Martin John has not been to Beirut.
He has only been to London and to visit his Aunty Noanie.
The dentist’s waiting room shaped Martin John’s life. A simple room, nothing to suggest it contained the almighty power it did.
It could have been any 5 or 15 minutes in any youth’s lifetime.
He remembered the strange fluorescent light, the organized nature of the room and how odd (it was) for a country dental practice to be so well planned inside a house: treatment room + waiting room. The physical space, so carefully executed, had made him comfortable and sleepy.
Surely to God they’d come. They’d come for him.
She continued to give him the line.
In the hope he might take it.
That he had gone to help that girl.
There were rumours.
Other rumours.
Other girls.
Other moments.
Same boy.
Martin John is living in England now.
In London.
South London.
Off Tower Bridge Road in an enclave of tiny houses, on a slit of a street, at number 7 Cluny Place.
Once, early on, in London, Martin John was vague about the time he went to sleep. Mam told him straight: Get a job at night.
Get a job at night or else I’ll come for ya.
I don’t know, he said.
To every question he said he did not know.
Still they came, the questions came.
I don’t know did not put a stop to them.
He has to know, she said.
He had to know because he was in the room.
If you are in the room Martin John then you know.
Unless you weren’t in the room?
Were you not in the room, she suggests.
Had you gone to the toilet?
Were you (maybe) in the toilet?
I was in the room, he said.
I was in the room and I still don’t know, he said.
Remember for me, she said another time not long after it. Remember would you? It will help us if you remember. We can help you if you remember. The guard had told her to use the word we. If you could get to him with we then we can all help him, he had said. He was a nice enough guard. Had a bit of a red rash on his neck, high blood pressure, but pushing through. That kind of man. The kind of man who pushed through. She imagined pushing through, pushing on, pushing these problems away. Did he have a son? He did. What would he do in her situation? I’ll tell you what I’d do, the guard said. I’d keep at him. He has to remember and we’ll wait until he does.
Those were the early days. The early-on days when there was patience for him, when there was patience for a man who was really only a boy then. Not anymore. All patience expired.
Tell me again what you remember of the chair and the girl? Tell it to me slowly. Remember how you moved over to help her, to let her know her skirt was hitched. Did you pull it down? You did. Did you maybe pull it down now? To afford her decency? You were trying to help her, weren’t you?
I don’t know mama, I don’t know.
Why are you calling me that? She snaps.
Still he maintained he didn’t know.
Was he lying?
Or does he simply not know?
When is she going to tell us what he knows?
How long will we wait only to find out like the last time that she doesn’t know either what he doesn’t know?
Are you feeling cheated? Frustrated?
Imagine the people that had to interview him.
Oh they eventually interview them. Eventually they trip up and there’s no avoiding an arrest or an interview.
He went a long time without an interview though.
Much longer than he should have.
Watch her. She’s telling us things.
She has started. Begun early. Is it going to be like the last time?
Will he do it again?
Will she do it to us again? We’re hopeful.
Is she going to disappoint us?
Mam was wrong about Cluny Place. She read the map poorly. It’s only a bicycle ride from Waterloo Station. Very central. He doesn’t have to sit in tunnels. He can take the bus, strange routes past the cricket ground at Kennington. He can head South to Brixton where he eats spicy patties when his mind is at him. If his mouth is hot, his mind is distracted. He likes his mouth burning hot.
There’s two cafes on Tower Bridge Road. At one, he can get a fry. At the other a pork pie.
This is what Martin John eats.
The newsagent across the road is for his papers. That’s all he needs. Pork and papers are what he needs.
He has the bike.
She doesn’t want him on public transport.
Don’t go near the buses, they might see you on the buses and don’t go down on the Tube for you could go into a tunnel and never come out.
D’ya hear me Martin John?
Did he have a role in it?
Did she have a role in it?
Do you have a role in it?
Should they?
Do you think?
Mam repeatedly asks whether or not he can hear her—d’ya hear me Martin John? Because we can assume she doesn’t feel heard. She doesn’t want to hear what it is he would say, if he were to speak the truth. She saw a man on telly once. She has seen plenty men on telly, but this one frightened her. She has seen many men on telly who frighten her. But he frightened her in a particular way. He frightened her the way she feels frightened when she sees someone lash out at a dog. In actual fact, she’s not a woman easily frighted. The dark, insects, vermin, death, moths in the flour—none bother her.
But a glance, a moment, in which there’s an indication of what might be the truth of a person sits longer at her. A rat would run under the cupboard sooner than look at you. A man or woman who lets a boot fly at a dog or throws an item at a chicken in their way has a raw and sealed-in-something that she’s convinced can never be dislodged. That man on the television made her afraid because she recognized something of her son in him. There were many who talked of their crimes in that programme. They talked like they were uncomfortable ingredients in a recipe. Something hard to shop for like chopped walnuts, ground lemon rind or tamarind. They used the names of the crime, I murdered, I raped, I killed, I punched. Not him. The details are gone. He talked above and around his crime. He remained oblivious or chose oblivion. He was unsure why he was in here. He did not say he hadn’t done it. He did not say it was a mistake. He merely said nothing either way. They showed this man beside a man with a long ponytail, who said he had opted for chemical castration and then physical castration. He was the only one in that prison program who had availed of it. She thought of a small boy, being born, riding a trike, building a fort and then flash-forward all these years. She wondered if that boy building an’ deploying could ever image-forward to the man they might grow up to be. Was it that she thought criminals should suffer unto perpetuity? She thought maybe it was.
Then she pushed it all aside. It was distressing that a stranger, in another time zone, filtered through a televisual tube, could induce this in her. She returned to it being a mistake, a misunderstanding, messing gone wrong, (boys get up to stuff), which it was. Martin John was young and it was only messing.
If people coming down a televisual tube were going to disturb her it would be a long disturbance.
What about it?
She did not like the idea she had a role in it.
You would not like the idea you had a role in it.
Did she have a role in it?
Have you had a role in it?
Do you have a role in this?
These are some of the questions a mother may ask herself.
Another interview, Tuesday morning radio this time, had her by the ear. An interview with a former drug-addicted mother, who wondered if the fact she was an addict was the reason her son grew up to become a drug dealer and robbed a post office in Kiltimagh. It was a strange place to rob a post office, said a priest who happened to be in there trying to buy a stamp. They wondered if her son did it because he’d been watching too much American television. The mother admitted the son glamourized his violence and boosted his profile with the words that the “feds” were after him. The mother admitted she thought the “feds” was a parcel company. I thought he thought he was being chased by the post office. I see different now. How did he get there, the priest on the panel asked. He took the bus, the radio-mother said. The woman interviewing them all said words like Now I realize this is very difficult for you all.
Except it wasn’t difficult for the priest. He was not at fault. Nor was it difficult for the Minister of Justice who was on the line. The only person it was difficult for was that mother with the veins from which her son had grown and robbed a post office. There was an advert where the radio-mother spoke to tempt the audience to keep listening, I botched up motherhood her voice said. Find out after the break, Did she botch up motherhood? annunciated the presenter. Martin John’s mam turned the radio off.
As Martin John’s mam hears the former drug-addicted mother puzzle it out, she recognizes there are many mothers out there puzzling things out. She will have to be a mother who puzzles. Except she is not the type who puzzles. She prefers to head, bang, to a conclusion. In this case: I was not that mother. I am not that mother. I didn’t raise my son to rob a post office. So what did she raise him to?
She prays hard. She incants for him. Once she prayed to St Jude, a man who fell in his own way, so he’d understand this overwhelming need to keep her son straight. I can’t afford no three-time-cock-crowing with Martin John, one more crowing and it’s prison he’ll be.
Everything I do and have done is to keep him on the outside. Sure if it’s in he goes, they’ll kill him. Plain and simple. They’d eat him alive, they don’t spare the like of him. Someday he’ll come home to me. He’ll come home when he’s failing or an old fella and I’ll be waiting.
She’s probably lying.
She doesn’t want him near her.
Ever again.
Some days she dreams/imagines/fantasizes he might be killed. Shot or run over by a bus.
Like them fellas you read about in the papers.
Sometimes they kill men like him. Others do it. They hunt and they kill them. Sometimes they wait ’til they’re inside. Sometimes they leave a note on them.
Martin John’s not as bad as the ones they kill.
She reminds, comforts herself.
Martin John’s mam hasn’t factored her own aging into it. She’ll never age, only waits on him to come home to her.
Three times a year she summons him. Always by ferry: Sealink not B&I. She doesn’t trust anything with a B in it. B&B never, B&Q—won’t go near it. She even wavers over BBC. B gave me trouble my whole life is all she’ll say. That’s what she’ll say on B.
We can suspect Martin John’s father’s name began with the letter B. Was he Brendan or Brian or just a simple Bob? A simple disappearing Bob.
There will be five refrains. The Index tells us there will be five refrains. We can conclude these five refrains may or may not take us into the circuits.
There may be subsidiary refrains: I don’t read the fucken Daily Telegraph. We will do as the Index tells us this time. There could be involuntary refrains, about which, alas, not much can be done, unless you take a pencil to them. When will she tell us exactly what they mean? She may not, since the mother may not ever know why he did what he did, or why it was her son and not the woman up the road’s son. There are simply going to be things we won’t know. It’s how it is. As it is in life must it be unto the page. There’s the known and the unknown. In the middle is where we wander and wonder.
Sometimes he said he hadn’t a clue, but he’d think about it. It was the difference between Martin John and the others. He offers to think about it when she asks him. A man who was pure evil wouldn’t make any such offer, would he?
He did hear her. Yes, he understood. He understood whatever it was he did, he would not do it again.
What was it? She wanted to know. What was it? Tell me what it was.
I have no clue, he said honestly, I’ve no clue at all. But he promised he would think about it.
Was that refrain number 1 or 2?
There’s no refrain called I have no clue. This is an interruption. Martin John does not like interruptions.