Nicola Barker - Small Holdings

‘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.

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, gingerly, 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?