The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  She’d left as soon as she could – to avoid him not so much as them.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The doorbell had never worked and the knocker had fallen off many years ago. There had been a cowbell once – but that was now by the hearth because Django McCabe found it the perfect surface off which to strike Swan Vestas when lighting the fire. A bitterly cold March day meant knocking on the old wooden door was not an option – even in balmy weather, bare knuckles on dense wood was a painful thing and, because of the door’s thickness, pointless anyway. So Oriana did what everyone did, what she’d always done – she opened the perennially unlocked door, stepped inside and called out knock! knock!

  It was Cat’s suggestion to meet here, at the old house. She told Oriana that Django was ill though you wouldn’t know it. That it would do him good to have a guest, that he’d cook up a storm in her honour. Their phone call had been brief, excited, fond. The arrangement had been made for today, Thursday, a week to the day of Oriana’s return.

  ‘Knock knock?’

  Django appeared, resplendent in Peruvian cardigan and citrus yellow corduroys. His hair was the colour of gunmetal and platinum and his beard was in a goatee, styled to a rakish point. On his feet, the clogs Oriana remembered so well. She had the strangest urge to run to him, to hold on tight, as if she’d just imbibed a Lewis Carroll potion that had hurled her back to childhood. From the kitchen came drifts of Classic FM, something manipulatively rousing like Elgar or Vaughan Williams. Also, wafts of an olfactory clash of ingredients. Everything about Django McCabe, about his household, was centred on the happy collision of seemingly disparate elements. It was a thoughtful serendipity. It was unbelievably genuine. In America, when holding court amongst her friends and telling them of her crazy technicolour upbringing, Oriana had shamelessly appropriated many of the details from here and transposed them to her home at Windward.

  ‘Oriana Taylor,’ he marvelled, taking her hand with great reverence. ‘Oriana Taylor. Well, heavens to Betsy.’

  ‘Hey, Django,’ she said and she felt as if she was ten, or seven, or fourteen. The slab stone floor underfoot, the peculiar and lively smells from the kitchen, the creak of the house, and the balding kilim in the middle of the floor. It was familiar and a comfort because while her life had gone on regardless, all this had remained just as it should be.

  And then Cat appeared with a beaming smile and arms outstretched. ‘Oh my God, Oriana!’

  ‘Oh my God, Cat – you’re pregnant!’

  There’d been no need for apologies or excuses or even explanations for the silent months. Their friendship had never lapsed, it had simply loitered where they’d left it whilst time had flung forward.

  ‘So,’ said Oriana, ‘it can be done.’

  They were curled at opposite ends of the sagging Chesterfield sofa.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cat, ‘you have sex at the right time and bam! baby on board.’

  ‘I meant the move back to the UK?’ And, just momentarily, the gleam left Oriana’s eyes.

  ‘Are you not back for good, then?’

  ‘For better, for worse,’ Oriana shrugged.

  ‘It’s amazing how fast you’ll settle back into the groove. And Casey?’

  Being evasive with her mother was one thing. With Cat, it was unthinkable.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No more Casey. But it’s all fine – bless him.’ She was rattling off the words like a mantra. ‘Moving back here is the best thing I could do for him too. I mean, I know the United States is huge – but there’s space and then there’s distance. Sometimes, you need more than merely miles to move on. Sometimes you need time zones.’

  ‘And you’re OK?’ Cat pressed, because Oriana’s voice had been expressionless. ‘Really OK?’

  ‘I am dandy.’ But still Cat was regarding her. ‘We’d come to the end. It was my call.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘A while back,’ said Oriana. ‘Well, three, four months.’

  ‘Poor Casey though, having left his—’

  ‘I need a glass of water, a cup of tea.’ Oriana had both in front of her but her mouth was suddenly dry. If Cat could just leave the topic while she went to fetch a drink. ‘Want anything?’

  ‘More space!’ The baby was wedged under her ribs. ‘How’s your ma?’

  ‘Suburban,’ Oriana said, returning. ‘You wouldn’t believe it.’

  Cat shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen her for years. No one has. I still find it bizarre – how she traded one life for another so diametrically opposed. How is Boring Bernard?’

  Oriana flinched at the moniker they’d given him as teenagers. ‘Do you know, he’s just – normal.’

  Cat thought about it. ‘I suppose we confused normal with boring.’

  ‘That’s because both of you grew up not really knowing any normal people,’ said Django, suddenly appearing with a wooden spoon that appeared to be covered in sweet-smelling tar. ‘Which was a blessing and a curse. For my part, I apologize. Come on, lunch.’

  The kitchen. How she’d always loved the McCabes’ kitchen. Despite the size of her own childhood home, Oriana’s family kitchen had been pokey. And it had been underused. As unconventional as the McCabes’ household had been – three young girls living with their eccentric uncle – it had always felt fundamentally stable to Oriana. And Django – as bonkers and outspoken as he was, he always put food on the table. The ingredients were peculiar, but mealtimes were sacred; they sat down as a family to eat. Throughout her life, she’d often arrived there hungry and wanting. And she’d always left nourished.

  ‘Is that cannabis?’ said Oriana.

  ‘No – but I used quite a lot of oregano. And a splash of Henderson’s Relish.’

  ‘Not in the dish,’ said Oriana, ‘there. On your windowsill.’

  They all regarded the plants. Cat rolled her eyes.

  ‘Medicinal,’ Django defended himself. ‘Your husband’s the doctor, Catriona – he’s done research.’

  ‘You could get busted!’ Oriana said.

  ‘I am busted,’ said Django. ‘I have cancer. Prostrate.’

  ‘Prostate,’ said Cat quietly.

  ‘It’s very slow growing,’ said Django rather proudly. He tapped at the bowls in front of them. ‘Now look – eat up. I’ve been experimenting. If Tabasco is hot enough to blow your socks off, just imagine what it can do to cancer cells. They thought I was a goner. I’ve proved them wrong.’

  This was a home where discordance was joyful, where love and hope provided the bedrock for whatever was dumped on top. Oriana felt more settled than at any other time since her return.

  ‘And will you be visiting Robin now you’re back?’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Oriana said.

  ‘So why did you return?’ Django pushed.

  ‘Sorry,’ Cat said to Oriana, under her breath. But it was fine.

  ‘It was time.’ She shrugged, paused, continued quietly. ‘Some things came to an end. Job. Lease. Other stuff.’

  Django liked her ambivalence. He wasn’t very good at ambivalence and he admired it in others.

  ‘Can’t be easy, living where you’re living.’

  Oriana shrugged. ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘Seconds,’ said Django and it wasn’t a question. He gathered the bowls and took them back into the kitchen to refill. Cat excused herself and disappeared upstairs.

  Alone at the table, Oriana thought about her mother. She didn’t doubt that the woman cared about her, in her own way which could be detached and could be dramatic and was always self-centred. But she knew and her mother knew that the Hathersage house was no place for her.

  ‘Here.’ Cat returned with the local paper. ‘Just look at this.’

  An apartment at Windward was up for sale.

  ‘That’s the last place on earth I’d live,’ said Oriana.

  ‘You couldn’t afford it anyway – they go for a fortune, these days.’

  They peered at the pictures which, though
in colour, were grainy. The main one was of the house – obviously taken during the summer months. There were four smaller photographs of interiors. Oriana considered them for some time.

  ‘I’m not even sure which one this is,’ Oriana said. ‘No one had a hi-tech kitchen like that when I was there.’

  ‘It’s Louis’, isn’t it?’ said Django, back.

  ‘Is it?’ said Oriana, grieving for Louis anew.

  ‘Look.’ He jabbed a finger at the final photo. ‘Where’s that then?’

  The girls looked.

  ‘The oriel windows,’ Oriana said, ‘right at the top. But it can’t be Louis’.’

  They read the details.

  ‘How on earth did they make three bedrooms out of his apartment?’ Oriana read on. ‘Two bathrooms, one en suite?’ She looked up at Cat and Django. ‘I loved it when it was Louis’. It was my place of choice for tea. It was always so genteel.’

  Django laughed. ‘Fabulous old queen.’

  Oriana turned to Cat. ‘Do you remember – after school – going for toast and to do homework at his kitchen table because it was so much quieter than downstairs?’

  Cat looked at the details anew. ‘I can’t believe that this is Louis’ place. And yes, of course I remember.’

  ‘I practically lived there during exams,’ Oriana said.

  ‘Well – between Louis’ and ours,’ said Cat.

  ‘Two bathrooms and three bedrooms,’ Oriana marvelled again.

  ‘Crivens,’ Django murmured at the guide price.

  ‘Will you visit?’ Cat asked.

  Oriana looked at her with exasperation.

  ‘I meant Windward,’ Cat said cautiously. She thought about it. It hadn’t been so long ago that she and Django had been estranged. However temporary it had been, it was hideous at the time. Oriana looked tired. Behind the smile and the teeth-whitening and Bobbi Brown cosmetics, it took an old friend little time to detect a degree of emotional exhaustion.

  ‘What’s the point? I haven’t spoken to my father in years. I rarely heard from him before that anyway. And I don’t know anyone there any more.’

  It was only after Oriana had left, when Cat and Django were reviewing her visit, that they realized none of them had mentioned the boys. Not once. Not even when poring over the details of the apartment that had come up at Windward. The Bedwell brothers. Malachy and Jed. And Cat wondered whether they, like Robin, were dead to Oriana too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The front door was never locked but Jed was always acutely aware how nowadays, Malachy’s was one of only three dwellings whose front door remained resolutely unlocked. Nearly all the other apartments in the old house had new security systems and even burglar alarms. Still, along the Corridor – running subterraneous through the house like a hollow crooked spine – the internal doors joining it were unlocked. That had been the very point, back at the end of the 1960s, when the pioneering group of artists and writers and musicians had rented Windward. There was to be flow, Windward ho – ideas and creativity, triumphs and failures, music and colour, characters invented and real – into and out of the rooms, through the windows, across the seasons, during the days and nights. Now, with only two of the original seven artists still living there, Windward was a quieter place. Apartments were much changed. White-collar people lived there now, quietly, privately. Music, if it could be heard at all, came in faint, civilized drifts from radios and sound systems, not resident musicians. Colour these days was polite Farrow & Ball, rollered to a perfect chalky finish; not Winsor & Newton oils squeezed direct from the tube and daubed in a glistening cacophony of hues. There was a distinction between day and night now, between your place and mine. These days, residents wouldn’t dream of entering without knocking.

  Nowadays, Windward was sedate, like a peaceable old uncle whose youthful tattoos were hidden from view. Cars were either German coupes or four-wheel drives and were parked neatly, herringbone style. Not Jed’s, though. He parked as he’d been taught, when learning to drive at Windward – askew on the gravel like a skate on a turn. Malachy knew this wasn’t in defiance of the residents’ association standards, it was because Windward was still home to Jed. He couldn’t distinguish between the Windward of his youth and the place today. And he didn’t understand the importance of compliance, because there’d never been rules back then and there’d been harmony. Whenever Jed arrived, his car was flung as if he simply couldn’t bear to be in it a moment longer. Into his childhood home he’d barge, rolling into his older brother’s life, shedding bags, heading for the purple velvet sofa. Into it he’d collapse and sigh as if Bear Grylls himself would have been hard pressed to make light of such a journey home as Jed’s. Really, it should have irritated Malachy, but instead it always slightly amused him. Jed’s return to Windward was akin to that of an adventurer walking through the front door, having spent years exploring the wilds of somewhere far-flung and dangerous. Namely, Sheffield, forty minutes’ drive away.

  ‘Hey!’ said Jed.

  Malachy was finishing off a paragraph on his laptop. Jed waited until his brother closed the lid on his work.

  ‘The novel?’

  Malachy shrugged. He stretched and smiled. ‘Beer?’

  ‘Music to my ears,’ said Jed. He was now sitting with his arms outstretched as if he had beautiful girls nestling to either side. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, energized by the thought, springing up from the sofa. He went to the kitchen and took two bottles of beer from the fridge. He noted that apart from beer, there was butter, unopened cheese and a lot of Greek yoghurt in the fridge. And not much else. He looked around. Blackening bananas. Washing-up. The cap was off the Henderson’s Relish.

  ‘What’s up with the cleaner?’

  Malachy took the beer and had a sip. ‘I don’t have a cleaner any more.’

  ‘I can see,’ said Jed. ‘But why not?’ It was one luxury Jed would cut corners elsewhere in his life rather than relinquish.

  Malachy shrugged.

  ‘What can your girlfriend think?’ Jed said, now noticing a general dustiness.

  Malachy shrugged again. ‘I don’t have a girlfriend any more.’ He paused. ‘My girlfriend was my cleaner.’

  Jed feared his beer might come out his nose. ‘You were shagging the cleaner?’

  ‘No,’ Malachy protested. ‘Well – yes. But don’t say it like that – it cheapens it. And she wasn’t “the cleaner” – she was Csilla.’

  ‘Was she a girlfriend who tidied up – or a cleaner who became a girlfriend?’

  ‘The latter,’ said Malachy.

  Jed started chuckling. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just my cleaner is called Betty and she’s a hundred and forty and has whiskers.’

  ‘Csilla was twenty-four,’ said Malachy. ‘Hungarian, with a physics degree and a Lara Croft figure.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Jed murmured, impressed. ‘You’ve certainly shafted yourself – your house is a mess and your unmade bed’s empty.’ He was starting to notice that Malachy was shrugging a lot, not in an acquiescent way, but with apathy. ‘What happened then? Did she no longer tickle your fancy with her feather duster?’

  Malachy watched his brother laughing. He’d humour him, he decided, as he went back to the kitchen to fetch another beer. ‘She stole from me,’ he called through.

  From the silence which ensued, he knew he’d wiped the smile off Jed’s face. He sauntered back, whistling; gave his brother another bottle and then sat himself down in their father’s Eames lounger and put his feet up on the footstool.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Jed. This was awful. ‘What did she take?’

  ‘Nothing in the end – because I intercepted it. I knew something wasn’t quite right but I couldn’t work out what. So I left for the gallery with a kiss on the cheek – then returned an hour later hoping to catch her so we could talk. Actually, that’s a lie. I returned hoping to catch her at it – at something – red-handed. Like in a bad film.’ He paused. ‘I laughed at the thought of finding her with some young buck, in fl
agrante, to justify my hunch. Instead, I found her and some sleazy-looking bastard loading up stuff into packing boxes. Our stuff – Dad’s.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  Malachy looked at him. ‘You’re a bit impoverished when it comes to expletives, buddy.’

  ‘Shit. Wish I’d known.’ Jed thought, Malachy’s going to shrug now. And Malachy did. ‘A thought – did you continue paying her once she was your girlfriend?’

  ‘Caveat emptor?’ said Malachy.

  ‘It’s just – out of the two of us – when it comes to girlfriends you’re always so much more –’ Jed struggled for the right word. ‘Discerning.’ He wanted to say cynical.

  ‘I reckon it was a long-held game plan of hers,’ Malachy said, as if it was just one of those things.

  ‘Wouldn’t anyone have seen? Seen Lara Croft trying to make off with your things?’

  ‘You forget, Jed – it’s not like it was. People live here but they don’t work from here. During the day, there’s rarely anyone around. Paula’s in and out – but she’s not in the main building. And the two who are still here – they’re old.’

  Jed thought for a moment. Even now, whenever he returned to Windward, he still liked to think it was all caught in a time warp, that everyone would be here, that everything would be just so. That he’d arrive and all would be preserved and someone would be playing bongos and an electric guitar would be searing from upstairs and people would be painting or being painted and everyone would be the same. No one would have left. They’d all be there, for him. As they had been. Jed blinked back to the present. This was Windward now. His parents had lived in Denmark for many years and rarely came over. There was only him and his brother and this faded, dusty place that needed a bloody good scrub.

  ‘So – you’ll be on the lookout for a new cleaner then,’ said Jed. ‘I should imagine.’ He wanted to perk up. He wanted to lighten the load. He didn’t want to appear rude. Poor bloody Malachy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Malachy, ‘I reckon I am.’