Small Holdings. Nicola Barker
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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