Poppyland (24 page)

‘Is
Susannah
enjoying it?'

‘Well, she bloody well should be. She'll sink like a stone if I don't sort this, and if I do, I've got a buyer who'll hand over thirteen grand for her tomorrow.'

‘Why, what is
Susannah
? I thought she was an old crock?'

Ed gave a crack of laughter. ‘She's rare,' he said. ‘I'll show you later.'

It is mid-afternoon, Ryder is sitting outside a café on a cliff in a seaside village where time has done no
marching on at all. His sketch book is open, but he puts down his pen and looks around him. Everyone seems to be asleep, and the café awning flaps blue and white, shrimping nets and windmills in a basket by the door. Ryder has bought two of the windmills for Bella and her sister, and he goes back in now to buy a whole lot more for Ed's children. In the café he orders another cup of tea and chooses a postcard for his parents. The picture on the front is a tinted photograph of a ruined tower, poppies flickering around it and along the edge of the cliff like flames. The lack of space more than anything is what drew Ryder to the card, and he reads the small-printed paragraph on the back:

Clement Scott brought popularity to the Cromer coastline when he christened this area Poppyland and wrote his famous poem ‘The Garden of Sleep', which contains the lines:

O! heart of my heart! Where the poppies are born,

I am waiting for thee, in the hush of the corn.

Sleep! Sleep!

From the Cliff to the Deep!

Sleep, my Poppy Land,

Sleep!

It's an Ealing comedy. He wonders what his mother will think of the appalling whimsy of the poem. It's nice to have a joke with her, that's for sure. It may be slight, but it's a beginning.

Dear Mum and Dad,

You will remember this place, I think you told me you came here when you were first married. It may have been a resort then. Frequented by poetry lovers, perhaps? Now it is not. Back to see you later this month and find out what on earth you did here. On second thoughts, maybe not. But seeing you for sure.

Love R

His mother will remember Poppyland; will his father? Ryder realises with a pang that he doesn't really know them at all. He would like to change that. Voices float up from the beach; it's the family he saw down there earlier, little girls playing with their mother. Their voices ripple and flutter towards him on the breeze and he lights a cigarette and moves over to the railings. Without thinking, he flicks the cigarette away over the cliff. He has leisure to regret this as it plummets inexorably towards the woman and the children kneeling in the sand beneath him. He closes his eyes.

‘Oh,' she cries, and Ryder forces himself to look down. She lunges at the baby, rugby tackling her away, as the burning ember lands next to them. The woman picks up a stone and grinds it into the sand then sits up, brushing her hair away from her cheeks and glares at him from behind her sunglasses.

‘Bloody hell. You threw your cigarette at us. And it was alight.'

Why had he thrown it? Why didn't it get blown off course?

He opens his mouth to apologise as she takes off her sunglasses and her face becomes visible.

It's her. Ryder's heart crumples. It's her with small children. Grace. The girl from Denmark. She's got children. If Ryder could step back at this moment to observe his reaction instead of churning with it on the edge of the cliff, he would notice that while he has accepted her presence in this remote spot without a blink, but has focused keen disappointment on her circumstances, she hasn't recognised him. He feels as if he has been shot, without knowing what that feels like, but his heart is pounding, his mouth full of the metal taste of adrenaline. Has she forgotten him? Or is it the sun in her eyes? God, is it not really her? She is not looking friendly; her eyebrows curve like a question mark and she has pulled the children towards her in instinctive protection. He wonders if he should introduce himself, but it doesn't seem like the right moment. She is looking a little like a mother tigress protecting her cubs. He rubs his hand through his hair. The only thing to do is to admit responsibility and apologise.

‘Yes. Sorry. It was a mistake.' Odd to be able to talk as though he is standing beside her, when she is a hundred feet beneath. But the vantage point of the cliff is not giving him any helpful moral high ground. She seems pretty annoyed.

‘What do you mean it was a mistake? We're the only people on the beach. There is nothing for miles.
Could you not throw it somewhere empty? Or even maybe just stamp it into the ground, or put it in an ashtray?' She shrugs, steps back, and looks up at him again. ‘I don't understand which bit is the mistake, when you deliberately throw something at someone. Or several someones. Us, in other words.'

God, she is going on a bit. Ryder becomes aware that he has a big grin on his face now, it can't be helped. She is very lovely. Girls like this are rare. It's a good thing she doesn't recognise him.

‘Er. Maybe you're right; it wasn't a mistake. I meant to hit you with a lighted cigarette,' he says to tease her. It comes out a lot more combative than he means it to.

She can raise one brow in an arch while the other stays still. She can't know how captivating this is to him, nor that he suddenly doesn't want her to recognise him. There is a gleam of laughter in her eyes, a spark of joy, and he's certain she hasn't recognised him. She might be flirting with him. Or is he imagining it? It is over fast, and she looks away with her smile.

‘Oh,' she says. It hangs in the air like an invitation. Or that's how Ryder interprets it. He doesn't want her to recognise him now. He doesn't want to hear that she is married, though the evidence is squatting next to her in the sand, unpacking the picnic basket she has put down. Maybe it isn't her. Maybe it wasn't her at Copenhagen airport in the winter either. Perhaps he just imposes his memory of Grace on to other women who look like her. The stillness of the
air becomes the intake of breath between them. It's her, all right.

Behind Grace, the sea flattens to a silk skin. Still. There's no movement, no time passing. Warm air like a sigh flows off the cliffs, on to the surface of the water. It settles glass calm, heavy, oily, sensuous. Not a wave or a ripple, but a lazy blue-green, flat like a bed, a whisper coming from the depths like wind through summer grass. She has sand on her fingers. Ryder notices this, and it is as if he has spoken it, for she runs the back of her hand down her skirt, shaking off the crumbs of beach, and tilts her head, squinting slightly to see him without shading her eyes. He realises that it is not so much that she doesn't recognise him but that she cannot see him properly in the low sunlight. His pulse races faster as the possibilities this opens up spark and ignite into another flame of excitement shooting through him.

A beep of a horn sounds behind him and Ryder almost jumps over the railing in surprise. He had not noticed the engine, the sidling yet sudden presence of Ed in his pick-up truck. He feels as if he is swimming up from the deep, breaking the surface and emerging somewhere brash and noisy. It surprises him to realise how intensely he had been moved in the previous moments. Or was it hours? Intoxicating. Surely what should be next in the programme for the day is more flirting, the magical disappearance of the children and a languorous hour or two of lovemaking with this woman who might be Grace. Nice fantasy, shame about the stark reality and the arrival of Ed. Ryder heaves a sigh.

‘God, I'm sorry, I was miles away. Are you early?'

‘Nope. Come on, mate.' Ed squints at Ryder, his head against the sun, low now and flooding pink across the still sea. ‘I need to get back and tackle the rigging to get that sodding boat in the water before the owners arrive. We've got the tide for an hour or two now.'

Ed gets out of the pick-up and, feeling in the breast pocket of his shirt, pulls out a packet of cigarettes and lights one, breathing a cloud out over the cliff edge as he rests his elbows on the rail next to Ryder and looks down. Cool purple shadows are drawing a new surface across the sand, bringing depth to the red of Grace's skirt where it falls long in front as she bends to pull a garment over the head of the baby. Her hair falls across her face like another shadow; she doesn't look up again, but murmurs something to the baby and bends to kiss the top of her head. The encounter is over.

Ryder sighs again and turns to his friend. ‘I'm all yours, Ed,' he says, rubbing his eyes, running his hand through his hair, kicking one foot against the tall white post with the life belt on it, and stretching tall, hands up in a spine-clicking arc, fingers interlocked and pulling the back of his head. His sketch pad is balanced on a post in front of him. He picks it up, sighing.

Ed raises an eyebrow. ‘Where have you been? Away with the bleedin' fairies or what?' He scans the beach, his gaze moving past Grace and the children with not even a pause of curiosity. Ryder feels absurdly
affronted. How can Ed not be intrigued by her? There must be something wrong with him. Ed digs his hands deep in his pockets and kicks a pebble into the dry grass beneath the railings. He purses his lips and half whistles, changes his mind and pulls his hands out of his pockets. Big hands, clasped now as he leans on the railings next to Ryder. A whiff of engine oil and a restless, slightly cross energy, emanate from Ed.

Even though the shingle rattling in the creeping water is louder now, and the slap of a wave on the groyne is like the crack of a whip as the air cools and the pressure drops, her voice rises over the cliff – not loud, but clear and gentle. ‘Come on, you two, we need to go home before the tide comes in.'

Ryder grins at Ed and, wanting to engage him too, looks down again. ‘Good view of Beauty on the beach from here,' he says, his euphoric interest in Grace spilling out of him in an attempt to involve Ed. Ed doesn't hear. Isn't interested. Perhaps she just isn't his type. Ryder was in Ed's workshop this morning, the radio was on, sawdust filled the air and, to the left of the door, was a carefully pinned and displayed wall of topless models. At the time, Ryder glanced at them without thought, but now he wonders why he has never torn a page from a tabloid and stuck it on the wall. Is it a desire to remain aloof or a thin-blooded lack of any desire at all? Do all men secretly want a pin-up and he is therefore a misfit? Or is it just something some people like and others don't? Simple. But hang on a minute, can anything where women are concerned be that simple?

He tries asking Ed now. ‘Do you reckon every straight man has an inner yearning for a shag with a nameless model? Or is it just a fantasy that needs to stay fantasy?' Ed carries on leaning over the railings, staring at the sea. His eyebrows, Ryder notices, are doing just what evolution intended them for; they are full of sawdust and even though they are like small haystacks, they look as though they might collapse at any moment and the sawdust will fall into his eyes. He doesn't speak. Ryder opens his mouth to repeat himself, feeling foolish, but Ed has heard enough for it to be embarrassing so he can't just change the subject. But before he utters a word, Ed shifts around, tosses his keys from one hand to the other, and looks at Ryder with mock severity, ‘For God's sake, Ryder, get your dick out of your arse and stop belly aching. You're not rarefied, you get laid like anyone else if you're lucky. Come on, let's go.'

Ryder laughs. ‘Yeah, I guess you're right. I think my version has suspenders.'

Ed is on a different thought plane.

‘There's something coming off the back of that wind,' he grumbles, looking to the horizon, and he reaches in through the window of his truck for binoculars. ‘Yep, it's looking dirty over there.' He passes the binoculars to Ryder. Where sea and sky meet, so far away Ryder could swear he can see the curve of the earth, a black line is thickening. As if drawn by felt tip and then underscored, the darkness intensifies and Ryder sees it as a widening crevice pushing sea
and sky further apart, though he knows that it is just rain seeping cubic tonnes of darkness and more and more water into the depths of the sea.

‘How far away is it?'

Ed flicks his cigarette into the road behind him. ‘Dunno. I don't think it'll hit us, though. But I wouldn't like to be out there tonight, the sea will be vicious. Come on, bring your colouring book and let's go.' He grins at Ryder and gets back into the truck. Ryder steals a last look down at the beach. There's no one there now. Like a shaken-out tablecloth, the wind cracks back into life, the sea hisses a response, and sound is all there is on the beach, apart from the ragged-edged hole dug by the children. She must be on the path, the zigzag concrete road made for tractors to get down the cliffs and haul out the crab boats from the shallows. A wind gust knocks over the small jug of sea lavender on the table where Ryder was sitting and the flowers fall into his empty cup and saucer.

Ed revs the engine. ‘Look, mate, I'm gonna go; you can stay here if you like and I'll come by for you later, but I need the tide,' he says, his demeanour relaxed but determined. No more hanging around.

‘OK, I'm in.' Chucking some change on top of the fluttering paper bill, Ryder grabs his notebook and the rolled charts he never quite got round to opening, and gets in to the pick-up. As Ed accelerates away, Ryder sees a billow of red skirt and wind-flayed hair in the wing mirror.

* * *

Jesus Christ, it's hot. Ryder's suit suddenly feels like someone else's bad joke. The road is frilly edged with cow parsley bobbing as it catches the breeze, tiny petals floating like confetti and the whole thing is festive and euphoric as if he is on the way to a wedding. This morning the countryside is alive with celebration, and being more accustomed to hanging out in the sea on rigs or in town on the boat, Ryder's senses are dazzled. Or assaulted, more like. The joys of the morning are not penetrating as yet. Waking up in Ed's house, on the sofa with a fuzzy head, and Ed's kids heaped in front of the TV on various giant foam blobs, Ryder was overwhelmed by the noise and action. He couldn't believe how lively they all were. And how callously oblivious to his presence. The television was unnecessarily loud, the cartoon creatures on it far too brightly green and cheerful, and Ed's children, all in pyjamas with tangled mops of hair, were rolling and somersaulting among the foam blobs like wind-up toys. There seemed to be about six of them, though Ryder was sure Ed only mentioned three. Or maybe four. The noise was intense.