Montague Jones was many things to many people. To his mother he was always Montague Barrington Pilkington Carrington Jones because that was the name she had given him. Montague because it was Romeo’s surname. His mother had never read Shakespeare – in truth she had read little beyond the menu at McDonald’s – but she knew the story of Romeo’s all encompassing love and she hoped that by giving her son that name he would be spiritually bound to reserve the same kind of devotion for her. In truth he hated the name and despised his mother for giving it to him. Worse still the supernumary names that she had insisted upon attaching to it, which she used in full whenever the occasion allowed, preventing Montague from pretending, even to himself, that they did not belong to him: Barrington, after a village she once saw on a jig-saw box, to which her romantic soul told her she would retire one day where she would drink Amontillado sherry from a tiny cut-crystal glass, rather than the mugs full of gin that routinely helped her make it through the day as a young mother; Pilkington because it reminded her of the double-glazing salesman who had brightened her day just nine months before her son was born and Carrington because the name allowed her a little nod towards the daughter she actually wanted by using the surname of Joan Collin’s character in Dynasty. Jones was the surname of the man who – before the days of DNA testing – appeared on his birth certificate as ‘Father’ and to whom Montague’s welfare was entrusted after the untimely death of his mother.
To his father he was always known as Monty, a name he particularly despised having seen the cover of a book “Monty – His Part in My Victory” by some bearded weirdo on which the Monty character was depicted as a wizened shrew-like man with a hook nose and a strange grey moustache that looked like it was trying to escape his face. Montague hated any association with this character and his father, sensing his son’s discomfort, was all too willing to heighten his unease by claiming to anyone who would listen that he had actually been named after the great man himself. Montague swore that he would take revenge one day when he was older, but fortunately his father passed away whilst he was still at school, the result, according to the coroner, of a diet that consisted almost exclusively of brown ale and chips and caused the kind of imbalance that almost certainly led to him toppling down the stairs early one Sunday morning whilst his son played ‘Cowboys and Indians’ in his bedroom with a cast made up entirely of household implements and cushions.
His outright refusal to respond to the name Montague at school led to him being known as Baz by of all his classmates and Barrington by all of the teachers. He suffered the ridicule routinely handed out to ‘care kids’ by the other children and only the humiliation of having ‘Free School Dinners’ saved him from the embarrassment of having his dinner money stolen on a regular basis. Unable to relieve Montague of cold, hard cash, his fellow students instead set upon a regime of piling ignominy upon ignominy upon him until he finally fully absented himself from further education, a step that was to be his salvation as he was subsequently not on board the school bus that ran off the road in the winter of young Jones’ thirteenth year, killing three of his contemporaries and maiming many more. Fortunately he was nowhere near the bus when tragedy struck, nor was he anything like the person who had been seen loitering around the bus station the night before – as far as anyone could tell…
To his workmates he was known as Pilkington when, in an effort to connect with his biological father, he began work as a window fitter. He was a popular member of staff to all but his fellow employees, employers and customers. Many co-workers refused to work alongside him which, ironically, ensured his own continued employment whilst those alongside him were routinely sacked for rejecting the instructions of their supervisors. Cheaper, less experienced workers were employed and, consequently, corners were cut. Workplace accidents became commonplace and the company eventually folded leaving Montague, the longest-serving member of staff, and the only one with all ten fingers, to face the pain of redundancy.
To the staff at the Labour Exchange he was known simply as Carrington in reference to his single likeness to the characters of Dynasty: overbearing arrogance. Montague made it quite clear that he did not need to be offered jobs because, quite simply, he had no intention of ever working again. All he required was a signature on a piece of paper that allowed him to draw his regular remuneration from Her Majesty’s grateful government at the Post Office. One or two members of staff naively attempted to point him towards gainful employment, even, on occasions, hinting that he would not receive the necessary signature if he did not at least attempt to find work, but those responsible seldom lasted long. It was not unusual for them to suddenly fail to turn up for work themselves, usually resulting in the other overworked members of staff ‘signing Montague off’ for extended periods, during which time he did not need to report to the office at all. The remaining staff members – many of whom had suffered unexplained ‘near misses’ to all manner of catastrophe – finally clubbed together to buy him a Fax machine through which they would send him – anonymously – the necessary paperwork each week.
To himself he remained simply Montague Barrington Pilkington Carrington Jones, a friendless, jobless orphan: a man who was isolated from the rest of humankind by a total lack of all empathy or sympathy and a personal hygiene regime that bordered on reckless. His shuttered upbringing had equipped him instead with an array of personal traits: antipathy, sociopathy and psychopathy that had coalesced to make him the person he was – the most ruthlessly efficient, emotionless serial killer ever known in the British Isles.
Of course no other person (still) alive knew that Montague…
Getting On 