The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  ‘I told them,’ Malachy said. ‘That I’d seen you. That you look so well. That you’ve changed so little.’

  Oriana looked at her plate.

  ‘They were pleased that I’d told them,’ he said, putting his hand gently over hers. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘Do they come over?’ Would she ever feel able to see them again?

  ‘Most Christmases,’ Malachy said. ‘But they always stay at Fischers – Baslow Hall – these days.’

  They’d finished eating; Malachy’s bowl scraped clean, Oriana’s still half full.

  She looked at her watch.

  ‘Half past nine!’

  Much at the same time as Malachy, she sensed Jed was unlikely to turn up that night.

  ‘More wine?’ He tipped his head. ‘You can stay, you know. Your stuff is already here. Jed will come at some point and you’ll be on your way to Sheffield.’ They looked at each other. ‘But you can stay tonight – if you like.’

  How to answer? A simple thank-you would do. Why was it so difficult? She found no assistance in the swirls of the wooded tabletop. There was no meaning to be gleaned from the configuration of her leftover pasta. Malachy’s expression, as straightforward as it was also unreadable, was nevertheless benign. You can stay tonight – if you like.

  ‘If you’re sure that’s OK.’ She’d previously told Cat she’d be staying. But that was before Jed’s place became Malachy’s home.

  ‘I’ll clear up,’ said Malachy and he stood and collected the plates and it was all decided. Nothing was a problem. Everything was fine. Stay the night – nice and simple. Don’t drive home in the dark. Have another glass of wine.

  ‘I’ll help.’

  ‘You cooked,’ he laughed. ‘You get to go through and sit down.’ He gave her the wineglasses and the bottle while he ran a sinkful of hot water.

  In the ballroom Oriana considered where to sit. There were so many options. The vintage Eames lounger, surely now something to look at, not use. How she’d loved cosying into that chair when she’d been young; the scent of leather, the luxuriousness of it. She gave it a squeeze as if it was Orlando’s arm. Lovely man. She could recall him sitting there, smoking a pipe, wryly contemplating the general careening of Windward children that regularly took place in the ballroom.

  The window was still open and the room was cold enough so she went and closed it. She caught her reflection in the windowpane. For hours she’d been on the inside, looking out, and suddenly she saw herself as she’d be seen – Oriana Taylor, aged thirty-four, shoulder-length hair, jeans, Converse trainers, American football-team top. She observed how she was; standing there, absolutely there, right in the middle of the Bedwells’ ballroom. It was the strangest concept. I. Am. Here. And yet, she could just as easily have been teleported back through the decades as fast-forwarded to the present, because there was a blurring of the distinction between the Oriana of today and of way back then.

  She curled into the massive old sofa. She felt surprisingly at ease. The wine had undoubtedly helped but actually it had more to do with Malachy. Whereas Jed would have been bouncing off the walls, twirling her about, saying mad things, filling every moment with energy and exuberance, Malachy was simply washing up. After all that had happened, all the time that had passed, the things that had been done, the things that had never been said, he had very simply welcomed her home.

  * * *

  Really, he could leave everything to drain, that’s what he normally did. Malachy looked at the tottering pile, soapsuds making a slow slither like melting snow. But he took a tea towel and started to dry anyway, making the process unnecessarily methodical and thorough. Then he decided he’d put everything away. And then he looked around and wondered where else he could wipe. And then he had to acknowledge that this had nothing to do with new-found house-pride and everything to do with feeling suddenly shy of the girl in the ballroom. He stood in the kitchen and listened. There was only silence. He thought, has she gone out of the window? He thought, has she left? Have I lost her before Jed comes to take her away again?

  ‘Malachy?’

  But she was still here. And, as he went through to the ballroom, he noticed her bags were no longer in the hallway.

  He wasn’t entirely sure where to sit either. Oriana appeared to be partially absorbed into one end of the vast sofa. If he sat at the other end, they’d be like figurines at opposite ends of a mantelpiece, formally placed and somehow disconnected. Instead, he chose his father’s lounger, close enough to be in reaching distance of her.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if it was just for show these days,’ Oriana said of the chair.

  ‘Charles Eames would turn in his grave – chairs are functional.’

  ‘It’s a design classic.’

  ‘It’s a chair.’

  ‘It’s an heirloom!’

  ‘It’s. A. Chair.’

  She laughed and he grinned. Her phone buzzed through Cat’s response to her hasty text. ‘Poor Cat’s been having kittens wondering if I’m OK.’ She glanced at the message.

  WTF! Malachy not Jed? SHEFFERS?! FFS! OMG!

  ‘When’s her kitten due?’

  ‘Six weeks or so.’

  ‘Here’s to Cat,’ said Malachy, raising his glass. ‘I liked Cat.’

  ‘You fancied Pip.’

  ‘I did not,’ Malachy said.

  ‘You did so!’

  ‘I snogged Fen when I was about fourteen. Bet you didn’t know that.’

  ‘Of course I did,’ said Oriana. She raised her glass. ‘Anyway, here’s to Ben – he’s the tomCat.’ As she took a sip of wine, she wondered about something. She looked at Malachy quizzically.

  ‘Do you have children, Malachy?’ It was quite possible.

  He smiled into his glass. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t.’ He looked at her. ‘Do you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Been married?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘You?’

  ‘No.’

  It was so bizarrely plausible that both might have had children, might have married. Time had not stood still, after all.

  ‘Girlfriend?’ she asked.

  ‘No – not right now.’ He thought about it. While he didn’t mind Oriana asking and while he was happy to answer, how much did he actually want to know in return? ‘You?’ he said, after a pause.

  ‘Girlfriend?’ she said, with mock surprise.

  ‘Bloke – you idiot.’

  She shook her head but, he noticed, not without reddening a little.

  ‘Is that why you came back?’

  ‘What – to find a bloke?’

  He looked at her levelly. ‘To get away from one?’

  She thought, how does he know? And she thought, because Malachy knows me. She thought, and I changed country. Like I did once before.

  But then she realized something. While she was sitting right there, with Malachy, she knew that she hadn’t left the United States because Casey had left her. She’d left because she’d always known that at some point she would be destined to return here. Whether she wanted to or not, whether she admitted it or not, whether she liked the place or professed to hate it, ultimately Windward had pulled her back at a time when she was free and open to return. She’d had no idea that she’d find Malachy there. And now she was here, with him. Privately, she thanked all the stars on that spangled banner she’d been waving for the last sixteen years.

  It struck her how Casey was a fraction of the man that Malachy was. That the feelings she’d had for him were risible against the depth of love she felt for Malachy. She was caught – not wanting to waste time talking about Casey, but wanting only to be honest with Malachy. When she’d confided in Cat, digging up the details was like gutting a fish. It was messy, unpleasant. This evening that she’d had so far with Malachy, the night that stretched ahead – why would she actively sully it? Why not ensure that every moment – and they were passing fast, it was already gone eleven – was filled with goodness, not detritus?

>   ‘His name’s Casey,’ she told him. ‘He was married. It went on way too long. I regret it.’

  To Malachy, it seemed to make sense. He thought about how to respond. ‘Were you in love?’

  ‘I liked to think so at the time,’ she said. ‘I’m very clear that I was deluded.’

  He considered it. ‘Idiot woman.’

  ‘I know.’ She winced.

  ‘Idiot woman.’ The repetition was underscored with kindness.

  Oriana looked up from her lap. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He didn’t understand.

  ‘I’m sorry that I haven’t come back with wholesome adventures to recount.’

  ‘I’m just glad you’re OK,’ Malachy said. ‘Sometimes, adventures are overrated.’

  ‘Aye to that,’ said Oriana and she leant forward and touched her glass against his.

  Into the small hours they talked. They shared and swapped and informed and listened. There was so much to say, so much to learn; so many years to account for. Sometimes, they simply fell silent and just sat, holding empty wineglasses and each other’s gaze, fleeting smiles underscored with long-term tenderness and desire. They talked about themselves and questioned each other, sensitively, impudently. They discussed random things; Tories and Republicans, the rules of American football, whatever happened to Judd Nelson, whatever happened to everyone who’d ever lived at Windward. Do you remember? Yes, I remember. Impossible to forget.

  It was very late. Oriana shivered and Malachy passed her the navy pullover she’d seen earlier. She put it on. It smelt good. They sat a while longer, not ready to relinquish each other’s company for something as sensible as sleep. Malachy stifled a yawn and rubbed his forehead, slipping his fingers under the ribbon of his patch, a swift swipe right under it. Oriana was consumed by a surging need to go to him, to offer her cool fingers for the purpose, to heal what had been hurt. If it was possible, she was more desperate now than she’d ever been, just to try to make it all a little bit better.

  ‘Malachy?’

  He looked at her. ‘I’m fine,’ he said.

  ‘It’s just –’ Her voice cracked. ‘Are you –’

  ‘It’s OK, Oriana,’ he said. ‘Let’s not.’

  It was the first time that entire evening that it was suddenly glaringly noticeable that he wore an eyepatch, that he was blind and disfigured behind it. Earlier that evening, when she’d first seen him, what had struck her most was that Malachy simply hadn’t been Jed. She hadn’t noticed his altered looks at all.

  ‘It’s just.’ She tried again. ‘I don’t even know. No one would tell me. And then I was gone.’

  He didn’t want this conversation now, he didn’t want her to ask, to know, because, quite selfishly, he wanted to keep the night unblemished and beautiful. But the more he looked at her, the more he knew that out of everyone, Oriana had a right to know.

  He leant forward, cupped his hands around hers. He spoke softly.

  ‘At first they hoped to save it – my eye. Not my sight, that had gone – that they knew. But it’s preferable to keep the eye – to eviscerate, to take away the damaged contents but leave the scleral shell intact. Movement remains good, prosthetics are extraordinary. The problem was that my eye then became phthisical – wasted, dead – which brought the risk of sympathetic opthalmia. After trauma, the good eye can go blind too.’ He could feel her recoil into herself, and he held her hands a little more tightly. ‘It’s OK, Oriana. They were brilliant. Ultimately, they had to enucleate – to take the eye completely – but they saved so much else. Muscles were reattached to the implant and then they –’

  He noticed how she was nodding and nodding, her head bowed. He watched a tear cling to the tip of her nose, then drop. Funny really, that he was the one making the soothing ‘there-theres’. Would she feel better if he told her about the brilliant ocularist, about the bits of rib bone ingeniously used to rebuild the fractured outer orbital section, the titanium mesh that made his surgeon a genius sculptor too? He could reassure her once more that, beyond six metres, everyone sees the world as if they have one eye. But he sensed it was best to leave it there. No more tonight. Tonight was about discovering that their closeness had been deepened, not widened, by time. Tonight they were together again, just the two of them, in the world within the world that was Windward.

  ‘Does it hurt you?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘If I wasn’t here – would you,’ she stumbled. ‘Would you not wear the patch?’

  Malachy nodded.

  ‘Is it because it’s me?’ she asked in a whisper.

  He smiled gently and leant right forward. ‘It would be like you seeing me naked,’ he said, catching her gaze and holding it. ‘Very stark naked.’

  Tentatively, he brushed strands of her hair away from her face, tucking them behind her ear, liking how they flopped forward again. He ran his fingertips lightly over her cheek, along her jawline, before turning his hand so the back of it stroked her so gently that she wasn’t sure whether he was actually touching her.

  Then he stood, offered his hand to Oriana and pulled her up. She felt unsteady, woozy with wine and tiredness and emotion.

  ‘Come on, sleepyhead,’ he said. ‘Time for bed – it turned tomorrow three hours ago.’

  But they hovered. Fixing on Johnny Ramone’s name on Malachy’s T-shirt, Oriana placed her hand lightly on his chest, stood just a little on her tiptoes and slowly kissed his cheek while his hands found their way to her waist and he kissed her back. There they stood, immobilized by the weight of not knowing what on earth to say or do next.

  Eventually, Malachy nodded over his shoulder towards what had been his parents’ room. ‘I live that way now.’ It was as if he was about to walk miles in the opposite direction.

  ‘And I’m in Jed’s bed.’

  Instantly, she regretted it. No matter how innocent the faux pas, or how many years had passed, and though the words shouldn’t have had an ounce of meaning or a wisp of symbolism – they did. They were the crash of cymbals that ended their night. She felt him retreat before he’d taken a step.

  ‘Sleep well, Oriana.’

  I’m in Jed’s bed.

  It was irrelevant that this particular piece of furniture was new. She turned her back on it, went to the window. There was nothing to see in the pitch blackness of the dreamless hour. With silent tears slicing a stinging path down her face, Oriana lifted the duvet from the bed and made herself a cocoon on the floor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jed thought, if I don’t go now, I’ll either not make it home alone, or not make it home at all. He thought, I really must go. Oriana’s coming tomorrow – I need to go home now.

  ‘Don’t go!’ The girl was tugging on his shirt. ‘That’s so boring!’ He wasn’t sure what her name was; he wasn’t actually sure whether she’d told him or not.

  ‘I have to go,’ Jed laughed, removing her hand. She was extremely pretty but absolutely blitzed. For a split-second he cursed Oriana for intruding into what was a sure thing. And then he chastised himself for trying to compare the incomparable. It was all very flattering – and there’d been no one since he’d broken up with Fiona – but did he really want to have sex with this girl? If Oriana wasn’t coming tomorrow, would he really be tempted? He hoped not. He took his leave of all these people he really didn’t know and scanned the bar to say goodbye to the people he did know, those he’d come in with. Friday nights were one ridiculous cliché, he knew it and yet he was a willing member of the cast. However sincere the intention was to make it just a couple of drinks with colleagues, the liquid in their glasses on this one night of the week always diluted their willpower. Jed observed them now, scattered around the bar like a handful of peanuts flung accidentally from a bowl. Mostly drunk and unforgivably oblivious to how much time they’d devoted to their swift half after work. He was one of them. He had to leave.

  The fresh air hit him like a slap around the face, sobering him up enough to realize how much h
e’d had to drink. He jumped in a cab and at last was headed for home.

  ‘Doing anything nice over the weekend, then?’

  ‘A friend’s coming to stay.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘An old, old friend.’

  ‘That’ll be grand.’

  ‘She’s lived abroad for many years.’

  ‘Oh, yeah – she’s a “she” then, this friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And “just good friends”, is it?’

  Jed glanced at the driver’s eyes, reflected in the rear-view mirror, which were assessing him with a knowing smirk.

  ‘We’ll see,’ he told the driver. ‘Time will tell.’

  Inside, Jed sat awhile on his sofa with a pint glass of water, rotating two Nurofen tablets between his fingers like worry beads. His mind was full, jumbled with thoughts. It wasn’t about the proximity of tomorrow, it was about what lay ahead. Tomorrow he would be ready for her – the cleaner had come today and his flat was spruce. The supermarket would be delivering in the morning so the fridge and cupboards would be full. He had no other plans apart from to settle her in. But once she was here, unpacked, orientated – then what? What happens the day after tomorrow? Or next week? He should phone Malachy – phone his brother and say guess who phoned me and guess what. But that could wait.

  He swallowed down the ibuprofen and refilled the water glass. He was determined not to have a hangover when he woke and he’d damn well sit up, sipping water until his head felt truly on top of his neck again and the room was steady around him.

  What does she like to eat? What does she have for breakfast? Is she a tea or a coffee person? Does she still eat jam straight from the jar? He looked around. She’d like all the books. But he would put all those back issues of Stuff and GQ in the recycling tomorrow. She’d recognize the little bronze sculpture of the boxing hares that used to stand at the centre of their kitchen table.

  ‘Does she want this place as a hotel – or to make it home?’

  He looked over to the CDs and DVDs crammed along the shelves in the two alcoves. I bet she’s stayed loyal to Rod and Bruce. He wondered, how much stuff is she bringing with her? His shelves had no space left. He stood, pleased to find the ground was now firmly under his feet. He went over to the DVDs. Has she seen The Wire? Shall we watch The Sopranos back to back? He pulled out his copy of Spaced, wondering whether it was shown in the States when she lived there. He could envisage the two of them relishing evenings in with their teas on their laps, watching boxed sets and laughing at the same things.