The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  When Ben arrived and his world with Cat and his daughter closed the door on all visitors, Django and Oriana left together brimming with emotion. There was a waft of gauzy rain coming rhythmically from the distant dales like shallow breaths and, against the sunshine and warmth of the early afternoon, even the modern hospital buildings were licked with gold, the cars festooned with pearls, the puddles filled with gemstones.

  ‘What a day,’ said Django. ‘Will you come back with me? For a cup of tea or a glass of something? Strangely, for one so happy and content, I don’t want to be on my own.’

  The McCabes’ house was home. Oriana sank into the cavernous sofa and sat in amicable, thoughtful silence with Django, sipping peculiar herbal tea and gnawing into hunks of a strange cake that was both rock hard and super sweet. They felt replenished and relaxed, so conversation came easily. Sheffield and bus routes and new jobs and babies and the ins and outs of keeping prostate cancer in check. And do you remember this person and that person? And the parties. Oh, the parties. And that terrible teacher at school with the vast grey teeth. And Fen’s news. And Pip’s. And all about California. And yes, Django had heard about the debacle with the cot. And don’t you worry – it was related in only an affectionate way. And the baby! Oh, the beautiful beautiful tiny little soul. How grown up you kids are. How old I am become.

  ‘I saw my father.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘You’ve seen him too?’

  ‘Yes. I do. Every now and then. I dig him out, brush him off and take him to the pub. To the Rag and Thistle where there are folk far more cantankerous than him and the beer is much more bitter.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You’re surprised.’

  ‘I thought he never left the apartment.’

  ‘Never? Of course he does! He takes a taxi to Bakewell sometimes during the day. But mostly he paints when it’s light and surfaces after dark. And once in a while he phones and tells me to pick him up and I do.’

  ‘I never thought –’

  ‘It’s quite amazing, isn’t it, that your parents’ generation can make decisions and plans and maintain a life of their own where you don’t feature.’

  ‘I never figured in my parents’ lives.’

  They let it hang in the air like smoke after a firework.

  ‘That’s not strictly true,’ Django said. ‘Shrug all you want, my girl – but that’s not strictly true.’

  She was never going to agree on that one.

  ‘But my father told you that he saw me?’

  ‘He told me you waved.’

  ‘He waved first,’ Oriana said defensively, wanting it known that the mythical olive branch was not her idea.

  ‘I meant “you” plural.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He’s an awful man, Oriana. But I say that with cautious affection. Not much – but some. And he’s old. And alone. Apart from Malachy.’

  Malachy. For hours she’d had respite from thinking of him. Now he might as well have been standing right there in the room on the flagstones, arms folded, waiting for her soliloquy, his response concealed. Even the image was too much for her to confront.

  ‘You’re not going to tell me you play Bridge with my mother and Bernard, are you?’

  Django laughed and shook his head. ‘I haven’t seen her in years. How is she?’

  ‘The same. I haven’t seen her myself – since I stayed at Cat and Ben’s. It seems to me there’s a silent pact not to see each other more often than when I lived abroad – regardless of proximity.’

  ‘Wise,’ said Django but Oriana heard it as ‘why’ and continued.

  ‘Some might think that sad,’ she said. ‘But I don’t. It’s enough. My relationship with my mother has never altered. Nothing that’s happened has worsened it. No sudden deterioration. Nothing to workshop, nothing to improve. An acceptance that it is what it is because it’s always been as it is.’

  Django stroked his goatee rhythmically. He didn’t have to say out loud, whereas with Robin … Oriana could see the words were on the tip of his tongue and she loved him for keeping them there just then. Over the years, her sadness and anger and fears and frustrations had been given voice in this house. Tonight, there was wisdom in the silence.

  ‘Why don’t you stay here tonight?’ said Django.

  It was so tempting. Oriana could go upstairs and find rooms that she knew off by heart, that would guarantee her a safe and potentially dreamless sleep. She knew how to run the bath, to handle the taps with the sensitivity of a wartime code transmitter, fine tuning the flow so that the temperature was even. It would be so lovely to stay, so easy. She wouldn’t have to think about a thing. She could have one of Django’s epic Sunday breakfasts tomorrow, perhaps catch a lift and visit Cat again.

  And then what?

  She looked down and found she had plaited all the strands on the tartan throw. She remembered how all of them – Cat, Fen, Pip – had at one time or other done this. Worries about boys, school, friendships; moodiness was always lessened by plaiting the strands.

  ‘And what does the magic blanket say?’ Django broke through.

  Oriana unravelled them, smoothed them straight again, ready for someone else’s angst. ‘I ought to go.’

  ‘You are welcome any time, Oriana. Not as a guest – as family.’

  She was so tired, so emotional. She brushed a fast tear away quickly. And another.

  ‘Where can I take you?’ Django asked.

  ‘Please could you take me to Windward?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t want me to take you all the way up? To wait?’

  ‘No – honestly.’

  ‘But say he’s not in?’

  Oriana looked at Django, grateful for the ambiguity, not wanting to name ‘him’. She wanted to be dropped at the bottom of the drive, she said, because she fancied a stroll in the fresh air. Django knew it was more to do with a desire not to be seen.

  ‘Well, if you’re absolutely sure,’ Django said, a little reluctantly.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Oriana said. ‘Thank you – and congratulations, Gramps – what a day!’

  He could detect the effort behind the exclamation mark but he respected her request and drove away.

  As was typical at that time of year, early summer and late spring were still at loggerheads; a fine day earlier gave way to a decidedly brisk evening. As the light changed with night beckoning, so the benign breeze of the afternoon had now churned into something less clement. The driveway at Windward was a quarter of a mile long and Oriana still remembered how to make the walk longer or shorter. There had been times when she’d dragged her heels along it, meandering from side to side, taking the hump of the bends to clock up a few precious extra yards. On other occasions she’d cut every corner, sticking to the underside of the curve and saving herself minutes. Tonight she kept clearly to the middle, her footfalls providing a rhythmic base under the wind’s freeform song which gusted about her. One more bend and then she’d see it. It would come into view at this time of night, its lumbering silhouette pierced with lights shining inside, like a candle within a skull. But she couldn’t see it yet and the indistinct light, typifying dusk slipping into night, was comforting.

  She stopped a while by the lime trees and spoke under her breath. She’d memorized her plan of action but she felt fortified by repeating it. I’ll knock. If there’s no reply, I’ll just go in. If he’s there, I’ll simply say hullo. I’ll try to keep it warm and friendly and just see where it leads. If it doesn’t lead where I hope, I’ll just go. I’ll go to Lilac’s. I’ll make out that is where I was headed all along, at 9.30 on Saturday night.

  By the time she was crossing the turning circle in front of the house, she’d managed to make the journey there last almost ten minutes longer than normal. She’d just passed the Ice House where she knew
Paula and the de la Mare family lived. They had pleasant uplights making their trees glow, breathing warmth into the brickwork that counteracted the chill night air. The Ice House, known only as the shack, a ruin, to Oriana, now looked like the stuff of fairy tales. One day, she’d accept Paula’s invitation and knock on the door. She thought about it, imagined taking little Emma and Kate on a tour of the building she’d known. But all this was just procrastination. She had to walk on, heading for the main house which, just then, looked so different from how it should.

  When she was young she knew absolutely who put the lights on when and where. It was as if each resident was standing at the window waving to her. Sometimes, they had. She was a familiar sight in those days, taking solace in the gardens if she didn’t want to be in her apartment. Tonight, Windward looked very different. It was difficult to tell who was at home because luxurious curtains were shutting off the inhabitants from the world, or the world from them. Privacy was being brandished as a purchasable right these days, whereas when she was growing up at Windward, privacy had seemed peculiar. Tonight, no one would know she was there – because they were unaware of anything outside their windows. Oriana would have the night to herself and it made her feel at once safe yet also isolated.

  Is he in?

  Why wouldn’t he be in?

  How will he react?

  Instead of knocking first, instead of just opening the door, Oriana hovered. Long before she came to the door, she could sense he was there but she was aware of something else too. Voices and laughter. It was both perplexing and chastening. She chided herself – what right had she to assume that he’d be there on his own just waiting for her to waltz in? The world doesn’t stop turning, time doesn’t stand still, life goes on regardless of Oriana Taylor. A little unsteady, she took a wide and stumbling route right around the building, edging her way along the garden to her cedar tree which afforded her an unparalleled view of the back of the house. She could see quite clearly from here that Malachy wasn’t alone.

  The windows to the balcony off the ballroom were open and someone was having a cigarette out there, their glass of wine glinting every now and then. From where she stood, Oriana scanned the apartment; there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the ballroom but from the opened windows of the kitchen assorted voices and various conversations drifted pleasantly into the night like the different aromas that make up a great meal. Slumping a little against the trunk of the tree, Oriana was struck how the intervening years had made a massive difference to absolutely everything. Malachy had established his own life and how could she have been so deluded as to think that he might have saved a space for her? Malachy was a man in his late thirties now, not a boy. He had silver flecks in his hair and crinkles around his eyes which spoke of the history he’d amassed long after she’d left his life. He had his own life, his own business and it was none of hers.

  And she was honestly thinking of pushing into his life tonight and telling him that she’d never stopped loving him?

  Was she really expecting him to say my darling! I’ve always loved you too!

  A happy ever after? With Malachy? At Windward? Was she out of her tiny mind? It was all preposterous.

  She thought, I am in the middle of the fucking gardens on a chilly night. She thought, I have no means of getting home. She thought, I have no home. She couldn’t bear to think of Jed, what kind of a day he’d been having, of having to see him again and confront it all. She thought, I could go to my father’s. And then she thought, what difference does a single wave make? None. And actually, she didn’t want to go to her father’s. And of course she wasn’t going to disturb Lilac. She was in her dotage and should be allowed to while away a Saturday night wearing her massive headphones with Bruce Forsyth or John Wayne for company, nodding off in front of the television without being disturbed by the endless and depressing dramas that Oriana had brought to her door throughout her life.

  Her feet were cold. She needed to keep moving. She needed to walk, to keep walking, all the way back to Sheffield. She could make it some stupid epic hike; she’d accept no lift, no help. It might take her the ten days between now and her new job starting. See the lone walker! She’s made it to the A61! No one knows where she’s come from and no one knows where she’s going – least of all her. Perhaps she should just sod the job and keep on walking, all the way to John o’Groats, then trudge into the ocean and swim the Atlantic back to the United States. She was cold; she really ought to go. She glanced at her watch. She’d been out here, ruminating, for forty-five minutes. Malachy’s buddies were probably on the cheese course by now. She started to walk across the lawn, just putting one foot in front of the other, thinking how the lawn had never been so rolled and even in her day. It had been tussocky which had made playing It or rounders or British Bulldog or even Kiss Chase all the more challenging and exciting.

  The smoker had gone in some time ago but look! he’s back again, with a replenished glass of wine and having another cig on the balcony. He wouldn’t see Oriana. He wouldn’t know where to look. Just then, she felt like the most invisible thing in the world and far from being empowering, it simply served to highlight how inconsequential she felt. And then her phone rang out. The signal had returned almost as soon as she left the sanctity of the cedar, and emails and voicemail alerts trilled through the air while the screen lit up like a beacon. Her cover was surrendered; the man on the balcony had clocked her, a nameless person just coming into view in the moonlight.

  Just look like you live here, she said to herself. Just mooch and mosey as if you’re a resident out for a stroll.

  ‘Malachy – there’s someone in the garden.’

  Don’t worry, Oriana said to herself, Malachy won’t be surprised. It’s just a resident out for a stroll.

  But Malachy was surprised because mostly, these days, the Windward occupants holed themselves up at night, shutting the door on the outside to enjoy all the interior trimmings their wealth bestowed. Supersized Internet TVs in prime positions on walls where once paintings created at Windward had hung. Music from MP3 files filling the rooms more perfectly than the bands who’d jammed in them. Mood lighting more atmospheric than the moon, deeply luxurious sofas far more comfortable than garden benches and tree stumps. They did still pick blackberries – because the fruits that freckled the hedgerows were far plumper and sweeter than those in prepacked M&S punnets. But it was too dark for that and anyway, it was a good two months too early. Malachy went to the balcony and looked. He could see no one.

  ‘I must be seeing things,’ his friend said. ‘This Bordeaux’s good.’

  ‘You’re on your third glass, Rob,’ Malachy laughed. ‘Come on – Paula’s pudding awaits you.’

  ‘I do love a double entendre,’ Rob said.

  ‘Your wife has baked the dessert,’ Malachy said, as if talking to a simpleton. ‘Come on. There’s hot sauce.’

  ‘Double entendre,’ said Rob hopefully.

  Malachy looked out over the garden again. There wasn’t anyone there. But that’s because no one knew how to hide as well as Oriana, to blend into the background as expertly as she could.

  Then the rain came. What had been gentle drizzle that afternoon was now prosaic, cold and fast. Once she would have danced and laughed and been ecstatic to be soaked to the skin. Just then, however, it seemed predictable that if her plans were a washout, it might as well just go ahead and piss it down on her parade. She wasn’t entirely sure what to do next. She could see the lights on in her father’s studio, but nowhere else in her old home, and she didn’t want to continue the wave anyway. Lilac’s apartment was dark. She found semi-shelter under the overhang around the side of the building and checked her phone. Two missed calls from Jed. Two texts as well.

  Where’s you? I hope you’re ok – walking?! Thinking?! Let’s do some talking. So sorry if in any way I did something wrong. Love you Jxx

  And then, a couple of hours later:

  Have you gone?? Jx

  She thou
ght, if only Jed was the bona-fide baddy in a fictitious adaptation of her life, how much easier it would be to set the record straight. But he wasn’t and he’d done nothing wrong. And tonight, she could only hide away from him much as she was currently hiding from the rain and from her father and from Malachy with his kitchen full of friends and cheer. She couldn’t call Cat. She absolutely wouldn’t be dragging Django out. There wasn’t the signal to FaceTime Ashlyn. She didn’t have the money for a taxi anywhere, she didn’t even have a number for a cab firm anyway. She shuddered to think how her mother would react if she called for Bernard to pick her up. This was the first time in her life that she’d been at Windward with no place to go. She’d always been able to leave her own home for someone else’s. The Bedwells’ had never been closed to her. But tonight, in the modern age and the real world, in the rain, it was.

  She stood there for over an hour, huddled into a zone where she focused on nothing. While she listened instead to the sound of the weather, she tuned in to the feel of the night, the sight of how leaves became trampolines for raindrops and the ground lapped up being wet. And then, one by one, Malachy’s guests left. From the shadows, Oriana watched as two cars headed off, and Paula and her husband, the man from the balcony, returned to their dwelling. Was there anyone left? The notion struck her like a punch of lead hitting her stomach. He’d told her he didn’t have a girlfriend – but had that changed? Or maybe there was someone he wouldn’t classify as a girlfriend, just someone who was a casual thing? Stealthily, she took a route well known to her, sticking to the shadows though it provided little shelter from the rain. As she went, she saw the kitchen lights were still on. She wondered if Malachy was clearing up, whether he was washing dishes or sitting down and munching on leftovers. She backed into the garden, trying to see in. The rain was making her blink a lot. It was hammering down now. It didn’t feel as cold as before, the wind had dropped. The audible squelch with every footstep she took made her realize that her feet were soaked.