The Way Back Home

by Freya North

‘Just coming.’

  They came across each other in the hallway. Jed’s hair was in haphazard soft spikes of frustration and the provenance of his flushed cheeks was the same. But his smile was expansive and there was tenderness and relief in his eyes that made it easy to be welcomed into his hug.

  ‘Daft bugger,’ he said into the top of Oriana’s head and she wasn’t sure to whom he referred.

  ‘Where’s your stuff?’

  ‘In your old room.’

  ‘Did you stay the night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes – here.’

  ‘Where here?’ He said it casually.

  ‘In your old room,’ Oriana said.

  And then Jed heard this as he’d first read Malachy’s She’s at Windward. With the silent you idiot at the end.

  ‘Shall I take you to your new room, then?’

  ‘In Sheffield?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at her. He didn’t expect her to jump for joy – but a grin or just a glint would be good. ‘You’ll love it,’ he said. ‘Time for a change,’ he said. ‘For something new.’

  Oriana thought, he’s right. She thought, Malachy and Jed always knew what was right for me. It was just so peculiar that their theories were usually diametrically opposed. Sheffield. Somewhere new. That in itself had to be a good start.

  ‘I’m intrigued,’ she said.

  ‘Sheffield – the City of Intrigue,’ Jed said, gesticulating as if it was written in lights. They collected her bags and headed out.

  At the front door, though Oriana knew she had everything, she was suddenly acutely aware that one thing was missing. She hadn’t forgotten to take something with her, she’d forgotten to leave it behind. A goodbye.

  ‘I’ll just be a moment,’ she said to Jed. ‘I need the loo.’

  Back in the apartment she stood halfway along the corridor in the silence and wondered how she could ever have thought that the space had been Jed’s. Malachy was everywhere.

  ‘Goodbye, Malachy,’ she whispered. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘So we’re dropping Cat’s car back at her place first?’ Jed was standing by his, when Oriana came down the front steps.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘We’re invited in for a cuppa. You’ll love Ben.’

  ‘Lead on, lady, lead on,’ said Jed, hopping into his car. He popped on his sunglasses and placed his phone in a cradle on the dashboard. He turned on the engine and music bounced about inside the car like beads on a drum. While Jed crunched his car over the gravel in a seventeen-point turn, Oriana looked back at the house.

  Windward wasn’t just the building. Windward wasn’t held up by pillars and pediments. Windward wasn’t defined by a ten-acre plot. Windward wasn’t a place, it was the genius loci, the spirit of a place. Every new footstep was merely covering a previously trodden and more important path pioneered years ago. The fancy cars now parked in gaudy neatness? They belonged to visitors, Oriana decided, not residents – regardless of how much money they now paid to be there. Curtains at windows and sleek new kitchens were temporary, as removable and crushable as doll’s house furniture. Front door locks were a laughing matter; they were inessential.

  All around her, on this beautiful day as spring turned into early summer, in the leaves and through the breeze, from each nodding bluebell and the glint off every single blade of grass – everything spoke of the living history of Windward. The moss-matted pots in the shrubbery and the lichen-licked statuary on the lawns, the spurt of the fountain and the gnarl of the fencing – they all told of who’d been who and what had happened when, in this world within the world. The soul of the place was in the details; seen and unseen, man-made or intrinsic. It sparkled in the glitter thrown at cobwebs, it lived on in the secret kisses hidden by corridors and it was epitomized by the breathless wonder of following the sweep of an old queen climbing the staircase.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  She’s gone, Malachy thought to himself as he turned in to the driveway. She’s gone. He could sense it. Just as animals can sense a gathering storm, so Malachy detected the flatness in his home, the return to monochrome, the sound of silence. He sat in his car outside the house for a while letting a conga line of memories encircle him. Jed and Oriana and Louis, Lilac, George, the Glaub children Plum and Willow – they all danced around him while Rod and Ronnie provided the music and Patty Glaub directed and Gordon Bryce captured it all in his scratchy line drawings. And away they went, the memory-makers and past-stealers, down the long driveway and away. Malachy tapped his fingers lightly on the steering wheel, grabbed the Chinese takeaway from the passenger seat and walked towards the building. At the last moment, he changed course and went around the side, to Robin’s.

  ‘I thought it would make a change from oxtail soup,’ he said, raising the takeaway bag as an explanation.

  Robin peered from behind his canvas and stared hard at Malachy. ‘You bought me a takeaway meal?’

  Malachy shrugged. ‘I fancied it.’

  Robin continued to eye him levelly. ‘She’s gone, you know.’

  Abruptly, Malachy focused on Robin who had returned to painting, humming tunelessly, casually.

  ‘You saw her?’

  Robin looked around the side of the canvas again. ‘Yes.’

  ‘She came to see you?’

  ‘No.’ Robin sighed as if Malachy was boring him. ‘I just saw her outside, whilst she sat in the midst of one of her daydreams.’

  Malachy said nothing.

  ‘Well,’ said Robin lightly, ‘she’s gone.’ He paused and when he picked up, his voice was lower, softer. ‘I didn’t need to see her leave to know she’s no longer here.’ He paused again. ‘And that’s why you’re here too. With your food in paper bags and cardboard boxes. You don’t need to go into your home to know that she’s not here, do you? And you don’t want to go into your home because you know she’s gone. That’s why you’ve brought your meal for two here – of all places.’

  ‘Do you want to eat?’ Malachy wasn’t sure whether Robin was trying to empathize or rile.

  ‘No.’

  I don’t either, Malachy thought to himself. He stood up and made to leave. At the door, Robin called after him.

  ‘You can put half in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Children starving in Africa and all that.’

  Malachy had no appetite and left the entire contents of the bag in Robin’s kitchen.

  * * *

  Home was as it always was. Calm and welcoming but, just then, it was a restaurant with nothing remotely tempting on the menu. He didn’t know which room he wanted to be in – none appealed. He looked in the newly stocked cupboards and fridge but nothing sparked an appetite. He was too tired to read, too restless to watch television, too distracted to write his novel, too introverted to call anyone and say hey, let’s meet for a drink. He didn’t want a shower to wash away the morning just yet. It was pathetically early to think about going to bed. It was Saturday evening and this alone irritated him. The pressure of the one night of the week when one oughtn’t to be pacing around, harangued by the reverberating echo of solitary footsteps and crowded thoughts.

  His blue pullover was on the arm of the sofa. He was just about to pick it up and put it to his nose when he stopped himself. You’re a ridiculous sad fuck, he thought. And then he thought, this time yesterday this time yesterday this time yesterday. The proximity of it quite set his clenched teeth on edge. He thought, I can’t stay here all evening. This is all wrong.

  He hovered outside Lilac’s front door, clearly envisaging her watching the television, her enormous headphones on and a dainty glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream to her side. Oh, to sit alongside her, invisible. He’d happily just sit there and lip-read Saturday-night television, take comfort from not being on his own in a room goaded by ghosts. Lilac, he realized, was the only one left who would know how he felt. But was that fair on Lilac? She’d want to busy about, to fuss over him, to make him tea, to fan out ginger biscuits on a doily
on a china plate. She loved her television: ‘my programmes’ she called them, as if they’d been commissioned exclusively for her and were beamed into her home only. She was old, she was to be protected from worrying. And she’d worry about Malachy, if he let her.

  He slunk down the wall until he sat with his back to Lilac’s door. Just going to see Lilac. That’s what they used to say, all of them. They’d say, just going to Louis’. But they’d say, just going to see Lilac – as if Lilac was more than a person, she was a colour, a soft filter on the world.

  It struck him that with Lilac, they never went to talk to her; they visited her because they wanted to be read like an open book. You have X-ray vision, Lilac, he once told her.

  ‘Don’t push her away,’ she’d told him years ago, when he’d gone to see her, to fiddle absent-mindedly with the ornaments on her windowsill. He remembered the feeling – comforted and alarmed.

  I’m not pushing her away.

  She just wants to give. Don’t shrug your shoulders at me, Malachy.

  It’s a timing thing, Lilac.

  I was married at nineteen.

  We don’t do that these days. Anyway – she’s fifteen. That’s just stupid. And anyway – Jed wants her.

  Come and sit down.

  And after it happened, Lilac went to see Malachy. In the hospital and when he convalesced at home. She just sat beside him and patted his hand. She knew everything already and she didn’t need to tell him that.

  The pipes in the house suddenly groaned out their cracking great yawns, as if they’d been waiting for the commercial break in Saturday-night television to do so. It brought Malachy out of the then and back into the now. He stood and rang Lilac’s doorbell, estimating to the second the process from her seeing the warning light to her opening the door.

  ‘Well, hullo, Malachy dear, have you come to see me?’

  ‘I have indeed – unless you’re entertaining?’

  ‘Just the Prime Minister and a few hangers-on,’ she said.

  It was banter they’d repeated often over the last decade.

  ‘I’m having a sherry – care to join me?’

  At this hour, he could ask for tea, he could ask for a glass of water, but she’d bring him sherry, he knew that.

  He toasted her health and took a sip. It was as hideous as it was settling; like Gaviscon on heartburn.

  ‘Well!’ Lilac declared. ‘Oriana popped in this afternoon to see me.’

  In a sly instant, she assessed Malachy’s reaction. She did love the way everyone always thought her a batty old fruitcake. Being of diminutive stature, she’d been able to play the little-old-lady card for many years – and it was a role she relished. It won her the patience and kindness of others and amused her no end. Malachy’s response to Oriana’s name was immediate, as if the twisted vines of a fairy tale paralysed him before he thrashed his way out.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I found her.’

  ‘Don’t you push her away this time,’ Lilac chided him. ‘Don’t you push her away.’

  ‘She’s gone, Lilac,’ Malachy said kindly, as if Lilac was deluding herself.

  ‘Well, fetch her back,’ she objected, as if he was the silliest boy in the world.

  Back home, he was finally ready to eat. He did think about the Chinese food he’d ordered and wondered whether Robin had touched it. He didn’t really know why he’d bought it, it was his least favourite cuisine. He’d been seduced by nostalgia, not the menu. It had been thoroughly exotic when they were young and Oriana would eat with her fingers, unaware of the way she cooed in delight as the tastes hit her mouth. Today, he’d bought it even though he knew she wouldn’t be here when he returned. He’d bought it because it was something concrete to enable him to say I remember, Oriana, I remember.

  He piled a plate with slabs of bread, tomatoes, onion marmalade and Stilton and took it into the ballroom. He sat down, flicked on the television and chose what Lilac had been watching. A chill seeped over to him and he glanced at the open window. For a split second he thought, maybe – just maybe. But pragmatism slammed the thought down. He ignored the window. There was a plate of fresh food on his lap and Bruce Forsyth on the television and everything around him could sod off for a while.

  He continued to watch whatever came on next. He refused to check his phone for text messages – he detested the enslaved, conditioned need that he witnessed all around him. People came into the gallery to look at paintings and ended up glancing away from what was on the walls to the graffiti of abbreviated nonsense on the screens welded to the palms of their hands. What would he find anyway? Jed saying Cheers! I’ve got her now. Oriana saying Hi I’m in Sheffield. Oriana saying Thank you, Oriana saying Goodbye. Or the wretched screen saying nothing at all.

  It was cold now and Malachy was tired from the late night last night and the tumult of emotion that had begun early yesterday evening. He reached for his pullover and put it on, unable to do anything about the scent of Oriana woven around every thread. It was fragrant and awful in equal measures; a comfort and a tease. He’d wash it tomorrow, but tonight he’d sleep in it. He went over to the window and pushed it down hard. It sent a wave of cold air through the room and caused a flap and a waft somewhere behind him. He turned in the direction of the sound and noticed a little white triangle, the edge of a piece of paper, jutting out over the edge of his father’s desk. So often he’d thought of moving that table out, perhaps storing it in the communal area in the bowels of the house. Orlando told him to chuck it but Malachy would never part with it though it hadn’t been used in years. The last time it had paper on it was when his father had sat behind it. Malachy went over and looked. He took his hand to his mouth to keep his voice from exposing the surge of emotion.

  Oriana had drawn two views of Windward.

  The back elevation and the view from precisely where Malachy now sat; from where she’d sat, for God knows how long earlier that day, waiting to see where life was going to take her. Her architectural drawing had always been extraordinary – he remembered his parents murmuring about it when she’d been young and the Windward children would while away Saturday afternoons or whole days in the holidays right there in the Bedwells’ ballroom. Gently, he traced the lines with his finger as if running them over the walls themselves, Oriana’s hand under his. Though the drawings were purely linear and in black pen, he could feel where stone became wood, where space became glass, where sun came in and brought warmth.

  Robin never liked the way she drew; that detail and precision controlled her style while colour and emotion dictated his. Use your heart! he’d shout at her. Don’t draw what you see – paint what you feel! And yet, as Malachy gazed and gazed at the drawing, everything Oriana felt about Windward was delineated and demonstrative. This was the building she’d loved and hated, that she’d left and returned to. It was massive and steady, it was cold and welcoming. She knew it off by heart though she was a stranger to it now. And there was heart in the drawing; it beat life into it and it rose out of it.

  The love was right there, just under her signature.

  Oriana

  x

  She’d made her mark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Jed vividly remembered his mother gently scolding him when Binky the dog arrived on Malachy’s birthday. Binky was a very small wire-haired terrier, possibly too small, probably because she’d been taken from her mother a couple of weeks too early. Jette had bought her from the farmers’ market, from a man on the fringes who had a squirming litter in a crate. The puppy was unsteady and shy and the family watched as she took one faltering step forwards before taking two slinking ones backwards. Malachy was pensively sitting on his knees right beside the cardboard box Binky had arrived in. His father sat quietly at his desk – a pencil behind his ear, his spectacles low on his nose. Jette was standing motionless between the windows, smiling benevolently at the scene, her long slender arms folded loosely. But Jed couldn’t stay still; Jed was keen to welcome the newest member of
the family even though the puppy was for Malachy. Jed bounced and laughed and rolled on the floor and offered Binky a succession of things to play with. He tickled her and scooped her up and kissed her. His mother had chided him – not because Binky belonged to Malachy, but because Jed was not being helpful.

  Let her come to you, Jette said. If you fuss over her too much, you’ll push her away. Let her find her feet; leave her alone for a bit.

  Watching Oriana now, finally in his flat, he remembered his mother’s words. Today, it was as hard for him as it had been all those years ago. His instinct was to flap around her, offering tea or coffee or juice or water. And biscuits or toast or some fruit. And to sit or stand or give her the guided tour. And to read the papers or watch TV or choose a DVD. And play music or the radio or just chat. To talk and talk about all the history they’d shared and all the things they’d done since. To stay in or go out. But he allowed Jette’s words to guide him.

  Don’t fuss. Let her come to you. Don’t push her away. Not this time. Not again.

  It was excruciating though, just being a passive observer. He watched as Oriana thoughtfully circumnavigated the room, passing and pausing at things he was screaming inside to talk about. She was perusing his CDs. He wanted to say do you remember? Do you remember the crush you had on Damon Albarn? Has she got to ‘S’? Has she seen that the Stones and Springsteen and Stewart are all waiting for her? Do you remember Rod and Ronnie coming to Windward?

  How could any of them forget?

  Eventually, she came full circle. Finally, she turned to Jed.

  ‘It’s lovely here,’ she said, smiling. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Do you still like Bounty bars?’ It tumbled out. His mother would be tutting, saying hold off! a rich tea biscuit will do!

  But Oriana laughed. ‘I haven’t had one in years.’

  ‘I have one – I bought it this morning. Would you like it?’

  She was grinning, really grinning. Her eyes were crinkling. ‘You shouldn’t have – but yes, please.’