NICOLA BARKER

Small Holdings

Empty-handed I go, and behold the spade is in my hands; I walk on foot, and yet on the back of an ox I am riding; When I pass over the bridge, Lo, the water floweth not, but the bridge doth flow.

Shan-hui

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Epigraph

Three Days

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Praise

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Three Days

Wednesday

SOME PEOPLE OPEN up like flowers; slowly, painstakingly, each petal unfurling, reacting, affirming. Responding, simply, to warmth and to tending.

Other people can be peeled; like a fruit - like an orange or a pomelo - the skin comes off, and underneath is something full and ripe, perfectly segmented, waiting to be apportioned by deft and inquisitive fingers.

Doug was like an egg. A boiled egg. Hard-boiled. He was knocked once, twice, many times, and his shell cracked, and it crumbled, and underneath was something slippery and rubbery and not especially digestible.

If he hadn’t been hard-boiled, he would have dropped from his shell, moist, sloppy, just a mess. In certain respects, in retrospect, that might have been preferable.

I’d been wrong about Doug all along. I’d thought he was an oyster: barnacle-hard outside, abrasive even, but with a vulnerable interior, maybe a pearl in there somewhere, hidden, precious, protected. I also considered at certain points that he might be a beetle. Beetles, it seems, like some other insects, have a skeleton on the outside and the flesh, the soft bits, inside. People are traditionally soft on the outside, and the bones, the frame, the supports are hidden away within layers of skin and fat and muscle. That’s exactly how I am. Soft and yielding, like tripe to the touch.

Well Doug, Doug was a boiled egg, hard-boiled with a blueish pallor - white turned blue - a pale yellow yolk (his heart, not soft either), and he was extremely entrenched, obscenely contained and mystifyingly, ridiculously, maybe even deceptively proud of himself.

We’d all worked as gardeners in the park for several years before the whole enterprise was privatized and a group of us -me, Doug and not forgetting Ray (Big Ray) - formed a partnership and along with Nancy, our driver, made a successful bid for the contract.

Doug was always nominally in charge. I’m too shy to do anything but blush and blunder. Ray, well, he’s moonish, and tender and completely unfocused. Doug is incredibly reasonable, too reasonable - monosyllabic, in general, admittedly -awesome, though, terrifying, as hard as a nut; a literal tough-nut. He is fair-minded but merciless. If he has a rule book (and he’ll usually find one close at hand) then he’ll play by it.

Working with Doug is like playing a game of snooker. The park is the green baize. We all look after the baize, we nurture it, we love it - but more of that later - and Doug is the white ball. He sets all the other balls in motion. He doesn’t confer, he doesn’t request, he doesn’t even cooperate. Doug simply knocks into the other balls, slams into them, bangs into them. Balls of all colours. And I’m a red ball. Shy. Embarrassed. Always the first to be pocketed, to scamper and scarper.

Doug’s technique is remarkably simple. Physical. He’s the big ball, the biggest ball. That’s all. He is also, and I guess this is ironic - or else this whole snooker business just isn’t working - Doug is also the black ball. He is the first and the last. If he leaves the table then the game is over.

There’s one question you should never ask Doug. Never ask Doug where he’s from. I know where he’s from because many is the time I’ve heard him talking French, a strange French, like a list of exotic ingredients from a fancy cookbook, to his wife, Mercy, who he walked out on a fortnight ago after thirty years of marriage.

Doug comes from a place full of bright birds and sun and tall trees. I can imagine this place so clearly, can even imagine Doug there, kicking up sand, shouting at people. It’s an island. One island in the Lesser Antilles: Martinique. I looked it up in my big old atlas. I saw the arc of Doug’s islands, islands humped in the Caribbean sea like the backbone of a long-forgotten animal. Barbuda, Antigua, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, St Lucia, St Vincent, Grenada, Doug’s Islands.

Everything about him gives him away, external things, so he holds himself in, his real self, his inside-self, every-part. Every muscle tenses, resists, contains. That’s Doug all over. With his neat greying beard, his black hair, his hands like clams, his dark, bloodied eyes, his accent which is as strong and thick as rich molasses.

In fact, though, in truth, he comes from Palmers Green, North London. We all do: me and Ray and Doug and Saleem (one-legged Saleem, our squatter, my persecutor, our old curator) and Nancy. That Nancy.

Well, the park is my soul. I live off it, I work on it, I live for it. I love it. Doug loves it too, but lately he’s taken to growing vegetables - out back, in the greenhouses which are no longer open to the public. Giant vegetables. He thinks the punters don’t notice when they peek through the glass, expecting succulents, orchids, exotica. He thinks they aren’t surprised, shocked, maybe even piqued when they see only row upon row of onions (Doug’s an onion, yes, I like that. An onion) or marrows, cabbages, tomatoes. The occasional giant, merry sprig of a carrot top.

‘Phil,’ Doug said, last time I broached the subject of the vegetables - and the other things too, more recent peculiarities - ‘Phil.’ (He takes every opportunity to say my name, rolls it on his tongue, pronounces it ‘feel’, which never fails to activate something in me, something inside, something vulnerable and inadequate, something connected to feeling too much but expressing nothing, something soft and sad.) ‘Phil, whosoever diggeth a pit shall fall in it.’

Doug has another saying, equally incomprehensible, which he’ll interchange randomly with this one; ‘Phil, Phil, what-yagonna do when your well runs dry? Huh?’ He won’t wait for an answer. He’s too preoccupied. He’ll saunter off (that saunter, a true gardener’s gait) and he’ll be rubbing his hands, jangling the keys in his pocket and expectorating; drawing something deep from his throat which he’ll expel neatly into the border as he wanders past the perennials.

By then I’ll be blushing. Fool. I’m thinking about ‘Feel’. Feel.

Whosoever diggeth a pit.

Ray was digging a deep hole next to the perimeter fence on the east side of the park and preparing to sink a gate-post into it. He was glossy with sweat. He stopped digging as I approached.

‘Whosoever diggeth a pit,’ I said.

‘Now that,’ Ray answered mopping his wide forehead with his fat arm, ‘That’s Bobby Marley.’

‘You’re kidding me. I thought it was biblical.’

Ray shrugged. ‘Could be originally, but I’m sure I heard it in a Bob Marley song.’

Ray must be well over twenty stone, has long, frizzy blonde hair, a straggly beard, green eyes, the face of a cherub. I told him Doug had requested a meeting at five, in the house, the kitchen.

‘Fine.’

‘You, me, him and Nancy.’

Ray rested on his spade. ‘It seems like Doug’s finally cracked,’ he said, grinning gently. ‘At long last. And that’s what comes,’ he added, ‘that’s what comes of being too solid for too long.’

I didn’t like this kind of talk. ‘He’s only left his wife,’ I said calmly. ‘That’s all.’

Ray remained undaunted. ‘He’s talking to himself.’

‘I do that too, sometimes, when I’m not thinking clearly.’

‘You’re like royalty. You talk to your plants. Doug’s just talking. All the time.’

‘He’s got a lot on his mind. There’s the meeting with the council to re-assert our tender on Friday. That won’t be much fun. It won’t be easy. And Doug’s the man to pull it off.’

Ray nodded his assent. ‘Doug’s the man, yes, but he hasn’t done a stroke of work in weeks now.’

I shrugged. I said, ‘He’s keeping busy.’

Ray scowled. ‘He’s up to something,’ he said. ‘He’s tipping the scales . . .’

Ray made a strange, scale-tipping gesture with his two arms. ‘And I don’t know,’ he added, ‘what that actually means for the rest of us, and for this place.’

He looked around him, at his spade, the mud, the grass, the fence.

I cleared my throat. I said, ‘Things are chugging over, just like they’ve always done.’

Ray shrugged, yanked up his spade and returned to his digging. ‘Someone,’ he said, grunting out every syllable with each cut of the soil, ‘Someone is going to have to do something.’ And after he’d finished speaking, the slice of his spade added a further five syllables: And it won’t be me.

I watched Ray digging for a moment. If only, I thought, Doug’d opened up gently, like a flower.

I had a thorough understanding of how flowers worked.

How big is it? Christ knows. An average size. Not a grand park. Not your Victoria, your Hyde, your Hampstead Heath. It seems small because of its unpretentiousness. Even so, it has pretensions. Used to have a Tudor museum - black, white, criss-crossed beams - stuck wham-bam in the middle of it, facing the water, reflected in the water; three little lakes and a round ornamental pond over to the right where kids paddle - contravening the park regulations - in the summer.

The museum was burned down, years ago now, but its black, burnt-out shell remains, and Saleem, its curator, well, more about her later. We used to have a proper athletics track: red, official, fenced off, very impressive, but we grew it over a while back. Athletes go down to Tottenham or up to Enfield now.

The tennis courts - six of them, slightly overgrown, but in working order - stand adjacent to the greenhouses. There’s also a wild section, which is purposefully unkempt, circled by silver birch, where the squirrels dart. A bandstand, Doug’s pride and joy, recently built at his instigation out of raw, dark-stained, splinter-pushing pine. An adventure playground that any park would be proud of.

To the north is the hill which is grass, mainly, where people come to picnic. We have public toilets - Ladies, Gents - and behind these are the private areas, staff-only places, which consist of a barn - a lovely barn - and the house where Saleem squats, where Doug is skulking, now he’s left his wife. Now he’s opened up and gone crackers.

It was three o’clock that same Wednesday afternoon and I was planting geraniums over by the bandstand. I had twenty plants in all and wasn’t particularly optimistic about the contribution these would make to the display as a whole which was scruffy and sparse and relatively shambolic. This was Doug’s patch, supposedly.

I was deciding whether to plant them in a half-moon, close to the border, or whether to distribute them more freely among the spider plants - this display’s main constituent. The spider plants had been Ray’s idea. His reasoning was that they grew quickly, reproduced easily, and that they were, most importantly, green. I doubted whether they’d last the winter out, but they’d cost us nothing which, as we’re broke, was all that really mattered.

Nancy had promised to drive over a new, cheap assortment of annuals from Southend at some point. She’d arranged to get them on credit. She has the gift of the gab, and it’s a useful gift. I wish I had it.

I dug a hole with my trowel near to the front of the bed. Behind me, as I worked, I could hear the gravel shift and scuffle, and another familiar noise, a plunging, a sucking-plucking. One-legged Saleem. I could see her from the corner of my eye, swinging over, staggering over. I pretended to be engrossed.

‘Phil,’ she said, ‘what’s up?’ She drew very close. ‘Planting pansies, eh?’

‘Geraniums.’ I popped one in and pressed the soil firm around its roots.

‘Yeah? What’s a geranium do?’ She poked her stick out, automatically, and pushed it into the soft soil to the right of the new plant. ‘How’s that?’

‘Thanks.’

I widened the hole with the trowel and placed the new plant.

‘What’s it do? I love knowing what they do. You’re clever like that.’

‘You could dry the root. It’s astringent. A kind of tonic. You could take it internally for diarrhoea or use it as a gargle. It’s a good gargle.’

‘Who’d’ve thought it?’ She bounced a step back and made a further hole. I moved over and planted the next one. ‘Who’d’ve thought it, eh?’

I grimaced. She stared at me closely, ‘Are you busy, Phil? Are you working too hard? Are you hot? Catching the sun, maybe? You’ve got bright little flames in both cheeks.’

I tried to distract her, to evade her questions, to drag her eyes away from my skin which always ripens at her approach, always reddens. ‘You’re getting mud on your stick.’

‘Huh?’ She inspected it, ‘Nah, Soil’s dry. Needs a water.’

‘It’s moist for August.’

‘It’s moist for August*.’

She guffawed and threw herself down on to the grass verge. I glanced at her for a moment and then turned my back and carried on planting.

Saleem has long, black hair and a lean face. Skin the colour of caramel. Half dark Hindu, half Greek. A curious hybrid. She looks like a cobra in a wig. She speaks with a forked tongue. She hates me. I don’t know why.

‘Can we talk, Phil?’

‘I’m working.’

‘While you work, then.’

I smell her hate, always, and it’s a hot-hate, has a hot smell which makes me shrivel, inside, outside. And she loves to stare, to invade, to gouge. She lives for it.

‘While you work, then,’ she repeated.

I said nothing.

‘Am I irritating you or something?’

‘No. ‘

She prodded the base of my back with the tip of her stick.

‘Stop that.’

I swatted her stick with my arm but didn’t turn.

‘You’re just too sensitive,’ Saleem said, and by the sound of her voice she had a smile on her lips. ‘And usually,’ she added, I wouldn’t care, but lately, well, things are coming to a head and I’m looking to you for some kind of decisive action.’

I didn’t respond to this, didn’t rise to her, and she, in turn, was silent for a minute, sitting up straight, viper-still, her amputated leg jutting out in front of her like the short butt of a cigar.

‘You know, sometimes, Phil, your natural reserve comes across like a kind of hostility. Turn and look at me, Phil,’ she added, almost whispering. ‘Turn and look, go on. Go on, Phil. Turn and face me. Look at me. Go on.’

‘I’m busy.’

My head was so low as I spoke that my chin touched my chest. She laughed at this. Her incisors are protrusive, are very clearly pointed. I could picture them in my mind, and the very idea of them scorched me, scalded me. She prodded me again, sharp in the back with her stick. ‘Go on, Phil, go on. Go on.’

And I blocked out her taunting, was working, like I’d said, was busy, was working, was planting, was digging. Quickly, busily. Five plants, then four plants. Then three plants left, only three, and after I’d placed those I’d have to turn to face her and she’d see, with glee, that I was burned by her proximity, that I was red as beet, purple-red as beet. Two plants left. One plant.

I turned. But Saleem wasn’t looking at me. She was a hooded reptile, yes, still a reptile, drawn up to spit, rocking, readying herself, but suddenly not focusing on me, but staring beyond me, over my shoulder, at the museum, its black shell. I thanked God for it, the museum. That was a skin she’d shed a long time ago, but she kept on inspecting it, sniffing at it, mulling it over.

I turned away again, shuffled the soil into smoothness with my palms, broke down lumps with my thumb and forefinger, patted it, softened it. And for a minute or so I was still blushing, red and ripe and bright as a poppy. Blood. My curse.

You see, I blushed before I could walk, before I could talk. People’s eyes invade me and make me anxious. Maybe because I think too well of other people, or maybe because I don’t think well enough of myself. My schooldays were tortured, my teenyears a wash-out, and when I grew older, my only recourse was to disguise. Girls wear green-tinted make-up. Yes, that helps to hide blushes, apparently. I grew my hair, a mass of curls that fall over my face, cover my ears, which always tingle first, sting and heat up. A neat and moderately well-spread beard - up my cheeks, down my neck - helps to shelter further exposed flesh. I am Monkey Man. I am Mountain Man. I am Scott of the Antarctic after a very long expedition.

Doug told me once, in a lighter moment, that my face was a vagina - all curls, all hair, with pink lips protruding and a small nose, labia-like, just above - a tender fold. After that I knew I didn’t just feel strange, vulnerable, like a whelk when its shell has been jerked open, but that I seemed strange to others, that I looked strange to others.

It’s all so complete, so perfect. A sun, a moon, a circle, a cycle. Maybe I think too much. Maybe I don’t think enough. Saleem knows all this. She smells it. She sees it with her yellow eyes.

‘What’s that?’ she asked suddenly, pointing with her stick. I followed its line. To the right of the museum I could see Doug in the distance, carrying what looked like a small tree.

‘Doug.’

‘What’s he up to?’

‘I don’t know. He’s working.’

‘Come off it! Anyway . I don’t mean Doug. I mean that . . .’ She continued pointing and added, ‘ A plant. Inside the building, the museum.’

I squinted. It was too far to see anything, not clearly.

‘It’s a plant,’ she insisted, ‘crawling up where the chimney used to be.’

I looked again, still not seeing but vaguely remembering -the park, its constituent parts, every small thing etched in my very heart - I aid, ‘I think it’s a passion flower, growing up in the charcoal and old cinder.’

‘What kind of a plant?’

‘A creeper. It has a beautiful flower. White and very ornate. In Jamaica they have a variation which they call a grenadilla. Doug might know more about it.’

‘I bet it grew from my leg,’ she said. ‘My skin and foot. During the fire, that’s where the burning beam fell, right there.’

I stared at her. She was warped. She was rubbing the stump of her knee, smiling. I shuddered.

‘What does it do?’

‘It works like a kind of morphine, affects the circulation and increases the rate of respiration. In homeopathic medicine they use its narcotic properties to treat dysentery. Sleeplessness. Some types are used for treating hysteria and skin inflammation.’

‘Yeah? How?’

‘I’m not sure. Dry the berry or boil the root. Something like that.’

Saleem started drawing a pattern in the grey gravel of the path with her stick.

‘Let me tell you something, Phil,’ she said. ‘I was talking to Doug this morning, over breakfast. And guess what we talked about?’

I didn’t turn but I shook my head.

‘We talked about the Gaps. ‘

I carried on smoothing the soil, thinking of softness, soil-softness.

‘Are you listening, Phil? The Gaps. Does that mean anything to you?’

I said quietly, ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘What was that?’

Saleem. My tormentor. I turned. ‘I don’t know.’

‘OK,’ she said, ‘OK, so Doug has this theory, right, about why London doesn’t work. It’s to do with the postal districts. He has this theory about London not working . . . Did he tell you this yet?’

I shook my head.

‘Oh, you’ll love it. You’ll love this. Here’s how it goes: Doug says that everything in nature moves in a circle, OK? That’s how nature works, a kind of winter-spring-summer-autumn-winter thing. A kind of sun-follows-moon-and-earth-revolving thing. Sort of oriental. He’s into all this stuff lately. Anyhow , Doug has now decided that the city of London is a life form too, kind of like a complex bacteria, and as such, everything should fit together. But unfortunately . . .’ She stressed this word until it stang with venom. ‘Unfortunately, Phil, London can’t work properly because of the Gaps. Sounding familiar yet?’ I shook my head, although suddenly, strangely, it did begin to sound familiar. Doug. Circles. Doug. The Gaps. It did sound familiar.

In the gravel Saleem had drawn a circle. ‘That’s London,’ the said, completing it. She drew a horizontal line through the centre of the circle, cutting it in half. ‘And that’s the Thames,’ she added. ‘So that’s London and everything connects to everything else. And these are the postal districts, OK?’ She drew them in. ‘We’ve got plain North London, we’v e got plain West London, we’v e got plain East London . . .’ As she spoke she pointed, and I could hear the gravel kissing and knocking.

‘But here’s a problem, right. There’s South-West London postal districts and there’s South-East postal districts, and they, sort of, meet in the middle, which means that there’s no South. No plain South. And Doug’s upset about this. And there’s another problem too, right. There’s North-West and South-West and South-East, but there’s no North-East. Another Gap. No plain South and no North-East. And according to Doug, this is why London doesn’t connect. This is why London doesn’t work. Things aren’t properly linked. See what I’m getting at, Phil?’

I nodded.

‘You see, the city is fucked, Phil, because of this little problem with the postal districts. And Doug is worrying about it, Phil. He’s thinking about it. These Gaps.’

I stopped feeling the soil. I turned.

‘So what’s the problem? Why are you telling me this?’

Saleem’s eyes popped. ‘Because Doug’s going absolutely rucking crazy. He’s got this meeting on Friday. Our whole fucking future depends on it, and he is going crazy. He’s crazy.’

I turned away again.

‘Say something!’

‘He’ll be fine.’

‘No he won’t be fine. And that’s the worst part of it. You seem determined to ignore what’s going on right under your nose. He’s gone mad. I know all about it. I’m living in the same house as him. And no one asked me, incidentally, whether I minded or not. He just moved in and that was that. Anyhow , I can see my way around the whole thing but no one wants to know what I’ve seen.’

Saleem scratched out her Postal District London and prepared the gravel for another design: a large phallus. Medieval. A two-foot phallus pointing west to her north and east to my south. Pointing, I decided, towards Ray, far away, digging his pit.

‘Doug’s OK.‘

‘OK? Jesus! You don’t know anything,’ she said, slitting her eyes, angry now, ‘You’re so in on yourself. There’s stuff going on here that you don’t know anything about. Private stuff. Everything’s a secret with Doug. You don’t know about Mercy and the diarrhoea. You don’t know about that mad man, that Chinaman, slinking about the place, poisoning everything. You don’t see anything through all that fucking hair. You don’t see anything.’

Saleem pushed herself up, used her stick to pull herself up by. She works well without her leg, admittedly, is lithe when she wants to be.

‘And the thing is, she said, ‘I know you love this place. It matters to you. You depend on it the same way I do. But you won’t ever act, you won’t ever do anything. You’re dormant, just blind. Turning in on yourself.’

I was surprised to be connected, all of a sudden, in a rush, like this, with Saleem. It was a curious sensation, this connection.

‘Forget it, then,’ she said, sounding defeated and afterwards, almost instantly, sounding defiant. ‘Looks like I’m going to have to be the one,’ she muttered, turning her back, ‘Me. Saleem. I am the one who’ll have to save things. Ray’s too stupid. You’re just a yak, a blob. And Nancy . . .’ She laughed. ‘I am the one,’ she said, darkly, stalking off, ‘just watch me.’

SO THIS IS the problem, I told the exhaust on the back of Nancy’s truck. The Park’s got another four months to run and we’r e almost broke. On Friday Doug’s going to meet Enfield Council’s Park Management Committee to re-assert our tender.

Doug’s been cryptic about his intentions. He’s said he has plans, big plans, but he hasn’t discussed them with me or Ray, he hasn’t told us what he’s up to. Saleem thinks that he doesn’t care any more, that he’s losing it, that he’s liable to do just about anything. Now he’s left his wife. Now he’s left his home. I can’t help thinking, though, somehow, that Doug’s just like me, that he cares too much. But there’s no telling, not with Doug. Doug won’t tell. His lips are zipped. Like Saleem says, he’s private. He’s impenetrable.

And of course we’re all frightened of him, apart from Saleem. Maybe even Saleem. He’s getting bigger and bigger. Sometimes I glance at his eyes and see the whole world in there, streaming in - light and colour and nature and history. Go d only knows what he might do.

My one compensation is that at least I think I know what he’s capable of. I know the perimeters. There are none.

And I love Doug for that very reason. I see my own smallness reflected in his hugeness, and because we are opposite we are almost the same.

I’m thirty-four years old and I can’t even hold a conversation. I’m soggy and I’m limpid and I’ve never truly believed in anything but the things that I do. My work, this park. And I like plants. I can make them grow, and I like the sky, how it goes up and up with no lid, and I’ve never even kissed a girl. And I’m in love with Nancy.

At least I think I am, and for all the wrong reasons. I love Nancy because she never looks me in the eye. That’s her way. She’s too preoccupied. There’s something in her gaze that doesn’t focus, doesn’t invade. I am only a voice in her head, so I’m safe, it’s a safe love. You see, she isn’t like other girls.

Nancy’s our driver. She has two great passions in her life: to drive her truck and the truck itself. (A Leyland Daf Roadrun ner, ‘Truck of the Year,’ she tells me proudly, ‘when it first came out.’ Seven tons of silver and metal and diesel.)

Also, Nancy likes to run. She has a body like a wasp; so clean so neat, so sharp. She can be very mean, potentially, but she often chooses not to be. She’s a man-woman, an Amazon, an outlaw. She has a small, silver pistol in her truck, in the glove compartment, smokes slim cheroots, wears denim jeans ripped off above the knee, and her muscles, smooth like cream, leg muscles, arm muscles, a tan, darker down one side of her body and face, a driving tan.

In summer she’ll wear a short leather halter-top. Her small breasts, like two beige damsons, jutting up, vibrating as she pulls the truck in, struggling in low gear, still when the engine’s off. She’s a reconstructed Suzi Quatro, a Joan Jett of jammed-up junctions. Sticky and tricky.

She is strong. She moves the load, effortlessly, at speed. She likes picking people up, can even pick Ray up, can do basic judo, play football, baseball, basketball. Has broken both arms, both legs, her collar bone in motorbike accidents. She told me so, she did.

She is covered, like a cactus, in tiny blonde hairs: her face, her arms, her legs. And the light shines off her, and the sweat, when she’s hot (always hot), beads on her and transforms her body into a silken web, so ornate, wondrous, one of the wonders of the world, in the world, out of this very, very world.

Nancy.

Nancy switched off her engine.

‘I’m fucked,’ she said, staring past my ear and into the middle distance. ‘My side-light’s gone. I’m gonna have to tell Doug. He’ll blow.’

‘What happened?’

‘I dunno. Some guy pulled out and I didn’t see him. Halfway to Southend. I was too uptight, too stressed. Just stupid. It’s been churning in my stomach all the way home. Third claim in two months. Here’s the paper,’ she slung me a copy of the Guardian, ‘that’s all they had left at the services.’

‘Anything in it?’

‘Nah.’

I rolled up the paper and stuck it in my back pocket, then said, ‘We’re having a meeting in a minute, in the kitchen. D’you need a hand unloading?’

‘Nope. I’ll be fine. Better start without me.’

‘Why?’

‘Doug’ll blow when I tell him about the bump I had. I can’t face it right now.’

‘D’you want me to tell him?’

She climbed out of her cab. ‘Would you? If the moment’s right? If he’s in a good mood. Don’t mention it otherwise.’

‘Fine.’

‘Would you?’

‘Sure.’

‘Thanks. You’re a gem.’

She rolled up her sleeves and went to let down the truck’s tail.

Ray was in the kitchen devouring a packet of ginger-nuts. He offered me the packet.

‘No thanks. Seen Doug?’

‘He’s on the phone.’

I started preparing a pot of tea. Saleem appeared in the doorway, That’ s fine, Ray, those are mine but just help yourself.’

‘Sorry.’ He put down the biscuits and furtively brushed some crumbs from his beard.

‘Let me do that.’ Saleem pushed past me and picked up the teapot, took off the lid and peered inside. ‘Doug never rinses this properly.’

I took the paper from my pocket, opened it, held it high and started turning the pages. On the third page, in the Reuters column, two small items had been outlined in blue ink. I peered more closely at them. The first had the heading THUMB SALAD. It said:

A nurse who found the tip of a thumb in a take-away salad was awarded £200 compensation. Rebecca Pothecary, who bought the food from Anthony’s Take-Away on Tottenham Street, central London, ‘felt something resist her bite’, Clerkenwell magistrates were told. The sandwich bar was ordered to pay £600 in fines and costs for breaching health regulations.

Outside my paper-wall I could hear Ray reaching quietly again, gently, for the ginger-nuts; the crackle of the packet, his fingers prodding inside, his nail catching the rim of a biscuit and easing it out. Saleem had her back to him, engrossed in the task of filling the kettle, fitting on its lid. I heard the water slosh inside it.

The second item in the paper, underlined, directly below the first, had the headline, 1OO-DAY PROTEST. It said:

Peter Hawes yesterday spent his 100th day welded inside his roadside café. Mr Hawes, 48, is fighting a government decision to close down the lay-by at Guyhirn in Cambridgeshire, where he has cooked for travellers for years.

Ray had the ginger-nut between his teeth now, bit down softly. I heard the sugar snap and then an unobtrusive crunching, a short silence, another snap, more crunching. Saleem pushed the kettle’s plug into the wall and then turned on the power switch. I waited to hear the water in the kettle starting to gurgle, I waited for Saleem to notice Ray’s chewing, I waited for Ray to gag and swallow, but all I heard, suddenly, was silence, like each sound had been extracted, sucked out, expunged. I tried to turn a page of my paper but it didn’t move. My eyes focused in front of me, on the words felt something resist her bite, the words felt something resist, the words felt . . . resist the word felt felt . . . felt. Doug was standing in the doorway. Doug was standing next to me.

‘Phil.’

Feel. All the sounds returned in a rush. At once. Doug was standing there and he was smaller than I’d remembered and he had his hands in his pockets and he was smiling.

‘If this is our meeting,’ Doug said, ‘our business meeting, then what is she doing in here?’

Doug tipped his head towards Saleem. Saleem bridled, ‘Aren’t I even allowed in my own kitchen now?’

Doug continued to smile. ‘This is not your kitchen, Saleem. It is our kitchen. This house belongs to the business. You used to work here, yes. You used to have some right to live in this place. When you were a curator. But now the museum is gone, you have no function. You stay here on sufferance, you have stayed here for years, on sufferance, because you have one leg and you lost the other one in a fire, and I feel sorry for you and Ray feels sorry for you and Phil, too, feels sorry for you. But this is not your kitchen. This is our kitchen and we let you borrow it. And you should remember that fact. Now would you get out, please.’

‘Fuck you, Doug,’ Saleem said, calmly. ‘D’you know what a grenadilla is?’ she asked, not sounding in the least bit ruffled.

‘I know what a grenadilla is, yes.’

‘I gave my own flesh for this place,’ she whispered. ‘What can you give?’

Doug said nothing. He watched her and then he said, ‘Go away. ‘

Saleem laughed. I moved the paper up closer to my face as she swung past me. ‘And what’re you doing?’ she asked, saucily. ‘Eating that thing?’ Close up she smelled like a bunch of watercress. A peppery smell. I folded the paper, my face tingling. ‘If you don’t mind,’ she added, ‘I’ll borrow that.’

She snatched the paper and swung out.

Doug filled the kitchen. Ray’s fatter - twice as fat - and I’m big enough and hairy enough, but Doug has personality. Doug has backbone, is a true vertebrate. Ray and I are rheumy, watery creatures that ride the wave s but Doug’s already clambered on shore.

‘Where’s Nancy?’ Doug asked.

‘I dunno. Phil?’ Ray looked to me.

‘Outside. Unloading.’

Doug leaned against the sink. ‘Nancy’s got to go, ‘ he said, i just got a call from our insurance. She had another accident this morning. Almost killed two people. Her fault.’

Ray and I stared at each other.

‘We can’t afford the insurance premiums any more,’ Doug said. ‘They keep on going up and up. It’s out of control. We’ve got to tidy this stuff away. Nothing will work until we tidy this stuff away. That’s all I’m saying.’

‘And just hear this,’ he added, warming to his subject now. ‘She only went and contacted the insurance people from the services on her way back and said she’d pay the difference herself and something extra if they didn’t tell us. If they didn’t tell me. That’s what the man just told me on the phone.’

‘I can’t see why she shouldn’t do that,’ Ray said, boldly.

Doug ignored this, ‘She wouldn’t even have mentioned it, not a word, not a single word.’

I almost said something, but when I opened my mouth I was only coughing.

That’ s deception,’ Doug said. ‘We can’t trust her. She’s a liability.’

‘I like her,’ Ray said cheerfully. ‘She’s OK.’

Doug focused on Ray. ‘Ray,’ he said, ‘you have all the business sense of a Savoy cabbage.’

Ray smiled. ‘True,’ he said, ‘I see your point, Doug.’

After a short pause, I said, ‘I think we should wait a while before we make any decisions. Give it some thought. Take a vote, later on. And maybe we should think about the meeting on Friday before all this other business.’

‘It’s under control,’ Doug said, haughty. ‘I want Nancy out. I can’t operate, I can’t deal with that kind of deception. I’ll tell her to her face when she crawls in here. No problem.’

‘It’s just . . .’ I said, ‘It’s only . . .’

‘First things first, Phil,’ Doug said, calmly. ‘We’ll lance her like a boil. Tidy things up a bit.’

Ray’s face began to move, to curdle, like he was having a thought which was germinating in his big, fat cheeks, swelling, expanding, filling him up.

‘Doug,’ he said, his thought at last finding a voice, a small voice, ‘Doug, we were all thinking that maybe you should take things a bit easy for a while . . .’

Doug stared calmly at Ray, his eyes taking in Ray’s pink lips and his yellow beard, his several chins, the dimple in his cheek.

‘You’re going crazy, fat boy, you’re crazy if you think I need to take things slow. I’m only just starting. I’m taking stock, fat boy. I’m seeing things big and I’m seeing them better than I’ve ever seen them. Better than ever.’

Ray looked at his hands. Ten fingers, all in good working order. ‘Uh, fine,’ he said. ‘It’s just that Phil . . .’

Doug turned, ‘Phil?’

I scratched my neck, my brain fizzy and empty. The kitchen is only a small room and it hasn’t been decorated in years. Above the oven, grease has stained the wallpaper a steamy yellow. The grey floor tiles are full of prints, footprints and mud-prints and cat-prints.

‘Is there something you’re wanting to say to me Phil? Anything? The meeting on Friday? Anything you think I can’t handle? Want to tell me?’

It’s not exactly that I couldn’t say anything, more that I didn’t really have anything to say. What was my evidence, after all? Doug was being strange, but thinking about it, he’d always been irascible, changeable, unpredictable. It wasn’t so much anything in particular, any special fact or detail I was burdened with, more a feeling, a sensation.

Saleem had said that we were connected in some way, she and I, the two of us, connected together, against Doug, because Doug was thinking about Gaps, and thinking about making Gaps. And Nancy . . . and Nancy . . . And I was contemplating all these things when I suddenly heard a voice and the voice was saying, ‘I love this place, Doug. I love this place.’ It was my voice. Blood rushed into my cheeks. I felt a stabbing sensation in my chest.

Doug’s face broke into a broad grin. His teeth were tombstones.

‘Phil,’ he said, laughing, ‘I’m going to the greenhouse. Gonna have a little talk to my big vegetables.’

And off he went.

As soon as Doug had gone, Saleem bounced back in. She put her stick down on the table, pulled out a chair and sat down.

‘Now what? Nancy’s in some kind of trouble?’

Ray nodded. His expression was so mournful and forlorn that it looked like his cheeks were in danger of melting and dripping and dribbling down on to the table. ‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘her timing’s less than perfect.’ I couldn’t think of anything to add. Eventually I said, ‘Let’s not get this all out of proportion.’

‘No?’ Ray glanced up, hopeful, ‘You think it’ll work itself out?’

‘More than likely.’

‘Oh shut up, Phil,’ Saleem snapped. ‘What the fuck do you know? ‘

My skin felt tight. I looked at my watch, ‘It’s nearly time to knock off.’

‘I need a drink,’ Ray said, ‘and a few packets of crisps. Want to come to The Fox for a while?’

Before I could answer the kitchen door opened slightly and Cog wandered in. Cog was the park’s cat who behaved like a dog, was dogged and doggish, ran for sticks and didn’t mind a cuff and a wrestle. Nancy was two paces behind him.

‘Me and Cog are going for a run together,’ she announced. Her voice was just a fraction too loud.

‘Did you see Doug?’ Ray asked nervously.

‘Doug? I saw him.’

She walked to the sink and rinsed her hands. She seemed calm.

‘Did Doug say anything?’ Ray asked, even more nervously.

‘Doug says a lot of things, Doug’s a sandwich short of a picnic ‘

‘Doug’s elevator,’ Ray grinned, ‘doesn’t stop at all floors.’

‘That’s as maybe,’ I said, ‘but above all else, it’s Doug who holds this place together.’

Saleem cocked her head at this. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘It’s you that holds this place together, and Ray, and even Nancy. Doug holds the business together.’

‘It’s the same thing,’ I said, confident of this fact.

‘Not at all.’

Nancy dried her hands on a tea towel. ‘I’m going for a run,’ she said, ‘Come on, Cog. ‘ She slapped her thigh. Cog came to heel.

‘Didn’t Doug say anything?’ Ray asked, for the second time. Nancy started jogging gently on the spot, warming up. ‘Did Phil tell you,’ she asked Ray, still very loud, ‘that I had another knock in the truck?’

Saleem intervened on my behalf. She said, ‘Doug already knew. The insurance people rang him.’

‘I was unloading the privet from the van,’ Nancy said, ‘and Doug came over and asked me to load it up again.’

Saleem, I noticed, was watching Nancy closely, staring at her, and she had a smile on her lips but her eyes were full of something else, an intensity, a fixity, a cruelty.

‘Privet?’ I asked, unable to stop myself. ‘You were unloading privet?’

Nancy nodded, distracted. ‘Neat bushes with small, dark green leaves. A ton of them.’

‘You don’t need to tell Phil what privet is,’ Ray said, smiling glumly. ‘He’s the Plant King.’

‘Come off it.’ My cheeks tightened a fraction more and I started to glow.

‘Yeah, well,’ Nancy tucked her T-shirt into her running shorts. ‘I’m going for a run,’ she said, and before anyone could respond, she’d slammed her way out and sprinted off.

Saleem turned to me. ‘He’s gone and sacked her,’ she said. ‘So what are you two going to do about it?’

Ray stared towards the door, after Nancy, his expression inscrutable.

‘Let’s just sit this one out,’ I said. ‘Doug won’t actually get rid of Nancy. He’s just letting off steam.’

‘I don’t know.’ Ray looked uncertain. ‘I mean, I like Nancy and I respect Doug. I like them both. But they’ve both done things and they’ve both said things . . . I dunno.’ Ray picked up the packet of ginger-nuts and ate another one.

‘What’s Nancy said?’ Saleem asked, suddenly sounding interested. I turned too, focused on Ray, slightly daunted by his apparent overview.

‘Huh?’ Ray stopped chewing.

‘What kind of things?’ Saleem persisted.

‘Stuff.’

Saleem looked towards me and said tartly, ‘Maybe you should go and catch up with her. Tell her you and Ray’ll sort something out. The way I see it, if Doug can get rid of her that easily and you’re both too spineless to do anything about it, then he can also dispense with your services too, if and when the fancy takes him.’

‘She’s running.’

‘Catch up with her. See that she’s OK.’

‘Maybe Ray should go?’

‘Not me,’ Ray said, ‘I’m not nimble enough.’

Saleem smiled at Ray. ‘Anyhow , me and Ray,’ she said, ‘need to have a quiet little chat.’

Ray’s eyes bulged nervously at this prospect. I smiled to myself and slunk out.

Ten minutes later, after a cursory stroll around the sections of the park in which I was least likely to find Nancy - Christ, she would have been half way up Alderman’s Hill by the time I’d left the house, and anyway , what could I have said to her if I did catch up with her? What could I promise? And how could I be sure that the words would come? I couldn’t be sure - I found myself travelling past the main lake, past the ducks and clambering on to the bandstand and settling myself in a shady corner where I fully intended to dawdle for ten minutes before returning to the house, back to Ray and Saleem.

It was cool and green here, and the water sloshed to my left, and in the distance I could hear a spaniel barking as it ran for a ball, and the thwuck and the swish as it caught the ball and returned it. To my right, I could see one of the tennis courts, and one of the greenhouses, and I could also see, if I stretched my neck, a small man in a white shirt who was limbering up, bending and stretching and bending and stretching.

And I found a fuzzy rhythm in this corner. A wooziness. And as the lids on my eyes descended, cutting my view in half, I felt a terrible certainty, in my gut, in my soul, that nothing could change the way things were, it wasn’t possible, because nature didn’t work in jerks and starts, but in a rhythm, a cycle, a circle, and Doug, of all people, was aware of that fact. And so was I.

Then out of the blue, out of the sky, a fistful of sand landed in my face. I blinked, shook myself, and then a clod of soil landed to my left followed by a small geranium plant, then a further clod of soil.

I stood up and saw for the first time that the innocuous little man in the white shirt was bending and stretching in the middle of my newly planted flower bed, plum in the middle of my freshly planted flower bed, and he was yanking up plants and tossing them. My new geraniums, the spider plants, other things. This way and that. An arc of soil flew over him.

I jumped off the bandstand and made my way over to him. As I drew closer I saw that he was Chinese and wearing kungfu robes and he was older than I’d initially thought - sixty or so - but his hair was black and his face was hooded, and something in it was scary, was withered, was fundamentally unpleasant.

And yet his expression was in such direct contrast to his body, his movements, which even in his present task were as fluid and beautiful as a seal’s. I appraised his body as I approached, calculating my chances in the likelihood of any kind of physical confrontation.

He was small but he was also solid and thorough and focused; clenched like a little nugget, a meteorite. Plain like a stone. I drew closer to him, but he ignored me. I drew closer still. I said, ‘Excuse me. I think you’d better stop what you’re doing.’

His head turned, a fraction. ‘You fuck off.’

He wasn’t nice. His voice was like a dry cork twisting in the neck of a bottle. A tight voice.

I said, again, ‘I’d like you to stop what you’re doing, immediately, please.’

He plucked a geranium, and weighed it in his hand, looked straight at me, took aim, and thwack! He hit me with it, in the centre of my chest. It had quite some clout, for a geranium. I stepped back slightly, and it was then that I thought I saw Doug, in the doorway of his greenhouse, and even from a distance it looked like Doug was smiling.

‘You know him?’

Squeaking voice. I turned back. ‘Pardon?’

He pointed towards Doug, ‘You know him?’

‘Who? Doug?’

‘I have a message for him.’

‘For Doug?’

‘D’you know me?’

I glanced over towards Doug again, but Doug had disappeared, had gone. I guessed he’d withdrawn, back to his tomatoes.

‘Do I know you? No . I don’t know you.’

‘I am Wu.’ He offered me a small, slightly muddy hand. ‘Shake.’

Gingerly, I offered him my hand. He took it and squeezed it and his grip was like steel.

‘Wu! Wu!’ he barked softly. ‘Like a dog, huh?’ And my hand was crumbling and grinding and liquidizing.

‘Let go of my hand, please.’

Wu pulled me close to him, so close I could feel little sprays of his saliva on my neck as he spoke.

‘Your friend,’ he said, ‘I don’t like him and I don’t want him near me. I don’t want him watching me, see? All the time I feel his eyes on me. And you can tell him, from me, that a frog cannot turn into a green leaf.’

‘I’ll tell him. Let go of my hand.’

He lessened his grip a fraction, pulled me even closer, stood on his tip-toes and whispered directly into my ear, ‘I hope I didn’t break your knuckle.’ Finally, after one more, gentle squeeze, he let go. He wiped his hands clean on his robes and walked off. Slowly, calmly, treading softly.

I looked down at my hand. I tried to wiggle my fingers. I could move my thumb but nothing else. My fingers were purple, the joints were white. The whole hand was burning. I ran over to the lake and dipped my fist in it. But the water didn’t help to cool me. It was warm as saliva at its edges. I took my hand out, held it in front of me like a trophy, and went to find Doug.

Doug was watering some tomatoes in his greenhouse. The house was warm and had that rich smell of damp compost which always makes me feel like sneezing: a fine, ripe smell.

Doug watered his tomatoes with enormous tenderness. He didn’t take his eyes off them as he spoke.

‘So he got you, did he?’

I stood next to his marrows and his radishes, both of which seemed to be coming on well. The radishes were already the size of tennis balls. ‘I think he broke my hand.’

‘Wu. He’s a devil.’ Doug chuckled to himself before adding, ‘I can’t take my eyes of him. My fault he destroyed the bed. I can’t stop myself from watching him and he’s warned me. He gets irritable.’ He chuckled again.

I said, ‘I’ve never even seen him before.’

Doug moved on to the next bush.

‘Phil, someone could squat down and shit on your foot and you’d hardly notice them.’

I let this pass. Pain had made me bold. My hand hurt so much that I could hardly contemplate any other kind of feeling. I said, ‘I don’t think you want to have too much to do with that man in the future, Doug.’

‘Wu!’ Doug said, delightedly. ‘Did you see the way he moves around this place? Flowing, flowing. Like water. Like he owns the whole damn park. And the sky. That special kind of movement. Inside out. Round. That strange oriental kind of moving. Tip-toeing but very sure.’

‘I think he broke my hand.’

Doug turned off the hose. ‘I’ve been following him about since I moved into the house. Early in the morning he comes to the park, climbs over the fence before we even open, and he does all that strange, slow dancing. Tai Chi. I’ve been watching him, I even approached him for a talk but he didn’t want disturbing. I think I broke his concentration,’ Doug said, ‘and so it’s possible I’ve started getting on his nerves.’

‘He said that. He told me to tell you that you were getting on his nerves. I don’t think you should pester him any more.’

Doug gave this some thought and then for the first time he turned his eyes on me. ‘That sudden violence,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I like it. I like the idea of it. It’s clean.’

‘He’s destroyed the flower bed. I spent half the afternoon planting it.’

‘He’s cleaned it out,’ Doug said, unperturbed. ‘Good luck to him. I have plans for that section anyway,’ he added, ‘a couple of big ideas. Icing on the cake.’

‘But for the time being . . .’

‘And if I’ve learned one thing from that tough little man,’ Doug said, ‘it’s that you’ve got to have your own vision and stick to it. Ignore the rest of life’s radish.’

‘Life’s radish?’ I echoed, bemused.

Doug nodded. ‘No more rubbish. Only truth.’

He then moved a few feet across, fingered the bright shoot of a large onion and said, almost to himself, ‘This one’s going to be a giant. I can feel it. I can smell it.’ He scratched his nose. ‘Do you smell it, Phil?’ He glanced over at me. ‘Smell it, do you?’

‘Smell what?’

Doug sucked his tongue, irritated. ‘You don’t see it, Phil, do you? You just don’t see how there’s a real logic to an onion. One layer inside another layer inside another layer. All circular. Like a maze. A puzzle. Nothing missing. No gaps. Just simple.’

My hand was swollen now. It had swelled up like a puffer fish. ‘If he tries to assault me again,’ I muttered, ‘I’ll call the police.’

Doug carried on talking to his onion, ‘One layer inside another layer.’

‘Doug. About Nancy . . .’

‘Whosoever diggeth a pit, Phil, shall fall in it. Nancy dug her pit. She’s fallen into it.’

‘Even so . . .’

Doug began to scowl. ‘I want big, Phil, and I want neat. Big, neat, clean, true. Not just the park itself, but everything. The whole lot. The business, the talking, the ideas. Big, clean, neat, true. None of that muddy stuff, none of that green fruit, nothing unripe, none of that murky water.’

I looked down at my hand.

‘I’ll fix the bed in the morning,’ I said, ‘before we open. I don’t think I can replant right now with my fist all swollen.’

Doug waved me away with his hand, ‘Go away, Phil. Go. I’m busy with this onion. There’s work to do here.’

I hesitated.

‘Phil,’ Doug barked. ‘Go away. Let’s get tidy. And I don’t just mean weeding and replanting. OK?’

I nodded. I retreated.

‘Where’s Ray?’

Saleem was in the kitchen alone. She had Cog on her lap and she was stroking him. Cog’s purr almost lifted the tablecloth.

‘He’s gone,’ she said, ‘to the pub. You didn’t find Nancy, I gather?’

‘No.’

‘Fuck. Your hand’s all swollen. What did you do?’

‘I crushed it in the mower.’

‘You’ve been out mowing?’

‘I was putting it away.’

‘Is it broken?’

‘No , the mower’s fine.’

She knocked Cog off her lap. ‘Let’s see it.’

I backed off a fraction. ‘It’s in the barn. I locked it up for the night.’

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