The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  At Jed’s it was different. It was a lovely flat in Nether Edge, paid for with wages that could comfortably cover Ocado deliveries, nights out and the top Sky package. Everything worked and it was clean. It had mod cons and home comforts. But it was impersonal. In essence, it was a decent two-bed flat that Oriana suspected looked just like this when Jed bought it and would remain so for the next owner. It was Jed’s place, but almost a month later it wasn’t Oriana’s home. Even though she had nowhere specific to go, it felt indulgent to be lounging indoors while she waited for news from the job interview, or that phone call from Cat which was imminent, or one from Malachy which would never come. It wasn’t the sort of interior for lolling anyway. It was a little like a hotel and, as such, she felt obliged to leave for most of the day.

  Therefore, when Jed left for work each morning, Oriana wasn’t long behind him, not least because, after a week of rain, the weather now was fine. A balmy spring was truly established – in the air, in everyone’s step. Walking the mile and a half to the Botanical Gardens was a pleasure that didn’t diminish and it had become something of a daily ritual. It’s free, she’d told Ashlyn. All our museums are free too. And Ashlyn thought to herself, when did that happen – when did my friend feel so British again? In the fifteen years she’d known Oriana, she’d only ever heard her employ the third person when speaking of her birthplace. Their museums are free. Now their museums had become Oriana’s and Ashlyn thought she’d better plan a trip over there, to see what all the fuss was about. She thought about her honeymoon. And how fun it would be to visit the United Kingdom. And that mythical place Windward which, from Oriana’s tales, had to have been the best place in the world to grow up.

  On a bench, in the sun, The Times read, cappuccino drunk, Oriana closed her eyes and raised her face. Is today the day when Cat and Ben’s baby will come? Is today the day that she’d land herself a job? There was an air of anticipation that made her fidget on her bench and, much as the sunlight on her face felt lovely, she couldn’t stay there. She checked her phone. Nothing. Not even a text. If she texted Ashlyn, she wouldn’t receive it till she woke up six hours later. She’d already sent a message to Cat who’d sent back one saying no news. If she texted Jed, he’d send a jaunty barrage back – which sometimes she liked and sometimes she was irritated by. Dear Jed. You’re like a puppy.

  If she texted Malachy, she knew not to expect a reply. Just then, though, she longed to see him. She wanted so much to tell him about the wave that had passed between her and her father. She wanted to tell him how odd it was to see her belongings again, how strange it was that they were now on English soil, stranger still that they were at Windward. She wanted to show him some of her things. The painting. The Shaker rocking chair. Each had a story to tell, fleshing out the years of her history which he’d missed. Had he liked the book, she wanted to know. Had he remembered it? Had he even seen that she’d put it there, on the piano in the ballroom, when everything was safely in the cellar and she was about to leave? It was a tome on Louis Sullivan and the Chicago School and it had belonged to his father. Orlando Bedwell had given it to Oriana when she was fourteen. He’d seen her drawings, her potential. You’ll like this chap, he’d told her. You’ll like this chap.

  She checked her watch. It wasn’t even time for elevenses. And Oriana thought, what shall I do with my day? She phoned Cat as she walked out of the gardens, heading for Ecclesall Road.

  ‘Are you in labour?’

  ‘Still heavy with child.’

  For the past fortnight, all their calls had started thus.

  ‘Shall I come and see you?’

  ‘I’d love that.’

  ‘I’ll get the bus.’

  ‘I’ll see you in ten years’ time, then,’ said Cat. ‘No doubt I’ll still be waiting for Baby.’

  Later, though feeling a little queasy on the return journey, Oriana was left with a good impression and analysed the route map at the stop. She could travel to Blenthrop direct. She’d had no idea! And Hathersage with one change. And even slightly circuitously with a hike at the end, to visit Django.

  The fresh air was welcome after the lurch and sway of country lanes and city traffic, so she mooched the long way back to Jed’s, looking in the shop windows along Eccy Road. There was a rare and welcome ‘local independent retailers’ feel to the area, the occasional generic coffee chain appearing to be trying to butt in on conversations between close friends. She was just thinking how she hadn’t been down this far when she saw a shop that stopped her in her tracks. Helpless not to approach, she felt a numbing pressure throbbing in her head.

  With a nice shoe shop on one side and a boutique on the other, the gun shop stood between the two like a bodyguard. The exterior was spruce yet old-fashioned. The window display, the title Gunsmiths, announced a family business, established and proud. Part of the high street for over thirty years. Everything for the shooter! More than the weaponry on show and details of ammunition stocked, it was that exclamation mark that made Oriana baulk most.

  When I was …

  When I was little I hid my father’s gun. He had quite a few but the one I hid was the only one in working order. It was an old Winchester and it had belonged to my maternal grandfather who I’d never met. It was the only thing of any value in my mother’s dowry. The rifle was an early twentieth-century Model 1890 and it was, my father used to marvel, the first ever repeating slide-action .22. It was the gun of choice for shooting galleries, hence its nickname, which my father loved – Gallery Gun. Very occasionally, he used it for shooting pigeons from the window. He was a poor shot and rarely nabbed a thing though the Short .22 was perfect for small game like squirrels and rabbits. I always felt guns were a terrible paradox – sculpted polished wood so beautiful and warm to the touch for something designed to kill in cold blood. Some of my father’s muskets were decorated with filigree silverwork that gave the pieces a jarring femininity in brutal contrast to their function. Those didn’t work, though. Those were just for show. When they were little, Malachy and Jed used to pick them up and shout bang! Just the once I remember my father spinning a fanciful yarn about the provenance of two of the pistols, who’d owned them and what duels for justice and land and women had been won with them. We knew it was fiction but, back when we were small, fiction wasn’t a lie, it was a parallel world.

  Two actors once stayed the whole summer at Windward. They were fabulous thesps, friends of the Glaubs, with lines to learn for performances at the Crucible which never materialized. Our summer break was spent in an imaginary amphitheatre on the lawn, watching them rehearse with their exotic props. I can’t remember if it was an existing play or whether they were improvising. It was a Restoration comedy of sorts. They wore breeches and garters and used our black felt-tip pens to draw beauty spots on each other’s faces. And they always had a daily duel. We children loved the daily duel. We loved that their guns went snap! with a puff of pungent smoke from the powder charges of potassium perchlorate, sulphur and antimony sulphide. What compelled us most was that heart-stopping moment when we all wondered whether the man down was really shot. The victor standing over him in contemplative triumph. Is he dead? Even the birds and the insects were silent as we waited. Is he actually dead this time? The relief when he rose and smiled! The applause we lavished when they both took a bow! They had lived to die another day!

  They let me do the shooting once.

  Good aim! said Malachy when I pulled the trigger and down fell the actor instantly, as if his body was suddenly devoid of its skeleton. For a split second when my hair might well have turned white, I did wonder if I’d killed the actor. But up he leapt and thanked me profusely for felling him so convincingly.

  That summer, I said I wanted to be an actress when I grew up.

  Don’t be stupid! said Jed. You’re way too shy.

  You can be anything you want, said Malachy.

  I know, I said. When you’re an actress you can pretend to be anything you want. I spent a long time wanti
ng to be an actress and thinking of which roles I’d most like to try.

  Apart from that one rifle, the rest of my father’s guns were defunct as weapons but had a second innings as props for a series of his still lifes; an extraordinary run of nine paintings called La Mort. As detailed as Chardin; with chiaroscuro as accomplished as Caravaggio. Nine intricate oil paintings of the spoils of war or the rewards of hunting, of the elegance of country traditions or the barbarism of the aristocracy – however you wanted to look at it. A classically composed still life, painted nine times. Two rabbits and a partridge, a pair of leather gloves, a silver tankard, two rifles beside them on a mahogany surface all set within a richly panelled interior. The first rendition was so fresh I remembering touching the surface convinced that the pelt of the rabbit would feel soft, the partridge still warm. The implosion started in the second canvas. By the ninth, the decay and decomposition were so horrible I didn’t want to get too close. Robin Taylor, La Mort. The distortion of beauty and life, of survival and sport; confrontational and pioneering, long before Damian Hirst or Sam Taylor-Wood even thought of art as a career.

  That day at the Bedwells’ – the day my mother came haring through the place shrieking he’s going to kill me! He’s going to kill me! That was the day that I hid my father’s Gallery Gun.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Cat’s baby girl arrived a week later, five days late; the very same day that Oriana was offered the job she’d given up hoping for. It was the distinctive day when suddenly late May makes it plain that as June is next week, spring may as well finally become summer, and a warm and benign fragrance danced on tiptoes in the air. Bluebells were long forgotten in the sudden tangle and burst of the summer flowers, like a riot of children released at the end of term. It was Good News Day for Oriana and though her world was a small one, she wanted to share it with everyone she knew. Ashlyn was FaceTimed. Oriana and Django spoke by phone in sentences left incomplete by emotion. She even phoned Hathersage and knew the day was blessed indeed when it was Bernard who answered and marvelled with her in his own level way by adding an appreciative eh! to the end of each sentence. A baby girl, eh! An architect at Stone & White, eh!

  ‘I did find a bus route from me to you,’ she told him. ‘But now I have a job, I may not be visiting for a little while.’

  ‘Now you have a job, perhaps you’ll be buying yourself a little runaround,’ said Bernard.

  She composed a text to send to Malachy but sent it to Jed instead. Why hassle Malachy when he’s already said how he hates texting? She wondered, if she worded it more like a conversation, with proper spelling and punctuation, might he be happy to receive her news? She realized, however, that though it was important to her that he knew, it was his response she longed for. She thought herself slightly ridiculous for having to quell a stomach full of butterflies when she phoned him instead.

  ‘White Peak Art Space.’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Hullo.’

  ‘It’s Oriana.’

  ‘I know who “me” is.’

  Her own pause infuriated her. ‘I just wanted to phone because I know you hate texts.’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Oh yes – I’m more than fine. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine too.’

  ‘I just thought I’d phone because Cat had a baby girl. This morning.’

  ‘That is wonderful news,’ Malachy said, soft and contemplative.

  ‘And also – I got that job.’

  His voice changed from thoughtful to energized. ‘Oriana – that’s really terrific. Well done.’

  ‘I just thought I’d phone you. I reckoned you’d like to know. About both.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘I know you hate texts.’

  ‘I do. I don’t much like phones, full stop.’

  ‘I can take a bus all the way to Blenthrop.’

  ‘What – now?’

  Frantically she looked at her watch. She could – if that’s what he was suggesting, she’d be delighted to.

  ‘Oh, you mean simply that it’s possible. That’s good – you should do that some time,’ Malachy had already continued. ‘Congratulations to Cat and to you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Does the baby have a name?’

  ‘Annabel.’

  ‘And do you have a job title?’

  ‘Well – architect.’

  ‘I love that,’ said Malachy quietly. She’d done it. It struck him now how this was the grown-up Oriana. And that she’d made it. They’d all made it, in their own ways, despite everything. ‘I’m proud of you.’

  She heard him the first time. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m proud of you,’ he said again.

  Fanbloodytastic! Jed’s text bounded in. I’m taking you out to celebrate tonight. Come and meet me from work. Champagne’ll pop like never before. Jxx

  Malachy looked at the work phone. Apart from that one text sent when she moved to Jed’s, Oriana had only ever used his work number. That afternoon, he wondered about that. Was it like the vous and tu in French? Had his dislike of phones inadvertently caused her to feel constrained and formal? Why hadn’t he told her that it was irrelevant whether or not he hated mobiles when actually, to have contact with her by whatever means was good. He thought about buses and how protracted the trundle of the route from Sheffield would be. He thought about the crate arriving from America – how lengthy and circuitous a reason it had provided for Oriana to make another visit to Windward. He thought about the hassle of borrowing other people’s cars.

  I haven’t made it easy for her, he thought. I haven’t once said to her, hey, why not come over? Why not come for dinner? For Sunday lunch, for a stroll, for a chat, for a plunder of photo albums and a rummage through the kitchen cupboards?

  A visitor to the gallery interrupted his intense consideration.

  He sold a screen print and the framing costs on top.

  ‘Will it take long?’

  ‘Shouldn’t do.’

  ‘OK – will you let me know straight away?’

  ‘I’ll phone you as soon as it’s in.’

  It struck him he hadn’t once phoned Oriana since she’d given him her number. He thought of Oriana’s single, shy little text trying to sneak past his own stubborn and vociferous eschewal of phones.

  Today her oldest friend had given birth and Oriana had her career back on track. And she’d wanted him to know.

  He stared at the message box on his phone. How much reading between the lines did a text message carry? That worried him. He wanted nothing to be misconstrued. His relationship with Oriana had always been searingly honest and he was concerned that this might be upended by a few words entrusted to the ether. With Oriana, unlike with any other woman, any person in his life really, it had always been that what he said was all that she could have. He hid nothing, he’d always ensured that everything he’d ever told her had precise meaning that could never be doubled. He couldn’t bear to run the risk of that happening now.

  Malachy looked at his mobile for a long while. He had to concede that actually, little had to do with him disliking gadgets. To text Oriana was to talk to her afresh, to establish a new conversation based on the present. He’d never forget how they’d been, what they’d said and the way they used to talk to each other. Perhaps it was time to see if they really could communicate now. When it came to Oriana, he had never hidden what he felt but he knew that he had stopped himself recently for fear of what might happen if he started. Just then, it struck him that it was time to confront that fear instead of pretending it didn’t exist. Still, there was a great difference between his door being unlocked and him flinging it wide open.

  When Malachy’s text pinged through to her phone, Oriana was singing while darting around Jed’s flat, her wet hair turbaned in a towel as she prepared for a night out to celebrate. She didn’t hear the message arrive; she was running late due to finally being able to speak to Cat by phone. The utter joy to effuse togethe
r directly! The excitement to be able to visit tomorrow!

  ‘Where’s my bloody key?’

  Oriana ricocheted around the sitting room checking surfaces plainly bare just in case the key had miraculously materialized.

  ‘Oh well, Jed’ll have his.’

  It was only while she was waiting for the bus and thought to text him that she was running late, that Oriana discovered she didn’t have her phone with her either.

  Her phone had slipped down onto the floor, nestled out of immediate sight between bed and chest of drawers. And so Thomas Hardy was to be played out in a flat in Sheffield. Like Tess’ letter to Angel, so Malachy’s two texts to Oriana wouldn’t be found when they were most needed, when they could change the course of things and shape history in a better form.

  When I was …

  When I was really quite young I learned how to switch off a little part of me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  ‘It suits you.’

  ‘Oh God – it’s ages old.’

  ‘Not your clothes.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Have some more champagne, girl. I meant, friends having babies and you landing prize jobs – that’s what suits you. You’re glowing.’

  As Oriana glided into the buffer of chilled champagne, so her blush was quelled back into a glow. Throughout the evening, she’d been accepting congratulations on behalf of Cat by a group of smiling, drinking people who’d never met her friend. And these same gregarious people, whom she barely knew, had repeatedly chinked her glass and raised theirs to toast her new job. At the beginning of the evening, their familiarity surprised her and she wondered if they just wanted a reason to drink. Soon enough, it didn’t seem to matter. There was a buzz and an energy because it was Friday night and any old excuse would do – that the newbie amongst them had a new job and a friend with a new baby was perfect. While she floated through the evening on a swell of compliments and champagne, anchoring her all the while was Jed.