He must now return and visit her tomorrow, a move abjectly necessary because of the predicament this young one has thrown at him. Because of the way the nurse has looked at him.
Two days after she was discharged from the hospital he told the Estonian his sister needed the room. The sister who was married in Beirut? She asked. No, he said, another sister altogether. She was on her way from Ireland and needed the room for a few months. A pregnant sister. A pregnant sister in trouble needed the room.
The Estonian appeared not to hear him correctly, so he repeated: two weeks, if she could find herself another arrangement in two weeks it would be best for the pair of them. A house where there would be someone to keep an eye on her. She cried. He exited to eat a pork pie. When he returned she was still red-eyed.
— Do you mind, she said, do you mind to bring me to the bus stop? I am confused. I don’t remember where it is.
He pulled on his old coat and as he walked with her, she held his arm tight. Past them, the cars mutated into each other, a noisy blur that put paid to the obvious silence. He stood beside her like a leek, counting to 40 and preparing to excuse himself.
— There’s enough room for all of us, she stated as the bus approached. He resisted the urge to ask about Russia’s 1984 Eurovision entry.
Mam was right, always right. He was trapped now. She was trapping him. Not even a pregnant sister in trouble could shift. We can share the room, she said before stepping onto the bus.
To be rid of the woman who may be a Latvian, an Estonian or a Lithuanian (he should know them all, from his frantic Eurovision studies, a further failing not lost on him: the first failing he let her in, the second she forced him to visit her in hospital), he sought unofficial help from the Department of Immigration. It was a cruel swipe, a dirty one, but since he hadn’t heeded mam’s warnings, he had been scalded. He knew precisely what his mam would do.
In the middle of his shift — and thus in the middle of the night — he phones their tip hotline and leaves a description of her and his address. He adds matter of fact that he didn’t know was she an Estonian or Latvian or Lithuanian but these were the hours they could find her there. He adds another line about respecting the laws of this country and Glad to be of service, which, when he hangs up, he regrets. He sounds like an MP on Newsnight: pious and prompt, while his accent gives his origins away.
He was unhappy with what he had done. It might have felt right before he did it, but once he’d done it, an overwhelming urge to reverse it hooked him. It was always this way when he made mistakes.
He kept a careful eye out for the immigration people coming for her. He told her he had seen them snooping around. He assured her that he’d do everything to prevent them access.
— You’re like my family, she sighed.
— Not at all, he rebuffed.
— You’re a very good man, she added.
— I am not, he assured her.
One morning, weeks later, he returns to find her room cleared and she’s gone. He’s puzzled. It was what he wanted, but now she is gone something is wrong.
There would be no tip line to remove her replacement: Baldy Conscience.
He has made mistakes:
Martin John has made mistakes.
Baldy Conscience continues to be his biggest mistake. He has been a five-year mistake. A repeated spade-to-the-back-of-his-head mistake. Baldy Conscience lied when moving in. He cannot remember the exact shape of the lies but Baldy Conscience is not who he said he was. He said he was a quiet man. Baldy Conscience said he liked building ships out of matchsticks.
Baldy Conscience was when all the latest trouble officially started again. He is at the bottom of his current situation and he knows it. He even tells the Doctor in the hospital about Baldy Conscience. He fucked everything up for me. I think there’s legions of people out there bothered by him. He’s probably causing the trouble in Beirut. If you killed him now or tomorrow all would be well. He doesn’t smile when he says it. The Doctor looks down at his paper and etches something onto it.
He has made mistakes.
Baldy Conscience was a terrific mistake.
Baldy Conscience was a turbine of a mistake.
He was a tubular bell of a mistake.
A Chernobyl-fucking-cloud of a mistake.
It was a grave error, an awful grave one.
He was swayed by the accent, by the good boots on the young man and the thinning hair on his head. If a young man had boots like those, there couldn’t be much up with him.
And he was in. Baldy Conscience was in to his house and it was only on the second day he realized the man had guitars, and there was to be no guitars.
There could be no guitars because where there’s a guitar there’s people and didn’t he tell the fella he could have the room all right, but no visitors? No people coming around. Ever. Did he use the word ever?
He did.
How many fucken ways were there to say No people comin around. Ever.
Baldy Conscience was not an illegal. He hadn’t the fear of an illegal. He was fearless. Disgustingly so.
They all want the room as soon as it is advertised because it is cheap and there’s nothing cheap in London. He’ll have to be shut of him, but how will he get him out? He was not an illegal like the Brazilian and he was not a woman like the Brazilian. All good. All fine. He didn’t want any women, nor Brazilians, after that young one pouring pills into herself.
Mam told him, no Martin John and be careful Martin John and keep away Martin John and for the love of God Martin John, into bed at 9 Martin John, if you’re not in the way of trouble you’ll not meet it Martin John.
And he was in the way now. He was well away in the way. He had scored a hat trick of being in the way. Snookered. Scuppered. Sunk. A scattered, sloping skunk.
But the problem of the Baldy Conscience — his guitars, his blokes with guitars who kept coming around — is not away. They were cute all right, cute in the brain, cute hoors they were. They were cute way into tiny dimensions and holes he couldn’t locate, with their wiggling an’ worming and almighty fucking burning. Of Him. They had him cornered there below them and were torching him. They were pissing on his head up there. They had him all right. Fuck they had him. They had him in ways he couldn’t have foreseen it was possible to be had. They wore hats and tight jeans and black boots like disguises.
Knock the front window, not the door, and the window above shook with the house so old and draughty. He could not go out and confront them with: Who are you and why are you at my door? Couldn’t go out and yell at the little gobshite that nobody means no-fucking-body, nobody did not mean a young fella with a sackful of guitar. And it was not just the one, they were all the same, only difference was the length of their hair, the bags under their eyes, the depleted heels on their shoes. Do these gobshites not know the shoe repair, the shoe repair on every street and railway station in this confounded city from Baker’s Street to Battersea? A man stuck in a hole in the wall with cylindrical machines to resurrect the British shoe and these hairy eejits not willing to shell out two pounds for a repair. This was one of so many things that frustrated Martin John about this hapless young fella and his unwelcome entourage.
Cunt, the Baldy Conscience says cunt. Upstairs on the pay phone he says it. So often he said it. Cunt this and cunt that and he’s a cunt and she’s a cunt. He doesn’t like the word. Cunt makes him think of thunk. The sound his thump made. Martin John doesn’t like the word, he doesn’t like it at all and he closed his door each time they rang the phone. But still the accent, the gutteral c-c-c and the swallowed unt. Martin John kicked the skirting board when he heard it to be shut of it. But it wouldn’t go. There was usually a pile of videos in the way and the pile took the kick and made a clatter. It was a bad word, a bad, bad word, an awful word that made him think of the women and the woman and the girl and he won’t think again of the girl because if he remembers that day then he’ll go through it in his mind and wonder about where he was. Was he on the edge of the plastic seat as he remembered or was he at the edge of the box beside her, as her mother stated? He can’t recall the small of her back. He can recall the thump. The thump he gave her. Sometimes it is there and sometimes it is not. He can see the fabric of her skirt. He remembers the woman at the reception who pointed her finger at him. He remembers where he gave the girl the thump. That is why he doesn’t like the word cunt.