Clark Ocean

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78563-362-1
Verlag: Eye Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 336 Seiten

A powerful yacht, a warring family, the unforgiving deep... Caught in a terrorist explosion on the London Underground, inner-city schoolteacher Helen is pregnant and lost until a stranger leads her to safety then vanishes. Obsessed with finding him, she begins to lose her grip on reality - and her family. As their marriage fractures, her husband Frank proposes a daring plan: sell up and sail the Atlantic with their son Nicholas and troubled foster daughter Sindi on the Innisfree, the very boat on which the couple first fell in love. What begins as a daring bid for salvation turns into an epic journey. The ocean proves as wild and unpredictable as the heartbreak Helen is trying to outrun. Will the voyage meant to save them destroy them instead? With a fiercely funny and maverick heroine at its helm, Ocean is a powerful exploration of the uncharted waters of the human heart. The award-winning author of Larchfield takes us on a gripping, beautifully written voyage into the depths of what it means to heal - and to live.

Polly Clark was born in Canada and brought up in Scotland. Her debut novel, Larchfield (2017), fictionalised a little-known period in the life of the poet W.H. Auden. It won the Mslexia Prize, as well as critical plaudits from Margaret Atwood, Louis de Bernières and Richard Ford. Her follow-up, Tiger (2019), was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year. She is also the author of four collections of poetry. Her first, Kiss (2000), won an Eric Gregory Award and her second, Take Me With You (2005), was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She divides her time between the west of Scotland and a houseboat in London.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Clark, Polly

Leseproben

2

Rush hour found me leaning against the map on the wall of the Underground, eyes closing in exhaustion. Frank had texted to tell me he had a client meeting and couldn’t drive me home, so I had hauled myself along to the Tube. I willed the train to arrive; all I wanted was to sink into a warm, comfortable place, drift on the soar of hormones like a pleasure boat on a holiday sea, feel the turn of the baby like a porpoise in the waves. Nicholas was with his friend Louis; Frank ended his text with a promise to cook something delicious tonight to compensate for not picking me up. On the surface, all was well. But as the day played back over my half-closed eyelids, I worried that perhaps I had gone too far.

The train arrived, and gratefully I crumpled into a vacant seat.

How marvellous it would be never to disembark from this train, I thought; instead, simply pound drowsily back and forth along the Northern Line forever. In that way I could remain the timeless orb of possibility I was now. I was full of love for this baby. It was a love more direct and simple than that for my son, conceived and experienced in a very different time. I could say this to myself, because I had not always been suffused with love for the baby. I was grateful for the baby, because I had come to feel our lives were no longer enough for Frank and me, and we desperately needed a fresh start. That’s how it began. But love can begin in all kinds of ways, can’t it, and evolve into something else? It can begin incomprehensibly, wrongly, and yet become something that defines an entire life.

As the various risk points of pregnancy passed, and scan after scan showed a perfect foetus gazing kindly back at me, my love for the baby grew. It grew as we told people and imagined our family having this new person in it. And it grew as we talked about the baby to Nicholas, whose eyes lit up as he realised he would no longer be alone.

I love my baby. I smiled to myself, leaning back in the seat, imagining the day this new life would be out in the world and safe in my arms.

But my pleasure was interrupted by unease about Sindi’s Intervention. Though I am a scientist by training, life is painful and I believed that sometimes the only defence against it was radical metaphor. And I’d found it was a strong defence, as strong as anything science or society could throw up. But not everyone is strong enough to be reminded of their broken heart. I unpicked Sindi’s intervention, trying to find where I might have slipped up.

These rituals took the form I had developed over several years. It took place in a corner of the block completely out of view, which I had decorated with candles and lights. Dwayne produced an oil drum and wood to burn, as it was a December evening. No matter the cold, there was always an excellent turnout for Interventions. No truancy for such theatre. Chalmers was master of ceremonies, stooped and half-smiling with the photocopied schedule in his hand. Over time the interventions had become quite elaborate, though never exceeding the hour of a detention. I encouraged this sense of occasion. I grew excited myself as the day approached.

In the centre of the space, supported on some bricks, stood an open coffin. This was lovingly made from plywood by Dwayne and Carol, whose woodwork skills were enthusiastic, and painted black with gorgeous silver curlicues by Petra, who was on track for an A at GCSE in art, but clinging by her fingernails in science. The space inside was lined with sheets in different colours. They had been lifted from different homes – including mine – then carefully pleated and upholstered with scraps of material pilfered from the Home Technology classroom. Dwayne and Carol had cleverly installed hinges, so that the whole ensemble could be folded away and stored. It was really very beautiful. I laid flowers inside.

With twenty or so students gathered round, Sindi hopped into the casket with a kind of alacrity that I remembered in my own little boy, leaping into bed with me with not a tweak of shame at his need. Eagerly, she got into position, her uniform pulled modestly to the correct length, woolly tights on, her eyes closed, her hands crossed over her chest. I laid the lid over her, sending an obelisk of shadow over her pale skin, a wisp of frosty breath escaping from her lips. A barely discernible ripple of fear faded from her cheek as the lid closed.

Now, it was sealed shut, with a little vent for air. I leaned over the vent and said, ‘You okay in there, Sindi?’

A tiny yes Miss.

Sindi was fifteen, and I had been thinking about her Intervention for weeks. I could not see that anything less radical could save her. An orphan, she strolled around inside in my conscience as if auditioning to be my daughter. She had the kind of charisma that was about force, not beauty; like certain men possessed. She was not vain in any way, wore no makeup, but if anything her lack of mask over her strong features only increased her magnetism.

Every day, when Sindi got off the bus, she would hitch up her skirt to micro length and tie her blouse up, exposing as much midriff and leg as possible. Having done this, however, all she’d go on to do, the same every day, was to spray her tags beneath the Technical Block, or sit barelegged alone in a corner of the playing field and smoke her Embassy Regals. She wore no jewellery and her long hay-coloured hair hung around her in matted vines, less a deliberate attempt to cultivate dreadlocks than indifference.

No one, not the boys, not the male teachers, let alone the world outside, was going to let Sindi smoke peacefully, half-naked, alone. It had started already, lads making that journey across the scrub to loiter beside her. Teachers lifted their heads as she made her sensational way down the drive. She was an inspiration to the younger girls, who tried to copy her. Classroom windows would fly open: ‘Sindi, pull your skirt down!’ And she would, absently, until out of range, when up it would go. I brought in wool tights because she looked so cold. It was a sign of the trust between us that she did, later, wear them if it was freezing in the class. Off they’d come for the technical block or the playing fields though. She resented covering herself, but had no coherent reason for why. She didn’t see any provocation in her actions, nor danger. She expressed no interest in her future.

Watching her in the hallucinogenic swirl of my hormones in the early days of pregnancy made me want to cry. In the end I could stand it no longer. I waddled over the playing fields to sit with her, putting my arms around her and resting my swollen cheek on her cold shoulder. She turned that strong face to me, nose too big, eyes too close together, gap in the front teeth, the whole effect enough to make me give her everything to save her from all the things I didn’t understand, and all those I understood too well. She breathed Embassy Regal smoke into my face and said, good-naturedly, ‘Miss, if you’re going to do that, budge your chin.’ We sat there like that for the rest of the lunch hour, mostly in silence, with occasional flurries of chat about things that interested her. She was interested in money, how it worked, what it meant, how bits of paper or numbers on a screen could mean anything. She asked me to explain the stock exchange, which I couldn’t, but I promised we’d look it up together. My back hurt and my legs went to sleep and I inhaled at least three cigarettes’ worth of second-hand smoke, but I loved that hour. I had deterred the hyena approaches of the lads. But it wasn’t enough. Only transformation would be enough.

With a wave of his hand, Chalmers indicated that the ceremony was about to begin. The lid was lifted to reveal Sindi, eyes closed, wearing the Funeral Tie, velvet black, awarded to the corpse. The ceremony would stop if the corpse showed any sign of life. This was serious.

All the pupils were in full uniform, or as full as they could manage on their meagre household budgets. The uniform was black and gold. Not yellow, although the school did turn a blind eye to yellow items, instantly marking out those who could not afford to go to Farrah and Sons on the high street next to the school for the correct colours. There was a lot of yellow in my lower-stream classes. I kept an eye on the second-hand sales of uniform, occasionally slipping a pupil a gold item. I believed in uniform; it was probably the only thing that prevented many of the girls from coming in a glittery boob tube. But gold? This was a battle I had decided against taking up with the Head. I was doing what I could. I had found my niche. And in return I knew the Head ignored my theatrical activities.

Chalmers, with his shy smile from under the black mop, said, ‘We are here today to celebrate the short life of Sindi Jackson, who was hung for murder.’ His voice echoed round the shadowy pillars. Corpses were allowed to choose the manner of their untimely deaths. The only proviso was that they should be believable.

‘Hanged,’ I corrected. ‘Sindi deserves good grammar.’

This scenario was truly excellent. I could see Sindi snapping after yet another worthless man abused her, whacking him in his sleep with one of his own spanners or stabbing him in the heart with a screwdriver. I could also see her as misunderstood in a time of witches, where she could never be sexy and unpunished. Anyway, a hush fell over the group.

Chalmers went on, ‘Although Sindi’s neck was snapped so violently her head actually came off, miraculously her face was...