Poppyland (30 page)

‘I think I will, but it might take a while.'

‘We've got a while,' he says. We turn off the canal and walk back through the evening. Summer is breaking through in London and outside pubs and bars people are gathered on the street. Everything has a dreamlike quality, but the happiness is less ephemeral, and it is still there when I wake up in the morning and look at Ryder asleep beside me. We spend three days together, doing the sort of things I have always wanted to do with any boyfriend and never have. We go to the zoo. It's a hot day and we walk back along the canal past the hyenas at the edge of Regents Park.

‘They are incredibly cheerful-looking for hyenas,' Ryder comments, taking my arm and walking around me so he is on the canal side of me as we saunter along the narrow towpath.

‘Well, what should they look like?'

‘I dunno. I just imagined them to be gloomy. Like vultures.'

‘Stoopid!' I poke him in the ribs. ‘They're famous for laughing, of course they're cheerful.' We explode giggling and loll on a bench while a red-lacquered boat glides past full of tourists. The next evening we drive down to the river to walk along it in the dark. Ryder holds my hand and we lean over the Millennium Bridge and he talks about his family.

‘I'd like to take you to see Mum and Dad. They will love you.'

‘Will they?' I don't mean it to sound as disbelieving as it comes out.

Ryder hugs me, and I can hear his smile. I don't have to look at him to feel it warming me.

‘I mean, they will love the fact that I have met you,' he says. ‘They took so long to live again after Bonnie died, and now they finally want to.'

‘Tell me about Bonnie.'

‘Well, it's not easy, sweetheart.' He pauses, trying to assemble all the love and memories to tell me something. ‘It's hard to explain someone I love to someone I love without sounding over the top.'

‘I don't mind if you're over the top, darling.' The Thames rushes beneath us, spangled with light reflections like stars, and, on both sides of the dark banks, glitter and sparkle sprays out like jets of water from the buildings. The air is warm, and all sound carries through the night; rushing cars, the occasional wail of a siren and the murmur of voices from people passing us. We walk on from the centre of the bridge towards the South Bank. Ryder puts his arm around my shoulders and we walk side by side.

‘She was any guy's dream sister. She was such a good friend of mine, too. I told her everything, and it was mutual. She had lots of friends and though she was only nineteen when she died, she really filled her life up.'

‘You must miss her every day.' I cannot think what it would be like not to have Lucy in my life, and sad compassion for Ryder smarts behind my eyes.

‘I don't know. I think I do, but it's the way life is,' he says.

‘I understand a little.' I squeeze myself closer to him. ‘Our dad died a while ago and then our mum, so I understand loss. But maybe not the kind of love you're describing.'

We are at the Tate, and it is late-night opening. I lead him in. ‘I want to show you my favourite paintings.'

‘Wow, I can't believe it's open at night and you know about it even though you live in New York, and I don't.'

The Rothko Room is empty. My heart pounds as if it will burst. Ryder is silent.

‘Have you been here before?' I whisper.

He shakes his head. ‘These are amazing.'

‘They were painted for the Four Seasons hotel in New York, but he felt they were too gloomy so he gave them to the Tate.'

I lie down on the big leather banquette. Ryder sits next to me. ‘They are intense,' he says finally.

On Tuesday night, anxious because I leave tomorrow, I begin to panic at the thought of saying goodbye, making plans to meet soon, missing him, trying to make dates to meet. And what has felt like the most natural existence, hand in hand with Ryder, doing everything with him, is suddenly remorselessly finite. And a continuation seems impossible, there is so much distance between us in our lives.

I take a deep breath and speak into the silence that has been growing around us.

‘I want to be with you more than anything in the world, and I love you, but I don't think I can do it right now.'

Ryder is lying next to me, almost asleep. He sits up, staring at me.

‘What are you talking about? I love you. We are together now. You're just going home for a while, that's why you're nervous.'

I can't look at him, I hide my head. ‘No, I don't mean that. I mean I'm too scared. I don't think I'm ready to be with you. It's not you, I love you, it's just me.' It feels as if a cliff has crumbled away inside me leaving nothing. I just need to get back to New York to think straight.

At the airport Ryder kisses me and I cling to him. I am numb in my body, but tears keep falling from my eyes. I don't know what has happened, I can see happiness so near, but it is as if it's through glass. Maybe I am testing him, I don't know. Maybe I am testing myself. Ryder takes me to the security section. He cannot come through any further. He hugs me again, and I never want to let go of him.

‘It will be all right, you know,' he says.

I watch him walk away, and he turns to look at me three times, and I stand there like a stupid statue until he vanishes among the crowds. I cannot believe what I have done. Except that it is what I always do. In the departure lounge I find a seat and call Lucy. She is horrified.

‘But I thought you were staying with Ryder in London. I thought you weren't going back for a bit. Oh Grace, why?' She sounded so disappointed you would think it was her life I was sabotaging.

‘I can't. I need to go back. I need to work.' I can't explain to her that I just need more time. But I try.

The loudspeaker starts calling my flight. I launch in, my fingers in the other ear so I can hear my sister. ‘Oh Luce, I don't know. Maybe I need a bit more time.'

‘No, you don't. You need to get a life and stop hiding behind your work.' I have never heard my sister shoot back at me with such a steely tone to her voice. ‘You will never not be afraid. We all are. You just have to take the risk, Grace. It won't kill you.'

‘But when I panic I feel it will kill me.'

‘Well, go ahead and ruin your life then.' Lucy is furious. I garner my spirits to argue, to answer back, to insist I am right, but the fight has all gone out of me. My eyes flood with tears again, I can't see the numbers on the gates.

‘I know, I think I already have,' I say, ‘but I don't know how not to.'

‘Did something happen that worried you? You seemed to be really into one another when you left here.' Lucy's anger has abated, one of the children is in the background, then both of them.

‘Oh nothing. We were having a really nice time, but I couldn't deal with it, so I said I was going.'

‘You couldn't deal with having a nice time? Well, who do you think you are anyway?' Lucy breaks off to talk to the children, then comes back.

‘What did Ryder say?'

‘He said if it was meant to be, we would find one another again. He's only just gone, he came to the airport with me. It was awful.'

‘Oh Grace.' Lucy sighs. ‘He's right, you know. If it is meant to be, it will sort itself out. Love finds a way.'

I begin to cry quietly again. Not quietly enough, though.

‘Grace?'

‘Yes?'

‘You should get on your plane, go home, pack up your life and then call Ryder and get him to come and get you. Please don't end it like this, you will regret it for ever. You are such a stubborn ass sometimes.'

‘Bye, Luce.' I turn off my phone for the flight.

Grace
August

Back in New York I am lovelorn. I am a real bore to myself and my friends. The only good thing is I am working a lot, manically painting my frustration and gloom on to canvas. Ryder called me as soon as I got back.

‘I will come and find you, Grace, but you have to want to be found,' he said.

Now, two or three months have passed and we still speak quite often, but with no plans to meet. At home I function like a robot. Breakfast is something I do standing at the fridge. Eating would make what I am doing sound like a sensory experience, which it is not. I seem to have left my tastebuds in Europe, and food tastes of nothing, it is just a series of feeling different wet or dry substances in my mouth. As I force down some yoghurt and blueberries, I think I have got stuck in terror. Most of me just misses Ryder
and wants to go back to London and marry him and have babies for which I am sure I am ready, or just as ready as anyone ever is. But some stubborn and crazed part of me is clinging to fear and I don't know how to stop it. Lonely, frightened or whatever, I am grateful when Stephan and Ike ask me out to supper. Stephan works in the gallery on the Upper East Side where my next show is happening, and he needs photographs of the work.

‘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.