Come and Tell Me Some Lies Page 16

  I was smiling to myself, beguiled by the notion, absurdly ignorant of any reality. ‘Maybe he’ll escape.’ Unintentionally I began to hum, ‘My daddy was a bank robber. He never hurt nobody’, a song by The Clash which Brodie and I had played as teenagers.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Dan was serious. ‘He will if he can disappear soon. But he thinks they are following him now.’

  I flew to Italy the next morning to research a documentary about a woman who had once been married to a bank robber. Serena Montepulchro lived among pink marble columns and white peacocks in a remote Sicilian palazzo where the top-floor rooms lay naked beneath the sky. She talked reluctantly, hiding her few words behind a thick and undoubtedly phoney Italian accent, as I followed with my tape recorder through vines and lilies. I returned to London elated. On my last night at the palazzo, Serena had imbibed half a bottle of Cente Herbe, a poison-green liqueur, and had rolled across her dining-room floor, a crazed dervish in cream lace, lobbing lumps of bread at her guests and singing along to Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’. The image was unforgettable, and for once I felt like a real professional, with something to say.

  There was nobody at my flat when I returned from Italy, and I had no keys. Stripping off the beautiful white cashmere shorts I had bought in Florence to celebrate my successful interview, I climbed over the porch, a kinky cat-burglar in black tights and leotard. The telephone was ringing, and with each peal I scrambled more frantically. Finally I was in, through the bathroom window; I fell inelegantly, my head just missing the lavatory bowl. The phone was still ringing. Out of breath and giggly, I picked it up. It was Flook.

  ‘Va Va. You’re back. Is anyone there?’

  ‘Nope. Just me and the loo. I got stuck and—’

  ‘Va Va. I’ve got some bad news.’

  Flook’s voice was rigid and tight, so heavy it seemed to fall down the line, shattering my mind. I knew.

  ‘Dad’s dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you.’ Flook talked on, giving details which swam round and round, lashing my heart. ‘It was last night at about seven o’clock. He wasn’t in pain. He was at home.’

  Suddenly cold, my teeth chattered against the phone. I listened. So many times, in so many ways, I had anticipated this. Now all the careful preparation was useless.

  It’s happened. He’s gone now. It’s happened. My brain thudded, over and over again. Flook told me to get a taxi to the station. ‘We’ll all go home together,’ he said.

  Like a sleep-walker, I obeyed his patient, simple instructions, collecting sheaves of black clothes, heaping them into a dustbin bag because my case was full from Italy. I called a cab. I was still wearing only tights and a leotard; Flook had not known this, so had neglected to tell me to get dressed. I did not think of it myself.

  There followed the slowest days of my life. Minutes spiralled, never turning into hours as we went through the curious, secret rituals which death brings. Dad died on the day the clocks went back, a day he had always hated for its dismal acceptance of winter. And winter arrived, bringing sharp bright days which faded early, the sky red behind shivering black trees denuded by flint-sharp wind.

  Pucker’s, the undertakers, bustled into action. They laid Dad out in their breeze-block Chapel of Rest; when empty of death it doubled up as an electrician’s workshop. Fearful, but unable to stay away, Poppy, Brodie and I went with Mum to see Dad there. Trussed in white satin frills like a babe prepared for christening, he lay in a silk-lined coffin. I kissed his forehead. He was colder than stone. Brodie cried. Poppy, Mum and I stood dry-eyed, absorbing every detail. I didn’t feel he was there. Dad would never wear white frills. He had to be somewhere else, in his fisherman’s cap and old suede jacket, laughing at his corpse.

  Pucker’s telephoned the next morning. They had decided I was in charge, and having asked my name, clung to it.

  ‘Hello, is that Mrs Gabrielly? Pucker’s here. We just wondered if you would like the grave dug double deep?’

  ‘What for? I don’t know anything about graves.’

  ‘Well, in case you want to pop your Mum in later.’ Mrs Pucker’s voice was a mixture of brisk practicality and motherly sympathy.

  My knees buckled, and I agreed. ‘Oh yes. Whatever you think is best. I don’t think I’ll ask her now though.’ I told Mum later, and she doubled up with laughter.

  We, her children, hovered around her, trying anything, everything, to protect her from loss, and knowing we could do nothing.

  A friend brought six little brown bottles of Rescue Remedy; they were labelled for each of us. ‘What’s the difference between them?’ Dan wondered. He took a drop from each. ‘Mum’s is neat brandy, Va Va’s is water, and mine tastes like Coca-Cola. Who wants to swap?’ He was sent outside to gather wood.

  Preparing for a funeral is like making party arrangements with a knife in your spine. This, with obituaries and letters from long-ago friends, was like one of Dad’s book launches. A hundred times I opened my mouth to say, ‘I must show this to Dad,’ only to close it foolishly.

  The day before the funeral Jim arrived. Mum had chosen him to be one of the pallbearers, along with the boys and Dominic, who had arrived with Liza. ‘Dan, will you ring him and ask him for me?’ she said. ‘Patrick loved him so much, I think he is the right person, don’t you?’

  ‘He may have gone away,’ said Dan, but when he phoned, Jim was there. ‘I couldn’t go when I heard about Patrick. I wanted to see you lot were all right and to come to his funeral. I am deeply honoured. Tell Eleanor that of course I will be a pallbearer, no matter what.’

  Dan relayed the news to Mum, and the rest of us sneaked into the Drinking Room.

  ‘Mum doesn’t know, does she?’ Brodie stroked the Chinese dog on the mantelpiece.

  Flook shook his head. ‘We’d better not tell her till afterwards, she’ll only worry.’

  ‘Will she be angry?’ asked Poppy. ‘It would be awful if she wished she hadn’t chosen him.’

  ‘No. She’ll like it. Dad would love it anyway, and he knew,’ I said.

  Dad’s funeral was held on All Souls’ Day. A Saturday. The day of the Rugby International Final between England and Australia. Kick-off was at three o’clock. We walked up to the church behind the hearse. Our dog T-Shirt came with us, a purple scarf tied round his hairy throat. The boys and Jim, sombre in long black coats, their eyes downcast in faces where sorrow was carved as deep as Jim’s scar, lifted the coffin out of the hearse. The graveyard was full of people. No one moved or spoke as the boys carried their father to the church.

  The service began. When Nile, the dreadlocked Ghanaian singer in Brodie’s band, sang ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ in our village church, televisions in pubs and sitting-rooms all over England roared the same words from the lips of a thousand thousand rugger fans.

  ‘If you get there before I do

  Coming for to carry me home

  Tell all my friends that I’ll be coming soon

  Coming for to carry me home.

  ‘Swing Low, sweet chariot

  Coming for to carry me home …’

  Twelve squad cars, six motorbikes, three vans and a helicopter were used in the raid on Jim’s house. An army of men in bulletproof boiler-suits and black helmets burst in through doors and windows as Jim slept. Outside, a frogman bobbed in the duckpond, slime dripping from his rubber suit. Jim was taken away in handcuffs. The police emptied drawers, slit mattresses and pulled up floorboards. They dug up the lawn and had to re-lay it when Jim’s landlord turned up to mend a barn. They rootled through three tons of hay and grain, they dismantled the car and the fridge and the cooker. They did not find what they were looking for. My father would have laughed if he had known.

  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, A Perfect Life and most recently, 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.

  Also by Raffaella Barker

  The Hook

  Phosphorescence

  Hens Dancing

  Summertime

  Green Grass

  A Perfect Life

  Poppyland

  From a Distance

  Also available by Raffaella Barker

  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

  POPPYLAND

  On a freezing cold night in an unfamiliar city, a man meets a woman. The encounter lasts just moments, they part barely knowing one another’s names, they make no plans to meet again. But both are left breathless.

  Five years on they live thousands of miles apart and live totally separate lives, except that they both still think about that night. So when they meet again it seems clear that they will do all they can to try and stay together, but can it be that easy? Will they be able to escape their past? Will they be able to take the risk they know they should?

  ‘A modern day Brief Encounter’ Daily Express

  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

  www.bloomsbury.com/RaffaellaBarker

  First published in Great Britain in 1994

  by Hamish Hamilton

  This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © 1994 Raffaella Barker

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  The right of Raffaella Barker to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square,

  London WC1B 3DP

  www.bloomsbury.com

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978-1-4088-5066-4

  To find out more about our authors and their books please visit www.bloomsbury.com where you will find extracts, author interviews and details of forthcoming events, and to be the first to hear about latest releases and special offers, sign up for our newsletters here.