Poppyland

by Raffaella Barker

  Without knowing what he hopes to find, he taps her on the shoulder, ‘Could I look, please?’

  She smiles and hands it to him. He smiles back. It must be a sign of something important that everyone is so nice, he thinks, flicking through to the arts pages. It is senseless to think the answer will be in the newspaper, but never mind, it’s good to start somewhere. He is not sure what he is looking for in among the album reviews and interviews with illustrious film-makers. Not bad coverage, in fact, for a small-scale paper such as this. And suddenly, she is there. In a photograph with a lot of people.

  Oh my God, thinks Ryder, I’ve lost the plot. This is like those moments in the tabloids when people find Jesus in a pizza or the Virgin Mary in an olive growing on an olive tree. OK, so this is in a newspaper, where information is generally supposed to be. But the chance of it happening . . . It’s a million to one for sure. He shakes the paper and holds it closer. It’s a terrible mug shot, the colour has run, and all the faces are pale green. Grace does not look her best, pale green, but undoubtedly it is her, looking unhealthy next to the Mayor and behind the right shoulder of the Queen of Denmark. She should never wear black, she looks like a ghost. Or else she should make sure she doesn’t have green photographs taken. He must tell her. How can he tell her? He has not seen her for five years, he just saw her leave the country and he has no idea how to get in touch with her.

  Ryder buys his own newspaper and gets into a taxi, his thoughts uninterrupted. It’s usually a mistake telling girls that a photograph is not flattering. They do not take kindly to anything less than superlatives about photographs. A girl sees it as criticism, not realising that what it is, in fact, is fascination in every tiny thing about her. One of the things Ryder finds most difficult to come to terms with in breaking up with a girlfriend, and it has happened more often than is strictly desirable or necessary, is the sudden absence of daily female minutiae. He loves the intimacy of everyday life shared with a woman. Her cosmetics on the bathroom shelf, the ritual of her bathing and getting ready to go out. Her shoes kicked off in the hall. The subtle scent of her on her clothes and at home. It is his pattern to forget how much he loves these small things until they are gone.

  Growing up with Bonnie, so tuned into her he could tell her mood from the colour of her clothes, he has never come to terms with losing this whole female element in his life. He misses it, yet repeatedly, whenever he has a girlfriend and they get to the stage of beginning to share intimacy, he begins to absent himself – cutting off from the very thing he longs for just as it is presented to him.

  Not that there is any intimacy on offer here with Grace Hart. It’s absurd to think there might be, but it’s impossible not to dream. He is drawn back to the photograph. Better to keep it light. Look how lovely her eyes are, even appearing as they do here, slightly cross eyed. Ryder doesn’t need the picture to remember they are beautiful, he has seen them in his dreams. So many times afterwards he wondered what might have happened if he had stayed. Walking into the gallery with Grace had fazed him. A crowd parted and then swarmed over them and Grace was taken from his side, passed on a chain of handshakes to a smooth-looking American businessman with eyes like a lizard and hair receding down the back of his head. Grace stretched a hand back to him and he came to join her, but even though she introduced him, there was an insularity, like blobs of mercury sticking to themselves, that repulsed all hope of Ryder melting into the flow. He didn’t know this world, he didn’t know Grace, and he had nothing to contribute save his presence on this occasion. Jerome Michaels had his hand on Grace’s back within seconds of meeting her, a big gold watch glinted from beneath the cuff of a pristine shirt, and the aura of money and power which surrounded him was as strong as the scent of a dog fox marking his territory. It was astonishing to think that this girl, who had been trembling in the cold on the harbour wall on her own, and who seemed as free as the moonlight dancing on the dark water, was big business for the City suits prowling possessively around her.

  Ryder walked around the gallery alone. The pictures surprised him, not that he knew what he was expecting; they were so big and expressive. Ryder longed to pull Grace away from the American now resting a tanned hand on her shoulder so that she could tell him about her pictures. Without her he had no language to interpret them, and he felt pride in her that she had done all this. There was no hope of looking at them with Grace, however, and after half an hour, during which he watched her work for the gallery owner, Ryder accepted that the spark they had made outside together had burned out and he must go. He whispered goodbye as she was led to a chair to give an interview, and their eyes met in a moment he had recalled a hundred times, including now, as he stands in the taxi queue waiting to leave the airport.

  Her eyes were beautiful, her skin was smooth. He can even remember the feel of her body, though he had only touched the small of her back through her dress. Otherwise all of the sense he had of her was from his other senses. Now, though, he is able to conjure the feeling of her with incredible urgency. Extraordinary urgency. Quick, better think of something else to stop the excitement, he thinks. It’s definitely perverted to be in transit getting a hard-on about a green-faced person in a group photo with the bloody Queen of Denmark. The caption reads:

  The unveiling of the new picture wing of the National Gallery took place in the presence of Queen Margrethe last night. The Lord Mayor played host to international artists including Njenst Dinnisk, Luis de Corliune and Grace Hart, at thirty-two the youngest living artist to have work in the Danish National Collection.

  Ryder looks at his watch. There should be enough time, it will be open for another hour. He gets into a taxi.

  ‘National Gallery please,’ he says, and blood is rushing, drumming in his head with the loud pulse of his heart.

  Later, with the key poised to let himself into Cara’s apartment, he changes his mind and rings the bell. It’s not that he has met someone else, for of course he has not, he has only seen her, but Ryder, with a poignant sadness, knows that he and Cara have reached the point where it should either go further or end. His work in Denmark is over.

  Cara lets him in. She is wearing a long green skirt and her hair glows in a pool of light from the sitting room.

  ‘You didn’t use your key?’

  ‘No, it’s here.’ He puts it on the table in the hall. Cara looks at it silently. The apartment smells of a smoky incense that clings to Ryder’s throat. He sits opposite her on a low chair, and in the faraway look in her eyes he sees that she has moved on too. He looks around the cluttered familiar space, wondering whether to speak first, wondering whether he is making a mistake, the usual mistake. But maybe it has never been a mistake, maybe it is just that he has not met the person to share his dreams and realities with.

  ‘How have you been?’ Cara pours him a drink. She is wearing lipstick and a different scent.

  ‘Oh good, thanks,’ Ryder replies, stilted in his manner with his glass, stilted in his voice. He rubs his hands through his hair and moves over next to Cara, putting his arms around her, resting his chin on the top of her head. Two candles have burned low on the mantelpiece and a blue scarf hangs off a chair, forming a pool on the floorboards.

  ‘I know,’ she says.

  He squeezes her tight for a moment. ‘I know you do, I could tell when I walked in. I am sorry, I suppose I never thought about what might happen between us when the work here ended.’

  Cara wriggles away from him to reach for her drink.

  ‘Oh come on,’ she says gently, ‘it’s been nice, you and me, but we were never going to end up together.’

  Relief and sadness hang in the air between them. ‘I suppose I’m wishing we had known that from the beginning,’ he says.

  Cara stands up, and in a flashing moment Ryder realises she is going out and her actions are tinged with impatience. This makes it easier. Logs crackle in the wood-burning stove, and one cracks loudly. Cara throws her lighted cigarette into the fire.

  �
��I’ve got to go, I’m meeting someone.’

  Ryder gets up and hugs her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she replies. ‘Be glad we are friends and let’s keep in touch.’

  She crouches to stoke up the fire and they walk out of the apartment together.

  In the street Ryder hails a taxi. He can hardly look at Cara because he is experiencing such an odd, weightless sensation. She stands next to him, delving in her handbag for her car keys. Ryder turns to kiss her goodbye, and, wanting to make a ritual of their parting, he suddenly remembers something he learned for an exam.

  ‘You never knowingly do anything for the last time without a certain sadness of the heart,’ he quotes.

  Cara looks surprised as she considers for a moment. ‘What?’ she says.

  The taxi purrs next to them, the words tumble out of Ryder: ‘It’s Oscar Wilde, and it’s true. The idea that this is the last time I’ll see you makes my skin crawl with sadness.’

  Cara laughs and pushes him towards the taxi. ‘Let’s make sure it isn’t, then. I will call you when I come to London.’

  ‘Yes, but you never do.’

  And he is in the cab looking round at Cara in the street. She waves her hand and walks towards her car. Shame leaps inside him as he watches her vanish from his sight because just as he never made the effort to learn to speak her language, so too he never made the leap or whatever it took to love her. And it feels like all he ever does is say goodbye to anyone his heart is touched by. Almost swept away by self pity, Ryder is stopped in his tracks as he realises the taxi is still stationary outside Cara’s apartment block. Where is he going? He has no idea. Back to the airport is the best idea, but he has the meeting tomorrow morning in town. That’s why he is here. Sitting outside this apartment is freaking him out. The empty street hits a spot of desolation very deep in his heart and Ryder taps the driver on the shoulder and gives the name of a hotel he has often had business meetings in.

  The reception desk is a pale green slab of glass which reminds Ryder of Grace’s paintings. Thinking of Grace at the same time as thinking of Cara is utterly exhausting. Actually, thinking of anyone is too much right now. Ryder opens the door of his room by pressing his hand flat on to an infrared pad, and enters. The room has soft grey walls and a carpet the colour of damsons. Glass surfaces appear to float without support near the walls; two on either side of the bed form little tables and another, positioned to the side of the window, is clearly a desk. On top of it is a cream-coloured telephone and a vase containing one twig. It does not even have a bud on it. Worn out, Ryder throws himself down on the bed, flat on his face, arms spread wide, surrendered. Stroking the silk shimmer of the bedspread, he wonders why the fuck he is alone. ‘How does this keep happening whenever I am with someone? I want to be with someone, but when I am, I end up leaving. How can I change that?’ he says aloud.

  Having no answers, he gets up again, pulls the metal lid from a glass bottle of beer. He moves over to the desk and begins, for the thousandth time, his favourite displacement activity. He begins to draw the boathouse he wants to build. This time he finds himself drawing an actual house he might inhabit next to it. The house is on a chalk cliff. It sits facing the sea in a shallow bowl of grassland, framed by pine woods from behind, long and low and at a right angle to the sea; the rooms on either end of the house looking out at all aspects of the spectacular view. The diagram has ceased to be purely functional and is becoming an actual picture.

  It is early in the morning, the sea is frilled with insouciant breakers, and the sun is rising on the horizon. With the chalky cliffs and the orientation, he realises this dream house he is conjuring could be in Norfolk. Ryder has hardly been back to Norfolk since Bonnie died. Maybe it’s time for a visit now. Lying on the bed in a strange hotel, utterly alone, Ryder is curious and anxious that his thoughts have gone to Bonnie. They often do still, though sometimes it is a fleeting flash of recognition, an unspoken acknowledgement that he has experienced something she would have shared and seen in the way he saw it. This more than anything is what has kept Ryder from forming a lasting relationship. Can there be someone whom he can know and be known by? ‘Why not?’ is his thought when things are going well, but there are many more instances when he broods and thinks, ‘Why would there be?’

  Maybe all siblings have the closeness he and his sister shared. There is no way of knowing, and Ryder recognises this sadness tugging his heart now, when he yearns to pick up the phone and call her, to hear the perspective he trusted all his childhood. Bonnie never let him down. Until she died. Ryder pushes back his chair and stands up to stretch, his spine curving his back like a full sail. He has learned now, thank God, that his memories will not overwhelm him any more. And that it is possible to keep the past at bay. Some natural filter – perhaps it is sanity – allows only what he can tolerate to shimmer into focus from the shifting currents and unnoticed patterns of all that has gone before and remains unresolved and shattered. God knows what is forgotten for ever. Sometimes Bonnie is in his head; he can imagine her voice, and hear her thoughts as clearly as his own. At other times, she is a distant figure, walking away; she is weightless and evaporating and he cannot talk to her. Then grief tightens around his heart with the fear that he has lost her for ever. Even though this has happened more times than he can remember, and the sense of her has always returned, Ryder is still susceptible to the anxiety it brings. When he is not gripped by it, he knows that he has Bonnie and her memory tucked into his heart, and that she will always be there. The tie is blood. Can there be a stronger tie? Ryder has not found one. The family tie unbreakable, like being a parent; no matter how far a child goes, even into death, the place they occupy in their parents’ hearts is theirs for ever. Or so Ryder believes from witnessing his own parents. For a long time he stayed away from them, from everything to do with his childhood and with children.

  Norfolk, indeed East Anglia including Essex where he grew up, has exuded an anti-magnetic force for Ryder. Over the years any suggestions from his colleagues in marine engineering that he should go there have been met with ever more resourceful reasons not to. The job in Denmark was a useful diversion from a suggestion he might do some work on the gas platforms in the North Sea. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that working with the wind instead of fossil fuel was more ethical, too. Can man truly harness the sea? Ryder’s work circles endlessly around this question, never accepting that the answer could be ‘No’. Generally, he believes that the answers to all the pressing questions about what the planet can do for energy lie submerged in the ebb and flow of the tides. However, the route to finding them is as unfathomable as the depths of the ocean. Everything is possible and none of it happens, or so it seems after weeks of grey winter seas and too many sea birds smashed like exploded pillows in the blades of the wind turbines. Even then, the many projects that come up in Norfolk leave him cold. Secretly he knows he is afraid. Not of what he believes he will find in revisiting the backdrop of his childhood, but of what he fears he may not.

  Marine engineering and, more specifically, energy conservation, requires a coastline. There is a lot of Norfolk on the sea, and increasingly a lot of Norfolk in the sea; Ryder had one reluctant trip there to photograph and measure an ancient wooden circle emerging from the shifting sands on the north-west coast of Norfolk. It was too extraordinary an opportunity for him to turn down – a wooden version of Stonehenge that conservationists were determined to remove from the sea, and Druids and the coastguards were united in believing should stay where it had been for thousands of years. Ryder saw it first at sunrise as the tide went out over the long shallow sand banks at Thornham Gap. The beach was silent but not empty, as grey dawn turned mauve and pink with the creeping arrival of the summer sun. Three figures loomed from along the shore beyond where Ryder stood at the water’s edge, watching eagerly for dark shapes within the waves to transform into the circle. Two of the figures were fishermen, netting for sea bass. They nodded a
greeting and strode on, incongruous in wetsuits on this ancient shore. The third was a Druid with a carved stick and a mane of dreadlocks.

  ‘This’ll show out in a moment.’

  ‘Yes, the tide is dropping now,’ agreed Ryder, trying to overcome his surprise that the Druid had a strong Norfolk accent. What was he supposed to sound like? Someone from Star Trek? Or the Middle Ages? And how had they sounded then, anyway? Probably like someone from Norfolk.

  The Druid rested both hands on his stick and waded in with his jeans rolled up beneath his cloak just beyond where Ryder stood, also with his bare feet under water.

  ‘That’ll be a job to stop them moving it, but that’ll be a job for them to move it, too. The tides at the summer solstice are big, and they’ve signed the papers to say they’ll not move the circle until the next day.’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Ryder, more to himself than in response, imagining the chaos the whole operation could cause. The Druid looked at him measuringly.

  ‘Are you from the conservation department, then?’

  ‘No. I’ve been sent by the British Museum.’

  The Druid tossed his dreads. ‘Ah. Same thing. I’m part of a peaceful protest. We don’t want this circle moved from the site. And we are concerned that in moving it, a whole lot of trouble will be churned up along with the sea bed. It’s not a good thing to mess about with a sacred site. You don’t know what spirits will be disturbed.’

  Slightly dumbfounded, Ryder looked back at the sea, half expecting to see a serpent rise hissing and coiling towards the beach like the ones in the Aeneid which came in from the wine-dark sea and strangled Laocoön and his sons. Breathless with foreboding, he watched as something black and slippery emerged from the rocking water and, he saw, like Excalibur emerging from the lake, the bumpy tops of the circle rising as the waves fell. Black and ancient and extraordinary, it was more real every moment, and Ryder became lost in rapt contemplation. At last he put his hand on the Druid’s shoulder and said to him, ‘I agree.’ The site was astonishing. In his report, he absolutely condemned the removal of the wooden stumps, and when he and those who agreed with him were overridden, he took it as a sign that he should not try to get involved in anything in Norfolk again.