Poppyland
Page 24
‘Only if you feel like it, honey,’ he trills, when I call him to arrange where to meet. ‘Let’s go for dinner downtown. Ike is working late and he’ll join us.’
Stephan and I have drunk two Mojito cocktails each by the time Ike arrives and we are heavily into a conversation about my work which has become a kind of therapy session. The restaurant is noisy, the tables close to one another, but as everyone is talking loudly and Cuban music tumbles through the spaces between the conversations, it offers perfect sanctuary to blurt out my sadness.
‘So, I left and came back here, and I speak to him occasionally on the phone, I spoke to him today, in fact, but not with a plan to meet. Not with a plan for anything. I can’t do it, I’m too scared.’
Stephan is aghast. ‘Darling, you have to go and find him. Where is he?’
I laugh. ‘Oh, he is unreachable. He’s on a gas platform somewhere in the sea near Denmark.’
‘Well, get on a plane and get over there. Haven’t you seen the movies? That’s what you do. That’s what you have to do for love.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
Stephan finally takes off his sunglasses and looks me in the eyes.
‘No, it’s ridiculous to walk away,’ he says.
I try eating a bit of bread to see whether I can taste anything. It’s not bad, there’s a hint of rosemary and the crumbling bite of salt. I feel as though I am defrosting from the tip of my tongue.
‘Keep talking. I think you might be able to convince me.’ I actually feel, for the first time, that I have got through whatever it was I needed to experience by coming back to New York. And I think it was just a bit of time alone. To see I could do it and live. OK, I may have overdone the experiment, and eating has been a disaster, but here I am, I still have a few friends and a sliver of my sense of humour, I didn’t go mad, and I am still very much alive. And I love Ryder. I pray it’s not too late.
‘You know what—’ I say to Stephan.
Suddenly Ike is at the table, like a visitation from another world, tanned and crisp and finished in his suit. He reminds me of Jerome. Stephan and I gape at him as he slides into the chair next to me and leans across to take Stephan’s hand for a moment.
‘Hey, Grace.’ He kisses me and his smile is warm and expansive though he presses his fingertips into his eyes before leaning over to take a glass of water from in front of Stephan.
‘I’m sorry I’m late, we had a gas platform blow out on a company I deal with just as it’s about to be bought by one of the big guys, and it sent panic through the clients like a Mexican wave.’ He opens the menu, reads for a moment then looks up, glancing between Stephan and me, his eyebrows raised in a question.
‘What’s up? You two have gone very quiet.’
‘A gas platform?’
‘Yes, it’s off the coast of Denmark, it’s causing chaos among some of the clients.’
I grab my bag and lunge out of my seat.
‘I’ve got to go. I’m going now.’ Making little sense, I kiss Stephan, wave to Ike, and rush out of the door. Every vestige of mist in my head and the internal fear in my heart has gone. Out on the street the late summer evening hits me with a blast of heat like an oven. The light is yellow and everything shudders in dust and warmth. I take a deep breath of hot air and make my way towards the subway. Then I change my mind and hail a taxi. There is an urgent clamour in my head. I need to find Ryder and I have to go now. My heart begins to hammer when I think again of the explosion. But it can’t be him. I pray it can’t be him.
Ryder
August
‘I’m going to supper tonight with Stephan – you know, my friend from the gallery. I’ll have to go straight from the studio. I’m going to go now or I’ll never even get to work today.’ Grace’s voice has the small pause of long distance, and Ryder feels a desolate ache because she sounds so far away.
‘OK, sweetheart. I’m stuck on this boat for a while, but it’s nice to talk to you. Thanks for ringing. Bye.’ The phone clicks and the line hums in New York before he can say anything else. The silence when she has gone is empty. He wonders what she is wearing, what her apartment is like, whether they will ever meet again. When she left after those few days in London, he felt as though he had been beaten up. It was not over, it was only the beginning, and yet she left. What is she doing now? Whom will she be doing it with? Suddenly in his mind’s eye she is there, walking out of the door, down the road in the silky summer morning. She will not be alone, she will see a friend at the studio, she will chat to the guy in the delicatessen where she buys her coffee. It’s so easy to imagine it all as wonderful, rich and various from where Ryder is, namely in the deathly quiet cabin of an efficiently air-conditioned supply ship on the way to the rig.
Ryder is alone. Apart from the crew, who don’t speak any English and to whom he is seemingly invisible. They are a team from Shanghai, and operate their shifts and duties with a homogenous rhythm and group body clock that Ryder notices without being either affected by, or included in, it. Being alone like this has taken some doing, and Ryder has made a spectacular effort this time. Surpassed himself, in fact. He is miles from anywhere, and that isn’t just north, south, east and west, but even from the bottom of the sea as well. He is on a boat taking cargo to the gas platform off the coast of Denmark. Funny to be near Copenhagen again and to speak to Grace from near where they first met.
He recalls his moonlit boat ride into the harbour, drawn like a moth to the extraordinary liquid light of Grace’s work on the wall of the gallery. Is it significant that he is near Copenhagen again, or not? Frankly, Ryder feels he has no judgement any more. This is ridiculously isolating. Bringing new meaning to the middle of nowhere. It’s late morning in New York. Grace is probably at her studio by now. Photographing her work. She may have got a friend to help her. Probably a male photographer. And photographers, Ryder broods, dragging himself on a swivelling chair towards a computer screen, are all after one thing. For Christ’s sake. Maybe he should just stop obsessing and get himself to New York? But what if she doesn’t want him? Ryder flicks the screen to standby. The other cargo ship is about to dock with the rig, so his vessel still has hours to wait. He steps up and out of the cabin on to the deck, adjusting his mind fast as the sound of the engines and the sea roars in his ears. He cannot get Grace out of his thoughts. How did he let this one in to his soul, where he thought he had built a citadel?
On deck, the curving horizon swells like a blue knife edge, cutting through the dense and restless sea, all flattened by sky. It is impossible to take on the scale of where he is, and unbearable to contrast it to land, home and heart. A familiar claustrophobia wells in his chest, a feeling he has gone to such lengths to escape that he finds himself here, alone, crazy with longing to be somewhere else, and that, too, is familiar. That is what has driven him. What would it be like to lose that feeling?
Ryder closes his eyes and breathes. Everything that has been wound taut pings into free fall. And it is like an elevator losing its machinery in a lift shaft, so fast is the plummet inside him, as he tries to imagine not wanting to be somewhere else. For a start, he would not be here in the middle of nowhere. Oh no. Hang on a minute, there he goes doing it again. Just for a minute, just for now, he wants to try what it feels like to be where he wants to be. So that means here and now in the middle of the sea. Far from the land in every direction, on the surface of the ocean, halfway between earth and sky, floating at the centre of his own world. And just for a moment, he glimpses the sun coming out in his heart and the full and happy sense of the warmth it brings, makes his heart sing with the exhilaration, the expansion, the joy of being where he wants to be.
It’s amazing; for a flickering moment he understands what a privilege it is to be alive on earth, or rather on the sea. It is a privilege he has earned through all the choices he has made to bring him to this point.
He remembers where he was a year ago. Then he was watching an iceberg move down from the shores of Labrador and
Newfoundland, trying to plot where it would get to before it melted in the Gulf Stream. He was unutterably miserable. No one whom he cared about knew where he was, and no one needed to. The loneliness of that feeling inhabits him again, and brings a clanking sadness.
We are the hollow men . . .
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone . . .
He read Eliot’s ‘Hollow Men’ at Bonnie’s funeral. It was his favourite poem, but it meant something different after that.
A different line, from a different poem, floats into his mind now: ‘I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.’
Suddenly Ryder knows what to do. In the end it’s simple. He will go and see Grace. He will ask her to marry him, and he will wait for her in New York until she can tell him one way or the other. It’s the only thing to do.
Turning back to the cabin and the telephone, Ryder notices the gas platform has come into sight on the horizon ahead of them. A giant unsymmetrical construction, yellow and black like a giant toy from his Meccano set when he was small, it squats like a spider in the churning sea. Ryder’s boat is still some distance away, so what he is seeing is more what he is expecting to see than what he can actually make out. He is moving closer, and with each minute that passes he can see more clearly what he is approaching. Nothing about it looks safe. And as if this thought is a self-fulfilling prophecy, Ryder is struck still with horror where he stands as a vast ball of fire leaps from the heart of the rig, up into the sky, spinning and mushrooming bigger, then hurtles back on to the metal structure. As it falls down again, black clouds belch from it like spores, spreading, ballooning out and back, bigger and bigger, and the red-hot heart of it throws long spears of burning flames into the foaming black-stained sea and through every level of the platform. Debris and machinery fall and vanish in puffs of smoke, and the fire rages and pulses with life. Until today Ryder could not have been sure he believed in God, but now he finds himself praying.
Grace and Ryder
Copenhagen
‘Hello, Ryder?’
‘Grace, where are you?’
‘I’m here, at the airport. Just coming through. Where are you?’
‘I’m here too. I’m just past the customs bit, waiting for you. Oh hang on. I can see you, turn round.’
She turns round and their eyes meet.
‘I can see you walking towards me,’ she says, but before she has finished speaking Ryder is pulling her into his arms.
A Note on the Author
Raffaella Barker, daughter of the poet George Barker, was born and brought up in the Norfolk countryside. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels, Come and Tell Me Some Lies, The Hook, Hens Dancing, Summertime, Green Grass, Poppyland and From a Distance. She has also written a novel for young adults, Phosphorescence. She is a regular contributor to Country Life and the Sunday Telegraph and teaches on the Literature and Creative Writing BA at the University of East Anglia and the Guardian UEA Novel Writing Masterclass. Raffaella Barker lives in Cley next the Sea, Norfolk.
By the Same Author
Come and Tell Me Some Lies
The Hook
Phosphorescence
Hens Dancing
Summertime
Green Grass
A Perfect Life
From a Distance
Also Available by Raffaella Barker
COME AND TELL ME SOME LIES
Gabriella lives in a damp, ramshackle, book-strewn manor in Norfolk with her tempestuous poet father and unconventional mother. Alongside her ever-expanding set of siblings and half-siblings, numerous pets and her father’s rag-tag admirers, Gabriella navigates a chaotic childhood of wild bohemian parties and fluctuating levels of poverty. Longing to be normal, Gabriella enrols in a strict day school, only to find herself balancing two very different lives. Struggling to keep the eccentricities of her family contained, her failure to achieve conformity amongst her peers is endearing, and absolute.
Come and Tell Me Some Lies is Raffaella Barker’s enchanting first novel – a humorous, bittersweet tale of a girl who longs to be normal, and a family that can’t help be anything but.
‘Funny … Clever and touching’ Guardian
THE HOOK
Christy Naylor was forced to grow up quickly. Still reeling with anger after the death of her mother, she abandons college in order to help her father uproot from suburbia and start a new life on a swampy fish farm out in the sticks, a prize that he won in a shady game of poker.
Amid this turmoil, looms the mysterious Mick Fleet, tall, powerful and charismatic. Unsettled and unsure of herself, Christy is hooked on his intense charm. She knows nothing about him yet she feels like she is being swallowed up in his embrace and she plunges into a love affair blind to the catastrophe he will bring…
‘Stylish and insightful … With the pace and verve of a thriller’ Independent
HENS DANCING
When Venetia Summers’ husband runs off with his masseuse, the bohemian idyll she has strived to create for her young family suddenly loses some of its rosy hue. From her tumble-down cottage in Norfolk she struggles to keep up with the chaos caused by her two boys, her splendid baby daughter and the hordes of animals, relatives and would-be artists that live in her home. From juggling errant cockerels, jam making frenzies and War Hammers, to unexpected romance, Bloody Mary’s and forays into fashion design, Hens Dancing is like a rural Bridget Jones’ Diary as it charts a year of Venetia’s madcap household.
‘A positive hymn to provincial living, it is an entertaining celebration of family life with all its highs, lows and eccentricities’ The Times
GREEN GRASS
Laura Sale has grown tired of her life. Her daily routine of dividing her time between pandering to the demands of her challenging conceptual artist husband, Inigo and those of their thirteen-year-old twins Dolly and Fred, has taken its toll. She longs to remember what makes her happy. A chance encounter with Guy, her first love, is the catalyst she needs, and she swaps North London for the rural idyll she grew up in. In her new Norfolk home Laura finds herself confronting old ghosts, ferrets, an ungracious goat and a collapsing relationship. As she starts to savour the space she has craved, and she takes control of her destiny, Laura finds it lit with possibility.
‘I love Raffaella Barker’s books – so funny and acerbic’ Maggie O’Farrell
A PERFECT LIFE
The Stone family live a seemingly fairy-tale existence, complete with fire pit barbeques and seaside picnics in their idyllic home in rural Norfolk. Nick, Angel and their four children appear to lead a charmed life.
But if everything is so perfect why is Nick away all of the time? Why is every conversation between husband and wife filled with growing silence? And why does their eldest child seem so disillusioned?
We all want a perfect life, but at what price?
Come and Tell Me Some Lies is Raffaella Barker’s enchanting first novel – a humorous, bittersweet tale of a girl who longs to be normal, and a family that can’t help be anything but.
‘To write well and with such open-hearted affection is an achievement’ Observer
FROM A DISTANCE
In April, 1946, Michael returns on a troopship from the war. In shock, he is caught in a moment at a station, and on impulse, takes the train heading west to Cornwall. In doing so he changes his destiny.
May, 2012, and Kit, a charming stranger, arrives in a coastal Norfolk village to take up his inheritance – a de-commissioned lighthouse, half hidden in the shadows of the past, but now sweeping it’s beam forward through time. Married Luisa falters in the flow of her life – suspended, invisible – as her children begin to fly the nest. When Kit and Luisa meet, neither can escape the consequences of the split-second decision made by Michael all those years ago.
‘I love Raffaella Barker’s books – so funny and acerbic’ Maggie O’Farrell
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First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Headline Review
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 2008 Raffaella Barker
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Extract from ‘The Hollow Men’ from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot.
Copyright © 2002 T.S. Eliot Estate. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd
Extract from ‘The Invitation’ by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. Copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (UK) and HarperCollins Publishers (USA)
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