Nicola Barker - Small Holdings

Saleem was holding a book. She put it down on the table and came over. She snatched the tea-towel, wrung it out and tied it on firmly. I winced. Pain and her proximity left me squeamish.

‘Sit.’

She pushed me down on to the chair again. She picked up the book. It had a red cover.

‘See this?’ She held the book up to me. It was called I’m Not Angry, I’m Hurting by Dr John Sledge. ‘Guess what, Phil?’

‘What?’ I wished the book didn’t have a red cover. Not red. ‘You’re not angry, Phil, you’re hurting.’

I inspected my makeshift bandage. I said, ‘I think I’m feeling a little of both, actually.’

Saleem ignored this.

‘I went to a psychiatrist, after the accident,’ she said, ‘after the museum burned down and I lost my leg.’ She paused for a moment and then grinned. ‘Fuck all wrong with me, though. But for some reason, that quack gave me this book. Obviously, it’s all bollocks. Most of it. But there’s something in here, Phil, that I think might help us. Kind of like the inside of a nut.’

‘ A kernel.’

‘Exactly.’

She paged through the book. She pushed the pages flat on Chapter four: ‘How I Feel, How You Feel’. She handed me the book. ‘Read.’

I closed the book. I said. ‘I’ll read it later. I think I should go and see Ray.’

‘It’s a quick fix,’ Saleem said, undaunted, ‘and if you’re going to attend that meeting on Friday then we’re going to need a quick fix, because You know and I know that you won’t have the balls to stand up in front of five people and present a good case for our tender without some kind of divine intervention.’

‘It won’t come to that.’

‘It might.’

She took the book back and opened it again. ‘The main point Sledge makes is this, right. He says, it’s not what happens in life that screws you up but how you interpret events. See? So sometimes, if you’re very sensitive, then often it’s not like bad things have actually happened, only that they feel bad to you. So it’s all a question of getting things in proportion, yeah?’

I gave my sore knuckle a little squeeze so that the pain would distract me. A kind of anaesthetic.

‘And right here’s how you go about it. Chapter Four. Right here. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Something called the three Cs. Cool, calm, confident. Uh. . rhythmic exercises and stuff. Breathing.’

I scratched my beard. ‘Did Ray say he’d be in The Fox?’

Saleem looked up from the book. She suddenly wasn’t as affable as she’d seemed before.

‘You’d better listen to me, Phil. I’m not bullshitting you. I’m taking control of this situation and it’s going to be a bumpy fucking ride.’

Her anger blew in my face like hot air from a hairdryer. Hot. Dry. She looked down at the book again. ‘You’ve got to get stuff in proportion. You’ve got to do it quickly, that’s all I’m saying. And it won’t be easy.’

Cog jumped up on to the table next to her. He’d barely landed before she knocked him off with a vigorous swipe. He skidded as he landed on the tiles.

‘You and I are going out together, right now, and we are going up on to the High Street, to the chemist’s, and you are going to walk in there, straight to the counter, and in a clear, loud voice you are going to ask the assistant for a packet of extra-small condoms.’

I shook my head. I continued staring down at the tiles.

‘OK, so it sounds stupid, but there’s a reason behind it. .’

‘I’m not doing that.’

‘It’s therapeutic. Kind of like embarrassing yourself on purpose. Taking it to the limit. Forcing yourself. Taking control of embarrassing situations and so taking the sting out of them.’

Sting. Saleem. Cog stood by the kitchen door. I wanted to be where Cog was. I wanted to be Cog. I shook my head. Outside I could hear something. Footsteps, a door opening, a metallic jangle. The engine of Nancy’s truck bursting into life.

Nancy. I looked up and over towards the window. Saleem was staring at me. I didn’t meet her eye. And then I heard her voice whispering under the growl of the truck. Lower than the truck and growlier. She said, ‘And you care about this place, and you care about Nancy, but you don’t have the guts to do anything. You won’t speak up. You won’t even do that. That one small thing. And I’d give up my fucking body, and Doug’d give up his fucking soul. But you, you won’t give anything.’

Saleem threw the book down onto my lap, picked up her stick, left me. I heard the front door slam. Outside I heard female voices. And whispering.

RAY WAS ON HIS third pint by the time I’d arrived at The Fox. He was perched on a stool by the bar. The pub wasn’t too full, although Ray’s enough of a man to fill any room. His arms are giant leeks, white leeks tipped with two artichoke paws, a full fist of fingers which he wiggles and he waggles to great dramatic effect.

I pulled up a stool for myself. Ray inspected my hand.

‘Did Nancy do that?’

‘No. ‘

‘Saleem?’

‘Let me just say something, Ray.’

He looked up, surprised by my determined tone. ‘What?’

I thought for a moment. ‘I just think we’v e got to make a real effort to keep Doug calm. Especially over the next couple of days.’

‘OK. ‘

I smiled. It was so easy with Ray. And I said, ‘I don’t think we should involve Saleem too much in the park’s affairs either.’

Ray suddenly looked uneasy, he fidgeted on his stool. ‘Saleem’s quite involved,’ he said, ‘already.’

‘Well she doesn’t need to be any more involved, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘No, ‘ Ray took a sip of his beer.

‘Doug’s doing fine.’

Ray took another sip. He smacked his lips. ‘You’re right,’ he said. He ordered me a pint, paid, passed it over. As he passed it I said, almost casually, almost incidentally, ‘And the Chinaman. .’

‘Wu.’

‘You know about him?’

Ray knew. He knew. Ray, it turned out, knew more than I’d thought. Ray, it turned out, had served as a confidant, a gatherer of scraps, an unobservant observer.

People feel they can trust Ray. They trust his gormlessness, his softness, his delicious, harmless squelchiness.

People mention things to Ray and they know that no judgement will be forthcoming, no private reckoning will take place in the cavern of Ray’s brain, no stern moral hypothesis will be formulated and delivered. Ray is a sponge. Ray is natural, is, above all other things (and how could it be otherwise, really?), himself.

Something dawned on me. A kind of shame. No one tells me stuff. No one tells me anything. Not of their own accord. My head is so full of other things, of myself, of itself, that no one ever bothers telling me anything else.

‘No one told me this stuff, Ray,’ I said at one point, during a conversational hiatus. ‘No one mentioned any of this to me.’

‘You’re lucky,’ Ray answered blithely. ‘You’ve got your own business going on. You’ve got,’ he paused for greater emphasis, ‘you’ve got a secret life, up there,’ he tapped his skull.

‘And you don’t?’

He grinned, ‘I’ve got all the outside stuff. That’s plenty.’ By Ray’s fourth pint I wasn’t worried any more, not shy to be spoken to, not conscious of his gaze. Ray’s eyes were watery, wandering; tadpoles in the jelly of his face. ‘You want to know about Wu?’ he asked. ‘Well, if you want to know about Wu, then first you have to know about Doug and Mercy and the Anniversary Dinner.’

‘I do?’

He nodded. ‘You see, I don’t understand all this business myself. It’s only that Saleem said something and then Doug mentioned something else. It’s not like anything fits together in any way. Nothing like that. But I keep picking up this information and slotting it away. .’