The Way Back Home

by Freya North

  Paula smiled at her warmly. ‘After you, then,’ she said, sweeping her hand theatrically to usher Oriana ahead.

  But Oriana couldn’t do it. Wave after wave of imagery cascaded over her, billows of recall so vivid that tears sprang to her eyes. All that Louis had given her. And she never said goodbye. Oh, to have five more minutes, one last cup of tea, to hear a few final words sweet or salacious. Suddenly, she was acutely aware that behind that door, none of it remained, not a whisper of Louis. The apartment had been commandeered and remodelled without a thought to him. She recalled the property particulars in the newspaper that Cat had shown her. Even from the small grainy photos, it seemed that the transformation of the place she’d known was a travesty and nothing to marvel at. Nothing to see – because it was all nothingy. She didn’t want to see a glossy kitchen and hi-spec bathrooms running roughshod over the bohemian opulence that had been Louis’. If it wasn’t Louis’ any more then whatever the intervening years and a lot of money had done to the place held little interest for her.

  Paula’s eyes, though, were glinting with anticipation. She tipped her head towards the door and smiled. It was as if, through Oriana, she might step back in time to a Windward she couldn’t imagine. But Oriana shook her head. She shrugged and shook her head again.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she said. And before Paula could cajole her, Oriana was walking slowly down the stairs, brushing a tear away.

  As they walked along the Corridor, she added further details to the vivid portrait of Louis for Paula. They were a step away from daylight, from leaving the interior and the secrets it held.

  ‘I learned to ride my bike in there,’ Oriana said, gazing back. ‘I skateboarded and roller-skated and did bowling practice with the boys.’ She didn’t tell Paula about her first kiss with Malachy. ‘We ran up and down like mad things. All the Windward children did. It’s one of the wonders of the Corridor – you can’t hear a thing that goes on there, from the apartments along it. It’s at the heart of everything – yet afforded us our most private times there.’

  Outside, the women stood awhile at the side entrance until Oriana walked on, setting the pace at a thoughtful stroll while she and Paula talked easily. An invitation was made for Oriana to visit Paula’s home in the converted Ice House – Paula keen to hear Oriana’s memories of the shack long before it was remotely habitable. Back at the front of the house, a couple waited – the bona-fide appointment for number four.

  ‘Tell them about Louis,’ Oriana said.

  Paula gave her arm a squeeze. ‘Don’t you worry,’ she said, ‘I fully intended to.’

  ‘Tell them about the throne.’

  ‘And the ostrich feathers. And what happened in Marrakesh.’ Paula laughed. ‘I’ll tell them everything.’

  ‘Louis Bayford,’ said Oriana.

  ‘Louis Bayford,’ Paula repeated.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Jed would kill him – Malachy could imagine the accusation. Why didn’t you phone me? As soon as you knew the mix-up – you should’ve called. But Malachy appeased himself – he was entitled to kill Jed anyway, for concealing Oriana’s previous visit to Windward. And if Jed was too stupid or too preoccupied to have worked out where Oriana was headed, then it was his own fault. Malachy thought, why deny her the chance to spend time at Windward, which is what she wanted to do, in spite of everything. And he thought, why shouldn’t I have her to myself for one night only – considering she’s going off to live with him.

  After a surprising surge of visitors mid-morning, the gallery was quiet now, at just approaching lunch-time. They often did this – came through Blenthrop supposedly to stock up on food and drink for a walk on the dales, only to be waylaid by the more unusual shops, of which the White Peak Art Space was one. One time, a couple in walking boots, gaiters and with maps in plastic pouches around their necks had come in and spent an hour and £3,000 on a bronze by Matt Birch. This morning, though Malachy hadn’t made a single sale, experience and a hunch said that two of the visitors would contact him at a later date, by phone or email, and he’d sell to one of them if not both.

  Has she gone?

  Is she still there?

  What did she do this morning?

  Whom did she see?

  He looked at his phone and scrolled through to ‘O’, staring at the numbers she’d given him as if she’d been reduced to a barcode. He hated phones, he hated text messaging and he hated seeing the population obsessed by these gadgets glued to the palms of their hands, walking gormlessly along with their thumbs in some unnatural yet evolutionary crook hovering over the screen.

  But has she left or is she still there?

  * * *

  Jed looked around his flat. There was nothing left to tidy, sort out or rearrange. Actually, it all looked a little odd to him – like visiting a known place in a dream. His world was just slightly off kilter. Deep down, he sensed that Oriana would bring either balance or chaos. He wasn’t sure which. He’d welcome both. He’d have to wait and see.

  He went to the kitchen and ate a late lunch right over the sink so as not to spill crumbs anywhere. He gulped it down fast, anticipating the doorbell at any moment and not wanting a gob full of clagging ham-and-cheese sandwich to impede his planned and expansive welcome. Half an hour later, heartburn set in. His body felt as if it was imploding and, hunched, he limped to the bathroom for antacid. He gave himself a long look in the mirror. Despite a haircut the day before and a long shower and good shave this morning, he didn’t look good. His eyes were slightly sunken and a little red from the discomfort; his face was pale. He looked at his hairline and cursed it for having receded, even at a mercifully slow pace, since his teenage years.

  ‘Pull yourself together, mate,’ he muttered at himself. ‘It’s only Oriana.’

  Of all the people he’d ever known, Oriana was the one with whom he’d felt most at ease and most alive. No one he’d met since had inspired such feelings of heady levelness. Those teenage years when the two of them believed they were pioneers, that they alone had the answers to the most complex questions the universe could ever throw at humankind. Back then, they could talk through entire days and into the early hours while they sorted out the problems of the world, solving poverty, finding a solution to the nuclear question, tearing down the greenhouse effect, pulling the ozone layer tight closed again, saving the whale and fighting for peace. All the while, limbs entwined, fingers knitted.

  Jed smiled kindly at himself. ‘I believed I knew more about the human condition than any poet, any philosopher.’ He laughed. ‘I could have lectured the world on What Love Means.’

  He felt better, looked around the bathroom: no bristles in the sink, plenty of loo roll, toilet seat wiped and lid closed. He was ready for Oriana to walk back into his life. He was as prepared for this as he’d been unprepared for when she left. It was as if he knew, he always knew, that she’d never be gone for good. She was always destined to return. Fate had decreed it – you’re not given a love that vast without being enabled to bring it to fruition.

  Back in the sitting room, Jed flicked on the television. There was an old John Wayne movie playing. He had his phone to hand, a glass of water within reach, the Saturday papers neatly folded at his side. While he waited for Oriana, John Wayne was there to show him what it is to be a man. Everything was ready. Jed waited.

  * * *

  Back in the Bedwells’ apartment, Oriana wondered what to do. She’d been curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea for a while, thinking about Louis, looking around her, grateful for so many reminders of the Bedwells’ place as it had been, as well as appreciating the changes of the New and the Now. She intended to visit Lilac but found herself feeling quite nervous about it. It would be all right if there was some magic guarantee that she’d find nothing changed but she had to acknowledge that Lilac was now in her eighties. Malachy had warned Oriana that since George’s death, Lilac’s feistiness had been smothered and her joie de vivre was these days sung in a minor key
. Oriana anticipated that to confront the changes in Lilac would be far harder than seeing Louis’ flat modernized – and she couldn’t even bring herself to do that.

  She walked around the ballroom, wondering if Malachy ever said ‘come in to my ballroom’ to a girlfriend. No, it wasn’t Malachy’s style, not even in an ironic way. Jed, though, would have lots of fun with it. Where was Jed? Had he forgotten? It was almost two in the afternoon. Should she phone? She’d wait a while longer. She came to the tilted draughtsman’s table and sat at it, sweeping the back of her hand over the vast surface area. It had been a while – tables like these were uncommon these days – but this was undoubtedly her domain. You could put Oriana behind such a desk, anywhere in the world, and she’d know what to do.

  * * *

  Lilac Camfield was distracted from John Wayne swaggering around the television screen by the sight of the doorbell. She quite liked the discordance of the senses in old age. She couldn’t hear the doorbell so her son had rigged up a contraption that lit a light bulb when anyone pressed the buzzer outside. She could see John Wayne on the screen at the other end of the room but she couldn’t read the Radio Times right in front of her. She couldn’t remember what she’d had for breakfast but she could recall the precise taste and texture of a millefeuille she’d had for tea in Paris fifty years ago. There was John Wayne – over there, in the far corner of her room. He was very cross. She knew this because he was bellowing in her ear via the enormous headphones her son had given her so she didn’t deafen the neighbours with the level of volume she required these days. Ingenious! A long length of wire suctioning out the sound from the Box and delivering it right into her lugholes. Her granddaughter had told Lilac that the headphones made her look like a pilot.

  ‘A who, darling?’

  ‘A pilot, Granny – a man who flies an aeroplane.’

  Lilac sincerely hoped that there were female pilots flying planes these days, otherwise Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson had taken to the skies for nothing.

  Oh, the doorbell! She’d quite forgotten! The light bulb was winking and blinking while John Wayne was shooting and killing. What an exciting afternoon! Is someone at the door? I wonder who on earth that can be? What day is it? Lilac removed the headphones and, on the second attempt, levered herself out of her chair. She went to the front door, able to hear the bell as she approached; the persistence of which, rather than annoy her, was of some comfort.

  ‘Oh hullo, Oriana,’ Lilac said. Because it seemed like yesterday. It all seemed like yesterday.

  For a while, sitting opposite each other, Lilac and Oriana just looked at each other in awe. Lilac’s expression was one of pure pride; Oriana meanwhile marvelled at how small Lilac was. Did all people shrink this much or had Lilac been granted some Lewis Carroll magic? The clock gently counted off the seconds, its mellow tock seeming to stretch time a little longer than normal. Oriana looked around; there were fewer trinkets than she remembered.

  ‘Where are all the bits and bobs, Lilac?’

  ‘They are in homes across Derbyshire,’ Lilac laughed, with an expansive wave. ‘I gave them to the cancer shops, dear.’ She paused. ‘One doesn’t need stuff – not at my age.’ Oriana thought of some ship, currently transporting the bulk of her own belongings, most of which she didn’t really need either.

  ‘They were so pesky to dust.’ Lilac interrupted Oriana’s thoughts. ‘I’m a little clumsier than I was – there again, why should someone in their dotage fret about dusting?’ Lilac caught her eye and took it upwards, to the corners of the ceiling where glitter hung in the cobwebs.

  ‘To throw glitter at the cobwebs is far better than dusting the cobwebs away,’ Oriana told her. Lilac smiled graciously.

  ‘Rafe – you remember Rafe, don’t you? He’s forever saying, Mother – let me. He came in with a feather duster once – it made him look like Louis. You remember Louis, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I remember Louis. And I haven’t forgotten Rafe either,’ Oriana said. ‘I always thought he was so – exotic. Because he was the oldest of us kids and he went off travelling and came back with a beard and tattoos and so many stories.’

  ‘He’s a dull old accountant these days, my dear. But kind – I am lucky. He’s very kind. He has a family – I have two grandchildren. My favourite is my granddaughter Ruby because she reminds me a little of you.’

  ‘How old is Ruby?’ Oriana asked, now sitting very close to Lilac, holding her hand.

  Lilac looked momentarily confused. Then she smiled mischievously. It was the same as the cobwebs – if age dared to impede her movement or her memory, call its bluff. ‘About this big,’ she declared, gesturing at a height appropriate for a child. ‘However old that is.’ Lilac paused. Oriana thirty-four? Did Oriana tell her she was thirty-four years old? ‘How long has it been, Oriana?’

  ‘A long long time.’

  ‘George died.’

  ‘I know. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Louis died too. You came to the funeral.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘But you didn’t stay.’

  ‘I know – I’m sorry.’

  ‘You couldn’t.’

  There was no accusation, no blame.

  ‘No,’ Oriana said. ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  Lilac’s bluntness was something that Oriana always found refreshing rather than confrontational.

  ‘No,’ said Oriana. Lilac’s pale eyes did not leave her face, travelling over her features like a well-worn route. She’d always been one of the few people in Oriana’s life with whom she felt she could be transparent. Time had not altered this.

  ‘I can’t, Lilac. I don’t want to.’ Oriana shrugged. ‘Even now I’m here, I feel absolutely no need to. I’m used to being estranged. It’s been years – he made me leave when I was so young. That’s what they’ll say in the obituary, I suppose. Robin Taylor had one daughter, Oriana, from whom he was estranged.’

  ‘How terribly morbid for such a lovely afternoon,’ Lilac said with her eyebrow raised archly. ‘And my dear – I wasn’t referring to your father, but to Malachy.’

  * * *

  Robin was eating tuna straight from the tin, forking it into his mouth while looking out of the window. He needed to rest his eyes from the canvas where reality stared confrontationally at him from the surface, while meaning was enmeshed and trapped deep behind it. Gazing outside helped because outside, especially at Windward, depth and meaning were boundless. There was no surface, just layers and layers of colour and texture and sound and scent.

  He watched her as she mooched around. He knew exactly which route she’d take, where she’d stop, the pace of her walk, what would catch her eye. He knew she wouldn’t look up. He knew this had nothing to do with there being so much else to occupy her gaze. He just knew she wouldn’t look to the windows of the place in which she’d grown up. As Robin watched Oriana, he thought of all the women he’d ever painted, and he thought of all the women who’d ever been in his life. He looked again at Oriana – it should be so simple. There was nothing to her – she had even features, a neatness to her figure, a containedness that kept the surface details in check and the workings behind them under control. Robin continued to look at his daughter who was currently sitting on one of the old giant olive oil urns which had been specifically positioned and placed on its side by Randall Peterson during one of his stays at Windward. Robin thought how odd it was that out of all the women he’d ever known – even Rachel, about whom he felt such searing intensity – it was Oriana he found most difficult to paint.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  She’s at Windward.

  Jed stared at Malachy’s text message. He felt at once relieved but humiliated too. And he felt very, very stupid. Of course Mel on reception wouldn’t have given out his home address. Of course Oriana would have headed for ‘home’ – because she had no reason to believe anything other than that’s where he lived. At Windward.

  When Malachy’s
text first came through, after momentary immobility Jed had charged around his flat, ricocheting off walls, trying to work out the order in which to do things. Then he sat down heavily, swamped by the weight of his brother’s words. At first, he read them as accusatory, as if Malachy had deleted you idiot from the end. Then, they became a declaration, underscored with alarming permanence. She’s at Windward. Full stop. Malachy, who hated texting and was always as brief as possible, had taken the time to add a defining full stop.

  Now Jed’s mind was a tumble of questions. How long had she been there? And why hadn’t Malachy told him sooner? And why hadn’t Oriana made contact as soon as she’d realized her mistake? But the fact remained that she was there because of him. He had to concede it wasn’t her mistake to make. She was the mistaken. He’d misled her – straight back to Malachy.

  Say she doesn’t want to live in Sheffield?

  And then he thought, just because Malachy’s told me she’s at Windward, does it follow that she’ll want to leave and come with me? He pondered this quietly for a while, before concluding that surely Sheffield was preferable to Windward, for Oriana of all people.

  And then he reread Malachy’s words.

  She’s at Windward.

  The bluntness was akin to that of a kidnapper. It was a challenge, as if there was a ransom. That made most sense of all. So Jed set off to rescue her.

  It was four o’clock when he hared up the driveway. Oriana didn’t hear him. But when the front door opened and wasn’t closed again, she knew it was Jed. Quietly, she stepped down from the stool behind the draughtsman’s desk at which she’d been sitting since returning from Lilac’s. She walked quickly through the ballroom absorbing, as if by emotional osmosis, all the details as she went.

  ‘Oriana?’