Poppyland Page 21

  Suddenly every whirling emotion he had experienced in the past few weeks collided within him and he had a sense that he might explode. Mac and the girl from Denmark? Surely not? But why not? No, it doesn’t fit. Oh God. It can’t.

  Through the mist in his head he heard Mac explaining something to him, ‘Lucy’s upstairs changing, and I doubt she’ll be ready before we are meant to be there, so I’ll introduce you to my little ones.’ Lucy. Ryder pulled himself back into sense. And in his head he reminded himself that she is called Lucy. He knew that perfectly well. Not Grace. Maybe they aren’t the ones from the beach? After all, isn’t one small adorable blond infant very much like another? Surely? He stared again at the little girls, and noticed they both had riding hats on. With party dresses and solemn expressions.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘They’re under starters order,’ explained Mac. ‘They’ve got the Derby coming up to compete with their christening.’

  ‘Are they into gambling?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mac, mock-serious as he pulled a betting slip from his pocket. ‘They’ve each taken a punt today. Bella’s on a long shot, Fuse Line, at fifteen to one, and Cat’s gone for the second favourite, Dutch Landscape. I reckon she’ll be in the money.’

  Sparkling eyes stared up at Ryder and Mac. Ryder smiled and put down the bag he had been carrying. ‘I like the look they’ve got,’ he said, ‘hats are great.’

  Mac sat down on the sofa between his daughters and bounced them into his arms, where they fell in a giggling heap.

  ‘Bella and Cat, here is Ryder, and he is my great old friend.’

  Frankly, Ryder thought, the children looked as though they could take or leave him. He removed his sunglasses from on top of his head and tucked them in a pocket instead and proffered the bag hopefully.

  ‘I’ve got some Barbie dolls for you.’ He was embarrassed by how shy he felt, how humbled by the vibrant innocence and sweetness of these children. Both of them looked suspiciously at the bag. ‘They used to belong to some little girls called Amy and Rachel,’ he added, ‘and they asked me to give them to you two.’

  He had no idea where this had come from, and had forgotten that he knew the names of Anthea’s children, but it seemed to be the right thing to say.

  ‘Are they out of the box?’ asked Bella.

  ‘Oh,’ Ryder cringed, ‘yes, sorry.’

  But she was smiling and clapping her hands. ‘That’s how we get them at the car boot sale; we like them out of the box,’ she added. Grinning back, Ryder glanced across to Mac.

  ‘They say all the right things,’ he joked, ‘they’ll go far.’ The girls jumped up from the sofa and delved into the bag.

  ‘You got the password right,’ replied Mac, ‘and Barbie dolls are the best possible currency here – like dollars in Nepal.’

  Ryder found himself floating away in his head again as the children unloaded a storm of tiny costumes and some naked dolls. Were they the same children? Could Grace really be Lucy? If he asked Mac if the girls went to the beach yesterday, what would it achieve? Would he seem like a weirdo and therefore not suitable as godfather? And what about Bonnie? In all the confusion of feelings he was experiencing, the one thing Ryder was sure of was that there were no amends to be made to Bonnie. His earlier anxieties on her behalf had dissolved and gone, but she needed to be mentioned.

  As if he had spoken the thought, Mac got up from the sofa, opened the door into the garden, and stood looking out for a moment. Then he turned to Ryder with sadness in his clear grey eyes.

  ‘It took me a long time, Kid. Really. Bonnie was wherever I was in her shocking absence every day for ten years. I felt like a part of me was missing. You know, the way amputees are supposed to feel? I really wondered if I would ever get over it, you know, and I’ll be honest, it was like a curse sometimes.’

  He half turned to look out of the door, swallowing. Ryder moved next to him and stepped outside to light a cigarette. ‘I can imagine,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Mac.’

  Mac took a cigarette too and both of them moved further into the garden, ‘It’s different now,’ he said simply. ‘It changed with Lucy. I will never forget Bonnie, but my heart mended when I met Lucy.’

  Ryder meant it fully when he replied, ‘I’m glad for you.’

  Cars had pulled up, their doors clunking, their engines dying on the breeze. The church bell continued chiming along with snatches of laughter and conversation that had been gathering, and then someone saw Mac and broke away from their group to come over to greet him.

  Chucking the cigarette away, Mac turned to Ryder. ‘Come out and meet everyone. Mum and Dad are here, they’ll be pleased to see you. I told them you were coming. I’ve got to get these girls out, too.’ Bella has emerged from the house in swashbuckling mode, a Barbie pushed like a gun into the sash of her dress, twirling a toy ballgown on her fingers. ‘That was a great present for them, thanks.’ Mac picked up Cat who was squatting intently looking at a leaf outside the French windows. ‘Here, come with me and we’ll go and find everyone.’

  Ryder, much to his surprise holding hands with Bella, who had reached up to him, tugging him, followed Mac through the gathered people. Then suddenly Mac walked away towards another open door into the house and out of it came a woman whom he put his arms around. She had her hair loosely up, and in the turn of her face as she leaned up to whisper in Mac’s ear, there was something familiar that made Ryder’s pulse race. A split second later it was as inevitable as it was astonishing that out of the door behind her stepped Grace. Sisters.

  Chapter 14

  Grace

  Norfolk

  It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the soft light in the church, where candles glow around the altar and the pink plaster on the walls bounces a rose tint into the aisle. Stepping into the space next to Lucy, I open the order of service. It is impossible to pay attention to the vicar as he delivers his sermon. How can it be that it is here and now that I have met him again? Is there significance attached, or is this just life revealing its shapes and patterns, flexing the push-me-pull-you of human connection? I don’t feel really surprised to see him, it is as if he has always been in my life, and I cannot dismiss this notion even though it makes no sense. But neither does his being here, at the furthest point east on the very edge of Norfolk with the sea moving steadily towards us and the land crumbling into it. And we are here for this tiny homely family christening. Ryder has appeared in my dreams once in a while, and in my thoughts a little more often through the last five years, but I never had a sense of truly wanting to see him again until yesterday. And yesterday I dismissed it as crazy. So last night, when I was telling Lucy, I made a joke out of the whole episode and I said, ‘When a guy flicks a fag over the cliff at you and reminds you of a lost moment five years ago, it’s a sign you need to get out more.’

  Lucy laughed too, but she squeezed my hand and said, ‘True. But it also means you must be over Jerome. You will find someone new now.’ And it was a relief to find no lurch of the heart or contraction of feeling when Jerome’s name is mentioned. The bruise has healed. The sun beams in, engulfing the soft candlelight and suffusing the church with joy. The vicar reaches the denouement of his sermon, and I wish I had been listening, as he draws himself to a conclusion.

  ‘There is wonder all the time in the world, it is our choice to see it or not. I know of no better expression of this than William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”:

  ‘To see a world in a grain of sand,

  And a heaven in a wild flower,

  Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

  And eternity in an hour.’

  Every small detail is lit with significance today. But then, maybe it always is, and usually we are too busy to notice. Cat, the baby, is in Lucy’s arms next to me. She reaches out her hand, turning it in the shaft of sunlight, absorbed in her own world while all of us gathered here are absorbed in her and Bella’s celebration. We stand up, rustling an introduction, a
s the organ pedals rattle and the tune to ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ pours into the church. Lucy and Mac are edging out of the pew to go to the font at the back, and beside them Bella skips in the aisle. She trundles towards the vicar, and then, in a block of sunshine, she stops and slowly twirls around, a tiny Degas in her shuttlecock skirt.

  It’s a bit like waking up in a room full of people to look around at the other guests. There are not many people, perhaps twenty or so, and among them old friends of Lucy’s whom I recognise and find myself half greeting with a semi-smile and invisible internal code to which I imagine they are responding similarly. There are a couple of aunt-like figures who must be related to Mac, as Aunt Sophie, our only proper relation, is too frail to come.

  Mac’s family are exotic-looking, I remember Lucy telling me they were Italian, and Mac’s dad ran a fleet of ice-cream vans on the beach at Great Yarmouth and Gorleston and was waiting for Mac to tire of photography and take them over. His parents are opposite me, and they remind me of the parents in a pack of Happy Families cards. Marina Perrone has a sculpted wave of auburn hair and gold jewellery enhancing a gleaming suntan the texture and colour of butterscotch ice cream, and Mac senior has wings of silver hair ending in glistening sideburns and thick black eyebrows. In the gathering of Lucy and Mac’s friends they look more surreal than the small boy in a Spider-Man suit and red Wellington boots who is flexing his spider skills by attempting to climb up the bell rope behind the font. His mother Felicity is a friend of Lucy’s from university, last seen by me wearing hot pants and high boots to her graduation ceremony. Of course, they were hidden by her gown, but the pinkness of her face as she strode on to the stage to receive her certificate was a glaring reminder. Her mermaid-like long red hair is a crisp bob now and her shoes are sensible and low. I am sobered by the changes wrought by age and domesticity and at the same time attracted to her serenity. She has been tying a small pink hat on to the large head of a baby who is identical to the tall man holding it, and she finishes this before gathering up Spider-Man. Her quiet patience is a quality I have seen in Lucy since Bella was born. I thought it was just exhaustion, but now I see it is actually love and I am chastened and pinpricked with curiosity. There is a collective theme running through the appearance and stance of all Lucy and Mac’s friends, subtle in as much as it is revealed in outward details – many of the women wearing coloured shoes, or the fact that none of the men is wearing a tie and even the ones with suits have rumpled linen shirts or T-shirts under them and no one’s hair or, indeed clothes, have a military cut. But it is more, Ryder both fits in and stands out. The vicar has separated the godparents and parents from the rest of the flock with practised skill and is busy extracting promises from them.

  ‘Do you turn to Christ?’ the vicar asks.

  ‘I turn to Christ,’ everyone responds.

  ‘Do you repent of your sins?’

  ‘I repent of my sins.’

  ‘Do you renounce evil?’

  ‘I renounce evil.’

  All of us are around the font now, and Bella is on tiptoe, trying to peep over the edge. Lucy and Mac look like one entity standing close together, Cat in Mac’s arms, solemn and attentive. Ryder catches my eye as the vicar moves towards the godparents, and in the glance we exchange I feel a thrill of possibility and I bite my lip hard and look away to stop myself smiling.

  ‘Do not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified,’ says the vicar, sounding somehow reproving, and all of us mumble the response like naughty children giving an excuse. ‘Fight valiantly under the banner of Christ against sin, the world and the devil and continue his faithful soldiers and servants to the end of your lives.’

  When I dare to look back at Ryder, he winks at me and looks down at the order of service in his hands, the corner of his mouth a smile. I feel incredibly naughty to be flirting in the middle of a christening, and it’s such fun too. The vicar moves on to bless the water of baptism, and I keep my eyes fixed on the children. Cat is wriggling away from the water as if it is deathly poison, climbing up her father’s arms like a marmoset. Bella is like the apprentice to the vicar and picks up the silver dish he uses for pouring and passes it to him as if she is a mindreader, just as he is reaching for it.

  He doesn’t falter, but smiles at her, and pours a trickle on to her head, intoning as he does: ‘Bella Bonnie, I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ With his thumb he makes the sign of the cross on her forehead and Ryder and her other godparents chorus ‘Amen.’

  It is Cat’s turn. Bella’s godparents move away from the font back to their places in the crowd of us grouped nearby, and suddenly Ryder is standing next to me. I feel absurdly proud of him, and confused. Nothing today has made sense since I looked up from kneeling in the garden and saw him. Thoughts and feelings rush and form in my mind in fast succession, but none of them add up to anything except a dopey, stunned happiness that has no foundation. Now the vicar has lit two candles.

  He gives one to Ryder, for Bella, saying, ‘Receive this Light.’ He gives the other one to Cat’s godmother and, waving his arms to encompass the two children, who are both automatically pouting ready to blow, he says, ‘This is to show that you have passed from darkness into light.’ He gets the final words out as Bella gives in to her own desire to blow, but although the flame shivers, it does not go out. Maybe it’s just me, but the pause that follows is electric, I must have been to a christening before, but I have never taken any notice of the words of the service, or the symbolism. There is nothing that does not feel significant. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve, not wanting to detract any attention from the babies.

  ‘Here, it’s clean.’ Ryder has pulled a bright yellow spotted handkerchief from his pocket and passes it to me. Somehow I am holding it before he lets go. We both tug at once and the look between us smokes. I am ridiculously overexcited. The service speeds towards its conclusion. The blessings are over, and the vicar and Mac and Lucy lead the way out of the church into the breezy sunlit churchyard where nature is creating a celebratory welcome committee with giant saucer-sized elderflowers nodding and bowing against bright green leaves, and the cow parsley beneath them is like a bank of lace. Ryder is by my side. I remember walking into the gallery in Copenhagen with him, wondering then if he would touch me, a leap of desire like the lick of a flame sparkling. He left on his boat in the dark, and I was so caught up in the suspended tension of the moment that I completely failed to notice the sliver of loss like a tiny blade of ice in my heart, unacknowledged but nonetheless there for all those years. And now it is melting. I thought I would never see him again. For months after the evening in Copenhagen I wondered if he would somehow get in touch. If I had known his number or how to find him, I might have tried, but the different time zones, the fact he hadn’t given me that information, and the secret conviction I could hardly let myself hear, that he could find me through the gallery if he wanted to, all stopped me doing anything. I wanted a man who would come and find me, I didn’t want to have to go looking for him. I guess that’s why I went for Jerome. He came and found me. Or tripped over me, more like, as I was floundering through the disorder of my life as a foreign resident in New York. After that I think I shut down my heart and I really gave up. And now the horizon is limitless again, and it has not been like that for a long time for me.

  Chapter 15

  Ryder

  Norfolk

  Ryder’s mind flips and weaves, cresting on a wave of excitement – she is here, he has found her, and everything will be wonderful now. He looks up at the vaulted roof, and the shadowy carved angels standing like figureheads on a ship’s prow at intervals along the ceiling, and his thoughts take an abrupt nosedive. How come, after all these years, I have re-met Mac, and I am taking part in his daughters’ christening, and all I can do is lust after a woman?

  But there is Grace, with a beam of sunlight bouncing on to her shoulder, like a girl in a highschool musical. When she moves her h
air falls across her back, and everything, just everything is on the up. Ryder forces himself to read the words on the service sheet, to think thoughts of tedium and distraction to get himself back under control. It’s excruciatingly embarrassing being a man sometimes. Right. Now. Watch. Join in. No perving. Mac leans towards Lucy and she passes the baby into his arms, their eyes meet and in the shape of their bodies and the way they fit together but are separate beings, there is such love and such mutuality. Lucy’s hand rests against Mac’s chest for a moment and then they move out into the aisle with Cat in Mac’s arms and Bella stomping along in front.

  In the aisle, Bella shuts her eyes and slowly turns, her arms above her head, in a dance she has learned at ballet lessons, unless a pirouette is implicit in all small girls. Actually, it probably is. What a girl. Bella, his god-daughter, is sublime. Ryder had no idea of the new levels of the word adorable that were untapped until he met his god-daughter. Mac and Lucy have gathered her up now, along with the baby, and they are walking to the font. In a minute he will be, too. Grace follows them and he feels a pinprick of light, the possibility of happiness, as she passes him and her patchouli scent wafts into his soul. The other godparents move out of their pews, and with a start Ryder follows them, glancing at people he doesn’t know, mildly curious and wondering what exactly his bond with them is now. Or is about to be. He finds himself standing across from Grace, and he wishes he was next to her for two reasons, first for the magnetic attraction he feels to her and secondly because now he can see her he can look nowhere else. Her dress is low at the front, and beneath it her breath rises and falls. She has sexy underwear on, and the light falls like lace across her, revealing much more than she is probably aware of. Oh God, it’s profane to be thinking like this in church, especially when you are there to take part in something as wonderful as a baptism.