The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  Today there was a man she didn’t recognize, gazing at her pleadingly, to hasten the return of the artist to free him, so that his life would be completed. Using the edge of her little finger, she lightly touched the surface. It was still wet. She looked at the tiny purple mark on her fingertip; it was like a blood blister. She rubbed it on a cloth. Her finger now smelt of turps. Everything smelt of turps. It didn’t surprise her that all around the room, canvas after canvas, board after board, her mother’s face stared out. She sat on the stool by the easel and tapped her fingers rhythmically on her knees. Don’t look at me like that, Mother. I have every right to be here. But she couldn’t relax in this space, not just because her mother’s eyes were upon her wherever she looked, but because this wasn’t where she should be. Go to your room, her father had told her. Go to your room.

  Walking back through into the hallway, Oriana glanced in at the study and sensed that was where her father now slept, by the look of the day bed and tomorrow’s shirt and tie on a hanger, balanced on the bookshelf. When he’d suddenly shown up at the Bedwells’ he’d been in his three-piece suit, he’d been working. He was as smart when he went to work as any businessman. And just as hard-working. It was Sunday after all. Art doesn’t close for the weekend. How loud the fury at the Bedwells’ must have been, to have been audible here, to have compelled him to come. Outside her bedroom, Oriana stopped; she bowed her head and stood a moment longer before opening the door and stepping inside.

  She gasped.

  Why had he done this?

  Was he mad?

  Eighteen years and he hadn’t changed a thing?

  The same bed linen. A black Tempo felt pen at an angle on the desk beside a collection of books in an unstraightened stack, like a precarious staircase from To Kill a Mockingbird on the bottom to The Catcher in the Rye on the top. She always used to arrange her books like that. If their spines were aligned she feared the stories would blend. Scout would be in Holden’s world and that just wasn’t right. In a parade along the skirting, all her vinyl LPs and singles. She crouched and flicked through them. Songs not heard for almost two decades coming in and out of her mind. The disc sent especially to her from Rod. An LP signed by some long-forgotten band called Saturn Returns. Hadn’t they stayed at Windward? Hadn’t they practised at the Bedwells’? One of her favourites – Alec Guinness reading The Waste Land. Lilac and George had bought that for her birthday. You’ll like his voice, they told her, because she was far too young to understand the poem. In fact, she never had a clue what any of it meant but the timbre of the actor’s voice and the rhythm and flow of the words were significant to her. She flipped up the lid of her record player, plugged it in, gently dabbed a finger on the needle for the affronted hum that would tell her it was on. She slid the record out of the sleeve, her middle finger and thumb remembering the stretch from hole to edge. As Alec Guinness came into the room so Oriana went and lay down on her bed. So much ugliness this morning after so much beauty. It was horrible. Horrible. If she stayed here long enough, could she too become frozen in time? To a time before she shot Malachy? To a time before Jed came into this very room and found her with him?

  I have single-handedly fucked up the lives of so many.

  Who the hell do I think I am that I thought I could return?

  But where was the sin in the love that flooded out of her for Malachy and the tenderness flowing from him for her? All night in his arms. His fingers through her hair. His heartbeat steady. Bacon and eggs? Yes, please. Would you like children? Yes, please.

  And Jed. Generous and warm, and inspiring such affection in her. Over recent weeks she knew how she’d ignored the fact that the light which beamed from him shone directly from the torch he still held for her. Deeply ashamed, she turned away from the thought and faced the wall while Alec Guinness told of Mrs Porter and her daughter and Oriana joined in washing their feet in soda water. If Jed had only said out loud how he felt, what he wanted – if only he’d taken a punt and declared his feelings – then she could have let him down gently.

  No.

  It was brutally unfair to pin any of the responsibility on Jed. In fact, it was cowardly.

  She’d known how he felt – even if she didn’t want to admit it, even if she made excuses for it, she’d known. It was obvious as soon as he appeared when she’d first come back to visit. Vaulting the balcony and shinning down the wall, one shoe off and one shoe on. She should have done something about it, something for him, much much sooner. It was bad enough realizing she had now lost one of the best friends she’d ever had. It was mortifying to think how she’d severely damaged another Bedwell boy in the process.

  But life is about letting go. Life is about adapting, about changing course. A stream keeps flowing even if inclement weather forces a change for its path. Love is about forgiveness. And love is about hope.

  Look at you, Oriana. You said you’d never return. You said you didn’t care. You said you hated him. But you’re in your old bedroom and you’re comforted to be there. And your father just stepped in to help, he was there to protect you.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Oriana’s watch didn’t make sense to her and the clock in her room had stopped goodness knows when. Could it really have been only an hour or so since Malachy sat on the bed and took the piss at his own expense for having just one eye? An hour since Jed returned and their worlds, individual yet intertwined, were flung into a maelstrom? And her father at the Bedwells’, doing what? Umpiring? Counselling? Was he standing there, a hand on each boy, keeping them apart while they flailed to get at each other? Was he even there still? Perhaps he’d returned. Perhaps he was painting.

  The clock in the sitting room was ten minutes faster than Oriana’s watch. The one in the kitchen read the same time exactly. There was no clock and no Robin in the studio. What was she meant to do? Just stay in her room where she’d been sent? Into a wasteland of her own making with only Sir Alec for company.

  When lovely woman stoops to folly and

  Paces about her room again, alone,

  She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,

  And puts a record on the gramophone.

  She put her watch to her ear and listened to it ticking. She had to go. She had the biggest part in all this anyway, there was no resolution without her.

  Back at the Bedwells’, straight through the apartment to the ballroom, three faces were already trained on the door for her entrance. Her father, sitting in Orlando’s chair like some stand-in patriarchal invigilator. Jed and Malachy at opposite ends of the sofa, sitting forward both of them, their hands clasped in their laps. She felt the eyes of the three men focus on her while she stared at the legs of the piano and wondered why they ended in the shape of claws. How long would they let her just stand there saying nothing, mesmerized by furniture? They’d give her as long as she needed, it seemed. They were waiting for her, they’d all been waiting such a long time.

  Over the years, she’d perfected soliloquys, amassed a whole volume of them – what she’d say to Malachy if only she had the chance. She’d honed feelings into stanzas of beautiful poetry and shaped memories into epic prose. Now was her chance. Gradually, her gaze travelled over to him, stopping on the way briefly but directly at Jed, then at her father.

  And when it came, she didn’t need her script. She walked over to Malachy, dropped to her knees, sat back on her heels, her hands resting suppliant in her lap.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. She looked up at him. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Then she sank into herself and wondered if she’d ever stand up again.

  * * *

  She felt a hand touch the top of her head, laid just lightly over her hair as if in blessing. And then it stroked down and another joined it and they cupped her face and tipped it up. Malachy was holding her steady.

  ‘It was an accident, Oriana.’

  His thumbs smudged away her tears and she closed her eyes, blinded.

  An arm around her shoulders, a body close to her
s. Jed’s voice soft on her ear.

  ‘It was an accident,’ said Jed.

  When finally Oriana opened her eyes, she was with the Bedwell boys again, deep within their fold and safe. They sat together for a long time, saying nothing more.

  Robin broke the silence.

  ‘Oriana,’ he said. ‘A word.’

  And he left the Bedwells’.

  She looked up at Malachy.

  ‘Go,’ he said. ‘I’ll be here when you come back.’

  When I was …

  When I was fifteen …

  When I was fifteen.

  When I was fifteen I changed everything for everyone.

  Our exams were done, term ended early and Malachy finished school for good. And though the anticipation of results slightly sullied the summer, August felt a way off and we knew what would be would be. I wrote a cracking essay on Hamlet and if I didn’t get an A I would personally storm the examiner’s office and demand to know why. If Jed didn’t get straight A’s then everyone who knew him would be in that examiner’s office declaring him insane. Malachy deserved to achieve the grades he hoped for because he worked hard and it was harder for him as he didn’t have Jed’s natural super-intelligence. I didn’t want to think of Malachy getting his results, because they’d take him away from me, to Bristol University which was his first choice. If he didn’t win his place there, he’d still go to York. Or Birmingham. He’d still leave. I knew I wasn’t prepared to lose him, to let him go.

  That summer we just wanted to be on English turf. All those weeks since winter, when we hadn’t dared step outside because we had revision and checklists and stacks of books and so much homework. Months on end when we didn’t hang out with our friends, when we were cooped up and stressed out and quietly wondering what the fuck it was all about anyway. So the Bedwell boys didn’t go with their parents to Denmark and Malachy was left in charge because everyone trusted him. My father wasn’t interested in where I was that summer – but when was he ever? He was painting a triptych which obsessed him and made me cringe. The Agony and the Ecstasy it was called and I really didn’t want to see my mother like that or know that my father had those kinds of feelings for her. I went into the studio only once during that period and I rolled my eyes as my stomach turned. Gross, I said to everyone. Oh my God – it’s just gross. Sex, we believed, was not for anyone over twenty-five.

  We spent most of our time outside. There was no place like Windward on a summer’s day. Private and so beautiful. We lolled because we were kids and schoolwork had meant no lolling for such a long time. We’d meet at the back where, because of the position of the house and the angle of the sun in high summer, there was a section of lawn that was never in the shade. We were practically woven to the grass, lying there, listening to Malachy’s radio cassette recorder which we had to stuff with new batteries on a weekly basis. I read my way through the American greats that summer – For Whom the Bell Tolls, Of Mice and Men, Flowers for Algernon, On the Road and The World According to Garp.

  Jed decided he’d start smoking and he had this thing for some brand called Raffles which came in a black packet. Malachy drank beer. I had a new bikini. I wasn’t concerned with how I looked; I just loved it that I could feel the sun on so much of my skin. Jed had stupid Garfield swimming trunks. Malachy wore denim shorts. We were all brown as hazel. Bob, the ancient gardener who’d come with the house when our parents moved in, mowed everywhere else but never asked us to move. He mowed all the way around us. It meant we had this lovely large circle of long grass and it was our island. If you looked out over the lawns at night, it was like gazing at the shadow of the moon.

  I lay between the brothers, chattering with Jed but all the while electrified by Malachy’s presence. I longed for him. I looked forward to when Jed cycled off to buy cigarettes or when he stayed over with friends. Then I had Malachy to myself. Out in the garden, side by side, eyes closed. I’d sneak a look at him but he’d always open one eye before long which I’d immediately shy away from. When Malachy looks at you, he looks into you. But he kissed me less often during that summer. It frustrated the hell out of me. Couldn’t he see me for the growing woman I was? I’m in the sixth form now, Malachy. I don’t wear school uniform any more. I’ll be sixteen soon enough. I tried to think it was because Jed was around so much but I knew it wasn’t. I knew Malachy was pulling away, I knew he’d be leaving Windward. I knew that he was preparing to go. I knew that I’d lose him.

  When the A level results came through, the Bedwell boys threw a party at the behest of all their friends. It was logical – Jette and Orlando were still away, they had the apartment to themselves and Windward was the perfect setting. Our GCSE results were still a week away but that was the summer when any old excuse for a party would do.

  ‘I did it, Oriana,’ Malachy repeated while I was filling his bath with ice for the beer. ‘I got the grades. I’m in.’ He was sitting on the closed toilet seat, holding the piece of paper as if it was a screen showing him the rest of his life. I went over to him and sat on his lap and he held me tightly and we kissed deeply and desperately and I thought to myself this is the beginning of the end.

  At the party there was beer and cider, a ridiculous rum punch and boxes of warm white wine. There were cigarettes and joints and hash cakes. There was Acid house and grunge and Neil Young and Springsteen – always Springsteen. We had our arms in the air and the world in our hands.

  The ballroom was heaving with people I didn’t know. I finally found Malachy out on the balcony. He tried to hide a joint from me but I raised my eyebrow and said I’m not a child you know, and I took the joint and sucked hard. I hated the head rush. We stood, side by side, our bare arms touching, goosepimpled by the connection and the middle-of-the-night air. We looked down on our circle of grass, we looked across to the cedar, we looked at each other and our fingers wove together. He didn’t need to kiss me. And he didn’t.

  What are you doing? said Jed who was suddenly with us, staring at our hands long after they’d disengaged.

  Nothing, we said. Just chilling.

  He stood with us, me in the middle, the love of two brothers encircling me like vapours.

  Are you coming back in? Malachy asked me but I didn’t want to say the joint had made me feel nauseous, that I needed to stay outside, focusing on the steady silhouette of the cedar. So I just said I was going to hang out with Jed. I let Jed hold my hand. It wasn’t unusual, he often did.

  ‘You know he’s shagging Charlotte?’ Jed said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Charlotte – who left school last year.’

  ‘The scary one?’

  ‘Yeah. You know he’s shagging her?’

  ‘Malachy?’

  ‘Yes, Oriana – Malachy.’

  No, I did not know that. And I didn’t believe Jed. Malachy would have told me. He told me everything. But Jed turned my shoulders and I saw inside; I saw Malachy sitting on the piano stool being straddled by scary Charlotte, her tongue inserted into his mouth like a slug, his hand moving around inside her shirt.

  What was I going to do? What was I going to do? I went home in a huff, that’s what I did. I curled up in bed with a bucket on the floor and when Jed tiptoed in and climbed in beside me and spooned next to me and cupped his hand over my breast and pressed against me and kissed my neck I didn’t object, I didn’t move. I couldn’t.

  When I woke in the morning, Jed was propped up on one arm, smiling at me.

  ‘Oregano,’ he said, ‘you snore.’

  He helped me avoid Malachy for the next few days by keeping me busy and keeping me with him. He took me fishing all day and we crouched around at dusk aiming at rabbits with my father’s old Winchester which I’d purloined for all those years without him ever commenting. We caught lots of fish but we always missed the rabbits, accidentally-on-purpose. And all the while Malachy lazed on our circle in the sun, listening to our music, reading and sleeping as if he’d never noticed we’d been there in the first plac
e and didn’t miss us now we weren’t. I was too humiliated, really, to tell Jed how crushed I felt. Jed’s chatty warmth and his tactile attentiveness were a distraction and a positive antidote to Malachy’s reticence and rejection. I did notice that Charlotte was never around and that Malachy was always at Windward but I said to myself who cares?

  Our GCSE results came the next weekend. I was chuffed, I’d excelled at what I loved, and failing maths was almost cool. I wanted to tell my father but he was in the studio, door shut. There was a knock on my bedroom door and in came Malachy. I turned away from him but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. He took the slip of paper from me and absorbed the facts and figures.

  ‘You flunked your maths pretty spectacularly,’ he smiled. ‘But you’ll retake it and I bet you’ll get a B.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Well done.’ He was beaming, he was proud. He came and sat beside me. ‘Clever girl.’

  ‘Where’s Jed?’

  ‘Gone to get fags.’

  I wanted Malachy to go. To stay. To go.

  ‘Did he get his straight A-starreds?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Is he ecstatic?’

  Malachy thought about it. ‘I’m not sure really – he could have done them with his eyes closed last year. Where’s the sense of achievement if you haven’t had to strive for something?’

  ‘Your parents are going to be cock-a-hoop,’ I said.

  ‘Does your dad know?’

  ‘No – he’s working. I’ll tell him later.’

  ‘You’ve been avoiding me all week.’