The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  He’d done a lot of listening last night, after he’d done the knight-in-shining-armour thing. He smiled about that now but at the time it had been quite alarming; the way Oriana had wilted just as soon as she’d told him she loved him. He’d cosied her into her favoured corner of the long purple velvet sofa but he hadn’t taken his customary place on the Eames. He’d sat right tight beside her, very close, holding her hand, watching her, wondering about breaking the silence. In the end, she did it for him.

  ‘That was a bit melodramatic of me,’ she said shyly.

  ‘Straight out of Brontë,’ Malachy said, sitting upright, letting go of her hands.

  ‘Please stay,’ she’d said, reaching for him.

  So there they’d stayed.

  ‘All this stuff,’ Oriana said. ‘All this stuff they always bang on about.’ He waited, but she didn’t qualify it. Then she giggled at Malachy’s obvious confusion. ‘That one should have various partners, live together before you marry,’ she explained. ‘Try before you buy. First love is a myth. All that.’ She held out her hand and he took it. ‘We never even slept together,’ she said. She thought about it. Did she regret it or marvel at it? Did he? Was he relieved? ‘Despite my advances.’ That made him smile. ‘I suppose you were right,’ she said. ‘And in the long run – did it matter?’ She thought about it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It didn’t matter – because here we are. Because it’s you. It was you. It’s always been you.’

  Malachy took Oriana’s hand to his mouth and pressed his lips into the valley between her knuckles. It was still acutely vivid – in his head, in his body – the amount of self-restraint he’d had to call upon during those years when his body ached for her and he denied himself what he craved.

  ‘People might say it’s all extremely naive and fanciful,’ Oriana continued. ‘But –’ She left her sentence hanging. He saw that her eyes were now shot through with tears. ‘It’s you, Malachy,’ she said. ‘For me – it’s only ever been you. I never stopped. I never stopped.’

  It took some time to find his voice. ‘And here you are,’ he said and she watched as his smile coursed its way all over his face and over to hers.

  He’d taken Oriana into his bed. She was almost drunk with emotional exhaustion. He’d cocooned her in the duvet while he had lain on top of the covers, propping himself up on his side, stroking her hair as she drifted in and out of slumber. He wished he had her way with words. Call yourself a novelist? Tell her!

  ‘Sleep,’ he’d whispered. ‘I’m here.’

  He thought about it now. How beautiful she’d looked in the suffused light. She’d placed her finger against his lips. ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ she’d said.

  ‘Can I tell you that I’m actually quite cold?’ he’d said.

  And she’d unwrapped herself from her duvet burrow and cloaked the covers around them both. There they lay, facing each other; just looking, no further words necessary. He didn’t feel himself move towards her, he didn’t sense that she’d brought her face closer but the tips of their noses touched and their lips brushed together. When he’d begun to kiss her last night, eighteen years of his life had evaporated in a superfast rewind. He’d been back where they’d started, and all the shit that had happened and all the time that had passed since was made sense of. Kissing her last night was so complete, so sustaining, that it didn’t need to lead on. It was lovemaking and communication in its finest and most basic form. It was enough. They slept awhile.

  She’d woken him. He could feel her kissing his cheek, the corner of his mouth. He could feel her fingertips stroking his jaw, his neck, running through his hair. She traced his nose, his eyebrow. She breezed her hand gently over his forehead, her fingers touching the path of the ribbon of his patch while her lips were on his. And then she slid her finger under the ribbon and she lifted it up and off and away. He didn’t look at her. She needed privacy despite the darkness. His heart banged against his ribcage. He felt naked and vulnerable. He’d never felt like that with other women. This is what I look like without my patch, he’d say quite conversationally. Are you ready? See? The pitting and the crevasses and the scarring – it looks worse than it feels these days. And that’s not my eye at all, it’s a scleral shell over a hydroxyapatite implant. And it moves, but not very well and sometimes not quite in sync with the other eye – which still bugs me. But no more operations. And the patch? I don’t like attention. And I like it that small children take me for a pirate instead.

  Now, another hour on, he was awake and she was sound asleep and his belt was still digging into his flesh but he didn’t want to move. He thought back to the times when he’d wondered where she was. He could have tried harder to find her. He had allowed himself to be fobbed off with the same old story: ‘She’s in America.’ He had allowed himself to be persuaded that this was best for Oriana. In turn, he’d told himself that she was better off without him, or that he was better off without her, that if he loved her, he ought to let her go and if she loved him she’d find her way back to him and all that Richard Bach bullshit. Lying here now, he was quite content to eat his words. It was on the wings of Jonathan Livingston Seagull – or his modern cousin, Virgin Atlantic airways – that Oriana had come right back to him. He now knew why he’d stayed at Windward when he so easily could have left, why he took out a sizeable mortgage to release Jed from his share. Windward was in his name; it was his home, his nest. It was feathered and ready and had been for years.

  * * *

  Jed knew Oriana hadn’t come back last night. He didn’t really need to wake up to know this. The knowledge had permeated through his dreamless sleep like noxious gas. Now awake, he didn’t need to leave his room and check on hers to know it was empty. He knew why she wasn’t here and he also knew where she’d gone. And he just couldn’t bear it. It was exquisitely painful. He curled up in his bed. It wasn’t fair. There was nothing wrong in what he wanted, he was driven only by love and devotion and the belief that you’re not given a dream without the power to fulfil it. It wasn’t fair at all. He knew that sounded petulant and stupid – but he felt that way and, for a while, he’d damn well wallow in it. Then he’d get dressed and do something about it.

  * * *

  ‘Morning, sleepyhead.’ Malachy smiled as Oriana opened her eyes and blinked herself into the here and now.

  ‘What’s the time?’ she said with a stretch.

  He smiled, thinking back to last night, to the same question asked. This morning, in his bed, rested and restored, she simply wanted to know what the time was.

  ‘It’s almost ten.’

  He was looking at her, grinning.

  ‘Please don’t look at me,’ she said, pulling the covers up to just under her eyes. ‘I’m all creased and crumpled in the mornings.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Malachy. He leant forward and kissed her forehead. ‘I’ve got an eye for a pretty girl when I see one,’ he said. For a moment, Oriana was appalled by the inappropriateness of his comment. But then he grinned. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ he said. ‘In my case – quite literally.’

  She punched him lightly on the arm and told him he was terrible. She looked at him steadily, seeing in fine detail what she’d felt for in the darkness with her lips and her fingertips; the area where his left eye had once been. He was letting her see him starkly naked and beautiful.

  ‘You are much changed,’ she said quietly, touching the scars gently. Then she smiled. ‘But there again – so am I. We all are. That’s age for you. You’re braver than me, Malachy – I don’t intend to let you see my cellulite.’

  He laughed, really laughed.

  ‘But we’re still you and me,’ she said.

  ‘And still, we’ve never had sex,’ he said, leaning forwards and kissing her.

  ‘I have morning breath!’ she protested, pulling the duvet up to her forehead. ‘Go away!’

  Malachy gazed at the top of her head, worked out the shape of her beneath the covers. He didn’t give a fig about
cellulite, whatever that was. He saw his eye patch on the bedside table. Sunday morning. This is what his average Sunday mornings would now be like. And it was just lovely.

  ‘Breakfast?’ he said. ‘Bacon and eggs?’

  ‘Starving,’ came her voice and her face reappeared. She thought about the cake hewn from rock that she’d had at Django’s, the last thing she’d eaten. She thought of Cat. And yesterday. Was all that really only yesterday?

  ‘Cat had her baby.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘Every now and then, the notion returns to me and I swoop inside.’

  ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Oriana replied as if he’d just asked if she’d like one egg or two. ‘Boy first.’

  They looked at each other. Everything that had been impossible was now not so.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ he said and he left the room.

  Oriana was so deep in thought, lulled into far-off daydreams by the herald of a beautiful day which was now streaming in through the window; Malachy was so engrossed by the sizzle of coordinating breakfast for two when mostly he cooked for one; that neither of them was aware that Jed had careened his car to a stop outside and was making his way up the steps.

  Jed paused at the front door. He knew this feeling of determination very well; it was a quality that had propelled him to achieve all that he had. A first from Cambridge. A fast scaling of the career ladder. The flat he wanted. The busy life. I ask for one thing only, he said under his breath. I ask finally for just this one thing. His mother’s words drifted into his head. Bange hjarte vandt aldrig fager mö. Faint heart never won fair lady. Well, the fair lady was in there and he was prepared to fight for her. He was armed. He turned and looked back at the driveway. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. Then he opened the door and went inside. Oriana’s Converse trainers were on the mat, stuffed with newspaper, the laces removed and currently hanging over the old shooting stick that had always been propped in the corner as though it was some kind of buttress.

  Malachy wasn’t in the kitchen but breakfast for two was already laid. Bacon, eggs and hot buttered toast. Henderson’s Relish. Tomato ketchup. Salt and pepper. Steaming mugs of tea. Two pieces of folded kitchen paper, cutlery placed on top.

  Jed walked on through the apartment, quietly opening the door to his room with hope in his heart – for everyone concerned – that he’d find Oriana in there. But she wasn’t. He looked in to the ballroom and saw his brother, his back to him, heaving up the great sash windows. The balcony doors were already open.

  Some would call it a gentle breeze that tickled its way into the room but suddenly to Malachy it was an ill wind. He turned and found Jed leaning against the wall, casual as you like, as if he owned the place; his arms crossed, staring at him with a look far worse than hatred: detachment.

  ‘Look –’ It was all Malachy could think to say.

  ‘I can see!’ Jed said. ‘Did you fuck?’

  ‘Jed – for God’s sake.’

  ‘Did you? Did you fuck her?’

  ‘Jed – I’m warning you.’ Malachy glanced at his bedroom door, knowing it was impossible for Oriana not to have heard.

  ‘OK – I’ll rephrase it. Did you have sex, shag, bang, copulate, fornicate?’

  ‘No.’ It was important to Malachy that Jed heard him. ‘No.’

  ‘You slept with her, didn’t you? You fucking slept with her.’

  ‘Yes, Jed – we slept together in that we went to sleep together.’

  ‘Right! Right!’ said Jed facetiously. ‘That’s why her clothes are all over the place in here?’

  Malachy looked around. It was true. They were in here. He’d hung them over the radiators to dry. At the time it had seemed logical because they were wringing wet. Now it seemed daft – the heating had been off for almost a month. ‘She was wet through.’

  ‘You talk such shit, Malachy. I’ve never been able to work out how so many people have fallen for the shit you shovel out.’

  ‘Jed – you need to calm down.’

  ‘I am calm.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘I’ve just come to collect what’s mine.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve come to collect Oriana. She lives with me. She chose to live with me.’ Then Jed enunciated it as three distinct and desperate sentences. ‘She. Chose. Me.’

  There was silence. In Malachy’s bedroom, Oriana had flattened herself against the wall. She wanted to be a million miles away. She wanted to be anywhere but here; America, Hathersage – anywhere.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ she heard Malachy say.

  ‘Why don’t you just go fuck yourself,’ she heard Jed say. ‘You’ve always done this to me. I hate you for it.’

  ‘Me!’ Malachy’s voice was raised. Oriana had heard it raised only once before, eighteen years ago. It was a sound she never wanted to hear again. She charged out of the bedroom and into battle.

  Jed pointed at her but kept his eyes level on Malachy; his voice raw. ‘Out of your bedroom and in your clothes?’ Then he looked at her in disgust. ‘Why didn’t you say?’ he asked her. ‘What kind of a heartless bitch are you?’

  Malachy wasn’t having that. ‘That’s enough.’ He walked to his brother and took him by the arm, to lead him away from Oriana and make him go. Jed snatched his arm away and pushed Malachy hard who shoved him back immediately. A side table was knocked over and a lamp crashed to the floor.

  ‘Please stop it,’ Oriana whispered, covering her face with her hands. ‘Please, boys, please.’

  Envy, years old, brand new, cut through Jed like a serrated knife while a lifetime of keeping quiet erupted out of Malachy as they fought. Hurling insults, they threw punches and blasted each other across the ballroom.

  ‘Stop it!’ Oriana cried. ‘Don’t! Just stop!’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Malachy,’ Jed yelled up close to his brother’s face, pointing his finger straight at the eye that could no longer see.

  ‘She fucking shot you!’

  It was as if the shot rang out again. The same deafening, life-changing sound. They all stood motionless and silent as the damage done seeped around them like spilling petrol, Jed’s words hanging like the touchpaper, perilously close.

  ‘Go to your room, Oriana,’ said Robin, suddenly amongst them. ‘Go to your room, now.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Oriana walked through the Bedwells’ rooms and out into the internal corridor, along it and up to her old connecting door, in a daze. She didn’t soak up the nostalgic scents along the way, or stop for memories to play back like scenes from a favourite film, nor did she note what was new, what had changed. She was going to her room, just as she’d been told, heading for there directly with no time for detours emotional or otherwise.

  The door into the Taylors’ groaned just as it always had and the spherical brass handle was just as loose, the dent exactly where it had always been – an odd flaw, the exact size of some man’s peculiarly strong thumb. It was a strangely comforting sight and, as she looked at it, she recalled one day in midwinter. Everyone was using the Corridor rather than brave the bitingly cold weather outside; Oriana had stood by her door and asked each man who passed to place his thumb in the indent. They all obliged but none of their thumbs fitted. Sometimes, living at Windward had something of the fairy tale about it. Not all fairy tales are happy and light, most are peculiar and dark. But they are all magical.

  She shut the door behind her and, for the first time in eighteen years, she was back in her childhood home. The smell hit her immediately. She hadn’t noticed it when it had been part of her every day, but now it struck her forcefully and she inhaled deeply, not knowing if she liked it, just needing to reacquaint herself with it. Brushes and turps and oil paints and the cloying smell of size used to prepare canvases. She was nowhere near her father’s studio but his art was in the air. She looked around the kitchen; everything was in its place. The cooker was the same,
there was still no toaster but now there was an electric kettle. She rubbed her wrist, feeling again the scorch of steam that had been par for the course when making a cup of tea. The pelargoniums were still on the windowsill, in bud now. This year he was late putting them out on the doorstep where they’d provide a slightly forlorn fanfare to the home. She went on, into the main room with the same wooden table at which she’d sat to have her impromptu haircut and her disastrous tea party and all those breakfasts she’d had to see to for herself.

  Here and there, dried-out tea bags stood like small brown islands in the midst of a stained sea. A cigarette butt standing upright, smoked down to the filter and left to extinguish on its own. She and Jed used to dare each other to sniff them; the most disgusting smell in the world. She’d double-dared him once to eat one. And he had.

  She walked all the way around the table, trailing her hand along the surface as she went. The same kinds of things were on it today. An old newspaper. A bottle of wine down to the dregs. Another cigarette with a little ash around the stem like silver leaves around a miniature tree trunk. There was a piece of paper with her father’s indecipherable coded handwriting. Also, an array of disparate objects that could marry up for a visually provocative still life. All these things, mostly so divorced from reality, from what was normal for a tabletop in a family home. Just then it was like contemplating museum exhibits and it gave Oriana a similar, pensive calm. But she kept walking, taking in the view from each window, knowing how each pane gave a slightly altered vignette from the one before. On she went to the door which was ajar at the far end, to her father’s studio.

  You were never, ever allowed to go in there if the door was closed and Robin was working. But on the occasions when he wasn’t, when it was open, you were free to enter. She tiptoed in now, as she had then, as if not wanting to startle whoever was being brought to life behind the surface of the canvas. In works in progress, the subjects always seemed so new to the world, as if they’d only just been released, as if giant rocks had been spliced to reveal them, to liberate them. And then, when the paintings were finished, his subjects always exuded this worldly experience, this innate knowing, as if they carried the secrets of the universe and it was the viewer who was so newly formed.