Small Holdings

by Nicola Barker

  I held Dr John Sledge in my hand and I swung my arm. I sniffed the tea-towel, which was still damp, but drier now, and musty, robust, sassy with the tang of sweat. Using my good hand, I felt inside my pocket for my keys. And then I saw her. On my doorstep.

  Saleem was glaring. ‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been round here twice. I’ve been waiting for absolutely bloody hours.’

  Saleem, incongruously, on my doormat. Was she a figment? A fragment? An ugly spectre? An invasive sylph? A sprite?

  I tested out my voice. It was steady. ‘What are you doing here?’

  She carried right on scowling. ‘We’ve got to talk. Now. ‘

  I was tired, suddenly, ‘Can’t it wait? Would you mind?’

  She shook her head. ‘It can’t wait. Open the door. Let me inside. I’m freezing.’

  It was a warm night. I didn’t want to open the door. If I let her in she might never leave, might take up residence, squat, like she did in the park keeper’s house. She had that adhesive, that sticky quality which wouldn’t come out in the wash.

  ‘You’re pissed,’ she muttered, watching as I fumbled with my keys.

  ‘I had three pints and I’m perfectly sober.’

  ‘Great in a fucking crisis. First thing you do is reach for the bottle.’

  I took my keys out. ‘There’s no crisis and I’m not drunk.’

  ‘Let me smell your breath.’ Uninvited, unexpected, she pushed her face into mine, sniffed, grinned and then took this opportunity to bite me, sharply, impishly on the nose.

  ‘Oh Christ.’ Why did she do that? Her tongue was a cattle prod. She was a ball of venom, slobbering on me.

  She cackled. ‘Open up. Make me wait out here any longer and I’ll fuck you up the arse with my stump. And remember,’ she added, ‘I’ve been standing all the while on only one sure limb, which is twice as tiring.’ She knocked my shins with her stick.

  She has that capacity to offend, Saleem, to hurt, mortally. I hate that in her. I’d like to hurt her back but I just don’t have it in me. I’d like to injure her, knock the other leg out from under her, just once.

  I opened the door. She pushed past me and bounded into the kitchen, pulled wide the oven door and switched the gas on full.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Gassing myself. What d’you think? I’m cold. Give me a match.’

  ‘If you want to light it then use the ignition.’

  ‘I want a match. I’m cold. Give me a bloody match right now or else.’

  She was cold-blooded. An amber mamba. I gave her the match and said, ‘Switch it off first. Don’t just . . .’

  Floooom! A gust of blue flame bellowed out of the oven. Saleem didn’t move or shirk. ‘Yeah! I love that.’

  She stared at the flame for a while, grinning, while it filled her irises and made them yellower. Then she snatched her eyes away, blinked, pulled out a chair and sat down.

  ‘OK, ‘ she said, ‘So you don’t know why I’m here, do you? Maybe you think I’ve come to appraise your living quarters. I’ve never even been in your house before. You never invited me.’ She looked around the kitchen. ‘Yeah, not bad. If things go wrong at the park after Friday I could easily make a den for myself here. Wouldn’t take too much adjusting.’

  She smiled, apparently well satisfied with this pronouncement, waiting, now, for a response.

  I didn’t respond. I said, ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Make me a cuppa.’

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Go on, I’m freezing.’

  ‘It’s nearly midnight. I want to go to bed, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Make me a cuppa and then I’ll come with you.’

  ‘I haven’t got any milk.’

  ‘Fine.’ She stood up, picked up her stick from the table. ‘Let’s fuck.’

  My temples throbbed. I took one deep breath and then another. ‘Why are you here Saleem?’

  She grinned at me, dug her hand into the pocket of the large denim jacket she was wearing and pulled out a sheet of paper.

  ‘See this?’ She passed it to me. I took it with my good hand. ‘Nancy left it out for Doug on the kitchen table. It’s from the nursery in Southend she visited today.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well read it, stupid.’

  I inspected it.

  ‘Look at it,’ she said, excitedly. ‘Privet!’

  She nudged me between my ribs with her elbow.

  ‘Privet!’ she exclaimed, yet again. ‘And all the while I’d been thinking private. Doug’s been going on about being private, but I’d got it all wrong, see? He meant privet.’

  Saleem had lost it.

  ‘No I don’t see.’

  I did see, however, that Doug had ordered literally a ton of the stuff. He’d spent a fortune on it. Three hundred pounds which I was certain the park didn’t possess.

  Saleem eyed me inquisitively. ‘And there I was, ‘ she said, ‘thinking that the park was broke and that you could all barely afford to put petrol in the mower.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said, calmly. ‘I already had an inkling about this.’ My words sounded half-formed.

  Saleem snorted, ‘Phil, you’re so bloody transparent. Like a square of polythene.’

  I folded up the receipt and handed it back to her.

  ‘Privet, private,’ she continued, speculatively, ‘one letter different.’

  ‘I can’t dispute that.’

  She pushed her skinny face up close to mine, ‘Doug’s going to do something very stupid, and he’s going to do it soon, and it’s going to screw everything up.’

  If I’d stepped back at this point I’d have ended up in the oven. Warm air against the back of my legs was already making me prickle.

  ‘And where would you be without the park, huh? And where would I be? If someone new takes over the tender they’d be bound to evict me. They wouldn’t care about my history with the place. Not strangers.’

  ‘It won’t come to that.’

  She drew even closer, ‘It might. It just might.’

  And I felt something strange, in my midriff. Saleem’s finger. It had threaded its way through a gap in my shirt, between the buttons, and was poking, sharply, pointedly, into my navel. Then it rotated, like I was a clockwork mouse and she was winding me up.

  ‘I must just quickly tell you,’ she whispered, ‘the way I see it. It’s like this, right: we’v e all been surfing, on the water’s surface, on top of a wave , sure-footed, and time has passed fairly comfortably, but now, all of a sudden, we’v e fallen off our boards and into the ocean. We’re swallowing water, it’s icy cold, it’s wet, it’s salty, and when we come up for air, it feels different. Very different. Not like the air we were surfing in before. Better. And every breath, every breath . . .’

  I pushed her away. ‘Stop that.’

  She stared at her finger for a moment, sniffed it, and then placed it in her mouth, sucked it, winked, removed it and said loudly, ‘Grab this opportunity and make the most of it.’

  ‘What opportunity?’

  ‘OK, so fine,’ she was suddenly businesslike, ‘I said this afternoon that I was the one to change things. But now . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I’m entrusting all this shit to you, handing it all over. For the time being.’ She grabbed my arm. ‘Wanna take me now or wait till morning?

  ‘Handing what over?’

  ‘You look knackered,’ she added, letting go of my arm, her top lip curling. ‘Better wait.’

  She grabbed her stick and bounded out.

  Thursday

  SLEEP CAME AND WENT like a slug crawling over my belly. I wok e at five and lay in bed, still half-dressed. I had two unusual bed-mates. Firstly, the tea-towel, which had loosened itself from my wrist and had journeyed up my arm until it found a niche around my shoulder, under my armpit.

  Secondly, incongruously, Dr John Sledge’s book, which was lying on the pillow next to my head. I appraised its redness. I prodded it with my nose. I put out a hand, gi
ngerly, picked it up, opened its pages and blinked at it. You can’t see the world through anyone else’s eyes, Dr Sledge said, only your own. There’s nothing wrong with being who you are. But let’s try to make sure that you like who you are. Let’s be sure that you like yourself. Because if you don’t like yourself, how do you expect anyone else to like you ? And if you don’t know yourself, how can you expect anyone else to want to know you?

  I looked to the top of the page. It said, Chapter Two: ‘Knowing Yourself. I closed the book and inspected my bad hand. It was bruised, had the dominant colours of a fine Red Oak Leaf lettuce. Purple and red and a darkish blue. Green on its edges and a slurried yellow.

  I lay back and tried to think about things. I had a lot to digest. But sometimes digesting isn’t as easy, as natural a process as it might be. You see, I have the kind of brain that doesn’t link things too well. Admittedly, I was the recipient of a whole, big, scruffy bundle of information, but most of it was words and feelings and hearsay, and these things mean little to me, mean nothing to me until I can see the proof of them with my own two eyes.

  A wholesaler might answer in the affirmative when I ask whether the hollyhock seedlings I’ve just purchased are all a single colour, but when they grow, when they flower, only then can I be truly sure. And it’s not suspicion or cynicism that makes me this way. I’m just stupid and dumb like a dozy mongrel. I do things and I do things and I believe things when I see them with my own eyes. That’s when. Only then.

  I’ve got some camomile tea that I made myself, that I grew myself, that I drink at night sometimes or to relax me. I got up and drank a cup. It tasted like a bundle of hay. I pulled on my shoes and I walked outside, still feeling like I had a whole farmyard on my tongue.

  It was early. I was earlier than usual. I wanted to check up on a couple of things, iron out hitches, smooth stuff over. I wanted to make sure that nothing bad could happen, to try to keep Doug padded up for the day in a soft swab of cotton wool. It felt necessary.

  The park wasn’t open yet. I unlocked one of the gates with my key and went in. It was getting light, like the sky was slowly growing accustomed to having the sun spill out all its pale guts on to it. No clouds, only a roof in the heavens the grey-white colour of spittle.

  It was so quiet, and the quiet was like a kiss. Soft and gentle, and all the plants were waking up in the sure caress of this silence, yawning and stretching and swallowing the dew. Even here, even in the city, this little green heart was pumping and throbbing and murmuring.

  I followed the path to the barn. I paused for a second, stared over at Nancy’s truck which was parked where it had been the previous afternoon. Everything was still. I went into the barn and pulled out some tools: a fork, a hoe, a small trowel, and headed off in the direction of the damaged flower bed. But I reached something else before I reached the bed, someone else. Wu. In a corner, filling the path between a rhododendron and the herb garden.

  Wu. Dancing, just like I’d been told. In his loose robes, with his leg in the air, moving slowly up and around, he looked like a gannet, a heron, the topmost trumpet of a white lily, touched by the wind and bending its neck, swooning.

  I stopped in my tracks. My hand gave a little twitch, like it remembered, like its damaged flesh had a memory. Wu hadn’t seen me, or at least gave no indication of having seen me but continued with his tiny movements, began painting slow, splendid letters in the air with his hands, packed the air with his palms, shifted it, organized it. Air, only air.

  I turned back on myself, slipped through the rockery, past the lake, over and around, and ended up, after this small diversion, where I wanted to be. Facing my ruined bed, my back to Doug’s greenhouse.

  What was it that made me turn? The sound of a door hinge squeaking? Something metallic which wasn’t the close, clinking sound of the tools I was holding? Nothing like that. A little message. An inkling.

  And I did turn. What made me turn? And I saw that the door was ajar. The greenhouse door. This was the first sign. The door was ajar. It made me shudder, the idea of the door being left open, the warm air escaping. I dropped my tools and walked over. I could smell something. Rich soil, compost. Sap.

  I pulled the door wide and walked in, checking the temperature gauge to my left, immediately, out of instinct. Cog whisked around my ankles and made me shudder again.

  I looked around me. It was terrible. Everything was up and out and overturned. Mud and dirt and water. Wretched vegetables - those giant things, those protein-pumped, over-large, swollen creatures - scratched and hacked and bruised and bleeding, tossed and chopped and kicked around. On the floor. Corpses, partially buried. Ruined. A massacre.

  My mind worked in its own natural way. I didn’t think of vandals, only of Doug, that someone hated Doug very badly or that Doug hated himself very badly. A stupid group of thoughts, like my mind was a collection of dried flowers, ornate and complex, but not as good as the real thing, the fresh thing, not at all.

  I moved from the greenhouse and went outside again, closing the door behind me, securing it. What did this mean? How could I know what it meant until I could see what it meant with my own two eyes? And in the distance, beyond the herb garden, behind the rhododendron, I saw the slightest, whitest, spitefullest little figure. I saw him.

  When did I pick up the hoe? I don’t remember. Only Wu. I saw him and I wondered idly, was he mad or was he only different? Was he mad or only different? Then I was next to him. I saw him. Wu. Wu’s eyes, full of the sky. I saw his eyes. I saw myself in them. And I thought . . . so all this had been going on? This mess, this madman, Doug and everything? All this had been going on even while everything else carried on too, the spring, the summer, the showers, the flowers?

  Suddenly Nancy was next to me. ‘Phil.’

  ‘What have you done?’

  I couldn’t see Nancy, I was looking at Wu, I was speaking to Wu. I glared at him. He didn’t seem in the least bit concerned. Very slowly, very slowly, he brought his arms and his legs down from the sky and into a kind of repose.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Do you know what you’ve done? Do you know?’

  Wu seemed nonplussed. ‘You want me to answer your questions? Huh? Yes. No . Yes . No. Huh?’

  I was holding the hoe, horizontally. I gripped it. I didn’t even stop to wonder what Nancy was doing. Why she was here.

  Wu took several, small steps towards me and then stopped. He then took another small step forward. I braced myself.

  ‘Give me that,’ he said, pointing at the hoe.

  ‘Give it to me, Phil,’ Nancy said, because she was there, right next to me, and she took hold of the hoe and pulled it from me. But Wu was still moving, like I still had the hoe and he had every intention of taking it away from me. Slowly, he pushed the flat of his palm forwards, towards me, as though nudging a book or a drink or a flower in my direction. Closer and closer. I watched it, dazed, dazzled, and then it touched me. This slow hand hit me like a hammer in my chest. Until . . . yes! I was flying through the air, like a pancake or an omelette, twirling - a stingray - whirling and twisting. Up and up.

  What a revelation! It wasn’t at all dramatic. Not in the least how it should have been. His hand had been soft and then stronger than anything. And now I was flying, and I had time to think about all kinds of stuff, to notice that the holly still needed pruning, to remember how muddy Nancy’s hands had been, to see that in the centre of the rockery there was clover. And it was flowering purply. It was far and then it was close and my nose was in it.

  A while after I landed I felt a jolt. My arm was twisted, slung under me. I was winded. I felt, just a little, like sleeping.

  OH, THIS WAS NICE . Kind of wet and slippery and I was moving without any effort. But, thinking about it, something was hurting, was hurting. A bump and a rucking and a grazing. A long distance away I heard a voice, a tight little voice, unfamiliar, which was saying, ‘Can’t force flow. Flow flows.’ Flow flows.

  Actually, the more I thou
ght about it - and, be assured, there was no rush, no reason to rush - the more I gave it thought, the less happy I felt. My head was banging on the ground. My arm was aching, turned under me. I was being dragged. I felt mud and grass and then I felt gravel. My beard was so full of it. Bits of stone finding a home. Until, finally, I was still.

  Something happened then, but I was no part of it. The gravel shifted, right up close to me, and then my face was wrapped in a warm, soft towel and a vapour darkened everything.

  ‘Hello Phil. Hello Phil. Hello.’

  ‘Wah?’

  Shit. That was me.

  I opened my eyes. Saleem had her face up close to mine and she was covered in blood - her cheek and her hand.

  ‘Don’t be shocked. I’m not hurt. This is your blood.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She wiped at her face with a piece of tissue while she said, ‘Nancy’s here. She dragged you in.’

  Nancy materialized in front of me. ‘I dragged you in. I’m really sorry. I’d never have taken the hoe away if I thought he was going to attack you. He’s so powerful for a little fella. Like David Carradine in Kung Fu.’

  ‘Where’s Doug?’

  Saleem had a bowl full of warm water and a roll of kitchen towel.

  ‘He’s upstairs. Still in bed.’

  She leaned over me again and applied something damp to my cheek. ‘Want to know what kind of injuries you sustained?’

  ‘Uh, I feel OK.’

  ‘Well, apart from the odd cut and graze, I think you broke your nose and sprained your arm. Maybe you sprained your ankle too. It’s swelling out a bit.’

  My ribs hurt when I inhaled. I tried to sit up, still woozy. ‘What time is it?’

  Nancy checked her watch, and I noticed again how dirty her hands were. Muddy hands.

  ‘About half-seven.’

  My arm did feel bad. We were in the kitchen. I was on the floor.

  ‘I think might like to sit on a chair.’

  Nancy helped me up.

  ‘Should we call the police?’ she asked, settling me down again with a small huff of exertion.

  ‘We can’t call the police,’ Saleem said quickly. ‘We’d be fucking ourselves over.’