thought back to the bleakest of times when nowhere at Windward would do, when the only option was to pedal herself away from the place. Vividly, she retraced in her mind the crazy cycle route, half road, half land. How she’d jostled her heavy old bike over drystone walls, negotiated boulders, forged streams and had to hoick it over five-bar gates all the way to the McCabes. No mobile phones back then, no texting to say they’re pissing me off, I’m going to bike it to yours. The duration of the journey, over an hour, during which no one in the world knew where she was, what time she’d left or where she was headed. The colliding extremes of loneliness and liberation spinning her head as her feet spun the pedals. The welcome at the McCabes’ – Django warm and accommodating as if it was a long-arranged invitation to tea. Cat and her sisters Fen and Pip – in a circle in a bedroom, or in the garden or around the kitchen table, listening and loving her and telling her don’t worry, they’re just stupid and annoying and you can stay here tonight.
She wondered if nowadays children dared to do a ride like that – that fast, that far. Was there even any need for it today – could they even be bothered? They probably just Instagrammed photos of themselves looking morose with some derogatory comment about their parents being, like, so unfair . And, just then, Oriana knew that no matter how imprisoned or squashed or unhappy or fed up or lonely or confused she’d felt when she was young, actually she’d had freedom few others would have experienced. Standing there, that Sunday morning, against the blandness of magnolia walls and gloss white skirting and the sound of her mother detesting her, she loved very much the child she’d been. She felt a familiar surge of protectiveness but also a new pride for her younger self. Rod Stewart had been right all those years ago.
* * *
In Windward, Robin Taylor hurled his palette with such force it turned into a razor-sharp Frisbee, whacked into the window frame and left its mark bloodied in smears of magenta and streaks of cerise, bruises of burnt umber. He looked back at the canvas and his objection rose in a vicious crescendo.
‘ No No No .’
It was as though the painting had wronged him. ‘ No No No .’
He pointed at it, wagging his finger with seething sarcasm. ‘No, you don’t. No, you
don’t
.’
He walked over to the window and stamped on the palette lying on the floor.
‘Fuck you,’ he glowered over his shoulder back at the painting. He roared with the furious effort of hauling up the warped sash window before walking calmly back to the painting as though it was a scoundrel to be ousted from the studio by the ear. He held the canvas at one corner; it wasn’t large but it was unwieldy enough, and he dragged it across the room without looking at it, like something too repellent even to be glanced at.
‘Fuck you!’ And he launched it out of the window.
Emma and Kate, the de la Mare girls, heard the rude word and saw the painting fall. They didn’t know the man who lived in that part of the house. Just that he wasn’t particularly friendly and didn’t much like children or animals or women or anything or anyone other than Malachy and then only sometimes. Their mother had told them to walk around the other side if they wanted to go to the back gardens where the cedar and the willow with the rope swing were. She told them, if they saw him, to be polite and smiley but not really to stop. She told them he might say rude words and not to worry about it, to understand that he wasn’t very well and rude words were part of it.
When they were quite sure that all was quiet, the sisters finally looked at each other. They felt, somehow, complicit in what had happened because after all they’d decided to go around the Other Side of the house. Currently, they were hidden in the old pigsty – which, unlike their Ice House and Mr Martin’s Stables and the Corrigans’
She wondered if nowadays children dared to do a ride like that – that fast, that far. Was there even any need for it today – could they even be bothered? They probably just Instagrammed photos of themselves looking morose with some derogatory comment about their parents being, like, so unfair . And, just then, Oriana knew that no matter how imprisoned or squashed or unhappy or fed up or lonely or confused she’d felt when she was young, actually she’d had freedom few others would have experienced. Standing there, that Sunday morning, against the blandness of magnolia walls and gloss white skirting and the sound of her mother detesting her, she loved very much the child she’d been. She felt a familiar surge of protectiveness but also a new pride for her younger self. Rod Stewart had been right all those years ago.
* * *
In Windward, Robin Taylor hurled his palette with such force it turned into a razor-sharp Frisbee, whacked into the window frame and left its mark bloodied in smears of magenta and streaks of cerise, bruises of burnt umber. He looked back at the canvas and his objection rose in a vicious crescendo.
‘ No No No .’
It was as though the painting had wronged him. ‘ No No No .’
He pointed at it, wagging his finger with seething sarcasm. ‘No, you don’t. No, you
don’t
.’
He walked over to the window and stamped on the palette lying on the floor.
‘Fuck you,’ he glowered over his shoulder back at the painting. He roared with the furious effort of hauling up the warped sash window before walking calmly back to the painting as though it was a scoundrel to be ousted from the studio by the ear. He held the canvas at one corner; it wasn’t large but it was unwieldy enough, and he dragged it across the room without looking at it, like something too repellent even to be glanced at.
‘Fuck you!’ And he launched it out of the window.
Emma and Kate, the de la Mare girls, heard the rude word and saw the painting fall. They didn’t know the man who lived in that part of the house. Just that he wasn’t particularly friendly and didn’t much like children or animals or women or anything or anyone other than Malachy and then only sometimes. Their mother had told them to walk around the other side if they wanted to go to the back gardens where the cedar and the willow with the rope swing were. She told them, if they saw him, to be polite and smiley but not really to stop. She told them he might say rude words and not to worry about it, to understand that he wasn’t very well and rude words were part of it.
When they were quite sure that all was quiet, the sisters finally looked at each other. They felt, somehow, complicit in what had happened because after all they’d decided to go around the Other Side of the house. Currently, they were hidden in the old pigsty – which, unlike their Ice House and Mr Martin’s Stables and the Corrigans’
Similar Books
