Small Holdings

by Nicola Barker

  ‘Events,’ she added, ‘and how you choose to interpret events. Two totally different kettles of fish, like I told you.’ I said nothing. ‘You’ve got a whole lot of work to do in that department, Phil. You’re too bloody suggestible. And you always seem determined to think the very worst of other people. I mean, I’ve come into your home and I’ve fried you the kidneys I was intending to cook for my own dinner. A selfless act. But still you manage to convince yourself that I mean you harm. Is that an entirely acceptable, a reasonable way to be thinking?’

  I held my glass of water in front of me and stared at it.

  ‘You are the exact same person,’ I said, ‘who got me to bury a live cat in the garden a few hours ago.’ Before she could respond I added, ‘And Doug drove his tractor into the greenhouse. Then he threatened Nancy. And Nancy, Nancy wrecked Doug’s vegetables and then shot Doug in the foot with a starting pistol before kidnapping him in the back of her truck.’

  I looked up and over my glass and stared into Saleem’s eyes. ‘And you think I’ve been hasty in judging everyone? You really think I’m always determined to see the worst in people?’

  Saleem grimaced. ‘Your problem is that you don’t think a person has any right to be more complicated than a fern or a bloody chrysanthemum. People live much more complicated lives than plants, Phil.’

  ‘I don’t think that way at all. Not at all.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Christ, you’ve become argumentative since you bumped your head. Let’s hope this’ll mean that you’re extremely persuasive and forthright at the meeting tomorrow.’

  I lay down on the sofa again. I was tired now. I closed my eyes. Saleem came and stood over me. She said, ‘Finish your kidneys. You need some energy. You’ve got to take a good look at those files. You’ve got to assimilate all the receipts and the documents.’

  ‘I don’t want the kidneys. I don’t care about the files.’

  Although my eyes were tightly shut I could feel Saleem right up close to me. When she next spoke I felt her breath on my ear and on my cheek.

  ‘Are you telling me,’ she whispered, ‘that the park means so little to you that this, the tiniest of sacrifices, is too much for you to make? The possibility of even the smallest bit of effort and discomfort are enough to make you abandon everything? Everyone?’

  But it wasn’t that. The park meant too much, not too little. How could I be held responsible for something that I loved so completely? ‘Find Doug and let him go,’ I said, somewhat unreasonably. ‘Let Ray go, ‘ I added, ‘or go yourself if you feel that strongly about it. I don’t care who goes. I won’t go.’

  Saleem was silent for so long that I opened one of my eyes and peeped out at her to check that she was still there. She was there. The air was bare with glare and stare. She was there.

  ‘And you dare to tell me,’ she gurgled, finding her voice, at last, locating it in the guttural regions of her lower throat, ‘and you dare to suggest to me that I wouldn’t sacrifice everything for something that I loved?’

  ‘That’s not what I was saying at all.’

  ‘You dare to suggest that?’

  Suddenly fearful, I said, ‘It’s a question of caring too much, not too little, that’s what I’m saying. It’s all right if someone else destroys the one thing you love most in the world but its a terrible thing if you destroy it yourself. No feeling could be worse than that.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’ Saleem was still gurgling. ‘You’re wrong, Phil. What you can’t see is that it’s better to destroy the thing you love than to have it snatched away from you. I’ve learned that lesson and Doug’s learned that lesson. Even Nancy’s learned it. But not you. ‘

  I shook my head. She ignored my shaking.

  ‘When they told me they were refurbishing the museum and turning it into a crèche and a café,’ she murmured, lethally, ‘when they told me they wouldn’t be needing a curator any more, I didn’t just walk away.’ I opened my eyes again. She grinned. ‘I didn’t just walk away. I lost my leg in that fire. And after the fire, no one could take away the books and the pictures and the papers. No one could take them away. And look where I locked them . . .’ Saleem patted her left breast with her right hand. ‘My heart. And that’s a very tight, very dark, very secure place.’

  I stared at her blankly. She stood up. ‘Finish your kidneys,’ she said, and then she picked up her stick and left me.

  I RAN A WARM BATH and soaked every bit of me in it. I stuck my head underwater and breathed the water in through my nose, swallowed some of it, blew the rest of it out, full of soil and muck and flaking red residue.

  After the bath I had hoped to feel bolder, but I didn’t. I looked in the mirror and saw the same hairy, scared creature staring straight back at me.

  In my bedroom I pulled on a clean shirt and some trousers. I pulled out my suit too, my funeral suit, from the back of the wardrobe, and laid it flat across the bed. My funeral suit. Whose funeral? I put the suit away again.

  Still on the pillow lay Dr John Sledge’s I’m Not Angry, I’m Hurting. I picked it up. I opened it. At the top of the page was a heading in bold lettering. It said: WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE ?

  Everything or nothing? Think about it for a moment. Give this question some serious thought, and once you have thought about it, think about this:

  (1) If you’ve got A LOT to lose, then why take the risk of losing it? If you’ve got A LOT to lose then you’ve got something worth fighting for.

  (2) If you’ve got NOTHING to lose, then why delay? Act today. What possible harm could it do you? Things can only get better. You’ve got NOTHING to lose and everything to gain.

  Repeat after me, out loud, ‘I’ve got nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Again, ‘I’ve got nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Feeling better? Well done. Why am I congratulating you? I’ll tell you why . I’m congratulating you because you are on the road to healing yourself. It’s a wonderful journey. Come, travel with me.

  I shut the book, turned it over and stared at the photograph of Dr John Sledge on the back of it. Dr Sledge was younger than I imagined. He had a head like a pumpkin. He exuded a kind of ghastly, glistening rude health. He had a mole in between his nose and his top lip. He was smiling broadly and he had perfect teeth. Out loud I said it. ‘Dr Sledge,’ I said, ‘if you came and sat down next to me on a train I’d change compartments.’

  I brewed some coffee. I ate three pieces of bread and butter. While I ate I considered the things I had yet to do. Some strimming by the rose garden, the hydrangeas needed cutting back. I’d noticed some of the rubbish bins by the tennis courts were full. What else? Nothing else.

  I searched for my keys, found them, picked up a jumper from the back of a chair because the air outside had turned nippy. As I picked up the jumper I knocked the files which Saleem had balanced precariously on the edge of the kitchen table. I swore. The top one fell and the bottom one followed. Their paper guts scattered across the floor. And as I picked up each sheet I told myself: See this? All this writing and planning and calculating? This is the business, this stuff. The park, well that’s something altogether different. They are two different entities. Altogether separate.

  But the paper was covered in Doug’s close hand. Doug’s figures and letters. I couldn’t help but see Doug in these papers. I picked them up. Some had doodles on them, inkspots, drops of tea, bits of crumb. Some were crumpled, others pristine. Some were stuck together. I tried to pull these apart as a tribute to Doug and then there, before me, the most incredible thing happened.

  The paper unfolded. Several sheets had been stuck together with Sellotape, hinged together on purpose. I unfolded, one piece and two pieces, three pieces, four, and beheld the most perfect, most detailed, accurate and lovely sketch, in green and red pen - mad colours - of the park: all its parts, but something new, too.

  In gorgeous detail, a little maze. A magical thing. A heart-shaped maze with a waterfall at its centre
. Ornate statues in dead ends, occasional arches and trellises, and honeysuckle. Spy-glasses and sunflowers and poppies growing through the privet. Concrete frogs peeping out from corners and pheasants stalking with glass tails.

  And at last, I saw Doug. I saw Doug. My hands started shaking, my eyes filled, because at last I saw Doug. He was right there in front of me. He was not lost any more.

  I FORGOT ABOUT ALL those other tasks. Instead I stared at Doug’s plans for what seemed like an eternity. Of course he’s mad, I told myself. Of course he is. And when I told myself that Doug was mad it sounded in my ears like the grandest kind of compliment, an accolade, the sweetest benediction.

  Once I’d familiarized myself thoroughly with every detail of Doug’s crazy plan, I read through the other stuff too. I put the receipts into some semblance of order, I calculated how much we’d spent over the last year and on what, and how much we’d saved by frugal management. I tried to work out whether we could claim for the damage to the greenhouse under our present system of insurance. And then I went out.

  I went out and I walked for a very long time. Things needed sorting and I wasn’t entirely sure who was going to sort them. Was I going to sort them? Could I?

  I walked for a very long time and eventually I found myself in Southgate and I was outside an all-night chemist and then I was inside and standing by the counter.

  ‘Can I help you?’ He was a young man with ginger hair and brown eyes. He wore a white lab coat and glasses. I said, ‘I want a packet of condoms please. Extra small.’

  Slightly surprised, he pointed to my left. ‘Over there, on the counter. We have several varieties. All sizes.’

  I said, ‘Only sometimes it’s hard to find the extra small ones because . . . they’re extra small.’ My face was a fire engine.

  ‘I’ll help you look, shall I, sir?’

  Cool, calm, collected. Breathe one, breathe two, breathe three. ‘That’s kind of you. Thanks.’

  My voice was going. I sounded Scottish, to myself; vowels crawling out from all corners of my mouth like crabs.

  He rummaged for a while and produced three different packets.

  ‘Three types. An y preference?’

  ‘Any. All. I’ll take all three. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll pop them in a bag for you, shall I, sir?’

  ‘Grand. Thanks.’

  ‘There we go.’

  ‘Thanks. Very much.’

  You see, the problem is a very simple one, really. It’s all a question of wanting - not just wanting, but needing, like something categorical. Needing to be a part of a landscape. It’s about belonging to a place and wanting to belong and not knowing whether other people will even let you get around to feeling like you belong.

  It’s more than that, more even than that. It’s like wanting to be an actual, a physical part of the landscape.

  Animals do it. A bird belongs to the sky and the trees just as much as the trees and the sky themselves belong. No one questions - no one thinks to question - whether the worm a bird plucks from the soil is rightfully his. How could a berry belong anywhere else but in a starling’s gut? No one doubts it.

  But people. Where do we fit in? How can we fit in? How do we know that we fit and who can we ask? And some people will always feel like they fit and try to make others feel like they don’t. And others won’t ever fit or feel like they fit, will never, ever feel that way .

  All these thoughts, every single one of them, were my technique for avoiding stuff that was happening, that would happen. And I wouldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it.

  I’d asked for the condoms, hadn’t I? Saleem was right. Maybe the only way to stop being embarrassed was to no longer avoid it. To search it out, to try - even - to enjoy it. To embrace it.

  I walked for a very long time and then I got on a bus and ended u p in Enfield outside an all-night chemist. And then I was inside the chemist and I was telling the assistant - a small, dark woman with a silver moustache - I’ve got crabs. Do you have anything for crabs? Are there many different varieties of crab? What are mine like? I don’t know. Little ginger things, tiny things.

  I caught another bus, stayed on it, ended up in Wood Green. A young woman was in the chemist’s, an attractive young woman with red lips and black eyes.

  Cool, calm, confident.

  ‘I want some tampons for my mother. It’s an emergency.’

  ‘Any particular kind? There are several varieties.’ She pointed.

  ‘Which are the good ones?’

  ‘Tampax, Li-lets. They’re all OK.’

  ‘Regular, medium-flow, light-flow? Oh God.’

  ‘Why don’t you get regular. That’s a fairly safe bet.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘Well, it’s entirely up to you.’

  ‘Maybe she’d prefer one of those padded things.’

  ‘A towel.’

  ‘Yes, maybe a trowel.’

  ‘Towel.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You said “trowel”.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’

  ‘You might be better off in a hardware store.’ She was laughing.

  ‘Sorry. You probably think I’m an idiot.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think. Your mother’s the one who’s having the crisis.’

  ‘I’m the one having a crisis.’

  ‘Know the feeling.’

  ‘You do?

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ll have the regular tampons. You’re right.’

  ‘Fine.’

  She grabbed them and bagged them. I paid for them.

  ‘You’ve done the rounds tonight,’ she said, pointing at the other two bags I was holding, smiling.

  I was beyond blushing. Hot and red and hot and red and hot and hot and hot and red. It didn’t matter any more. Things were too bad. I shook my head, ‘I’m just a wanker.’

  ‘Right. Fine.’ She shrugged and laughed.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It was nothing.’

  Almost ten o’clock. I stood by the bus stop, blinded by the fluorescent lights from the Shopping City, bemused by the concrete everywhere, the red-brick, glass, plastic, all those other city things. I imagined the soil underneath the shopping complex, flattened down hard and close by the weight of the city above; crushed, compacted, useless, like the core of a bad molar. And the city’s breath, flowing in and out of its rotting mouth, warm with fumes and dark and stinking.

  No buses, not for a while. I started walking. I had a blister on the side of my foot. My shoes weren’t the problem, only the fact that I was placing my bad foot and ankle differently when I hobbled and so making the leather rub.

  Past Top Rank Bingo, past Wood Green Tube Station, past the bus garage, past the town hall, past the church and on and along. I’d seen teeth on the pavement outside The Tottenham once - a pub painted in pastel shades but its bland colour was deceptive - so crossed over before I reached it, to the other side where Fagin’s Talk of the Town Nightspot was bumping and grinding, its disco lights bleaching and bloodying the pavement, its music leaking out too, into the night air.

  If I hadn’t crossed over I wouldn’t have seen it. If my foot hadn’t been smarting I wouldn’t have paused to adjust my shoe. But I did stop and I did see it. Parked down the side of Fagin’s, half in the shade, half lit by a streetlight, a Daf Roadrunner, white, in good condition, Truck of the Year in God knows when.

  I went and took a closer look. Could I remember the registration? I couldn’t remember it. I almost walked away and then I noticed the front indicator, on the left. It had been smashed.

  I ran to the back door and tried to open it. Locked, I knocked on the tailgate. No sound. I pressed my ear up close to its cool metal and held my breath, but nothing was audible from within.

  Fagin’s. Legendary Nightspot of North London. Above the entrance, a snot-green, life-sized, brass statue of Fagin himself - a skinny, untrustworthy lo
oking character in a stetson, guitar slung across his shoulder, holding up two fingers in a weak-limbed sign of peace.

  I didn’t want to go in but I went in anyway. Five pounds on the door. Red strobes lit up and picked out a small gaggle of people nestled inside intimate, velvet-coated cubicles. No Nancy. A clutch of characters were cradling their drinks by the bar. No Nancy. Three people were on the dance floor, clumping gracelessly, careful not to make eye contact with each other or with me while their mouths silently worked on the lyrics to the song that was playing. Ain’t no stopping us now. We’re on the move! Ain’t no stopping us now. We’re in the groove!

  I squinted around me, looking for Nancy but not seeing her. I described her in some detail to the barman. He was giving most of his attention to changing the optic on a bottle of Malibu. When I persisted he shrugged and shook his head, ‘I only just came on my shift, mate.’

  I bought a drink but didn’t drink it. I left it on the bar and headed for the exit, past the toilets and the cloakroom and the coat-check girl. I stopped in my tracks and doubled back. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, and described Nancy to her. The girl winked. ‘Have you got a ticket?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘ A ticket.’ She put out her hand and grinned. She had a tight, high ponytail on the top of her head which made her look like a pineapple, and wide-spaced teeth. She was a Martian.

  ‘I don’t have a ticket.’

  The girl was still grinning. She said, ‘Well, the policy is that if You want to collect something then you have to exchange a ticket for it. I mean, you could be anybody. How am I supposed to tell that the item in question is actually yours?’

  Using her thumb, she indicated over her shoulder to where a small collection of summer jackets were hung on numbered metal hangers. I stared at the coats blankly.

  The girl tossed her head and her hair nearly took out my eye. ‘Not there, stupid! On the floor.’

  I looked down. Huddled in an ungainly heap against the wall, half covered in a denim jacket, apparently sleeping -eyes shut - but still making the kind of quiet retching noises a cat makes after it’s devoured a gutful of grass: Nancy.