The Way Back Home

‘Wait – can I? I mean – if you’re around, now – perhaps we can meet, just for a drink and a catch-up?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’ll be sure to call you!’

An unconvincing transatlantic twang to her accent. Oh he could have taken her into his arms and said shut up you silly thing. And swung her around and kissed her and said I knew you’d come back, I knew I hadn’t lost you. Quick! he thought, give her your number before she changes her mind! He chanted his work number as well as his mobile to her though they came out in a tangle.

‘So – you’re not going in?’ He nodded at the house.

She glanced there and shrugged as though it was no big deal. ‘Not today,’ she said. It was as though she hadn’t intended to come, as though she’d just been passing and had suddenly remembered Windward was here. ‘I have to go.’ Though her voice wavered, she didn’t take her eyes off him as she stepped close and gave him a small, soft kiss on his cheek. ‘Bye, Jed. It’s so good to see you.’

He watched her walk away, taking the longer route around the opposite side of the house to her old home. And then she was gone and all that was there was the house. He spied Malachy’s rogue shoe on the grass, as though it had been flung off in glee. Jed looked down, surprised by his one bare foot. He hadn’t noticed. Had Oriana? He cringed. But it didn’t matter because he could feel the kiss on his cheek. He heard a car start, then listened as the sound of the engine faded. And then he thought shit, you stupid idiot. You didn’t take her number. What if she never calls? What if you never see her again? Having been this close.

* * *

It did cross Oriana’s mind that she was probably less safe to drive than if she had been ten times over the limit. But she needed to put distance between herself and Windward, so on she drove. She felt peculiar; light headed and slightly sick, hyper yet exhausted. Her throat was tight and her mouth was dry and her eyes itched with tears that she was furious about. She needed a drink of water. Perhaps she needed a drink. She drove on, thinking please be there, please be there. But the old petrol station was gone, a barren concrete slab the only remnant. She continued, heading helplessly into Blenthrop. She’d dive in, she decided quickly, buy water, perhaps walk around in a haze and then phone Cat. That was a good idea. Perhaps she’d be around this afternoon and Oriana could call on her to workshop through the headfuckness of what just happened.

The first thing she noticed was traffic wardens as though they were a newly introduced species. There was a one-way system too, which flummoxed her, but it led her to the car park by the library. It was much changed. She looked around – the little booth she remembered with the wizened old toothless man had gone. Invariably, he’d left the barrier up, but they’d never not paid. Now there were dictatorial signs everywhere. Pay & Display. She went to the machine and bought a ticket. At that price, an hour would be plenty.

Walking tentatively down Church Street, it felt initially as though all eyes were on her. But she knew it was doubtful that anyone knew her, and if they had known her years ago, they wouldn’t recognize her today because she’d be the last person on their minds. And wouldn’t most people have grown up and moved away or just grown old and died? There were a lot of pushchairs, it seemed. Pushed by parents perhaps a decade younger than she was. Changing times and with it, a new community. New housing. Self-service petrol from supermarket forecourts. She felt a stranger. She felt anonymous. She didn’t know a soul and it calmed her down.

The shops were all different and yet they seemed so established that she found it hard to remember what had been there when this had been her town. Marketplace was awash with stalls selling fruit and vegetables, sickly-smelling sweets and cheap dogs’ beds. A smart lorry with one side down had fresh fish on beds of tumbling ice scalpings. A van vending coffee. A stall selling crepes. A butcher yelling sausages! at passers-by like someone with Tourette’s. Where can one buy just a simple bottle of bloody water these days?

Remembering that there used to be a newsagent’s on Ashbourne Road, she headed there, pleased that, despite the disconcerting unfamiliarity, some things remained instinctive. Turn right. Go straight. Turn right. Oxfam! Oxfam’s still here! She peered through the window but it was all changed. It looked like a proper shop, brightly lit with veneered shelving carrying fancy goods, and she wondered where in town today’s teenagers went to rummage for clothes to customize. That’s new – that hairdresser’s. But that isn’t – the kitchen shop. It has a new name but it’s still a kitchen shop.

‘The White Peak Art Space,’ Oriana said quietly. A gallery in Blenthrop – there should always be a gallery in Blenthrop. She doubted that the old one, fusty with dingy oil paintings and insipid watercolours, had survived. To her relief, this new place appeared to be a proper gallery – not a shop selling dreadful generic pictures of sand dunes, or bluebell woods, or squirrels, or small children, all given the Adobe once-over. Nor was it full of annoying sayings on strips of distressed tin or weathered wood. It appeared to be a genuine showcase for artists, for talent; it seemed to be somewhere that Art mattered.

She looked in through the window. In pride of place, a sculpture: abstract yet compellingly figurative in essence – a surge or swoop in bronze that could be bird or fish or falling person. It didn’t matter which. On one wall, a series of large landscapes in oil, compellingly globular. She knew, even from this angle and through a plate-glass window, that they depicted Baslow Edge seen from Curbar Edge and the Kissing Stones of Bleaklow. They were rather wonderful, so thickly painted she thought the scent of the oils would probably still permeate. She could make out three people towards the back of the gallery, grouped deep in conversation around a plinth on which was a smaller version of the birdman fish. Oriana stepped inside quietly and went straight over to the landscapes. They were captivating and yes, they did indeed smell wonderful. She stood and looked and inhaled and forgot she was thirsty and forgot about Windward. Instead, she was out there, on the dales, reconnecting with the comforting solitude she’d always found there and it alleviated her prior agitation and grounded her. Yes, she thought to herself, I’ll just stand here awhile and get my breath back.

Malachy was too busy on the verge of a sale to notice much about the person who’d just come in. Lots of people came in to admire the landscapes by Natalie Fox. He didn’t mind. Art gladdens the heart. He liked it that people thought of the White Peak Art Space as not exclusively a commercial enterprise. It was good that passers-by came in to look at paintings, to stand awhile and consider them before leaving somehow nourished. This couple, looking at Swoop II, had been in the previous weekend and they were back and they liked it, they really liked it, but it was a lot of money and they weren’t sure what to do.

‘I offer financing,’ Malachy told them. And this sounded like an excellent idea because it was nought per cent and it meant that the artist had his money, Malachy had his commission and this nice couple could own their art on an affordable basis. He went to his desk to prepare the paperwork and noted the woman very close to the paintings, apparently sniffing them. He didn’t mind at all. When he’d finished the paperwork, however, he saw that she had gone. One day, he thought, one day someone will come in and buy all three. It sometimes happened like that; the unlikeliest of people suddenly turning up.

Oriana walked on and there, like an oasis in the yawing march of her memory, the small newsagent’s still stood. The only thing that had changed was that the Daily Mail now sponsored the shop sign, not the Daily Mirror, but from what Oriana had deduced since her return, this switch from left to right was par for the course nationwide. She bought water and Cadbury’s chocolate and possibly their only copy of the Guardian. The shopkeepers were new to her and had put their mark on the place with a tabletop unit containing exotic-looking pasties as well as a vending machine for coffee, tea and hot chocolate. Coffee. Coffee was a good idea. Even if it wasn’t good coffee, she suddenly craved something caffeinated and hot.

Slowly she walked, so as not to spill her drink and to give herself the chance to look up and around. Blenthrop, she was back in Blenthrop and it was no big deal. The town didn’t know her and the town was welcoming. With her coffee finished, she sent Cat a text, hoping to call in on her way back to Hathersage. Oriana decided to have one last look around the gallery before making tracks. The gallery, though, appeared to be empty, closed even. But Oriana thought I wonder if those people bought that sculpture? And it became a really provocative thought. How much was it? Who is the artist? But did they buy it? Just as she’d bought a paper and some chocolate and a coffee – had they come out on a Saturday and bought some art? She had to know. She tried the door and it opened.

In she went, her nose now finely tuned to the oily fragrance emanating from the landscapes. The gallery was Tardis-like; it was deceptively large and went back some way. She walked quickly over to the sculpture. A little red sticker – they did buy it! She felt peculiarly vindicated. It didn’t have a price on it but the artist was called Yuki McDonald. McDonald. Maybe the form was inspired by a slippery otter playing mercurially on a Scottish loch, or salmon leaping at Pitlochry. Yuki. Perhaps the form was linked with something more symbolic from Asia – a crane or some more mythical form. She went back to the landscapes and sensed the paintings draw her in, the same sensation the dales themselves had whenever she went there – they were to Oriana as the moors were to Cathy.

I wonder how much these paintings are?

They didn’t have a price. She turned to the opposite wall, wondering if anything here had a price. And, like a smack in the mouth and a blow to the heart, two of her father’s works glowered at her. She crept towards them. Robin Taylor, Depth I. Robin Taylor, Depth IV. Ink and mixed media on plasterboard. Her father once told her the women he painted were imagined, that his pictures weren’t portraits, they were impressions. But these women were staring at her as if they knew her, as if it was down to her to acknowledge their pain, take it on and free them. Just then, to Oriana, the White Peak Art Space became very dark indeed and she turned to leave.

Damn – I might have missed a sale.

Malachy had just come through from the back with a steaming mug of tea and a biscuit when Oriana reached the door.

‘Hullo – can I be of any help?’

Usually, people automatically say no thanks, just looking, to which Malachy always says it’s a gallery – feel free, which then leads on to varied and mostly interesting discussion about what they see when they look at art.

Just now, though, his offer garnered no response. Could be a foreign tourist though it was still early in the season. He put the mug down, took a quick bite of biscuit, wiped the crumbs on the back of his trousers and looked over towards the door where the woman had turned to stone. The tilt of her head, the whole of her. In an instant he knew who it was. Suddenly, he could no more speak than Oriana could move. The postman came in and stared at her as if she was some kooky installation. He stared at Malachy too, who was unable to take the bundle of post he was being handed.

‘Well, see you next week then, Malachy.’

‘Malachy as in key,’ Oriana said quietly, turning.

The postman had pronounced his name Malachy as in sky.

For the first time in eighteen years, Oriana and Malachy faced each other head on.

It’s OK, she said to herself. It’s OK. Don’t stare.

You need to look, she told herself, to see. Otherwise it’s rude – and ignoring it makes it more of an issue.

But don’t stare.

She noted how his hair was now delicately silvered here and there but still licked into the haphazard curls she’d never forgotten. As he approached, she caught his violet-grey eye colour striated like local Blue John. Sharp cheekbones and slim nose which always suggested an aloofness far from true.

And she had to acknowledge, for the first time, the eyepatch – a softened triangle of black protecting, concealing, his left eye; corded neatly around his head.

‘You have a beard, Malachy.’

He felt his face thoughtfully. ‘I couldn’t be arsed to shave last week,’ he said. ‘But you, Oriana – you haven’t changed a bit.’

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_e17d9e57-6dbb-541a-9ba5-180e42ab17f7)

‘You were sniffing Natalie Fox.’

‘There isn’t a sign saying “No Sniffing”.’

‘Oils should be sniffed, sculptures touched.’

‘Is this your gallery?’

‘Yes.’

‘You own it? It’s your career?’

‘Yes. You look – disappointed?’

‘It’s – it’s impressive. Congrats. But – what about being an author?’

‘A teenage daydream. But I still write. Still writing that novel.’

Silence. You don’t have to stare – but it’s a bit obvious you’re looking everywhere but at Malachy.

‘Is it?’ Oriana touched her own eye, as gently as if she was touching Malachy.

He shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said softly.