JUST COME OUT HERE RIGHT NOW.
He turns his head a touch. He can definitely hear her.
“I’m fucking stuck. Help me right now you moron. I have a child. They’ll arrest me. Quick. I swear they’re coming. Fuck. You’ve got to help me.” She has lost Jesus down here, she has found only a tirade of F-words and the desire to see this man extinguished and herself airlifted to glory.
Something’s moving under there. She can hear the stones shuffle.
The worst part of it, from Mary’s point of view, is that the policeman with the misshapen head is now heaving under one of her armpits to get her back on the platform. It’s been a long, sweaty shift and she does not want this particular man in her armpit. I’ve got her, I’ve got her, legs, someone grab the legs. Someone get her other leg. Push. Two others are clawing at her other armpit and there’s another jumped down to the track and his hand is pushing up her bum, which is pure unnecessary chancery. Shameful, she would later say aloud. One voice remarks on how heavy she is, as some kind of reassurance they are all doing a great job. Her knee scrapes along the platform edge as the punishing thought an Intercity 125 train might arrive from Manchester any second and crush her. She doesn’t care if Martin John lives or dies at this point. She doesn’t care about tonight’s meeting. She just wants back up and out of this swollen volume of manhandling.
On the way back up the platform, pain revisits her palms from pressing on the concrete and there’s a slicing sting beneath her tights from the knee gash. Head lectures onward and upward in undulating clips about the danger of doing such a stupid thing and how she needs to listen when police tell her what to do and they may yet arrest her for obstruction.
“Obviously I didn’t want to go down there, it was an accident,” she says. “I slipped. Innit.”
The better part is it takes two police officers to move the bin along behind her. At the top of the platform while they are asking Mary how to spell her name and writing it into three different notebooks, Martin John is led away by a group of people near her. He is barefoot. His gown is open at the back. His hand reaches behind to hold it closed in some desperate stab at a dignity he’d long lost.
“THAT is the saddest thing,” she declares to Anthony nearby, ignoring her as he fiddles with a button on the side of his digital watch. “Totally unnecessary. Never need happen. People are so isolated. That’s why they should go to church.”
“What’s the date today?” Anthony, still jamming at his watch.
24-HOUR CCTV RECORDING IS IN OPERATION AT THIS STATION FOR THE PURPOSE OF SECURITY AND SAFETY MANAGEMENT.
“I told you I could get him up,” Mary says to no one in particular. “I got him up,” she says triumphantly as she trundles off with the bin.
~ ~ ~
Martin John has left the food court. He flew it hurrying. He more than flew it hurrying. He is in bolt. No one, except him, is quite sure why this half-dressed man has taken up such speed.
A situation, a situation is boiling/bubbling, a situation that must be burst. He must circle it. If he can circuit the station, the situation will be circled. Harm was done, harm was done, so the loop gnaws. Did he or did he not just grab her? Did he lift his gown? He did lift his gown. His hands were under it.
The nun put Martin John in a bad way. This is the refrain he’ll give us. A circuit. A circuit. Only a circuit will erase it. He is barefoot. He is green-gowned. But a circuit, an absolute circuit, which will need to be a square circuit because the station is a box.
He did not touch the nun. He knows he did not touch the nun. Harm was done. He is covered in tea. His arm is wet. His shoulder is wet because Harm was done.
Martin John has told us about the nun, but she never was the sole captive of his attention. He has lied to us about this. He has lied to us about much. Has he lied to us about Baldy Conscience?
Her, over there, sat next to her parents, she’s the reason he sat down here. The nun may be here too. That’s her choice. But Martin John’s choice was towards the young one with long brown hair. She lifts a burger up and down to her mouth. Her eyes do not initially notice him. He diddles about with the tea, but his hand has slipped/passed under the table over his groin. At first he applies pressure from the heel of his palm to his general bulge but as her mouth moves and munches, his subtle mounding movements become strong, flat-palmed, insistent. Up and down. Until he resists no more and macerates it. He’s waiting for her to register him. He’s patient, though. Her hair shades her face and she’s concentrating on her burger. He watches her lips and how she wipes them with the back of her hand mid-sentence. He likes it. She’s somewhere around fifteen or so. Maybe more. Maybe less. Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe he doesn’t care. Her head moves between her food and the conversation to her left. Martin John’s hand below remains firmly with her and he likes what she’s doing for him. He’s lost (in)to it now. He doesn’t notice the man who has joined him at the table to his left because his right hand has found it’s way under his gown and his legs have parted and he’s leaning backwards and focused hard on his task.
People do what people do. They wonder. They elbow. They lean and whisper. They nod. They query. Do you think? Is he? Each other. Doing that? They stand up and look about for someone to report it to. They look for someone to report it to using their arms. They might even walk towards someone panicked and point. They may wave a hand and indicate the problem. Excuse me there’s a guy over here who… or they may just up and move away from what’s happening and allow that someone else will deal with it. Very occasionally there’s a decisive someone who sees it. They have seen it and they know exactly what it is they are seeing.
Not today though. Not today.
Or maybe. Wait now.
Hold on a second.
It’s the man at the next table who, like others, thought he saw what he saw, except, ever-assured, never feels the need to question what he sees, knows it’s what he saw and requires no further confirmation of what he saw. He does not ever move off and find another table when he’s uncomfortable. He stays here. He believes in conclusive ends. He likes them.