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Sparkle (1)
If you haven't had a change to pick up BlogHer Book Club's pick Sea Change, here's an excerpt to get you started.
Within each horseradish leaf, where it unwinds from the stem, there’s a small bead of rainwater. He sees one there, shining brilliantly in the morning sun, as if it’s been placed, a jewel, pure and dazzling. It’s perfect. This will be lovely he thinks, leading his daughter towards the plant, her hand so small and cool in his own, both of them crouching over the leaves till their shadows merge. Briefly, the sunshine becomes extinguished from the drop of water, he repositions himself, and it sparks back to life. He imagines a direct unbending shaft of light, taut and without substance, stretching between the sun and its own captured sparkle, a miniature sun in itself, caught in some bend of the refraction.
She is captivated. Surprises like this, especially beautiful ones, always bring a brightness in her, too. She’s four years old, and already there is a sense of such conspiracy between them, father and daughter, such gorgeous intimacy. They share the fascination of pausing to look at things they discover, in detail, her waiting for him to explain what they see. It’s a familiar routine. And he knows even then, that he will want to hold on to this moment for the rest of his life, like the leaf holds its soft capture of that beautiful jewel, to be with her, in that wide sunny field in East Anglia, crouching by the horseradish plants.
From his position in the grass he has a low-angled view of his wife, Judy, sitting on a fallen branch about twenty feet away. She’s wearing dark glasses, and is bent over a small open book on her lap. He knows what she’s reading – a collection of poems, it’s for inspiration, for some lyrics she’s working on, and she likes to make notes in the margins. She has the pencil poised, and every so often he thinks he can hear her humming the tune. So typical of her, really, surrounded by such a perfect morning, to enter into her own private world, so readily. He smiles at her, at the thought of her, smiles at the way her knees are drawn together and the way both ankles bend awkwardly beneath them, giving her a childish look. She’s pretty, he thinks.
His daughter leans as soft as a reed against him as she looks down at the water droplet. She’s wearing one of her favourite dresses, and it smells of washing powder and warm cotton and just a hint, even in the field, of her bedroom’s mix of books and toys. It’s lilac, or had once been brighter than that but has faded, and is cut in an old-fashioned style which makes her more doll-like than usual, with a wide band round the waist which she tends to stroke in a comforting gesture. Around the hem at the bottom of the dress is an unusual trim of farm animals in a printed design, running after each other. They’d made up stories about these animals before, how the goose seems to chase the dog, and how the pig is seen chewing a flower. He looks at this design, stretched across her knees as she crouches in the grass, and he knows she’s itching to reach out and touch the bead of rainwater. She’ll probably knock it off the leaf, so he whispers Freya, watch this, as he holds the plant gently, from underneath, bending it gradually so the droplet begins to stretch and tremble. The leaf has prominent raised veins running across its surface in a root pattern, and the water adheres stickily to one of them, then begins to slide along the vein’s length, rolling, leaving absolutely no mark of wetness behind it, constantly gathering into its own flattened egg shape. The little sun in there dances and sparkles with new brilliance, and he can see how the shine from it has added an extra point of light on to the surface of the leaf.
'Is it a raindrop?’ she asks.
‘No – not really.’
‘Daddy, is it a piece of the sun?’
He smiles. ‘That’s lovely,’ he whispers. ‘A sun-drop.’ He coaxes the water further along the leaf. ‘Look, it’s like mercury,’ he says, marvelling at it.
‘What’s mercury?’ she asks, carefully. Her voice is slow and deliberate and made a little husky by a child’s effort of whispering.
‘It’s a
