The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  Malachy respected Robin greatly as an artist. As the elderly, infirm man Robin was today, it was no bother for Malachy to look in on him, to take him the paper, heat up a can of oxtail soup, ensure he’d taken his pills. But as the man who’d caused him significant distress when he was a child, whether directly or indirectly? And as the man who’d so heinously mistreated the gift of love, of fatherhood? The man who’d ripped Oriana away from him, from them all? The truth of it was that Malachy despised him.

  ‘Robin?’

  ‘In here.’

  In the studio.

  God, it was airless. It had been balmy all day, constant sunshine even if diluted by typical April temperatures. The windows had trapped the sunlight, drawn it into the room and expanded it. It was unpleasantly stuffy.

  ‘You need to open the windows, Robin,’ said Malachy. ‘Let the fresh air in. It’s been beautiful out there.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at work? Are you unwell?’ Robin rose, still impressive though stooped, today in a three-piece suit of sludge-coloured wool shot through with a bright purple stripe. Today he sounded present, almost chipper. Malachy was adept at taking no notice of Robin’s moods.

  ‘I was at work all day,’ said Malachy. ‘It’s almost seven. I shut at five at the moment.’

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘What have you there?’ Robin gestured to the canvas.

  ‘I didn’t know whether you’d like it back,’ Malachy said, turning it around and then casually back again, his eyes never leaving Robin’s face, tuned for the slightest darkening.

  ‘I wondered where that had got to,’ Robin mused as though it was a missing shoe. He took the canvas from Malachy. ‘Let’s pop you up here, shall we? See what we can do for you.’

  Malachy thought, he sounds like a GP about to treat a patient for laryngitis. He thought, she needs more than a GP for that throat; she needs a plastic bloody surgeon.

  ‘Thank you, Malachy.’

  ‘Can I heat something up for you?’

  ‘I’ve had,’ said Robin.

  ‘And your tablets?’

  ‘And I’ve had my tablets.’

  ‘May I?’ Malachy gestured to a chair.

  ‘By all means,’ said Robin, who pottered around the studio as if it was his surgery. Where’s my filbert brush? Stethoscope. Let’s have a little look at you, shall we? Blood pressure. Palette. Let me look down your throat. Rag soaked in meths. His total focus was Rachel.

  Is it not exhausting being Robin? Malachy wondered. Now as much as then? A lifetime of duress and extremes? One day, so full of venom, the next – like now – almost genial, tender even, chatty as you like?

  ‘Keep taking the tablets,’ he said under his breath. But Robin didn’t hear him, Robin was communicating on another level entirely. With love in his eyes, tenderness in every flick and touch of his brush, warmth in the chosen colours, his lips moving in silent conversation – his world polarized by and devoted to Rachel.

  Malachy slipped away unnoticed. Robin would work until he had to sleep. That could well be after twenty-four straight hours of painting. He’d once asked Robin if he could install a video camera because it would be so fascinating to play it back, speeded up. The artist at work. The artist possessed. Robin had flatly refused.

  Out in the gardens, Malachy walked, gulping in lungfuls of fresh air as if he’d just surfaced from underwater. He smiled at his pre-teen self – he’d taken Oriana the æbleskiver that night, going outside and throwing stones up at her window in their secret code to alert her. One, two. Wait. One, two. But the fritters were so light that the bag just floated back down to him well short of her arms. Don’t worry, she’d said, not hungry.

  You OK?

  Me OK.

  Idiots, Malachy said. You can stay at ours?

  They’re just idiots, Oriana had said.

  Now he walked across the grass, around the house and over the drive towards the Ice House. He fancied a cup of tea with Paula. Or a beer with Rob. Or maybe, he just wanted company. As he walked, Malachy thought back some more – Rachel had left Robin not long after that. It was scandalous at the time. People were as shocked that it was Bernard she’d left Robin for, as they were horrified that she’d left her child. He was about to knock on the de la Mares’ door when suddenly he paused.

  He stepped away, almost staggered a step or two backwards. With sudden and startling clarity he now understood how love had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t about love or lack of. Leaving Robin and choosing Bernard was Rachel making the conscientious decision to self-lobotomize. Ultimately she’d done so to save her own life.

  When I was …

  When I was twelve my birthday was unforgettable but I would do anything not to remember it. I can’t recall my eleventh at all – that was the first one after my mother left. But when I was turning twelve, my mother insisted that I had a birthday party though I didn’t really want one. People my age were having trips to the cinema or out for a pizza for their birthdays. But she was adamant – and she told my father it was to be at Windward because ‘that’s where the girl lives’. I suppose, looking back, it wasn’t about me, it was all about my mother. At the time, with my mother reappearing at Windward trailing bunting and balloons, it felt peculiar to be the centre of attention. I remember how she and Bernard made trip after trip back out to their car, bringing in platters and trays piled with party food. My father stood by, watching as his ex-wife commandeered the kitchen while her new husband made awkward adjustments to this platter of crustless sandwiches and that tray of fondant fancies, or this jug of celery sticks and that bowl of Twiglets. In the end, my father just went back to his studio to paint, at which point my mother made much of an enormous sigh of relief.

  And then the guests came. Nearly everyone in my class. And Malachy and Jed. And a Windward girl called Plum who was a little younger than me and her sister Willow who was a little older. Louis came down, Lilac and George too. There was no need for party games and there was no official entertainment – the tea banquet was the focus. It was straight from the pages of Lewis Carroll. We almost didn’t dare eat the food, suspecting that it couldn’t possibly be real, not that quantity and variety. Everything seemed so plump – the mini sausage rolls were in puffed-up pillows of pastry, the muffins were spilling corpulently over the paper cases, all manner of bright fillings oozed from sandwiches, icing had been applied to cupcakes like cement from a trowel.

  But eat we did. We gorged ourselves and every time an obese vol-au-vent went, my mother seemed to pluck another from thin air and replenish the plate. It was all delicious – hyper-sweet or fabulously salty, just what we craved at that age. And the birthday cake itself – so monstrous in its extravagant confection that, when it appeared, everyone fell silent. It looked like a pile of hatboxes of diminishing sizes stacked in a precarious tower; chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate, globs of cream and huge mutant strawberries. It took both my mother and Bernard to bring it in. This year, my mother hadn’t stinted on candles; they circumnavigated the haphazard tiers like flares marking the way of a magical, terrifying spiralling pathway.

  They called for my father.

  No singing until Robin is here. I said NO singing until Oriana’s father comes. Don’t touch! Be quiet, everyone – silence!

  The candles had burnt halfway down by the time he came. He looked flustered. He was in rolled-up shirtsleeves. Quite something for him not to be painting in his suit jacket. He scratched at his hair while mouthing the words to Happy Birthday. I blew and I blew and, when finally all the flames were out, everyone chanted at me to make a wish. They told me to cut the cake and scream when the knife touched the bottom – for good luck.

  That’s not my scream.

  That’s my mother.

  And it was bloodcurdling.

  Almost immediately everyone in the room saw the cause.

  A woman had appeared from my father’s studio and was walking across our main room as if none o
f us was there. And the room was vast – it had been the original drawing room of the house. She sauntered across it with no urgency, no awareness of her audience. She walked steadily past us all, towards my father, at ease with her butt-nakedness. She had small perky breasts, nipples out like bullets, buttocks creamy and round like scoops of ice cream. She had no hair on her body, which I thought was alarming as even I had just a little.

  Oh for God’s sake, Rachel, my father hissed. She’s my life model.

  And I thought to myself, how long has she been here, this naked lady? I had no idea there’d been anyone else in my home apart from my father and me. After my mother left my father, we were acutely aware of her absence because it brought with it a soundlessness our apartment had never known. We didn’t converse much, my father and I. The quietness was private to both of us. Yet I could hear clearly the scrape of palette knife against canvas two rooms away, much as my father could hear me buttering toast for our tea. I was shocked, therefore, at the silence of real nakedness going on behind the closed door of my father’s studio. It was more shocking to me than my mother’s hollow scream on my twelfth birthday.

  When I was thirteen, I had two birthdays. Mum and Bernard were off on a cruise so they had to rush through my birthday a week early. They picked me up from school and took me into town for supper because my mother still harped on about never stepping over the Windward threshold as long as she lived. Or ‘over my dead body’ she’d say if she was being even more dramatic and morbid.

  I was hoping for a radio-cassette recorder – Malachy had one. Every Sunday, he let me and Jed sit in his room and ‘watch’ the Top 40 on the radio. That’s how I learned which bands were cool – if Malachy recorded it, I knew it was worth memorizing the lyrics and the tune by heart. I couldn’t decide whether it was art or science – but it was visually impressive – Malachy’s perfected method of pressing the play and record buttons at precisely the moment the DJ stopped talking and the song began, releasing his fingers an inspired millisecond before the music faded and the presenter barged in again. ‘You can borrow the tapes any time you like,’ he told me. I did borrow one, not that I had anything to play it on – I simply wanted it in my possession, just so that I could imagine what being a bona-fide teenager must be like. That intriguing brown ribbon containing the music that made life OK. If Malachy thought I was mad, he didn’t say. Jed did, though. I was never offended that Jed laughed at me. It always felt rather wonderful to be so audibly the subject of someone’s happiness.

  When I was thirteen my mum and Bernard didn’t buy me a radio-cassette recorder for my birthday. I thought they had – because the box looked about the right shape. But it was a set of stuff for the bath. My mother called it a coffret and the French accent she used curdled with her slightly anglicized American one. Bernard said to me, I had no idea you wanted a radio-cassette recorder, love. My mother looked aghast. Well, that’s news to me, she said. But we all knew it wasn’t so we pushed the food around the plates for a bit. This is far more useful, she said, running her fingers over the display of bubble bath and lotions as if I was horribly spoiled and ungrateful. Did she truly believe that tablets of bath salts were more useful to a thirteen-year-old than the music of a generation?

  Malachy made it better. ‘What’ll she buy you next year?’ he said. ‘Scented drawer liners? A frilly shower cap?’ He put his arm tenderly around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze.

  And that was the moment that it felt different. That was when I felt it.

  I’d known Malachy and Jed for ever and we’d always roughhoused and linked arms and poked each other and ruffled each other’s hair. But that day, Malachy’s touch felt different from before. And different from Jed’s.

  At thirteen, there was no way I was having a party – not after what had happened the year before. But I knew Jette had spoken to my father who then told me I could invite a gaggle of girls for the afternoon. I hadn’t a clue whether there was a model in his studio, naked or clothed. I didn’t intend to find out. I had no need to – Malachy lent me his radio-cassette player and a tape of the current Top 40, abridged for coolness – a seamless medley with no DJ banter. Cat was there; she bought me leg warmers. She told me Django had laughed at them, offering to cut the sleeves off one of his Peruvian pullovers instead. We convened in my room, five or six of us, and it wasn’t about it being someone’s birthday. There was no cake, no balloons. It didn’t matter – it was all about being together. It was about singing. And leg warmers.

  ‘These are from my mum.’ Malachy came by just to deliver a plate of fritters from Jette.

  Who is he! my friends wanted to know.

  What’s his name! How old is he! Oh wow – who is he!

  He’s Malachy, I told them.

  And it was then that I thought to myself, he’s Malachy – and he’s mine.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When Oriana considered how hard she’d found it working out where she’d go from her mother and Bernard’s in Hathersage, deciding to leave Cat’s lovely home was bizarrely easy. It surprised her that the decision of where she’d go was so simple. She had no job, she had already dipped into her savings. Her future, in some ways, was currently wholly dependent on her past. Really, she had no alternative other than to return to it.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Cat, trying her best to wrap her arms around Oriana, despite her bump holding them apart.

  ‘Sure sure.’

  ‘You can stay.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But are you sure you want to go there?’

  ‘Sure sure.’

  ‘Well, you know where we are.’

  ‘Cat,’ said Oriana, ‘I know you’ll always, always be here.’

  ‘But when will you go?’

  ‘Well, I’m hoping the weekend,’ said Oriana. ‘I’m going to phone him now.’

  ‘You haven’t asked him yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, if there’s any problem – or if you change your mind, or if it doesn’t work out, or if you miss us – you know you can stay here.’

  ‘I know,’ said Oriana, starting to well up. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’

  There were two numbers to choose from but Oriana opted for the one most likely to be answered on a Thursday afternoon. And so she dialled. It was a woman’s voice that answered.

  ‘Kidson Hazel Meade, good afternoon?’

  She put Oriana through.

  ‘Jed Bedwell.’

  ‘Jed?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Hullo, me.’

  ‘It’s – Oriana.’

  Silence. ‘Oriana?’ Stillness. ‘Oregano?’ Laughter. ‘Are you serious? Hullo!’

  ‘Hullo. I hope it’s OK to call you at work?’

  ‘Of course! Christ! I’m – I mean. It’s great to hear from you. I assumed – well, I hadn’t heard from you.’

  Oriana thought about it. ‘I’ve had so much to sort out.’

  ‘It’s OK. That’s fine. It’s just good to hear your voice.’ Oriana could hear him smile as he spoke. ‘It’s good that you phoned. How are you?’

  ‘I’m well – thanks, Jed.’

  ‘I’d love to see you.’ Jed looked around the office, open plan and buzzing. How could no one sense that something glorious was happening to him? ‘I’d really love to see you.’

  Oriana thought, make it happen. It was a favourite phrase of Casey’s – finally she’d commandeered it with no thought for him.

  ‘Jed, you can say no. It’s just – I was wondering, hoping, that it might be OK with you if I came and stayed. Just for a while.’

  It was Christmas. It was his birthday. He’d won the lottery. It was the best day ever and the first day of the rest of his life.

  ‘Of course it’s OK, Oriana. Of course it’s OK.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure sure!’ said Jed. And Oriana suddenly remembered it was his phrase, not hers. ‘When?’

  ‘
This weekend? I can borrow Cat’s car – I don’t have much stuff.’

  ‘Cat McCabe?’

  ‘Yes – long story.’

  ‘Cat McCabe! God, we have so much to catch up on.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Years. And years.’ Jed paused and laughed. ‘Fuck!’ It was amazing, bizarre. ‘Fuck! It’s going to be great!’ People were looking at him now – but his colleague was tapping his watch and pointing at the meeting room. ‘I have to go,’ he told Oriana. ‘I have to go – I’ll call you later.’ He paused and softened his voice. ‘And I’ll see you very, very soon.’

  * * *

  Oriana stared at the phone for some time, as if it had become a small plaque commemorating her considerable achievement of making a decision and getting on with her life. Wasn’t she just taking skeletons out of closets, dusting them off and interring them decently?

  ‘And Jed said?’

  But Oriana was deep in thought and didn’t hear Cat.

  ‘And Jed said let’s eat bread and let’s get wed and go to bed and call our red-head baby Ted.’

  ‘What?’ Oriana looked over at her.

  ‘And wear boots of lead,’ said Cat, ‘and have a horse called Ned.’ Oriana frowned. ‘Jed?’ said Cat. ‘And Jed said …’ God, this baby was making her insane.

  ‘He said yes.’ Oriana didn’t look as sure as his answer.

  She and Cat stared at each other; a flitter of silent but obvious questions reverberating between them.

  ‘Just be –’ Cat thought about the best word to use. ‘Aware.’ Oriana tipped her head to one side. Cat continued. ‘I mean, I don’t know what his life is like these days but I’m just saying you’ve been elsewhere for all those years but he’s stayed here.’

  Oriana nodded because she knew what Cat meant. ‘I remember when you and Ben lived in Colorado you once said to me how physical distance gave emotional distance from memories and feelings.’