The Way Back Home (27 page)

Her father’s art, not for sale, on the wall opposite her. She realized she was looking at his work now without flinching. Could she remember these being painted? She couldn’t. She went over to them and stood very close, regarded the date. She’d have been in her mid-twenties, just graduating from the School of Engineering at Stanford University with her degree in architectural design. Did her father know she’d been the top-scoring student in her year? That she’d been granted a full needs-based scholarship because the department needed a student as gifted as her? Come to think of it, did her mother know?

‘Oriana?’

Malachy startled her back into the present. She’d been miles away, years away, back in California. She jumped and the spilled coffee ran in a zip-like scorch along her hand.

‘Ouch,’ Malachy said for her, taking the cups, walking to the back of the now empty gallery, calling over his shoulder, let me get you a tissue. ‘Here,’ he dabbed the wetness from her skin and frowned at the growing redness there. She saw how his eyebrow puckered above his patch with concern. He looked at her and she looked away quickly, guiltily even, as if she’d been caught staring right at his disability. ‘How does that feel?’ he asked. ‘Sore?’

She shrugged. ‘Ish.’

‘You ought to run it under the cold tap,’ he told her, his hand gently at her shoulder, leading her to the sink in the tiny kitchenette behind the stud wall at the back of the gallery. He turned on the tap and, standing behind her, so close that she could feel his breath through her hair, he took her wrist and let the peaks-cold water rush silkily over her skin. There they stood, not moving, though her hand was now freezing and his back was aching with the effort of keeping his body from pressing against hers.

He encased her hand in a tea towel, holding it between his. He told her to count to ten, for no other reason than to enable him to stay right there with her, to preserve the loaded silence, the closeness. Back in the gallery, they sat opposite each other at his desk, the surface busy with a scatter of brochures and artists’ details, pens and a laptop, various forms and a box of tissues, a glass of water, an uneaten chocolate bar. But nothing distracted Oriana or Malachy from sipping their coffee while wondering who might speak first and what they might say. Only the arrival of a visitor interrupted their genial silence. Malachy rose.

‘Don’t go,’ he whispered. ‘Stay awhile.’

She watched him. She thought, I could spend all day watching him. Just like I used to. Those times he didn’t know. And those times that he did.

* * *

She stayed in the gallery for over two hours. When people came in it was like the DJ interrupting the songs that they’d listened to on Malachy’s radio cassette recorder on Sunday afternoons at Windward during their youth. And, just as he had been back then, so today Malachy was equally expert at cutting out the extraneous so that nothing interrupted the music. He noticed her hair – it’s flicky, he said, it suits you. She liked his shirt. It was denim and well worn and worked well with his faded black jeans. She took a private snapshot of the base of his neck, where his collarbones met, the subtle suggestion of chest hair. So vividly could she recall how their differing heights had enabled her head to tuck under his chin, how she could raise her face so that her lips could kiss precisely this part of him. Did he remember that too? She looked over to him. Busy busy with his working day. He probably didn’t want to remember. She thought, why would he? It was probably the last thing he thought about because it was the furthest thing in his memory. Was there anyone who was less likely to want to revisit the past?

‘I’d better go,’ she said. Her phone showed three unread texts, all from Jed – and a missed call from him too.

Malachy made a gesture that was half shrug, half nod.

Why don’t you just say don’t go! Oriana desperately tried to telepathize as she rose to her feet. Just ask me to stay. Tell me to wait.

But he didn’t. He just nodded. No shrug. Just nodded as if he agreed, yes – you’d better go.

‘See you next haircut,’ he said lightly. He was standing, his hands in his pockets.

‘OK,’ Oriana said. ‘It’s a date.’ And she cringed because it was such a stupid thing to say. And it wasn’t a date. It was just Malachy saying something polite and jaunty.

They stood and looked at each other and she so wanted to kiss him. She’d be happy enough to place just a small one on his cheek. Had she, he would have taken his hands out of his pockets and put an arm lightly around her waist and kissed her back. But someone came into the gallery and it marked the end of their soundtrack for that afternoon.

Jed knew that haircuts didn’t take that long – not even a really good cut by Gay Colin. And instinctively he knew why Oriana was late, he knew where she’d been. But he didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want it to sound the way he knew it would sound. He didn’t want to say, it’s too late to cook now. He didn’t want Malachy between them. Instead, he welcomed Oriana back with a barrage of chat and cups of tea and come on! let’s go into town now! Let’s eat Mexican and have a drink before the concert starts.

Nothing like sharing nachos for spilling the metaphorical refried beans.

‘I went into the gallery and had a chat with Malachy.’

That must be the chilli that’s making Jed choke. Yes, that’s what it’ll be.

‘How is my older bro’?’

‘He’s fine.’

‘Was it busy? Is business good?’

‘He sold a print and a few cards while I was there – but there was a steady flow of visitors.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Yep.’

‘We should get him over – for a drink. Invite him to ours, cook him a meal. Take him out.’

And when their eyes locked, just for a moment, they knew that it was the most stupid suggestion because it was the last thing that any of them would want.

‘I haven’t seen him in ages,’ Jed mumbled between hasty mouthfuls. ‘I must give him a call.’

Oriana swigged almost all her margarita in one.

The Richard Hawley gig was enthralling. Oriana loved his music, finding it wonderfully strange that the artist she’d first discovered in California was actually from the city in which she was now living. Everyone danced and sang and grinned at each other. Greystones was hot and sweaty and the atmosphere was perfect.

‘That was the
best
!’ Oriana enthused as they fairly bounced down the street late, late that night. ‘Amazing!’

‘Awesome,’ said Jed.

And back at the flat they sat on the floor with their backs to the sofa like students, drinking white wine that should have been chilled, listening to Richard Hawley on CD and talking. Talking about nothing in particular, Oriana would have termed it. Shooting the shit, would have been Jed’s take.

Richard Hawley had not played ‘Don’t You Cry’ live earlier that night. But the song rang through Jed’s flat now. For Jed, it was simply just another superb track and he didn’t connect it to how contemplative Oriana had suddenly become. He didn’t realize it was the reason that her energy was slinking away and she was deflating a little before his eyes, like a soft toy squeezed a bit too hard.

‘You OK?’ he asked tenderly, touching her cheek with his fingertip. His hand dropped down, lightly coursing along her arm, to her wrist, to the hand she’d spilled the hot coffee on earlier that day. He wove his fingers through hers. ‘Hey?’ Might she lay her head on his shoulder like she used to? Might that lead on – like it once had?

‘Just tired,’ she said. It was a lie, but he didn’t hear it because she kissed him. He didn’t acknowledge that it was just sweetly on the cheek as she said goodnight. It was a kiss. It was a kiss.

‘Just really tired,’ she said as she stood up.

In bed, she nestled deeply into the duvet, pulling it up high like a child hiding from monsters in the cupboard. Richard Hawley’s lyrics continued to reverberate in her head. Not just in her head – she could hear him drifting through from the sitting room, where she’d left Jed with a kiss on his cheek, a glass of warm wine in his hand and the CD on repeat.

In separate rooms they were both listening to the song again. The relevance of the lyrics now striking both of them. The years and years between them and what had happened. And so it was a lonely futility that marked the end of their day.

He knows that she’s so sad

She knows the goods turned bad

He knows that she’s so sad

She knows the clocks don’t turn back

‘Oriana?’

It was her mother and it came as a total shock. She had barely thought of her since she last saw her almost two months ago. They’d spoken just the once in that time, which was back to the regularity of their contact when Oriana had been living abroad. Now her mother’s voice brittled right through her, threatening the spring in her step created by the job interview she’d just floated out of.

‘Mum?’

‘Where are you?’

Oriana was in the centre of the city, off Tudor Square. ‘I’ve just had a job interview. I think they really liked me. It’s an amazing company.’

‘Yes, but
where
are you?’

‘Sheffield.’

‘You’re in Sheffield.’ It was a statement underscored with immense irritation.

‘Yes.’

‘For God’s sake.’

‘Sorry?’

‘What are you
doing
there?’

‘I just told you? About the amazing job interview?’ Oriana saw the Winter Gardens ahead of her and walked there quickly. Peace amongst the plants, just what she needed. And oxygen. Her mother’s voice had a toxicity similar to carbon dioxide.

‘Sheffield.’ Her mother sounded appalled. Did she hate the city – or the fact that it hadn’t crossed her daughter’s mind to update her on her whereabouts?

‘Yes,’ said Oriana. It was sad, really, that she hadn’t thought to inform her own mother about this change in her life.

‘Well, could you get yourself
out
of Sheffield. All your stuff is here.’

Oriana racked her brains for what on earth she had left at her mother’s. A pair of jeans perhaps? Was her presence so negatively intrusive that her mother wanted them out of the house? Oriana wished it was Bernard who’d phoned her. Why couldn’t her mother have had a histrionic flounce and said to Bernard you phone her! You tell her to come and get her jeans!

‘I’m pretty sure I took everything, Mum.’

‘Oh yes – oh yes! You
took
everything, didn’t you!’ The sarcastic hysteria in her mother’s voice rose like the spikes of an ECG. It was the same tone she used to use with Robin and it hurt Oriana’s ears. ‘There is a truck blocking our road,’ she continued. ‘And it’s brought
everything
from the United States.’

Oriana sat down heavily, aware of the irony that she was surrounded by thorny, twisted plants. All her stuff. Shit. The same welling emotion struck her now as it had then, when the truck had trundled off out of sight with the essential pieces of her life. Fragments of Oriana in a plain crate, sailing the ocean to find her again. She’d given away and sold so much – but there were a few key items that she’d never part with. She was defined by every weft of the vintage patchwork quilt, each turned corner of a book’s page, every dovetail joint in the investment pieces of furniture she’d saved hard for. How often had she given herself a good talking-to in that oversized mirror with the gesso frame? And escaped into the benign landscape of the oil painting she’d picked up at the Flea? And her Specialized bike that she’d ridden miles on? And the desk at which she’d studied and drawn and shaped her career?

‘What am I to do?’ Her mother’s wail brought her back to the present. ‘We can’t have it here! We have no storage! This isn’t bloody Windward, you know!’

And then a thought surged through Oriana like the perfect wave, lifting her up and over her mother’s squallish angst, delivering her to a place where everything was calm, magical and as strange as a fairy tale.

‘It’s OK, Mum,’ Oriana said. ‘Can you tell the driver to wait just five minutes? I need to make a phone call.’

Malachy had rewritten Chapter Seventeen many, many times. Chapters Sixteen and Eighteen were fine – he was very happy with them. But Chapter Seventeen just wasn’t right. The prose was clunky, the dialogue unconvincing, the leaps in plot pretty ridiculous. He sat back in his chair and thanked the Lord that it was quiet in the gallery and no visitors could see him tearing his hair out, hissing
for fuck’s sake
at the laptop screen while stabbing at the keys as if that would teach the words a lesson.

‘Yes?’ he answered the gallery phone, irritated.

Oriana was a little taken aback. She’d left the spiky plants for a more genial area of soft and feathery ferns. Malachy’s fractious voice made her coil into herself, like a frond of bracken by which she sat.

‘White Peak Art Space – yes?’ He spoke as if to a hoax caller. Or an imbecile.

‘It’s me,’ Oriana apologized.

There was a momentary pause.

‘It’s Oriana.’

‘I know it’s you.’

‘Are you OK?’

‘Just pissed off with my stupid novel.’

Oriana had to smile. Had there ever been a time when Malachy’s novel had caused him anything other than extremes of emotion? She thought back to what he’d told her when they’d talked late into the night. That, for him, it wasn’t about getting published, it was about telling the story. Rejection slips from publishers had bluntly extinguished his teenage dreams of being Derbyshire’s John Irving. Selling art had been something he’d been good at during his university vacations, when galleries were happy to employ him because customers wanted to buy from him. What he’d assumed to be a secondary career choice had soon become the sensible thing to do. But if his business brain was in the gallery and art was in his heart, writing his novel still nourished his soul. And sometimes tortured him too.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Oriana told Malachy. ‘Just read one of the chapters you
do
like.’

Malachy nodded at the phone, temporarily soothed by familiar advice she’d dispensed verbatim so regularly a long time ago. Now, as then, she wasn’t wrong.