Nicola Barker - Small Holdings

Saleem’s expression turned from derision to perplexity. ‘Phil,’ she said, ‘I think you might be a little concussed. You’re babbling.’

I was sad again and vulnerable again but I was still determined. ‘No. I’m making perfect sense.’

‘You’re talking shit, Phil. It sounds like perfect sense to you because your head has taken a knocking, but in fact it’s only drivel. Trust me on this one. Wait a minute.’

Saleem closed the door and left me on the doorstep for a short duration. When she reappeared she was clutching a couple of folders, a carrier bag and her front door keys.

‘I’m going to take you home.’

‘I don’t want to go home. I want to talk to Ray.’

‘I can’t think Ray’ll want to talk to you right now. You’re nonsensical. Come on. Home. Walk with me.’

Saleem grabbed hold of my bad arm and she yanked it. It felt like it might snap. It groaned, the way a big ship groans and whines when it’s being launched for the very first time. I gave in and staggered along beside her.

‘We’ve got to calm that brain of yours down a little bit,’ she said, as she walked. “This place is like a sodding war zone.’

‘You don’t see the plants and the grass and the trees fighting,’ I said, trying to get back my previous state of equilibrium, ‘only people.’

‘Say another stupid thing like that,’ Saleem whispered, ‘and I’ll put my fucking fist in your mouth.’

I’d imagined things would feel better horizontal but I was wrong. I was flat on my back, on my sofa. My feet and ankles were slung up and over the arm. Saleem had insisted that I lie this way. It was extremely uncomfortable. Saleem herself was in my kitchen, cooking.

‘I’m going to feed you and feed you,’ she yelled through the kitchen’s open doorway, ‘till your stuffed up like a rooster.’

After ten minutes she came through holding a tray. On the tray was a plate which was full of a brown, glutinous substance, slightly fried. ‘Sit up and eat this shit.’

I sat up, dutifully. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s brain food.’

‘Aren’t you having any?’

‘Only enough there for one serving, you lucky devil.’

Saleem handed me the plate and a fork. I sliced into the brown stuff and swallowed a mouthful. It had a meaty, metallic taste to it. I ate another mouthful. I chewed briefly and swallowed, i s this liver?’ I asked, forking up some more.

Saleem grinned, ‘Nope.’

‘I tastes like liver.’

Saleem scratched the tip of her stump and hopped over to peruse a photograph on the mantelpiece of my dead aunt with my dead grandparents posing on the beach at Southend.

‘Remember this morning?’ she asked, her back to me, ‘when you got dragged in by Nancy and your nose started bleeding?’

‘Yes.‘

‘Remember when Doug came down and you had that giant piece of jelly dangling from your nose?’

‘Yes.‘

‘At the time if kind of reminded me of black pudding. While I watched you pull it out I wondered how it would taste if it was gently fried.’

I stopped chewing. I put down my plate and hobbled into the kitchen. I threw up into the sink. I turned on the tap and washed the mush I’d produced down the plug-hole. I poured myself a glass of water and returned to the living room.

Saleem was still staring at the picture. ‘But then it dawned on me,’ she said, as though there hadn’t been any hiatus in our conversation, ‘that black pudding is a mixture of pig’s blood and fat. Plain blood, if heated, would probably just disintegrate. The fat’d be the thing that would hold it together.’

I stared at her. I said, ‘You are a very sick, very cruel person.’

She turned and smiled. ‘Cool, calm, confident,’ she said. ‘The three Cs, remember?’

I sat down and pressed my glass of water up against my hot head.

‘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.’