Nicola Barker - Small Holdings

‘What are you doing?’

Saleem stood in the doorway, dressed in her vest and some knickers. The sight of her strange, pale stump almost made me smile. There was something so special about it. Something neat and extraordinary. She tossed me my shirt and I pulled it on.

‘You won’t believe it,’ I said, determining to carry on embarrassing myself, if needs be for the rest of my whole stupid life, ‘but I love Doug too.’

‘You don’t.’

‘I do.’

‘How? ‘

‘What do you mean?’

‘How do you love him?’

I shrugged. I said, ‘He’s great.’

Her eyebrows rose. I added. ‘I mean great, like Julius Caesar or someone. Napoleon. A giant personality.’

‘I’ll tell you what he is,’ Saleem said sourly. ‘He’s an unholy pain in the fucking arse and he’s half-mad.’

‘I know.’ I stared into Doug’s dead eyes. ‘He’s everything.’

‘Come downstairs.’ She beckoned me from the doorway.

‘Why?’

‘I can’t talk properly in here with Doug lying there.’

I stood up. I followed Saleem to the top of the stairs. She didn’t have a stick with her and refused the arm I offered. Instead she sat on the top step and then bumped down on her bottom. I remembered doing just that when I was small. As she bumped down and I followed her, I said, ‘How did Nancy get involved in all this?’

‘Fucking Nancy,’ she grumbled.

‘I’m only interested.’

‘Christ, you’re so pleased with yourself all of a sudden.’

Am I? I wondered. I couldn’t think why I should be.

Saleem reached the bottom of the stairs and pulled herself up on the banister. I saw from the rear that her bottom was pink with friction. She hopped into the kitchen. She went and turned on the kettle.

‘I’m going to have a boiled egg,’ she said, and set about preparing it.

I sat down at the table. The sun was thinking about coming up. My hand was still swollen. My ankle looked horrible, bright and red like the skin might crack and blister.

Saleem pulled out a chair for herself. ‘OK,’ she said, licking some margarine from her thumb, ‘so you think I’m a shit. And yes, I did kind of twist Nancy’s arm. The point is, though,’ she turned as the kettle boiled but didn’t move to make some tea. I stood u p instead and made some coffee.

‘The point is, right, when I heard about Nancy’s eye from Ray it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. Shall I tell you why? ‘

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s all just crap. Ray might’ve noticed about Nancy’s eye before the rest of us, but what he doesn’t realize is that Nancy’s perfectly within her rights to drive with only one eye.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I thought it best to find out the details before I set about blackmailing her. I phoned the Department of Transport.’

Saleem smirked. ‘And I’ll tell you something else. If you check out the damage on the truck and the receipts for the repairs on the other accidents she’s had, it turns out that all the smashes were on the left hand side of the truck.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘She’s over-compensating, stupid. Her eye isn’t the problem at all. The problem is that she’s so het-up about the eye that she’s driving badly by trying to overcompensate for it. She’s so paranoid about the possibility of losing her job that she didn’t even think to find out whether it was ever a problem in the first place.’

‘So it isn’t?’

‘Nope.’

‘But you blackmailed her anyway.’

‘Yep. I needed her to help me carry Doug’s body upstairs, and as a decoy.’ She stared at me, unrepentant. ‘I told her we’ d all lose everything if Doug wasn’t stopped from going to the meeting. I also threatened to tell you about her eye and how she’d deceived you. I convinced her and I convinced Ray that you were a man of integrity. I told them you’d stand by Doug come hell or high water, if you believed he was in the right. Even if he was mad.’

I passed her a mug of coffee. She took the mug. ‘Thanks.’

‘So all of this,’ I said nervously, ‘has been for my benefit.’

‘Yep. To prove to you that Doug was mad; you needed irrefutable proof. To corner you, to bully you, to beguile you. ‘

She took a gulp of her coffee and then hopped over to the oven to remove her egg. She put it on to a saucer and then hopped back to the table. She knocked it on the saucer and then started to peel it.

‘I realized, though,’ she said, preoccupied with the egg, ‘when I left you this afternoon, that you had no intention of going to the meeting.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because you don’t really love Doug. You don’t understand Doug.’

‘How can you say that?’

The egg was peeled now. ‘How? Because if you loved Doug you’d want to go to the meeting. You’d want to help him. You wouldn’t think that all the things I’d done to him were bad. You’d understand that I’m Doug’s friend and so I want to protect him.’

I almost laughed at this. Saleem ignored me and took a bite of her egg.

‘You think you’re different,’ she said, chewing and swallowing, ‘but you aren’t different at all, you only feel different on the inside. But me and Doug, we just can’t help it. People think we’re different because we are, physically. We’re a different colour. Doesn’t matter how much you do. It doesn’t fucking matter how much you care. You won’t fit. People won’t let you. Even if you find the most perfect landscape and it’s yours. Even then.’

I stared at her, flummoxed.

‘You’re a part of this place,’ she said. ‘No one doubts it.’

‘Doug’s a part of it too. So are you.’

She carried on eating her egg in silence. Eventually she said, ‘How you feel and fact, Phil. Two entirely different matters.’

I tried to work out which was worse: feeling different but fitting in or being different but feeling in your heart like you should fit but not quite fitting. Which was worse? Stupid question.

Saleem finished her egg. She sucked her fingers clean. Istared at her. ‘Would you have told on Nancy?’ I asked, eventually.

She shrugged. ‘Dunno. I like to think I’m capable of anything.’ She licked her lips and added, ‘We’re back to Nancy again, I see.’

‘No, ‘ I said, ‘I was only thinking about what you were saying earlier, before you drugged me.’

‘What was I saying?’

‘About how you have a responsibility to someone once you know their secrets.’

She sighed, ‘Screw it. We’re going to lose everything anyway.’

‘You really think so?’

‘I know it.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Who cares? This is the only place I fit.’

‘And Doug?’

‘He’s everything, he’s everywhere. Poor fucker.’

We sat in silence for a while. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll go to the meeting. I don’t know why I made such a fuss about going in the first place.’

I thought of my funeral suit, hanging up in my wardrobe. My heart contracted.

‘We’ve got nothing to lose,’ I added, thinking, at the same time, about the herb garden and the ornamental pond, the ducks, the geese.

‘I’ll wait and see,’ Saleem said, showing a laudable lack of faith in me. ‘I’ll believe you’ve actually gone only when I see it with these two eyes.’

She pointed. We were both silent for a while. Upstairs I could hear Cog walking down the passageway. Saleem looked up at the ceiling.

‘The cat,’ I said.

She shook her head, ‘He’s on my lap.’

‘Doug!’ I exclaimed, feeling something slither down my spine.

We both listened. Doug was dragging himself up the corridor and into the bathroom.