The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  I couldn’t answer that. He nudged me. He nudged me again. And then he put his arm around me and kissed the side of my face so gently again, again and again, slowly, slowly, while he stroked my neck, my arms. My Malachy was back and I didn’t care what the consequences were, I just wanted to stay in that moment. We crumpled onto my bed and kissed each other’s faces and wrapped our arms and legs around each other and pulled each other in as close as we could. We took off our tops and basked in skin against skin. I could feel him harden and strain in his trousers and, just fleetingly, he swept his hand up between my legs and pressed his fingers against me. We lay together and rolled and rocked and he was on top of me and we moved and kissed and writhed and something extraordinary started building in my body. And suddenly Malachy was fumbling with his flies and breathing hard. I was so ready. This was how it should be. It was going to be perfect.

  And then he pulled away. ‘We can’t.’

  I reached out for him. ‘We can. I want this. I love you.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s crazy. You’re fifteen! I’m going to university. It’s just – impossible. Ridiculous.’

  ‘Please don’t say that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You have nothing to apologize for.’

  ‘You’ll thank me, Oriana. One day – I promise.’

  ‘Don’t say that. That’s rubbish. Malachy – please.’

  ‘Don’t you see? If we – made love –’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. ‘I want to,’ he said, hoarse. ‘It’s just not the right time, Oriana. It would be wholly wrong.’

  ‘Are you shagging scary Charlotte? Is that why?’ I think he laughed as much at my accusatory tone as at the concept.

  We lay beside each other again while our bodies tried to make sense of the come-down. We lay together and just loved one another, tiptoeing fingers up and over the landscapes of each other’s bodies as if committing the routes to memory should we ever find ourselves lost. I knew Malachy was right but what he said conflicted so strongly with the physical and the emotional, that denial seemed an insult to the veracity of those feelings.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered to me with a glazed gaze. ‘I love you.’

  And that’s how Jed found us. Semi-naked, wrapped up in each other with the word ‘Love’ hanging in the air like a neon banner.

  He had a cigarette behind his ear and it tumbled off as he turned and stormed out.

  ‘Shit,’ said Malachy and he dressed quickly and left.

  And I lay there thinking that everything sucked and everyone was going to get hurt but I never imagined that in ten minutes’ time the hurt would be so cataclysmic.

  The noise coming from their apartment. The crashing and banging and yelling. It was more unbearable than any of the furious rows my parents had ever had.

  ‘What’s going on?’ My father had stormed out of his studio and appeared to be ricocheting off the walls in our hallway. ‘I’m trying to paint!’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘It’s the boys – they’re just scrapping. I’ll go. Here.’ I gave him the paper with my results. ‘I flunked maths. Sorry.’

  Even the deadening flagstones of the Corridor and the monumentally thick walls couldn’t absorb the sound of the fight. I rushed to be there and found myself in the midst of such uncontained hatred that I didn’t know what to do. I watched, I felt. Jed punched Malachy square on the jaw and sent him flying but he hurled himself back with an empty bottle in his hand and thwacked Jed hard on the side of his skull. As Jed staggered and swayed, Malachy spat blood on the floor.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Malachy said. ‘Just fuck you, Jed.’

  Malachy rarely swore. I always felt a bit childish if I did so in his presence. Those words from Malachy enunciated his hostility more than any strike. But the moment of separation re-energized them and they ran at each other again with a combined roar, hurling one another against the walls.

  I was terrified and desperate. I needed the Bedwells to be the family full of love and support and solidity. I depended on them to be so. They needed to exemplify the opposite to my family. This wildness I was in the midst of, the primal hatred and violence and baseness, was more than I could handle. It had to stop. The noise, the blood, the damage and the despising had to stop. If it was me who’d started it, I had to stop it. But they couldn’t hear me shout. They weren’t listening to me at all.

  People say that when terrible things happen, it’s as if the protagonists have been flung backwards momentarily, held in abeyance; then the action proceeds in slow motion towards the impending disaster which is at once known yet unavoidable. This is not so. It does not happen like that. Time went into overdrive that day and moved too fast for any of us to sense what lay ahead. My father’s rifle was on their mantelpiece, left there from one of our futile rabbiting attempts. I ran for it. I wasn’t aiming. There was no time to put it to my shoulder, though that rifle alone was heavy enough on a teenage girl’s wrist and that was before the kick. I just grabbed it and raised it, and the sun struck through the middle pane of the upper section of the second sash window to the left of the balcony and blinded me the moment I shot into the air. I couldn’t see a thing. I never saw that Malachy had stood up while Jed remained down. I was shooting into the light to make them stop and in a split second, that stupid rifle that couldn’t kill a bunny maimed Malachy for life.

  That’s what happened. That’s how it happened.

  That’s what happened when I was fifteen.

  Eighteen years later, I have finally accepted that it was an accident. Because Malachy told me so and Jed corroborated it and it was only the three of us there, back then. And the three of us are here again now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Malachy and Jed

  It was hard not to be transfixed by the space that Oriana had left when she’d gone. If they imagined that she was still here, sitting between them, then they could keep their focus on her and not have to adjust it to take in the wider picture bespeckled with overlapping details of what had happened that morning. Eventually, the rumble of his stomach caused Malachy to stand, to look at the time and say Jesus, it’s almost midday, to glance at his brother and ask if he’d like tea.

  ‘Please,’ said Jed and he stood and stretched and yawned and slumped back down on the sofa.

  Malachy looked at the cold breakfasts, forlornly curling on the plates. Had they only been made this morning? It seemed longer than that. Time was playing tricks.

  ‘Jed,’ he called, ‘do you want to eat?’

  In the ballroom, Jed was looking over to Oriana’s wet clothes. He wondered, what kind of crazy adventure did she have yesterday?

  ‘I’m starving,’ he called. ‘Thanks.’ And he stood up and crossed to the windows and smoothed the yellow film back flat where it had peeled away from one of the windows. The middle pane of the upper section of the second sash window to the left of the balcony. He checked the film on the panes to the right and the left of the neighbouring sashes, up a little, down a little. He remembered his father studying the passage of sunlight for hours each day while Malachy convalesced, hovering with the pieces of sticky-backed coloured coverings as if poised to refract the rays before any further harm was done. He remembered how his mother would run her eyes over the six coloured panes for months afterwards, as if they were notes forming a dissonant tune she could never quite memorize.

  Malachy returned with sandwiches filled with cold bacon and eggs. They didn’t taste too bad and they were much needed. The brothers ate in silence and gulped down the tea.

  ‘Refill?’ Malachy asked.

  ‘Looking back, she and I were hurled together by what happened that day.’ Jed regarded Malachy. ‘During that time when you were down at Moorfields and Mum and Dad were with you most days.’ Jed wanted to continue but he wasn’t sure how; he gave up stumbling over his words and put his head in his hands. ‘The drifts of news we scavenged were getting worse and worse.’

  ‘I remember so little,’ Malachy
said. ‘I remember nothing of it happening.’

  ‘She cradled your head,’ Jed told him, looking up at him again. ‘She was so brave because it was terrifying and you looked terrible but she didn’t stop talking to you.’ He paused. ‘Your hand over your eye. The blood. Your head in her lap,’ said Jed. He pointed. ‘The copper shell casing just there. The rifle flung – over there.’

  Malachy considered it. In some ways, he felt lucky to remember so little. ‘You must have been beside yourselves.’

  ‘I called the ambulance. I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly, Robin was here and he couldn’t speak. And Lilac. Others – I can’t tell you who. It was oddly quiet. Just waiting. I think people probably prayed. But all the while, Oriana talked to you. You know it took her two days to realize how badly sprained her wrist was from the kick.’

  ‘As bad as it was for us,’ said Malachy, ‘for me, for our family, it was beyond awful for that girl. She was a kid. She believed we were all she had.’

  Jed nodded. ‘I want you to know that I did tell Dad it was an accident. And Mum. Even Robin. And they all said “I know” and they all said “That’s beside the point.” I did say “Don’t blame Oriana” but I don’t know if I said it enough. If I’d said it more, maybe Mum and Dad could have stepped in to stop her being sent away.’

  Malachy had been through this privately again and again over the years; he knew the logical answers to every question, the reason behind every action, the provenance of every emotion that all of them had experienced. He shook his head.

  ‘There wasn’t anything you could have done. Or me, come to that. It was going to be impossible for her to stay,’ he said. ‘Mum and Dad told me that Oriana was going. I pleaded with them too, Jed. I heard them in the hospital room saying Windward’s imploding. They blamed themselves. All the grown-ups blamed each other. By sending Oriana away they were taking responsibility, assuaging their guilt, telling themselves they were doing the right thing for everyone. Boarding school on the South Downs – it came at the right time and even if what happened hadn’t happened, it still would have been the best for her, I suppose. Windward – me, you – she was fragile, Jed. I don’t think we truly appreciated that. Had she stayed – who knows what would have happened.’

  ‘Is that why you didn’t sleep with her? You thought it was wrong, damaging, because of her age and her vulnerability?’

  ‘Partly.’ Malachy looked at him. It would be easy to nod and be done with it. But he shook his head. ‘Actually, that wasn’t the main reason. I was – desperate – to. It’s why I fooled around with crazy Charlotte, I was so – pent up.’

  Jed seemed surprised. ‘Charlotte? I thought that was a rumour? I thought you didn’t?’

  ‘Well, I did. And yes, I lied to Oriana – but don’t you go blowing my cover. It’s what she needed to hear at the time. I needed her to let go, I needed her to hate me a little and not want me so much.’

  ‘Are you crazy? If I’d felt that kind of desire from Oriana, I’d’ve never jeopardized what we could have had. Why did you do that? Why did you deny yourself that? Just because on paper she was fifteen?’

  ‘Partly,’ said Malachy. He wasn’t sure whether the truth would harm his brother by hurting him further. He wasn’t sure how to temper the truth without lying. He sensed that there was only today to bury the past; by tomorrow it would already have calcified, immobilizing things unsaid into fossils that would stare out and goad, encased for eternity. ‘I was leaving. I was eighteen.’ Malachy paused. ‘I couldn’t take her with me, Jed.’ He shrugged, his face softened. ‘But I knew it didn’t matter because I was always going to come back for her. Always. That’s why. Do you see? That’s why.’

  ‘Were you living in a Dickens novel?’ Jed said and a note of admiration struck through the ridicule. He took their mugs and plates back into the kitchen, tutting under his breath. He put his hands either side of the sink and allowed his shoulders to slump. When Oriana had returned, he’d been flooded with the thought of him and her picking up from where they’d left off. If he smothered her with love and provided her with all the accoutrements of a great life, she’d never need to think what-if when it came to his brother. Just now, he had to concede that he hadn’t actually taken her feelings into consideration at all; he’d been too busy thinking about what he wanted, assessing what he was capable of achieving. He needed to admit defeat in a battle with Malachy that his older brother had no idea he’d even been part of, let alone won. Malachy had always had this overriding conviction of destiny with Oriana. And much as Jed felt adored by Oriana he had to accept that he’d sensed all along that her love was solely for Malachy. And that realization in itself, for someone who’d achieved so much with so little effort, was a sharp and humbling lesson for Jed.

  ‘I didn’t want her just because you did or because she wanted you,’ Jed told his brother quietly, returning with fresh tea. ‘It wasn’t a challenge. It was deeper – it was personal. Those were my feelings, my desires, my own hopes and dreams. I had to pursue them. All I’d ever heard was Jed can achieve everything he sets his mind to. It gave me a skewed sense of what was possible, what I was entitled to, what was success, what was failure.’

  ‘I know,’ said Malachy. ‘I realize that.’ His voice dropped and he looked over to Jed. ‘I’m reluctant to ask, but I feel I have to.’ He paused. ‘When you two –’ He tried again. ‘When I was in hospital – that’s when you two –’ He looked at Jed. ‘How is that even possible? Coming so soon after –?’ He wasn’t angry, just utterly baffled.

  Jed thought back to that time – twelve days of hermetically sealed togetherness. That was all. Adults running in circles wondering what to do and, incredibly, not noticing the two teenagers clinging to each other. His parents, mostly in London. Robin away from Windward in crisis talks with Rachel, or locked in his studio. Jed and Oriana safe in a new world they’d discovered the route to together; a place where you could forget about everything else. There were details that Malachy didn’t need to know, Jed told himself. Partly because he wanted to keep them sacred, partly out of respect for Oriana, partly out of sensitivity towards his brother. Earlier that day he could easily have spat the details in Malachy’s face. The sounds she made, how frantic her passion was, all those firsts for her and for him. How clumsiness and fumbling gave way to an ecstatic flow. Condoms and cunnilingus and blow-jobs and this way and that way and all day long.

  ‘You know – we were beyond terrified, Malachy, by what had happened and what was happening. We didn’t know if you were going to be OK. No one told us. Often, there was no one here. We cleaned your blood from the floor. We eavesdropped on people saying blinded and further surgery and facial reconstruction and no, he won’t be going to Bristol this year. We were thrown together, Malachy. We literally clung to each other. We were right in the path of the hurricane and we had to hold on to each other to stop ourselves from being flung, torn, destroyed. So, you see, the physical – it just helped. It took us away from pain and panic. We could get lost in sex.’ He glanced at Malachy. It was difficult to tell what his brother was thinking. ‘It wasn’t about love,’ Jed said. ‘It wasn’t about togetherness. It was neither lovemaking nor was it shagging. There was no shared emotion, no profound meaning, nothing momentous that we discovered together. It was where we escaped to, it was somewhere that fear and guilt couldn’t infiltrate.’

  Malachy stared down into his tea. Of all the days that his brother could have brandished damaging details, this was the one. But Jed hadn’t and for that he was grateful. He observed Jed who looked crumpled by it all. The memories of that day and the aftermath. The dashed hopes of today.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Malachy said. ‘I know you didn’t do it to spite me.’ The more he thought about it, the stranger his conclusion. ‘Thank God she had you during those days. Thank God you found a way to cope.’ How bizarre did that sound? Not so bizarre. ‘Those days were as dark for you as they were for me,’ Malachy said. ‘Dark days.’

  Jed s
crunched his eyes tight shut and grabbed the mug hard to stop himself shaking. ‘On day nine the police came. I honestly thought they’d come to take her to jail. She was beside herself. It was that doddery old PC – do you remember him? But he came to interview Robin, about licences and certificates and lockable cupboards – all the rules that would have accidentally bypassed a place like Windward.’ Jed paused. ‘And then her sixteenth birthday came and went. Nobody noticed. She said nothing. I only remembered late that afternoon.’ Malachy’s head was now in his hands. Jed cleared his throat. ‘And then she left the day before you came home. Day thirteen. Robin frogmarched her out – there was a taxi waiting to take them to the train. Two suitcases. She’d come in to me in the small hours. They’re making me go away, Jed, she’d said. No one will help me stay. Not Lilac. Not Louis.’ Jed looked at Malachy imploringly. ‘There was nothing I could do, Malachy.’

  ‘No one would tell me the name of the fucking school,’ Malachy said.

  ‘I stood on the steps and she banged on the mini-cab window and she yelled out, Tell Malachy tell Malachy tell Malachy.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you never told me that.’

  Jed looked ashamed. ‘I promise you part of me just didn’t know what I was meant to tell you.’

  They sat silently with their thoughts.

  ‘When you were little – out in the orchard – of all the stunted twisted trees you could just have stood on your tiptoes and picked the fruit from, you always, always tried for the apple or pear just beyond your grasp. You’d jump and leap and you’d clamber along precarious branches. You would not be appeased by any other fruit on any other tree, even if they were bigger or riper or easier to have. That’s why there are so many photos of you climbing trees, Jed. Mum and Dad used to say There goes Jed, lured by the golden pear.’

  Jed remembered. He brushed away a tear. He glanced over at the cabinet in which were the albums containing those very photos.