. He’s not, she thought. He’s just a very bad listener. And she told the doctors this. And they were also very bad listeners.
The single good listener is Noanie, who agrees with her. She’ll take her lead from Noanie and him above. When they gave her all kinds of names and titles and explanations she gave them back the bald facts as they stood between her and the file folder notes and those white coats. I’ve told him. I’ve warned him for years. I said I was sure. If only he’d heed me but he won’t and now he’ll pay. They’ll kill him if he ends up in there.
In the end she brought Noanie in with her. When Noanie heard the details of what he’d done and how they found him in the station: What? she said. What? Come again? I’m surprised I didn’t see that in the paper.
Mam sat beside Noanie and ran through the inventory of warnings she’d given Martin John whilst insisting to the doctors no, no, he’s never gone this far, while knowing she had no true idea of how far he might have gone. But he had technically never set a building on fire to her knowledge. A good, hard-working man he is. Was the fire a suicide attempt? I hope so, she thought. I hope so. Please God he’ll succeed the next time. She said none of this aloud. Only what she’d learnt to say, I don’t know, I don’t know and perhaps beneath her breath they might have heard, I don’t want to know. Please spare me. Redirect it in the post to someone else.
But they’d an awful thick sheaf of notes on him. They weren’t going to let her off easy. They’ve a big folder on him, she told Noanie on the train back to Hatfield. They do, Noanie said. But he’ll get out. They can’t afford to keep him in there and they release all the lunatics onto the street and he’ll be no different. We’ll have him out by the end of the week.
They agreed she could bring him home to Ireland. You’ll have to bring him home, Noanie said. ’Til he’s stable. Then you can let him come back. Mam didn’t want him home. It only seemed like yesterday she’d managed to get rid of him.
He needed a strong hand, mam told the doctors. That was what was missing. A good strong man’s hand. Mam offered no explanation as to why a man’s hand was missing. Why a man’s hand, say, couldn’t be found in North or South London. If that was what could fix him? Prison might be the only thing that could fix him. She didn’t say it aloud, but she thought it. She thought about what Noanie said. Noanie said lock him in. Lock him in, she said. She didn’t say how. The how was her own doing.
He’ll have to come home with me. I’ll mind him, she said. I’ll let him know what’s what.
These fellas can do nothing for him, mam told Noanie, who agreed that people who talked in a medical language could do nothing. They can do nothing really, they may as well be talking to the wall for all the sense they make, Noanie said brightly while she fed her green bird. Then she said Timmy the bird would need cleaning out on Thursday and when she cleaned him out she had to let him fly around the room and he’d expect to do his tricks, so if they could get Martin John out of the hospital one way or the other by Thursday it would be for the best. I’ll have to clean him, she said, indicating the bottom of his cage. There’s only so long he can go without cleaning. Everything has to be right when I clean him or he’ll get upset.
They were getting sick of the hospital and the hospital was getting sick of them and Martin John was in-between the lot of them, making no sense at all.
— He’s going on about Beirut all the time. It’s Beirut this, Beirut that. Why’s he doing that, Noanie wanted to know.
— I’ll tell you the truth, I think they injected him with something. Or he needs a bang on the head. Or, mam whispered, he’s just pretending. Mam swings between two poles. The bash-him and fix-him poles. The sympathy and I’m-sick-of-him poles. The let’s end it: It’ll-just-take-time poles.
That evening Noanie said brightly they were wasting their time, all of their time, and they needed to put a stop to it. Well Noanie said it as they were eating a trifle that she’d made that day. The only thing I am not satisfied with about this trifle, Noanie said, is the bottom layer. The other two layers I can live with, but there’s something missing in the bottom layer. They agreed some mini-oranges or a splash more of sherry might be it.
The rest of the week she and Noanie watched telly together silently.
— It’s an awful interruption.
— Oh it is.
— Why couldn’t he have paid more heed?
— There was no telling him.
Each evening, with or without trifle, they reached the same conclusion. It was all a waste of their time. All of their time.
— I haven’t time to be dealing with this, mam said. I’m not for another minute of it.
She worried though. He’d been away so long and that was a good thing. It was a good thing he’d been away so long as they might not remember when they see him back. Noanie didn’t ask what it was they might not remember but they both agreed whomever she didn’t want remembering might not remember. Noanie thought she was talking very loosely. No one remembers much anymore, she said. It was no consolation, but mam tried not to think beyond that fact. People forget, do you think? Oh they do, Noanie said, they do.
She had a plan for what she’d do when she got him home. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was a plan.
~ ~ ~
She works at the French-themed bakery that the majority of passengers trek by to purchase food at the burger and chips joint beside it and her name is Mary and she is devout. Mary and Martin John had once come to blows when he tried to grab hold of her hand as she gave him change for a pain au chocolat he didn’t really want.
Today Mary is pushing a large rolling rubbish bin down to the massive compactor where the transfer over her head has to be made. It’s full of dirty baking paper, napkins and gunk. The compactor, located well out of sight, is beneath the station, for passengers must never be made aware of the volume of disposable muck they create while travelling up/down the country’s railways. It requires two people to bring down such an oversize bin, but staff cutbacks have doomed the safe, unobstructed passage of this rolling heap of crap.
There are police officers in her way.
There are random men and women in her way.
There are British Rail people blocking her way.
“You can’t go through,” an unidentified uniform, appearing from the front of the giant bin, tells her.
“Well I am not taking this rubbish home to Watford, am I? I work here. I need to bring it down.”
“You’ll have to wait. We’re not letting anyone through.”
Mary is determined she is not taking this crapheap back to the food court because Florence, her Irish supervisor, will only insist Mary return with it again, under the plea my back, my back love. I can’t risk it. It’ll put me on a stretcher.