Small Holdings by Nicola Barker

Author:Nicola Barker [Barker, Nicola]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780571175888
Publisher: Faber and Faber Limited
Published: 1995-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

MY FOOT WAS SORE but I was walking anyway. I needed to re-acquaint myself. Re-acquaint myself. To look. To touch. To reaffirm how it was that I felt about this place. To get it back. I should have talked to Ray, I should have seen what Ray had to say, but I just didn’t, I just couldn’t.

This is a physical world. Everything’s out there and you can touch it if you want to. You can touch it if you doubt it. Just stretch out your hands and your fingers.

I was walking around the park’s perimeter. I was going to feel and identify every single object and particle that I had contributed to this place. I was going to see myself, my face and features in every cowering flower, in every bird and every bud.

In the scented garden where I’d planted the pinks and the jasmine, I swung out my arm and rubbed my hand into lavender. I pinched some mint between my thumb and forefinger, then dabbed my finger on to my tongue. I could taste this place. I could touch it. I could smell this place. I could see it.

I kept on walking. Through the wild part where the squirrels dart. Through the adventure playground where the children run and bound and kid around.

Then I doubled back. To the right, past the ornamental pond. I’d filled that pond. I’d emptied it. I’d cleared out the sweet wrappers and the coins and the cans.

Up and along. The stones I was walking on. The loose gravel. I had laid down that gravel. With these two hands.

And up and up the hill. The giant oak. I had pruned that oak. A large rose bed near the fence. I had chosen those roses. Yellow roses and apricot roses. I had sprayed those roses, I had watered and fed them.

At the hill’s crest I found the silver birch and the poplar. I knew how the bark of each tree felt on the calloused palms of my hands and also, and also, on the softer lid of each fist; that bare little space between my fist and my wrist.

And the grass. I had cut it. And the daisies. I had cut them too. And the weeds. I had plucked them out.

Where was the sun? I looked up for it, into the sky. I turned on the spot and tried to see it. It was behind the giant cedar, tucked like a lost ball in its branches. How late was it? The sun made me blink, I closed my eyes and it stayed nestled inside my lids, glaring balefully into my head.

I sat down. My face was damp with sweat. I licked my lips and it was like my tongue had been dipped in the Adriatic. My eyes were still closed but the sun was fading now, flickering inside me.

I put down my hands flat on to the grass. I could feel the soil through the grass. I dug my nails into it.

Doug. Why had the feel of this soil stopped meaning enough? Doug wanted things to be bigger.

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