The Way Back Home

Malachy shrugged. He stretched and smiled. ‘Beer?’

‘Music to my ears,’ said Jed. He was now sitting with his arms outstretched as if he had beautiful girls nestling to either side. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, energized by the thought, springing up from the sofa. He went to the kitchen and took two bottles of beer from the fridge. He noted that apart from beer, there was butter, unopened cheese and a lot of Greek yoghurt in the fridge. And not much else. He looked around. Blackening bananas. Washing-up. The cap was off the Henderson’s Relish.

‘What’s up with the cleaner?’

Malachy took the beer and had a sip. ‘I don’t have a cleaner any more.’

‘I can see,’ said Jed. ‘But why not?’ It was one luxury Jed would cut corners elsewhere in his life rather than relinquish.

Malachy shrugged.

‘What can your girlfriend think?’ Jed said, now noticing a general dustiness.

Malachy shrugged again. ‘I don’t have a girlfriend any more.’ He paused. ‘My girlfriend was my cleaner.’

Jed feared his beer might come out his nose. ‘You were shagging the cleaner?’

‘No,’ Malachy protested. ‘Well – yes. But don’t say it like that – it cheapens it. And she wasn’t “the cleaner” – she was Csilla.’

‘Was she a girlfriend who tidied up – or a cleaner who became a girlfriend?’

‘The latter,’ said Malachy.

Jed started chuckling. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just my cleaner is called Betty and she’s a hundred and forty and has whiskers.’

‘Csilla was twenty-four,’ said Malachy. ‘Hungarian, with a physics degree and a Lara Croft figure.’

‘Fuck,’ Jed murmured, impressed. ‘You’ve certainly shafted yourself – your house is a mess and your unmade bed’s empty.’ He was starting to notice that Malachy was shrugging a lot, not in an acquiescent way, but with apathy. ‘What happened then? Did she no longer tickle your fancy with her feather duster?’

Malachy watched his brother laughing. He’d humour him, he decided, as he went back to the kitchen to fetch another beer. ‘She stole from me,’ he called through.

From the silence which ensued, he knew he’d wiped the smile off Jed’s face. He sauntered back, whistling; gave his brother another bottle and then sat himself down in their father’s Eames lounger and put his feet up on the footstool.

‘Fuck,’ said Jed. This was awful. ‘What did she take?’

‘Nothing in the end – because I intercepted it. I knew something wasn’t quite right but I couldn’t work out what. So I left for the gallery with a kiss on the cheek – then returned an hour later hoping to catch her so we could talk. Actually, that’s a lie. I returned hoping to catch her at it – at something – red-handed. Like in a bad film.’ He paused. ‘I laughed at the thought of finding her with some young buck, in flagrante, to justify my hunch. Instead, I found her and some sleazy-looking bastard loading up stuff into packing boxes. Our stuff – Dad’s.’

‘Fuck.’

Malachy looked at him. ‘You’re a bit impoverished when it comes to expletives, buddy.’

‘Shit. Wish I’d known.’ Jed thought, Malachy’s going to shrug now. And Malachy did. ‘A thought – did you continue paying her once she was your girlfriend?’

‘Caveat emptor?’ said Malachy.

‘It’s just – out of the two of us – when it comes to girlfriends you’re always so much more –’ Jed struggled for the right word. ‘Discerning.’ He wanted to say cynical.

‘I reckon it was a long-held game plan of hers,’ Malachy said, as if it was just one of those things.

‘Wouldn’t anyone have seen? Seen Lara Croft trying to make off with your things?’

‘You forget, Jed – it’s not like it was. People live here but they don’t work from here. During the day, there’s rarely anyone around. Paula’s in and out – but she’s not in the main building. And the two who are still here – they’re old.’

Jed thought for a moment. Even now, whenever he returned to Windward, he still liked to think it was all caught in a time warp, that everyone would be here, that everything would be just so. That he’d arrive and all would be preserved and someone would be playing bongos and an electric guitar would be searing from upstairs and people would be painting or being painted and everyone would be the same. No one would have left. They’d all be there, for him. As they had been. Jed blinked back to the present. This was Windward now. His parents had lived in Denmark for many years and rarely came over. There was only him and his brother and this faded, dusty place that needed a bloody good scrub.

‘So – you’ll be on the lookout for a new cleaner then,’ said Jed. ‘I should imagine.’ He wanted to perk up. He wanted to lighten the load. He didn’t want to appear rude. Poor bloody Malachy.

‘Yes,’ said Malachy, ‘I reckon I am.’

‘And a new girlfriend,’ said Jed.

‘From now on I’ll have either one or the other but not both at the same time and certainly not the same for both.’ Malachy thought about it. About Csilla. ‘To be honest, a cleaner enhances my life more, anyway. I need one more than I need a girlfriend.’

‘It’s not about need,’ Jed said quietly. And Malachy remembered how much he liked it when his brother went quiet and wise and thoughtful and astute. It was as though he leapfrogged Malachy and became the older sibling, despite being almost three years younger.

‘By the way,’ said Malachy, though it led on from nothing, ‘I’m not having the operation.’

Jed squinted down his beer bottle, as if trying to read meaning into the last slick of foamy liquid the way a fortune teller might with tea leaves. ‘Oh yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Malachy.

‘Is that wise?’

‘It’s not unwise,’ Malachy said. ‘It’s not life and death. It’s something else I don’t need. I said no more operations and I meant it. I’m too old to be vain.’

Jed thought quickly about his brother’s fixation with only wanting the things he needed. He no longer saw it – that which made strangers flinch when they saw Malachy; children stare and point. That which made some people approach and question Malachy quite brazenly; curiosity outweighing manners and decorum, voyeuristic fear putting paid to tact and basic sensitivity. And then Jed thought, despite everything, my brother is still the better-looking one, the bastard.

‘Do you want to come in to the gallery with me tomorrow?’ Malachy asked, rummaging for the Indian takeaway menu. He deftly folded it into a paper aeroplane and sent it across to Jed, where it nosedived and landed just at his feet.

Jed perused the menu though neither he nor Malachy ever veered from their choices. They both still gave the menu much attention, as if it was rude, disrespectful, not to at least say pasanda and okra and fjal out loud.

‘The usual.’ Jed launched it back at Malachy where it curved off and glided some way before crashing in to the piano.

‘So,’ said Malachy. ‘Are you coming to the gallery tomorrow?

‘Er – no,’ said Jed as if he’d considered it. ‘It’s been a busy shitefest week.’

‘Some of us also have to work weekends, you know.’

‘Some of us have our brother’s flats to tidy up and clean,’ Jed countered, nodding at the fallen menu as if it was a case in point.

‘You don’t need to do that,’ said Malachy.

And Jed said, ‘I keep trying to tell you – there’s a meaningful distinction between need and want. I want to do it.’

His younger brother was mothering him. It should have irritated Malachy. Somehow, it didn’t.

‘I might pop in,’ Jed said, because around him, he could see what was needed and he could tell that it was what his brother wanted.