Nicola Barker - Small Holdings

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 looking 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.

‘How long has she been there?’

‘Since she got pissed and passed out by the bar.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘What do you reckon, Einstein?’

The girl unlocked the kiosk and beckoned me inside. ‘Take her away with you before she chucks up in here.’

‘Nancy?’ I crouched down next to her and touched her shoulder. ‘Nancy? Wake up. ‘

Very slowly, Nancy opened her right eye and stared at me.

‘Nancy, it’s me. Phil.’

Not a glimmer of recognition. The coat-check girl came and stood beside me. I said, ‘I don’t think she even knows who I am.’

The girl stared intently into Nancy’s face. ‘Nah, she’ll be OK, it’s her bad eye, that’s all. The right one. She just can’t see you from that side.’ She nudged Nancy’s shoulder, ‘Come on, you. It’s home time.’

Nancy had been blind in one eye since before Christmas and this was the first time I’d actually noticed, and yet Pineapple Head had observed and digested it seemingly in a matter of moments. I stared up at her with new regard. ‘How did you know? About her eye, I mean.’

The girl adjusted her ponytail and said, ‘I noticed when she checked in her coat. I put the ticket down on the counter, just to the right of her and she didn’t seem to see it.’

I stared deep into Nancy’s right eye and saw that it was pure and glassy. And I suddenly felt almost tearful. That dead right eye gave me the strangest sensation — like my feelings, my feelings and fact, fact, were two totally separate things. My feelings and fact. I was deluded.

My mind turned to Doug and what he’d said in the greenhouse that morning. If you can’t trust your instincts, what can you trust? I stared down at Nancy. What is there to a person, after all, beyond how they feel? What are human beings apart from little bundles of feelings and apprehensions and misapprehensions?