Nicola Barker - Small Holdings

‘But Wu. .?’

‘Remember three weeks ago? Before Doug moved in with Saleem? Before all this weird stuff? Doug and Mercy’s thirtieth wedding anniversary. That’s where it started. .’

‘Mercy and the diarrhoea, Saleem said something. .’

Ray nodded. ‘That’s the one. Just listen,’ he said. ‘You won’t hardly believe it.’

And slowly, slowly, with commendable precision, Ray rolled open his canvas and covered it with colour. And each stroke was perfect, each touch, each piece of his narrative fitted, each portion, each serving, so neat and geometrical, every element, a balance. Like he was neatly laying squares of turf down for a brand new lawn.

‘Picture it,’ Ray said, his eyes sparkling, ‘Friday night, three weeks ago. Italian restaurant. La Bruschetta on Green Lanes. Doug’s all dressed up for dinner. Jacket, tie. Mercy’s wearing a new dress. Doug’s been busy all day working on the accounts for the park. Things are tight. The budget’s stretching thin. . yeah, well, who cares, because they’re out for a special night together. Thirty years! That’s something worth celebrating.

‘Now here’s the important part, right, pay attention. Doug is perfectly happy. Four words: Doug is perfectly happy’. He’s got other things on his mind, naturally, other pressures: work, the park, money, their gas boiler might be on the blink. . yeah, well, but everything’s fine, and the waiter comes over to their table and they order their starters.

‘Mercy has Parma ham. Great. Doug’s about to have the same — he always follows Mercy’s lead in culinary matters, that’s just the way it is between them — and then his eye swerves, he looks down the menu, and his gaze settles on the words “prawn cocktail”. He thinks: what the hell. I’m thirty years married. Time for something new. Prawn cocktail.

‘Doug looks up at the waiter and he says “Prawn cocktail, please.” And Mercy stares at him with a strange expression on her face. He stares back at her. “What’s up?” he says. “Doug, what made you choose that prawn cocktail?” He gives it some thought. He says, “Do I need a reason?” She shrugs.

‘They order the rest of their meal, their drinks, and off the waiter goes. Fine. Except Doug can’t help noticing that Mercy’s expression is a little bit brighter, a little bit tighter.

‘The starters arrive. Doug digs in. Mercy’s staring at his prawns. She’s not touched her ham yet. She says, “Doug, why did you order that prawn cocktail when you know we never have prawns?” Doug puts down his fork. He says, “Now what? What’s the big problem with the prawns?” Mercy says, “Remember our very first date?” Doug gives it some thought. He remembers. Mercy says, “Well, on that occasion I had prawns.” Doug is flummoxed. So what? And he turns his mind back to that very first date.

‘And the truth is — and he remembers it — that he didn’t much like Mercy when he first met her. Not for any particular reason, but there was no spark between them, not on his side, at least, and he firmly believes in a spark. He’s romantic like that, although you’d be hard pressed to imagine it now.

‘Anyway, he remembers their first date, thirty years ago. Remembers it clearly, how, at the beginning, on their way to the restaurant, things were really dragging, and he was wondering why he agreed to go, and he was thinking about how his parents knew Mercy’s parents and how Mercy’s brother was at the same cricket club, all this stuff.

‘And then Doug remembers, with a smile, how it happened, during the meal, how something peculiar, something completely unexpected happened. They were on their second course, they’d been talking, and suddenly, out of the blue, he saw that Mercy was brighter than he’d thought, and sparky, and nervous, and she had this restlessness, this vivacity. And the candle on the table flickered its light on her and she was beautiful. Beautiful.

‘In that instant, Doug knew that there was a spark. Right there, in his heart. And she wasn’t pushy, she wasn’t slow, she wasn’t any of the things he’d thought she was. She was fine, jumpy, mysterious; a thoroughbred.

‘Doug remembered. Thirty years! He grinned to himself. He picked up his spoon. Mercy was glaring. He put down his spoon. Now what? What’s the problem? “ I hate prawns, Doug,” Mercy mutters. “That very first date we went on, I had prawns as a starter and they nearly ruined everything.”

‘Well you can imagine, Doug is staring at her like she’s crazy. “ I mean it, Doug, “ she says. “ I had some prawns and they gave me the quickest and the worst and the strongest dose of food poisoning I’ve ever had. How I sat through that meal I’ll never know. My stomach was a volcano, my head was on fire. I could barely hold my fork.”

‘Bang! Suddenly Doug’s mind is clicking and whirring, turning over and everything’s playing back in slow motion. And he realizes, it dawns on him, it strikes him that Mercy is not the woman he thought she was. She wasn’t the woman he fell in love with. He fell in love with — and this is the best part or the worst part according to how you look at it — he fell in love with a small dose of staphi cocci. That’s bacteria, incidentally.

‘You see, Mercy wasn’t that vivacious woman, that flighty, peachy, jumpy thoroughbred. She was a boring person with a gastric disorder. But Doug hadn’t seen it. He’d duped himself. He’d sold himself down the river. Bang! Just like that. Doug had built his house on sand. Doug had been living a lie. It was over. That was it. He moved out of their home that very same night.’

Ray rested his head on the bar, sideways, and stared at me. I was gawping.

‘Ray,’ I said, ‘I’ve never heard such a pile of absolute garbage.’

Ray was unfazed. ‘Later I saw Mercy,’ he said, ‘and she was sobbing her eyes out because Doug had told her she was never the person he thought she was. She just didn’t get it, and I didn’t get it either. I told her so. I said, “He’s having a brainstorm. Men sometimes go funny at fifty.” She said, “Women go funny too but they don’t make such a song and dance about it.” I said, “Fair enough.” That’s all I could say.’

‘Is there anything else?’

Ray sighed. ‘Well, Saleem thinks the problem is longer term. The big vegetables in the greenhouse. His obsession with getting the bandstand built. Wu. She thinks Doug’s having all these weird thoughts about religion and truth and culture and the Mercy thing’s just a part of it. She says she hears him talking to himself at night, having whole conversations all on his own. She says Doug’s been muttering stuff to her about how events all go in a circle and that everything inside has to come outside and that all actions should be true actions and direct actions. He’s private and secretive but also evangelical. You’d think it’d be hard to be all these things at once but Doug seems to manage it.

‘Anyhow, Saleem says that if he talks to anyone for a period longer than five minutes then it becomes extremely apparent that he’s very disturbed indeed. Very disturbed. She said he can’t go to the meeting on Friday because it’ll be as plain as her face that he’s as mad as a hatter. We’ll lose the tender.’

‘Forget about Saleem, Ray,’ I said, ‘Doug might be thinking a lot of strange things but it hasn’t affected us directly yet. I’m sure we can sort out the business with Nancy during the two weeks she’s working out her notice. He’ll come around. And there’s no reason for us to believe that the meeting won’t be just fine. It’s all a question of keeping things in proportion.

‘And if what Doug says is true, and things do move in a circle, then maybe Doug will get back to how he used to be eventually. Maybe even quite soon if everything stays calm.’