Poppyland (31 page)

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.

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.

Come and Tell Me Some Lies
The Hook
Phosphorescence
Hens Dancing
Summertime
Green Grass
A Perfect Life
From a Distance

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