Poppyland

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘You put all this somewhere safe in Bonnie’s room,’ someone said, and the jewellery was suddenly in his hands. They were just flimsy beads, a necklace and her special bracelet, but they were what she had been wearing. It was not difficult to know where to put them. It had been difficult to forget them.

  It only takes a moment for Ryder to find what he is looking for. As soon as he opens the box it is there on top, the C-shaped silver bracelet Bonnie always wore. It is tarnished dull grey, but its purity and prettiness shine through. It has a tiny silver mouse engraved on the ball at one end, and an apple on the other, both now mistily obscure, but Ryder rubs the bracelet on his shirt and the mouse appears. Magic. Not knowing much about three-year-old girls, he can’t be sure, but he reckons there is a good chance that Miss Bella Bonnie Perrone will like this.

  Bonnie didn’t tell Jean and Bill she was planning to live with Mac, and that they were hunting for a house that summer. She didn’t want to expose him to their disapproval, and she didn’t want to discuss her boyfriend with them.

  ‘I’ll tell them when I’ve seen the house we’re going to live in,’ she whispered to Ryder after a row because she had said she was going away again. She said that there was a party she wanted to go to.

  ‘There’s always a party,’ grumbled Bill.

  ‘Well, what do you expect?’ Bonnie yelled at him. ‘That’s what everyone does at our age. You may have forgotten, but you were young once, Dad.’

  Ryder realised that she was fighting his battle for him, breaking away with all the directness and courage he loved in her.

  ‘Chhrrriiisst! Dad wouldn’t know a party if it crept up and jumped on him!’ Bonnie exploded into Ryder’s room, bracelets jangling, her long hair a tangle of curls and five mini plaits she had started undoing and then forgotten about.

  ‘Look at these rat’s tails,’ she wailed, pulling at them distractedly, ‘I was trying to do a Ten head. You know, like that film? And I got distracted and forgot I started. Oh bugger. I’m going to miss the train. Or maybe I’m not. What time is it?’ There was a stream of thoughts and questions, no answer was needed, Ryder knew that, but she needed him to be there. He loved that mercurial energy that was uniquely his sister’s. It was so much easier than having any energy himself. He sighed and lay back, staring at the ceiling, pleased with his new poster of a girl with long brown legs, walking away from the camera, her arse caught mid-swing in orange hot pants, her head turned, her mouth an ‘O’ of surprise. Cute. Very cute on the ceiling. Or was it oppressive? Ryder was bored and missing Lila. She had gone travelling, and he knew although they hadn’t talked about it, that the bubble of their relationship had burst. He felt impatient for the rest of his life to begin, Bonnie suddenly seemed to be so many miles ahead of him.

  She was still talking. ‘Anyway, it looks stupid to do those tiny plaits if you aren’t blonde.’ She broke off, noticing her brother was now horizontal on his bed. ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘Mm. Definitely.’ Maybe the poster would be better on the wall next to the shrine? Maybe there was a good reason why people didn’t usually put posters on their ceiling? Lying there, Ryder decided he was not enjoying looking at the orange hot pants. They were definitely in the wrong place. The shrine was so called as it was a collection of black-and-white posters of dead people – Jim Morrison, Sid Vicious, Jimi Hendrix, Steve McQueen and Janis Joplin, in various states of decay. Steve McQueen was the one he most wanted to be. In The Getaway with Ali McGraw. She could be on the ceiling in any clothes she fancied and she would never be an oppressive presence.

  Bonnie scanned the room. ‘God, Ryder, you’ve got very retro taste. Have all the festivals we’ve been to turned you into an old hippie?’

  Ryder threw a cushion at her and didn’t bother to answer. Bonnie bounced up on to her feet and was craning to see herself in Ryder’s mirror, most of which was obscured by graffiti drawings of the Jefferson Airplane logo.

  ‘I think I’m going to cut my hair. It looks like a wig. It’s too much,’ she announced. ‘Shall I?’

  Ryder nodded, looking deliberately very sensible, then reaching behind himself on to the floor, he grabbed hold of a purple afro wig nesting in a jumble of old fancy dress under his bed. ‘And then you will look like this!’ he said, putting it on and pouting and stretching in his version of girl posture. ‘We can be matching.’ He grinned.

  Bonnie pulled the wig off him and chucked it out of the open window. ‘You’re stoopid,’ she protested. Giggling, they both looked out to see the wig in the top of the apple tree.

  ‘Oops,’ said Ryder, ‘better go and get it.’

  ‘No,’ Bonnie had her hand on his arm, eyes gleaming mischief, ‘let’s leave it. It can be like one of those urban myths – you know, how on earth did that mysterious purple wig get there? Like the diving suit left in a tree in the African bush.’ Her eyes were shining with mischief. ‘And let’s have a bet how long it will be before Mum and Dad even notice.’

  Laughing, Ryder picked up a cushion and biffed her gently on the head. ‘Listen, Betsy baby,’ he said in a mock-Chicago gangster voice, ‘there ain’t never gonna be an urban myth about our back garden. Dream on, princess.’

  She biffed him back. ‘I hate that Betsy crap. Ooh, look, I’ve got to go.’ She sighed and ruffled his hair. ‘Oh, Kid, I wish you would come too.’

  He shut the window and stretched. His hands brushed the ceiling, and inevitably the arse of the girl in hot pants. Now that was quite fun. ‘Can’t. I’m going out with my mates, everyone’s leaving next week and this is the last Saturday. I’ll come another time next term.’

  ‘OK.’ She was wide eyed in the mirror again, drawing kohl in a purple smudge at the corner of her eyes. ‘Take me to the train, then. I can’t bear to have Dad fussing all the way to the station.’

  ‘Sure thing, Betsy, when d’you wanna go?’ Ryder coughed and swaggered in his imaginary Raymond Chandler coat.

  Bonnie scrabbled in her bag for lipstick and ran it around her mouth fast and practised as she headed out of the door, swinging back in, mock serious, to add, ‘Don’t get cute with me, Kid, or I will leave you out of all the fun.’

  He drove her to the station with the music up loud. They worked out she would make the connection in Ipswich.

  ‘If I miss it, I’ll hitch-hike.’

  ‘Don’t be stoopid, not on your own,’ said Ryder.

  Bonnie grinned at him. ‘Oh, you’re as bad as Mac. I do it all the time, it’s fine. Anyway, you do too.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m a bloke.’

  Bonnie made a face. ‘Stop it, Ryder! I’m sure I’ll get the connection anyway.’

  At the station she kissed his cheek and swung her bag on to the train. When she pulled down the window to look out, he blew her a kiss through it and shouted, ‘I’m coming up there next week, so get everything in place for me, Betsy.’ And she threw him a key on a blue velvet ribbon.

  ‘It’s the back door at Mac’s – it’s always open to you, Kid,’ she yelled. Ryder waved her off, his big sister, pretty enough to turn the heads of three guys waiting on the platform and the station guard as she waved back, her mane of curly hair shining as she smiled the same wide grin she smiled when she was four years old.

  A familiar sound at an unfamiliar hour is disorientating. The drilling of the door bell was urgent, intrusive like a warped alarm clock. Ryder swam up from deepest sleep, reluctant to return to consciousness, pushing his head further under his pillow until, irritatingly, the pillow wasn’t there, and his head was burrowing against the cold plaster of the wall. God, who could be making that fucking racket? Some road workers in his parents’ garden, maybe? Digging a road to nowhere? The unreal sense of having a hangover pulsed through his veins and his head swam as he attempted to raise it from the mattress. The horrible bell stopped for a moment, and now there were voices, or maybe it was just the echo in his head of the pub last night. Then it was rattling away again, more like a chainsaw than a drill, Ryder thought, but
that might have something to do with the flayed state of his senses. He groaned. Regret is such a frustrating emotion. Too late now to say no to the tequila slammers lined up on the bar. Or to throw cold water on the really stupid race he had sped through with Jack to chase the pints with a couple of vodka shots. The drinks were all downed through a game of pool and no supper, though Ryder dimly recalled a stop at the kebab shop a bit too late at a point of no return last night.

  Oh fuck. Maybe life would improve with some breakfast? Definitely life would improve if the drilling noise would stop. He felt vaguely omnipotent for a moment as, in answer to his wishes, the drilling stopped. It was immediately replaced by an episode of Z Cars turned on much too loud.

  ‘BEEEP – calling car 274 on the corner of Beechcroft Avenue, come in please – BEEP.’

  ‘Officer Blaine, have you located the household? Residence of a mister – BEEP.’

  ‘Turn off the sodding TV!’ Ryder yelled, unable to bear the pain his parents’ insensitive behaviour was causing him. In desperation he burrowed further into his bed and wondered for a moment if a cigarette would help. Probably not, but he may as well have one anyway. He reached an arm out, feeling across the floor for the packet he hoped might be lying there. Before he found anything, he heard thudding footsteps in the hall and his father’s voice outside his bedroom.

  ‘Ryder, the police are here.’

  Panic tasted like metal, solid like a box in his mouth, ramming fear down his throat. In less time than any thoughts left his brain, he found he was upright, out of bed, guilt chasing through him like a flame. What did he do last night? No, not the stuff he had just been remembering, but what did he REALLY do? With whom? Oh fuck, how stupid. At least he didn’t drive home. And he wasn’t that drunk. Was he? Every nerve ending in his body was screaming panic. Ryder knew he was overreacting, but sweat broke out on his upper lip and he succumbed to the state of paralysis that shock brought. He could not retain a simple thought in his head. He tried to concentrate on suitable clothes to wear for meeting the police. Fuck. What sort of clothes could they be? And if by some miracle it wasn’t him, who the hell was in trouble? Dad? Mum? Ryder was pulling T-shirts out of his drawer like a mad man, rejecting the Sex Pistols one, and the New York Dolls one, in favour of the one which said, ‘Jesus loves you, but I’m his favourite’. Pulling denim out of the cupboard he hurled all his jeans on the floor. Not a single pair without holes, and holes look criminal. Shorts might be more suitable as the uniform of the upright citizen.

  Oh man, he could do with spending a minute brushing his teeth or his hair, but instead Ryder grimaced, rubbed his head to try to boost some circulation, and headed downstairs.

  The scene was more surreal than any late-night pub experience. Ryder stopped short in the hall and stared at the disruption of his parents’ home. The doorway from the hall into the kitchen was full of people, his mother at the table in her dressing gown, his father standing by the window, and two policemen like cartoon cut-outs with curling wires exuding from their pockets, hairy arms sticking out of their short-sleeved shirts. Their colonisation had extended to the kitchen table, where their black hats sat awkwardly among the cups, milk jug and toast rack. The kettle was shrilling on the stove. No one turned it off. Everyone in the room turned to look at Ryder. Ice ran beneath his skin. He suddenly knew why he was scared. He looked wildly at each person in the overheated room, hoping for a way out. Reality was hurtling towards him and his head pounded. He had not done anything wrong last night; the police were not here because of him. Ryder was afraid because he had nothing to fear. He saw his mother was crying, and comprehension flared bright then dimmed to nothing, like a lamp extinguished inside him.

  His voice came from a long way off and it was a whisper. ‘It’s Bonnie, isn’t it?’ he said.

  Nobody moved, his mother’s face was blotched and red, frightening. Ryder walked across and lifted the screaming kettle off the hot plate. Then he turned and unlocked the back door and stepped out into the garden.

  Everything he had ever felt in his whole life was jammed in his chest and his throat trying to come out. All the rage and joy, the hope and despair, the love and regret writhed and got stuck. Ryder’s skin felt as if it was stretching over and no sound, no tears, no anything came from inside Ryder. The apple tree where Jean hung bags of nuts for the small wild birds was studded with small vivid green apples. And with the purple wig. Ryder walked under heavy branches to the smooth tree trunk and sat down. The dew-soaked grass tickled his bare legs and drenched his shorts and the tree dug into his shoulder blades. Moments passed. They were not real. Nothing was real for a long time again.

  In the local paper the photograph they used, apart from the Miss Pears Soap 1970 one, with baby Bonnie looking cute sitting in some cow parsley, was one of Ryder’s. Bonnie with her dimple and her eyes lit up, making a daisy chain in the garden with her friend Nicky. Ryder had taken it with his new camera, it was his first roll of film. He had dropped it off to be developed earlier that week. The local camera shop delivered it back free of charge, posting the envelope through the letterbox early on Monday with a note saying, ‘With our condolences to you and your family.’

  That was the day the police asked for a photograph of Bonnie. But it was worse than that. They asked for a photograph of ‘the deceased’. Numbly biddable, Ryder gave the one on top in the envelope. Bonnie was looking up at the lens, her face heart shaped, enquiry in her clear eyes. The colours of the picture, the blue of her eyes, the red of her mouth and the pale gleam of her skin were vivid like a stained-glass window. Her immediacy, the lustrous life shining out of her, was at once both uplifting and stomach churning. Ryder felt his heart clawing up in his chest and up to his throat and a sob trying to escape with the urgent need to rebalance the lopsided wrongness of life without his sister in it.

  Staring at the photograph, his tears falling on it, brushing them off angrily, kicking hard fury against the kitchen door, all made not one jot of difference to what had happened.

  Ryder couldn’t look at the rest of the pictures yet; the first one had swirled into his senses and swallowed up all the courage he hadn’t realised he was holding on to. He was still staring at it when the police telephoned. There was no time for him to put up any resistance; he was malleable and compliant.

  ‘Yes. I’ve got one. Yes. It’s here. They’re coming now? They’re outside? Oh. OK.’

  Opening the door to police officers was becoming more normal than anything else. Ryder’s aunt Felicity, widow of Jean’s brother, had come to stay expressly to prevent the family from suffering these domino-effect experiences, and she clasped Ryder’s arm with her small cold hands and shook her head.

  ‘Dear me, let’s see,’ she fluttered.

  Neither she nor Ryder thought to ask what the photograph might be used for. Plump yet delicate in her white dressing gown, Felicity reminded Ryder of a dandelion clock. He never really felt she was there, even the next morning when she stood, stepping back and forth, one arm across her bosom, the other hand pinching the bridge of her nose, her eyes shut but her head bowed over the newspaper. Bonnie was on the front page. Ryder’s picture of Bonnie was staring out from the front of the newspaper.

  ‘TOO BONNIE TO DIE’ was the headline. And yet she had died. And the local newspaper had all the details.

  In a freak accident last week an American car, a Mustang, hit a stag on the A1065 near Brandon, killing outright the passenger Bonnie James, 19 years old and former Miss Manningtree and Colchester Beauty Pageant winner two years in a row. The stag was also killed, and the driver, Tony Mail, an aviation worker at the nearby Lakenheath airbase, was concussed. Darren Parden, 22, from East Tuddenham, was the first witness at the scene. He reported no passengers. Miss James was not found immediately. Her body had been thrown from the car by the impact, and it was not until later on the same evening when Tony Mail regained consciousness in hospital and told the nurses that he had been carrying a passenger, a hitch-hiker whom he had pic
ked up in Ipswich, that a search party returned to the scene of the accident and her body was recovered from the forest.

  Reading it, Ryder’s mind whirred through the information like a football rattle, juddering loudly to cover anything he could not bear to imagine or did not like. Most of it. Flicking his restless eyes across the printed words, he ended up obsessing about the stag. Where was the dead stag when the car was found? It was unacceptable and impossible that a stag crossing the road on a summer’s night could provide the brick-wall ending to a life. Ryder had not believed it was true from the moment he was told. But now he knew better, and he knew that every local hospital has a mortuary, and that Bonnie was in the one in Thetford. Thetford, for God’s sake. What the fuck was she doing dying anywhere near Thetford? Why did she hitch when she knew she shouldn’t? What happened with the train connection? Why the hell had he not gone with her?

  Ryder had not realised how many imaginary conversations he had always held with his sister until he was having them for real with no follow-up. When she was alive they were echoes of things they had talked about or reminders to himself to bring something to her attention. Especially once she was away at university. Ryder always remembered better if he said things out loud, and it was more likely that someone else would hear. Even if they are dead. She needed to know, for example, that the ribbon on the key was just right for putting over his head. She needed to know he wore the key round his neck, she needed to know Ryder had talked to Mac.

  They met him at the mortuary. He had asked Ryder by telephone to ask Bill if he could come too. Bill had cleared his throat, looked up from the newspaper he had been staring at. ‘Mm? Yes, of course he can come,’ he said mildly.

  There were stilted discussions about what she should be buried in, but it was just conversation, painful and halting, something to fill the screaming space. It had no practical purpose, as the truth of the matter contained no Sleeping Beauty corpse to mourn and kiss goodbye. ‘Are you coming, Mum?’ Ryder asked Jean when he was off the telephone. Jean shook her head. Her smallness in her chair made Ryder shiver. He wanted Lila to come back from Europe, but even more he wanted Bonnie to come back from wherever she was now. She must be somewhere surely?