Nicola Barker - Small Holdings

Then I doubled back. To the right, past the ornamental pond. I’d filled that pond. I’d emptied it. I’d cleared out the sweet wrappers and the coins and the cans.

Up and along. The stones I was walking on. The loose gravel. I had laid down that gravel. With these two hands.

And up and up the hill. The giant oak. I had pruned that oak. A large rose bed near the fence. I had chosen those roses. Yellow roses and apricot roses. I had sprayed those roses, I had watered and fed them.

At the hill’s crest I found the silver birch and the poplar. I knew how the bark of each tree felt on the calloused palms of my hands and also, and also, on the softer lid of each fist; that bare little space between my fist and my wrist.

And the grass. I had cut it. And the daisies. I had cut them too. And the weeds. I had plucked them out.

Where was the sun? I looked up for it, into the sky. I turned on the spot and tried to see it. It was behind the giant cedar, tucked like a lost ball in its branches. How late was it? The sun made me blink, I closed my eyes and it stayed nestled inside my lids, glaring balefully into my head.

I sat down. My face was damp with sweat. I licked my lips and it was like my tongue had been dipped in the Adriatic. My eyes were still closed but the sun was fading now, flickering inside me.

I put down my hands flat on to the grass. I could feel the soil through the grass. I dug my nails into it.

Doug. Why had the feel of this soil stopped meaning enough? Doug wanted things to be bigger. He wanted something universal. He wanted the colour of the peonies, the height of the pampas grass, the smell of the honeysuckle to mean something. And did it mean something? And should it?

I opened my eyes. Doug had slipped in, into my head. Doug and his doings, Saleem and her words, Nancy and her muddy hands, Ray and his insight, all of these things were pulling me away from what I should be thinking about, from what I should be believing in. The soil. The sun. The shade. The bright glow of the buttercup.

I turned and looked down at the park below me, all its parts fitting together. And my nose was itching and my eyes were smarting and something or someone was knocking on the inside of my skull. Knock, knock. Knock, knock. Trying to attract my attention.

And how was I feeling? How was I doing? What was I thinking? Who did I believe? Oh Christ. I’m so sick of this head. So sick of this head. I’m sick of it. I am. Sick.

I sat on the grass, on the slope. I wanted to be simple, a natural part of the landscape but my mind wouldn’t let me. I stretched out my legs. I pulled up my trouser and inspected my ankle. It had swollen out of the top of my sock. It had swelled like pale, prime dough out of my shoe and was glooping over my laces. It was pale as cooked fish-flesh, though, and felt numb when I pinched it.

I rolled up my sleeve and inspected my arm. It still had its bruises, but now it was bent too, curved in the strangest places like a finely crafted piece of metal piping. Some new, pinky marks were dawdling up near my elbow. My shoulder smarted a little. I picked out some of the dry blood from my nostrils. That, at least, was satisfying.

While I picked I looked down at the park. Dumbly, dutifully. I looked through the trees, the tall grass, past the roses, the flower beds, the pond. And there, sitting next to the pond, I could have sworn I saw a cat. A big tabby, licking its tail.

Could I trust my eyes? I clambered up and started to walk, down the hill. The slope made me trot, made me jog. At the bottom of the slope I carried on jogging: through the trees, the flower beds, up to the water.

Cog rolled on to his back and offered me his belly. I squatted down, panting. I rubbed it. As I rubbed a small sprinkle of mud and dust rose and fell. Then Cog stood up and sauntered off, his little jaunty bollocks to the rear, neat and well balanced like a sprig of cherries.

It was then that I decided to be someone else. Seeing the cat, like that, resurrected. It was so curious. Could I be someone else? Temporarily? Could I be someone else, altogether?

I crawled over to the edge of the pond. I saw my face in it. My face looked different. Swollen at its gills, wild-eyed. My cheeks were scratched like I’d had a tangle with a fistful of thorns.

Who was I? Who could I be? I didn’t care. I’d be anyone. Anyone at all. I’d even forgo the thrill of being someone else so long as I was not my self. Was it possible?

Yes. I could be. I could be un-Phil. Out-of-Phil. Un-fool-Philled. Yes.

And the process was a simple one. To scrape out a gap in my gut like the pond. Water in the middle. Rock on the edges. Water flowing. Rock, holding in, containing, not hurting. This sublime pool inside me and a chalk-empty mind. No thought, only pure action. No doubt, only purpose. The three Ps. Park (my heart), Pond (my gut), Purpose (alone).

Park, pond, purpose.

Park, pond, purpose.

Park, pond, porpoise.

My brain rattled like a chickpea inside my skull.

THER E WAS BLOOD ON the courtyard. Was it Doug’s or was it mine? Some stains near the privet. An unsightly little brown rivulet. Only sap, I told myself, just red, not green.

I pushed at the front door but it would not open. It had been locked from inside. I rang the bell. After a short wait, Saleem answered.

‘What?’

‘Can I come inside for a moment?’

‘No. I’m busy. I’m cleaning. I’ve washed the kitchen floor. I don’t want your muddy footprints all over it.’

I didn’t baulk or shirk. I was empty-Phil. She couldn’t touch me. ‘I just saw the cat, Saleem.’

‘So?’

I didn’t hesitate, not for a second, ‘I just saw the cat by the pond, large as life. You said he was dead.’

‘So what’s the big deal?’

‘We just buried him.’

Saleem raised her eyebrows. ‘So?’

‘You said that the cat was dead and so we buried him.’

She scratched her nose, ‘As I recall, I never actually said we should bury the cat. That wasn’t my idea.’

Everything flowing. I told myself, everything flows. ‘Saleem, you said the cat was dead.’

‘I might’ve said that the cat was tired. I might conceivably have said that.’

She was either very funny or she was mad. Or else she was truly evil and she wanted to hurt me. She could kill with one flash of her eye. She smelled of pepper. She was wearing a Wellington boot, a pair of old overalls, the spare leg tied up, fastened with a safety pin but still dangling.

Pool, pond, purpose, I told myself. That wasn’t right. It didn’t work. It didn’t flow, not properly. The serene lake in my gut began leaking. Saleem was filling my stomach with lies. Her tongue was a spade and she shovelled them out, out of her mouth and into my ears. Her tongue was heaped with falsehood and fallacy.

Saleem was about to close the door when I stopped her with my hand. And very bravely, very proudly I said, ‘You’re just like an owner with a ball.’

‘What?’ She scowled at me.

‘You know, when an owner throws a ball for his dog and the dog goes and fetches the ball and brings it back? And after a while the owner gets bored of the throwing and the retrieving so he pretends to throw the ball and he doesn’t actually throw it, but the dog’s so stupid that it runs for what it thinks is the ball anyway. Even though there’s nothing there. Just thin air.’

She carried on scowling, ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ she said. ‘You mean the boy who cried wolf. That’s the fable.’

I shook my head. My brain rattled. ‘No. Not that story. This is a different one. In this story, the next time the owner throws the ball he does actually throw it and the dog still appears to have faith in him because he runs just as readily, except, this time, when the dog returns with the ball and the owner reaches out his hand to take the ball away, this time, the dog won’t hand it over. He clamps his jaws together. He won’t give it up. He’s making his feelings clear about the little deception of earlier. That’s all.’