The Way Back Home (37 page)

‘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 scrunched 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.

‘I remember,’ he said before falling silent again. He didn’t really want to say it out loud. It would mummify his past and define his future if he did. But hadn’t he been through enough? Hadn’t they all been through enough? He looked at his brother. ‘You say you were always going to come back for her – but look what happened, Malachy. Oriana came back to you.’

Robin had said he wanted a word – but when they left the Bedwells’ and came back into the apartment, Robin had gone straight through to his studio and shut the door. Oriana knew Jed and Malachy needed time together alone. But it left her standing all on her own, in her childhood room for the second time in one day, and it was beyond bizarre. She put the LP of
The Waste Land
back in the stack, moved
Flowers for Algernon
to the top of the pile. She was still in Malachy’s clothes and she looked at the few garments of hers remaining in the cupboard. One day, she’d try them all on. But today wasn’t a day for snow-washed jeans or the particularly virulent Acid-house top. Today, the past was like a vast museum and she was fatigued by all the exhibits on show, all the history and cross-references that accompanied everything. She straightened her bed covers and left her bedroom, closing the door quietly behind her. She walked lightly through to the sitting room.

At the far end, the studio door was shut. And she thought to herself, so bloody what. She thought to herself, for somewhere like Windward which prides itself on its open-door policy she’d been shut out too many times and for too bloody long. She didn’t bother to knock; she just went straight in.

Robin wasn’t working. The man on the canvas was still trapped. Robin was standing in the middle of the room, looking at the portraits of Rachel. He knew Oriana would come in. And now she was there just behind him, while Rachel was right in front of him. His child. Their child. Their grown-up child with a piece of her mind on the tip of her tongue. He could pre-empt and deflect all he expected to hear her say but, just then, an overriding feeling of sorrow and shame left him speechless and somehow open.

In Oriana’s big book of soliloquies there were a fair few she’d composed to her father. But standing there in his airless studio, staring at his back, she couldn’t recall a single one. What she did know was that the animosity that had made her estrangement seem vindicated, that had set the tone of all those speeches in her head, had dissipated today. There just didn’t seem much point having such strong feelings for someone like him.

‘You wanted a word?’

‘Not any more,’ he said, without looking at her.

And she thought, what is the point of a confrontation if the net result is something you don’t really want? It’s just not worth it. It wasn’t as if there was a relationship to resuscitate because there hadn’t actually been one in the first place. So why waste breath? Robin didn’t want a showdown either, it seemed. He didn’t even want the paltry ‘word’ he’d asked her for half an hour before.

‘Well,’ said Oriana, ‘I’ll be going then.’

And she left, quietly closing the studio door behind her.

‘Off to the Bedwells’,’ Robin said to himself. The phrase so familiar, so forgotten, now back again and known by rote. It caused him to drop his brush and it fell to the floor, smudging vermilion onto his brogues.

Malachy was watching television when he looked up to see Oriana’s face appear around the edge of the door. She saw that Jed had gone. He returned his gaze to the screen but opened out his right arm. Into the room she padded, over to the sofa to curl up beside him. She took his arm and fitted it closely around herself. And there they sat.

‘What did your father want?’ Malachy asked her.

‘Nothing.’

‘He said nothing?’

‘Not a word.’

‘He’s a mad old bastard,’ said Malachy.

And then it struck Oriana forcefully. She stood up from the sofa and paced the room. ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘But do you know something? I didn’t actually mind him being a mad bastard.’ She was pacing the room, agitated. ‘I grew up accustomed to it, I was inured to it.’ She thought about it. ‘My mother – she was more outwardly unhinged. But Robin – he was utterly consistent in his introversion and indifference.’

‘Don’t make excuses for him,’ Malachy said. ‘You were just a little girl.’

‘Malachy – I’ve only ever felt loved by you. Similarly, I always felt that to Robin I was an odd, strange little thing – a funny little curiosity he sometimes forgot was there. He wasn’t cruel, he just wasn’t interested.’

Malachy wondered if this analysing was wise after the day she’d already had. He thought perhaps she was better off on the sofa, his arms around her, watching the television.