Small Holdings (10 page)

I RAN A WARM BATH
and soaked every bit of me in it. I stuck my head underwater and breathed the water in through my nose, swallowed some of it, blew the rest of it out, full of soil and muck and flaking red residue.

After the bath I had hoped to feel bolder, but I didn’t. I looked in the mirror and saw the same hairy, scared creature staring straight back at me.

In my bedroom I pulled on a clean shirt and some trousers. I pulled out my suit too, my funeral suit, from the back of the wardrobe, and laid it flat across the bed. My funeral suit. Whose funeral? I put the suit away again.

Still on the pillow lay Dr John Sledge’s
I’m Not Angry, I’m Hurting.
I picked it up. I opened it. At the top of the page was a heading in bold lettering. It said:
WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE ?

I shut the book, turned it over and stared at the photograph of Dr John Sledge on the back of it. Dr Sledge was younger than I imagined. He had a head like a pumpkin. He exuded a kind of ghastly, glistening rude health. He had a mole in between his nose and his top lip. He was smiling broadly and he had perfect teeth. Out loud I said it. ‘Dr Sledge,’ I said, ‘if you came and sat down next to me on a train I’d change compartments.’

I brewed some coffee. I ate three pieces of bread and butter. While I ate I considered the things I had yet to do. Some strimming by the rose garden, the hydrangeas needed cutting back. I’d noticed some of the rubbish bins by the tennis courts were full. What else? Nothing else.

I searched for my keys, found them, picked up a jumper from the back of a chair because the air outside had turned nippy. As I picked up the jumper I knocked the files which Saleem had balanced precariously on the edge of the kitchen table. I swore. The top one fell and the bottom one followed. Their paper guts scattered across the floor. And as I picked up each sheet I told myself: See this? All this writing and planning and calculating? This is the business, this stuff. The park, well that’s something altogether different. They are two different entities. Altogether separate.

But the paper was covered in Doug’s close hand. Doug’s figures and letters. I couldn’t help but see Doug in these papers. I picked them up. Some had doodles on them, inkspots, drops of tea, bits of crumb. Some were crumpled, others pristine. Some were stuck together. I tried to pull these apart as a tribute to Doug and then there, before me, the most incredible thing happened.

The paper unfolded. Several sheets had been stuck together with Sellotape, hinged together on purpose. I unfolded, one piece and two pieces, three pieces, four, and beheld the most perfect, most detailed, accurate and lovely sketch, in green and red pen - mad colours - of the park: all its parts, but something new, too.

In gorgeous detail, a little maze. A magical thing. A heart-shaped maze with a waterfall at its centre. Ornate statues in dead ends, occasional arches and trellises, and honeysuckle. Spy-glasses and sunflowers and poppies growing through the privet. Concrete frogs peeping out from corners and pheasants stalking with glass tails.

And at last, I saw Doug. I saw Doug. My hands started shaking, my eyes filled, because at last I saw Doug. He was right there in front of me. He was not lost any more.

I FORGOT ABOUT ALL
those other tasks. Instead I stared at Doug’s plans for what seemed like an eternity. Of course he’s mad, I told myself. Of course he is. And when I told myself that Doug was mad it sounded in my ears like the grandest kind of compliment, an accolade, the sweetest benediction.

Once I’d familiarized myself thoroughly with every detail of Doug’s crazy plan, I read through the other stuff too. I put the receipts into some semblance of order, I calculated how much we’d spent over the last year and on what, and how much we’d saved by frugal management. I tried to work out whether we could claim for the damage to the greenhouse under our present system of insurance. And then I went out.

I went out and I walked for a very long time. Things needed sorting and I wasn’t entirely sure who was going to sort them. Was I going to sort them? Could I?

I walked for a very long time and eventually I found myself in Southgate and I was outside an all-night chemist and then I was inside and standing by the counter.

‘Can I help you?’ He was a young man with ginger hair and brown eyes. He wore a white lab coat and glasses. I said, ‘I want a packet of condoms please. Extra small.’

Slightly surprised, he pointed to my left. ‘Over there, on the counter. We have several varieties. All sizes.’

I said, ‘Only sometimes it’s hard to find the extra small ones because . . . they’re extra small.’ My face was a fire engine.

‘I’ll help you look, shall I, sir?’

Cool, calm, collected. Breathe one, breathe two, breathe three. ‘That’s kind of you. Thanks.’

My voice was going. I sounded Scottish, to myself; vowels crawling out from all corners of my mouth like crabs.

He rummaged for a while and produced three different packets.

‘Three types. An y preference?’

‘Any. All. I’ll take all three. Thank you.’

‘I’ll pop them in a bag for you, shall I, sir?’

‘Grand. Thanks.’

‘There we go.’

‘Thanks. Very much.’

You see, the problem is a very simple one, really. It’s all a question of wanting - not just wanting, but
needing,
like something categorical. Needing to be a part of a landscape. It’s about belonging to a place and wanting to belong and not knowing whether other people will even let you get around to
feeling
like you belong.

It’s more than that, more even than that. It’s like wanting to be an
actual,
a
physical
part of the landscape.

Animals do it. A bird belongs to the sky and the trees just as much as the trees and the sky themselves belong. No one questions - no one thinks to question - whether the worm a bird plucks from the soil is rightfully his. How could a berry belong anywhere else but in a starling’s gut? No one doubts it.

But people. Where do we fit in? How can we fit in? How do we know that we fit and who can we ask? And some people will always feel like they fit and try to make others feel like they don’t. And others won’t ever fit or feel like they fit, will never, ever feel that way .

All these thoughts, every single one of them, were my technique for avoiding stuff that was happening, that would happen. And I wouldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it.

I’d asked for the condoms, hadn’t I? Saleem was right. Maybe the only way to stop being embarrassed was to no longer avoid it. To search it out, to try - even - to enjoy it. To embrace it.

I walked for a very long time and then I got on a bus and ended u p in Enfield outside an all-night chemist. And then I was inside the chemist and I was telling the assistant - a small, dark woman with a silver moustache - I’ve got crabs. Do you have anything for crabs? Are there many different varieties of crab? What are mine like? I don’t know. Little ginger things, tiny things.

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?

Nancy started wheezing more violently.

‘Out!’ the coat-check girl yelled, ‘before she hurls. Quick!’

‘Nancy.’ I shook her shoulder, harder this time, ‘Hey, Nancy, wake up.’

Very slowly, very gradually, Nancy opened her other eye. Wide and then wider.

‘Phil!’ she mumbled, speaking like her tongue had trebled in size and was working on inhabiting the whole of her head. Her right eye stared through me, the left eye skittered and slid around.

‘Hello Nancy. Where’s Doug?’

She turned her head, ‘Doug? Where?’

‘Yes. ‘

She eyed me expectantly. I stared back, for a moment, before it dawned on me that she wasn’t intent on telling but on waiting for an answer. I said, isn’t he still in your truck?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Nancy muttered, woozily, ‘all the veg-e-ta-bles.’ After a short pause she added, ‘Boom! Just like Gregory Peck. Boom!’ She cackled and made pathetic little mushroom-shaped cloud pictures in the air with her hands.

I peered up at the coat-check girl again. ‘Do you remember by any chance whether she arrived here alone or with someone else? A man.’ The coat-check girl was no longer feeling quite as cooperative as before. ‘She could’ve come in with seventeen eunuchs and a Jack Russell for all I care. I want her out of here.’

Nancy’s eyes were closing again. ‘Come on,’ I said, and grabbed hold of her arm. I tried to tug her up but wasn’t strong enough.

‘Out of my way, you twat,’ the coat-check girl clucked, pushing me aside, bending from the knee, lifting Nancy up with apparent ease and draping her across her shoulder. ‘I’ll take her down the corridor to the public phone and then it’s up to you,’ she declared tartly, and led the way.

The cab driver stared at Nancy and said, ‘If she spews in my car I’ll make you lick up every last drop of it.’

I gave him Ray’s address and then spent the entire journey staring at Nancy’s mouth and her throat, waiting for her to retch, waiting to catch any liquid in my cupped hands or in the flaps of my shirt-front.

Nancy didn’t seem to know what she was doing or where she was going. She lay across my lap and panted like an old dog pants when the sun has risen to its midday height and the shade he was lying in has crept a short distance away, but he’s too old and too tired to drag his stiff bones back into it. She panted in just that way, but thank God she did not retch. I still tried talking, though. ‘Doug,’ I kept asking, ‘where did you put him? Is he still in your truck? Was he bleeding?’ ‘Mine’s a Bacardi,’ she rasped, ‘with coke and ice.’

Once we’d arrived, the driver didn’t want to help me with Nancy but he didn’t have much choice. She had to be moved and I wasn’t man enough to move her. He dumped her on Ray’s doormat. She grinned up at him, gratefully, while he overcharged me.