Martin John finds value in repetition. He always has. As a child he liked to wander around lampposts in town. It drove his mother mad. It took perpetuity to move him anyplace for he would loop endlessly around every lamppost they passed. Mam could go into a shop and come out and be assured Martin John would still be there doing his lamppost loops.

He takes this repetition to Euston. At Euston Station he does circuits. He walks corner to corner in a square. People look up at the departures board while their suitcases and trolleys interrupt his circuits. If one is interrupted, he prefers to recommence it. This is why he loves Euston. It’s an opera with an aria that never ends.

It is concurrently why he is good at his job. Martin John does the most circuits in his job. All the guards know this and encourage him to do fewer circuits. Gary, a guard who does virtually no circuits, pointed out to Martin John he was making the rest of them look shoddy. Martin John agreed he’ll do Gary’s circuits if Gary does his cleaning. Gary looked blank and pointed out they work opposite shifts. Martin John said that’s grand: Gary needs to change shifts. Gary said he doesn’t need to change shifts because he has three children he has to take care of at night while his wife works at a factory. What he needs is Martin John to stop doing so many circuits and sit down and watch television instead. It’s what all the guards do. He makes this statement a question. You won’t be able to keep it up. He makes this statement a warning.

It has been enough years that Martin John knows he can keep it up. Gary has no idea the sorts of things Martin John is used to keeping up nor what he’s using to keep it up. He does not comprehend the self-imposed pressures Martin John lives by. If Gary had to live with Baldy Conscience, Gary would realize that the circuits are necessary to survive him.

The only deal I can do with you involves you hurting a man. Martin John says it straight, direct, and stares at Gary when he says it. Gary shakes his head. I really don’t get you, he says.

—There is a man living in my house and if you can get rid of him, I will do fewer circuits.

—Throw him out, Gary replies.

This conversation is going nowhere. Conversation with Gary never goes anywhere. His brain is the final bus stop on the route.

Another problem with Martin John’s endless contested circuits is that Martin John ignores the cleaning schedule. The cleaning schedule that all the guards are meant to adhere to. The cleaning needs to be done. Martin John does not believe in the cleaning schedule because Baldy Conscience has views on cleaning and each time he puts a mop into a bucket, Baldy Conscience comes to mind. He has solved this problem by trading with the Bosnian. He allows the Bosnian to sleep and does double the loops. The Bosnian wakes at 5 am and does Martin John’s cleaning. Martin John does two buildings’ worth of walking. The Bosnian does 2 hours’ worth of cleaning. A good trade. A co-operative European union. The Irish man, the Bosnian. Understood by both men. In two languages. No argument. Ever.

Except when one is off sick.

The Bosnian appears to manage his circuits. Martin John, however, just ignores the cleaning. This is fine.

Unless it rains.

Given it is South London it regularly rains. As eggs are eaten, so it rains. It is the kind of rain that makes its mark. Especially in the hallways. Rain will fall, Rain will fall, Martin John mutters out the windows to the weather. Rain will fall is his code word for I am screwed. Still he doesn’t want to go near the bucket. Still he doesn’t want to deal with the bucket. Rain does not send him to the bucket. If he goes near a bucket Baldy Conscience looms and all is ruined. He is reminded what none of them know.

BALDY CONSCIENCE IS AFTER HIM FULL-TIME.

Baldy Conscience wants the house. Baldy Conscience wants to be the landlord.

When Martin John ignores the cleaning, Dallas is waiting. He fills up the forms that say the cleaning was not completed. When Martin John arrives for his shift, Dallas leans over the top railing to greet him with the announcement, pointing to the floor that Martin John is walking upon—Cleaning wasn’t done man. Cleaning wasn’t done.

Martin John is always apologetic to Dallas but claims his stock excuse that he became distracted reading the Bible. Dallas then asks, which part has he been reading? Martin John repeats whatever he has read because when Martin John does not want to do the cleaning he reads the Bible knowing that if he has done so, Dallas will tear up the form and they can carry on. (Like good Christian men carry on.)
In anticipation of meddling he also brings Dallas cheap pies. The man is a pussycat in the midst of a pie. The cleaning in this instance can be overcome.

Yet Dallas is not the only guard who objects to Martin John doing the dodge on his cleaning. There’s that woman guard. There’s the woman guard that none of the men like because she is bigger than them, rounder than them, more careful than them, and all things considered, more frightening than doing the cleaning.

Because none of the men like the woman it is easy to escape her accusations. Let’s say Sarah, the woman, or the witch as the men call her, reports Martin John has not done his cleaning. Despite the fact the floor and bathroom on the cleaning list remain uncleaned, despite the overwhelming evidence to support this fact, Martin John can opine to the manager—a man whom they never really see unless there’s a problem—that Sarah has a vendetta against him. That she constantly reports on him. She hates me. I don’t know what her problem is.

She hates us all, the manager once replied.

Sarah’s problem is merely that she wants to do her job properly and she wants the guys to do their jobs properly. The guys have other plans. Sarah does not understand people who do not do their jobs properly. It is a serious business having a job. She doesn’t like slackers. Yes she eats too much but it’s none of their fucking business. They are not paid to guard the opening to her stomach nor calibrate its contents. She does her job properly. She doesn’t understand those who don’t. You can see the problem the guys have with Sarah. You can see the problem Sarah has with the guys. The manager is stuck in the middle. He likes that Sarah does her job properly, but agrees with the men she is disgusting for no other reason than they insist she is. The manager does nothing. The men call her that fat bitch. One calls her a slag. Sarah only ever talks about the fact they don’t do their job. She doesn’t mention their waists, or their wives, or the way they smell. And they do smell. Of course they smell. All men in uniforms, indoors, smell because Sarah has the United Nations sense of smell. Her smell is funded by NASA. They could lock me in a lab and ask me to sniff and I’d be useful, she once told Martin John. Sometimes they forget to flush the staffroom toilet. That bothers her bad. They’ve stopped doing that because she screams if she comes across it and will stand in the middle of the place and say RIGHT. Fucking Right Now whosever arse put that lump of shit in the staff toilet get it down here now and get rid of it before I put your fucking head in there with it.

Martin John can easily find his way around Sarah. (For one, he never ever shits on duty.) Go and check my card, he’ll tell her.

Go and check my card in the machine and then check your card in the machine and see how many circuits mine registered yesterday, then we can talk about cleaning.

—My card has nothing to do with cleaning. Your card has nothing to do with cleaning. Cards don’t do the cleaning. A fucking mop and bucket does the cleaning.

—Your card never leaves the desk.

—Where my card goes is none of your business.

—Where my mop goes is none of your business.

—It is my business. Look at the state of the fucking floor.

—I cleaned it. Then a man walked on it.

—You are the only fucking man in here at 5 am. She has him at that. This is true.

—Check your card, he repeats. Check your card. Then check my card. I have the most circuits.

She walks away talking to herself. She wonders how she came to be sandwiched this way between a bunch of fucking apes. She threatens him. She threatens him by speaking ahead of herself. She does not turn around and threaten him. There would be no point in that.

—There are no cards, she says. You know there are no fucking cards to check.

Everyone knows there is a machine in the office where the cards are rumoured to be checked except no one has ever seen the machine. Nor has anyone seen the cards physically get checked. But it’s enough. If the manager says there’s a machine in there that checks, they buy it. They believe it. They believe in the machine they have not seen.

There are also technically no cards, but each guard has a badge or someone somewhere convinced someone somewhere that this badge is the card that the machine checks.

The manager dissolves the tension among the guards by allowing them to have a small black-and-white telly on the desk. He is giving them the one that his family used in his caravan in Great Yarmouth because he says they recently obtained a colour one.

But he warns them: any disputes over the telly and it will go. Also, any cleaning not done or any circuits not walked and it will go.

For a time, peace reigns, Martin John walks the others’ circuits, the others do his cleaning, they watch telly while he is chronically walking.

All is well until all is not well.

When all becomes not well it has nothing to do with the cleaning. It has everything to do with Baldy Conscience.

Mam has warned him the only thing keeping him on the straight is the job.

Mam has repeated the only thing he has going for him is the job.

No matter what he does he should never threaten the job.

The job, she points out, stopped you doing the other stuff. The other stuff no one can save him from.

She speaks of the job in the singular as if it’s the only job Martin John will ever get. (He is the The in The Job) As far as she is concerned it is The Only Job. The only job between him and the manhole. If he goes down he’ll never come up.

Get to work, get into bed at a good time and nothing will befall you. Don’t threaten it all now. Don’t do it. And get out to visit Noanie on a Wednesday, she wrote to him in a letter. The world will fall apart. His world will fall apart if he does not visit Noanie every Wednesday. Mam has registered this calculation with the Office of Evaluations. Every time he is admitted to the hospital there has been an interruption to his consistent Noanie visits. She knows because the only time Noanie ever phones her is if Martin John misses a visit. The next phone call that generally follows is from whichever hospital or police station have picked him up. Mam now makes notes on any phone call from Noanie. She notes the time and the date and she puts it inside an unused teapot on the dresser. One day she will open the teapot. She will pour all those receipts onto the table. She will take Martin John’s finger and she will trace his history of not listening to her by banging it on top of each receipt four times to match I told you so. Nothing I can do. Can’t save you now. Over for you.