The Way Back Home (11 page)

And now, the sash window over at the house was juddered down and the shadowy figure disappeared from view, back into the mystery of the apartment. The girls waited. Then they looked at each other again before scuttling out of the sty and over to the painting. It had fallen face down just beyond the French drain. Emma flipped it over and both girls gasped.

Bosoms.

How utterly thrilling.

Quickly, they carried the painting back to the sty and propped it against a wall. Their hearts pounded at the bases of their throats, their stomachs knotted and their eyes danced – they were just old enough to grasp the illicitness of it all – bosoms in a painting that they had kidnapped, bosoms that were enough to make a grown man swear. Fervently, they explored every inch of the painting with their eyes, with their fingers. Parts of the canvas had oils so thick they had been whipped up into peaks and ridges like a storm-lashed sea. The paint was still pliable and the children fiddled, pressing with thumbs and digging with their nails. There was an area of the picture – the lady’s neck – that they decided must be the fuck-you part because the paint was still fresh and tacky and the sweary man had done a bad job trying to keep within the outline.

It was like skating by fingertip – the girls swirled and tracked around the wetter paint, leaving their marks and thinking it looked better. Not perfect. It still didn’t look like a nice, smooth, elegant neck – but at least it no longer looked as though the flesh had been grabbed away from the lady’s throat.

* * *

‘Christ.’

Jed had been in a slump on the sofa for two hours, saying nothing other than Christ. Malachy laughed at him, but privately was grateful for the ground coffee his brother had bought the day before, and he made a pot so strong that he really could stand a teaspoon in it.

‘Are you staying for lunch?’

‘I can’t talk about food.’

‘At least you’ve stopped talking to Jesus.’

‘Fat lot of help He gave me.’ Jed paused. ‘Christ.’

He pressed gingerly around his eye sockets as if fully expecting to find fissures and shards. Unbelievably, his nose appeared to be straight and he still had all his teeth. The coffee helped and, after an hour, he said yes to the scrambled eggs and bacon Malachy offered to cook for them.

‘I am a prize idiot,’ Jed said, ‘and I have only myself to blame. If I ever even mention the word
Scotch
again, you are within your rights to have me sectioned.’

Malachy laughed. His brother could always make him laugh – Jed could always bring a genuine smile to anyone: teachers ready to dish out detention, parents about to ground him, even girlfriends on the verge of dumping him. It was something Malachy had quietly begrudged him their whole lives. Not so much because it got Jed out of all manner of scrapes, but more because it seemed to amplify Malachy’s diametric default. Jed the lively one, Malachy the quiet one. Jed the life and soul. Malachy the boy in the background. Jed who could get away with blue murder. Malachy who should know better. Jed the brother the girls flocked to. Malachy the brother they didn’t.

But today he looked at Jed and thought, mate, I do
not
envy you your hangover.

‘Stay tonight,’ he said. ‘You’re probably still over the limit, anyway.’

Jed thought about it. Stretched. Slumped. Straightened. Shrugged. ‘I’d better go,’ he said, ‘but thanks.’

‘Don’t leave it so long next time,’ said Malachy.

His brother grinned. ‘It’s nothing personal.’ Then he thought about it, about the fact that he wasn’t entirely sure what Malachy did in between the times he saw him. Apart from fending off thieving cleaner girlfriends and caring for deranged aged artists. What did Malachy do when he wasn’t at the gallery, or in Robin’s studio? Where was he on a standard Tuesday evening, or on a random Sunday? Who was he with on any given Friday night? For Jed, Malachy and Windward were indivisible, one and the same, always there; solid, little changed, patiently pleased to accommodate him. Just then, he felt badly about this.

‘Come to mine,’ he said to Malachy. ‘We’ll go out next time.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘Good. I’ll phone – we’ll arrange it.’

‘Let’s.’

With Jed gone, Malachy went to check on Robin who refused to move from his chair let alone acknowledge that Malachy was even there. Malachy always thought how disconcerting it was that a human being could emanate such coldness whilst simultaneously radiating such fierce heat. He left Robin the
Sunday Times
, on top of which he placed a glass of water and the tablets. Robin’s apartment seemed particularly fetid today and Malachy stepped outside and walked into the gardens, head back, breathing deeply. That afternoon, spring had finally become a tantalizing glimpse through a crack in winter, a tangible quality in the light, a benign edge to the breeze, a shy scent. He walked around the back of the house, automatically checking the pointing and paintwork around his windows which always begged for attention. These days, though, there had to be a residents’ meeting to sanction anything, another to agree contractors and argue costs and a couple more just for the sake of it. Long gone were the days of an assortment of ladders and paint pots and everyone mucking in with each other’s Sunday DIY tasks. The sinking fund into which he had to put money up front was a bottomless pit that seemed to produce little visible return. It pissed him off. It irked him that the original residents appeared to have less say than the new. If anything, they were kept just on the periphery of the loop and decisions were cleverly presented to them as fait accompli.

‘Hi, Malachy!’

‘Hi, Malachy!’

The de la Mare girls bounded over the grass to him like excited ponies.

‘Guess what?’

‘Guess
what
!’

Kate, the younger, was like a lively echo to her sister.

‘What?’ said Malachy, patting them as if they really were ponies.

‘We heard him say
fuck
and there are
bosoms
.’

Priceless. Malachy looked around hoping that Paula or Rob were in earshot but their parents were nowhere in sight. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Oh – we’re not swearing on purpose,’ said Emma, ‘we’re just repeating.’

‘Repeating,’ Malachy said thoughtfully.

‘Bosoms and fuck!’ said a delighted Kate.

‘Care to elaborate?’ said Malachy.

‘Come and see,’ said Emma.

‘
Come. And
.
See
,’ said Kate, tugging at his sleeve all the way to the pigsty.

The three of them contemplated the painting in silence for some time, like art critics at a private view.

‘I did
this
bit,’ said Emma eventually, proudly wafting her hand at the canvas.

‘No, you didn’t – I did,’ said Kate.

‘Did
not.
You did
that
bit – see, that same colour is still on your hands,’ and she splayed her own fingers for emphasis.

‘Ladies,’ said Malachy diplomatically. He always referred to them as ladies, never girls, and they loved it. He scratched his chin and breathed against the crook of his finger, deep in thought. It was the first time he’d seen this work and yet it had obviously been in production for some time. He recognized the subject as Rachel. Here was the Rachel he remembered. The painting was an ode to a ruinous passion so profoundly deep it imploded. The painting was a pictorial love letter because words were impotent to describe the breadth of feeling. The execution was mostly sublime – the throat, however, was simply an execution. The throat was mid-murder. Malachy thought, this painting will give me nightmares. He glanced at the girls and thought thank God for bosoms – that’s the part of the painting that they’ll remember.

‘Can we keep it?’

‘No,’ said Malachy.

‘But he said
fuck you
and threw it out of the window!’ said Kate.

‘He chucked it out because he messed it up,’ Emma explained ‘but we mended her neck. See? So why can’t we keep it if he doesn’t want it? It can live
here
.’

‘Because, sometimes artists suffer for their art – they do almighty battle with their paintings and that’s what makes their work so brilliant. The discord between artist and painting is what gives it the depth, so many layers, such luminosity.’ The girls stared at Malachy blankly. ‘It’s the equivalent of your mum putting you on the naughty step. And then coming back for you.’

‘I’ve never been on the naughty step,’ said Kate.

‘Oh yes, you have,’ said her elder sister.

‘Well – not like the naughty step, then,’ said Malachy. ‘It’s like having a big row with someone you love and going off in a huff.’

Emma thought Malachy was using too many unnecessary words. The artist had messed up his picture. That was the sum of it, surely. He could paint another quite easily. This one had been thrown away – until she and her sister had kindly rescued and resuscitated it.

‘Do you think he’ll at least
like
how we’ve fixed it?’ she said.

He’ll go absolutely berserk, thought Malachy, who hoped that an ambiguous hum and a hand on Emma’s head would suffice.

Into the time warp of the pigsty, Paula’s voice filtered through, calling her girls to come in now, come in for tea. He escorted them back out into the daylight, around the house, along the side of the driveway, across the front lawn and through the cherry walk towards the Ice House.

‘We think the painting is of that lady who came here yesterday,’ Emma said.

‘Sorry?’ Malachy was only half listening. How on earth am I going to get that canvas back to Robin?

‘The painting – the lady looks a bit like the one who came here yesterday.’

‘Oh yes?’ Ought I to take it to Robin – or let him retrieve it in his own time?

‘Yes, the one who came in the blue car. Who had her head on the steering wheel and we thought she was asleep.’

‘Of course.’ I could leave it where it might have landed when he threw it.

‘Anyway, she looked quite a bit like the lady in the painting. But with clothes on, of course.’

But Robin will still see what’s happened to it. ‘Indeed,’ said Malachy. It might be prudent for me to tell him first, then bring the painting to him.

‘Binky,’ Kate butted in.

It was as if a guillotine had sliced off Malachy’s meandering thoughts. He stared at Kate. ‘What?’

‘
Binky
,’ she repeated.

‘The
lady
,’ Emma said, weary of yet another grown-up doing that annoying half-listening thing which meant she’d have to repeat it all again. ‘The lady who came yesterday – who we think looks like the one in the painting.’

‘A lady who came yesterday? Here? A lady who looks like the one in the painting?’ Malachy stared from one girl to the other. ‘What did she look like?’

The sisters glanced at each other and regarded him as if he was completely stupid.

‘Like the lady in the painting?’ said Emma slowly, as if Malachy was utterly dense.

‘And she said her name was
Binky
?’

‘The lady was called Binky,’ said Kate conversationally. ‘She told us. She went for a walk with your brother.’

‘Hey, Malachy! Coming in for a cuppa?’ Paula de la Mare was coming across the lawn to meet them. But Malachy shook his head and walked away without even saying goodbye to the girls. He strode back to the house fast, chanting you bastard, Jed – you total bastard.

Binky.

Binky had been Malachy’s dog when he was a boy. A tufty mongrel to whom Oriana had taught all manner of tricks which a slightly peeved Malachy had told her were demeaning. There’d been dogs before and after Binky – but none so special to him.

The woman in the painting was Rachel, Robin’s muse, his wife. Beautiful and brittle and little more than a child when she’d come over from America for Robin. In the painting she was a little older, but still young – though her physical vulnerability was now underscored with a canny awareness of the destructive power of her beauty. But Emma and Kate had never met Rachel. And Rachel was forty years older now than in the painting. And Rachel had never given a flying fuck about Binky. So, if some woman had been here yesterday, who looked like the subject of the painting and said her name was Binky, that woman could only have been Oriana.

Oriana had come back to Windward.

She’d been here.

She’d been here with Jed.

He didn’t say.

Was that before she came into the gallery? Or after?

Jed had said nothing.

Why had Jed not said?

Bastard.

Fuck him.

That is
it
, thought Malachy. Fuck him, the bastard. Fuck
him
.

When I was three I needed a haircut. If people talk about their earliest memories, invariably it’s specific events which they recall. My earliest memory was not an event – it was something said about me.

When I was three I needed a haircut. I remember my father hissing at my mother, ‘The child needs a haircut – it can’t see where it’s going.’ And my mother said, ‘Yes, it can.’ And my mother suddenly saw me and started shouting at my father: ‘She! She! She’s not an
It
, she’s a
She,
you heartless bastard!’ But I knew that she knew that I knew that she’d also called me ‘it’.

That was my earliest memory, when I was three. It remains far more cutting than what followed.

My mother hoicked me onto her hip and plonked me on the edge of the table. I distinctly remember the table that day because there were all these wine bottles on it in a perfect, accidental grouping. They were mostly but not quite empty and one was on its side. The light slicked the glass like varnish and the glass was the colour of glossy black cherries. They looked so beautiful, like a detail in a seventeenth-century Dutch or Flemish still life – like something you might spy in a corner of a Frans Hals painting – just a perfect little vignette away from the main focus of the canvas. I remember being mesmerized by these bottles; the grace and stillness a haven away from the seethe between my parents.

There’s something else I recall hearing that day. Perhaps not so much a sound as a sensation – the slow ratcheting crunch of scissors against my hair and the sharp snag of any disparate strands caught around my mother’s fingers. It hurt. You could, quite literally, say that ‘it’ hurt because when I was three, that’s who I was. Everything hurt that day.