Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind

by Deirdre Shanahan

  ‘You look…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Good. And this’ll top me up for the night. I want to look my best for the party they’re having out there.’ She reached for the bottle of cherry brandy on the draining board, raised a glass to her lips and slumped into the seat between the cooker and the window, her legs stretched out. ‘I don’t want to overdo it. Only, being back I want to mark it.’

  She put down the glass, her arms plumping out as she relaxed in the seat. Her dress with layers of blue and green sequins glistened like the scales of a fish. At least it would cover her knees. Her red shoes had scuffs. She did not dress as nice as she used to. She always said she had no time. It was true. She did not behave properly, the way mothers should. When he was twelve, she ran off to Liverpool with a man who had a Ford Transit, who said he was getting her a job, said he knew people, had contacts in catering. She had ended up crossing the Mersey and spending a few days in New Brighton. When she came home, she lay on her bed for hours, crying, unsettling him. It made him want to run out of the flat.

  People were always moving. In the week since he’d arrived, three families had shifted off. No one knew where they had gone. He pushed the magazines to the back of the sofa and stood to search the cupboards above the beds for a clean tee-shirt. Beyond the window, towards the entrance, the site was muddier than anywhere he had seen in ages, worse than a football pitch. He didn’t know how people could live there, or how he could, knocking his head against the ceiling, pressed in between walls. A framed photograph of a woman wobbled and slid down the wall.

  ‘Here, lad, watch what you’re knocking against,’ his grandad shouted.

  ‘Who’s she?’ Torin asked, peering at a dull black-and-white photograph.

  ‘Kate. Your grandmother.’

  He had not seen a photo so old and with no colour. It was watery, indistinct. It’d merge into the air if he touched it.

  ‘She looks pretty.’

  ‘She was more than pretty. D’you mind the fine meals we had, Eva, by the grass verges, when we’d the two horses? I’ve only Feather left from them days. Out in the field across, along with the horsebox. D’you mind how we’d the horse flying along the roads to Donegal?’

  ‘I do,’ his mum said.

  ‘Be careful how you’re putting it back and don’t let it drop.’

  Torin replaced the picture beside one of a young girl with a broad smile who stood awkwardly, one arm raised against the sun. By her side, the patient dark eyes of a sheep-dog looked out. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Eva. Your mother,’ his grandad said.

  She could not have been so young. This girl could not have been his mum. Her dress floated out. Her face gazed ahead but her stance, the slight slope of her leaning against a wall, was like her.

  ‘She looks different.’

  ‘She does of course.’

  ‘I’d no years on me then. And no cares. But aren’t we all changing?’ she said.

  ‘Like myself. You’d never think I was a dapper fella once, in fine waistcoats.’ His grandad’s fingers, thin as flex, ran down the sides of his chest, preening himself.

  ‘You’re wearing an old fashioned dress.’

  ‘It was the style. I think I look good all the same.’ She peered into the picture.

  ‘I often wish things stayed the same. But to want time to stand still’d be like trying to swim to Mongolia. You can keep the picture, for it’s more use to you than to myself. Put it somewhere safe,’ his grandad said.

  ‘In here.’ Torin opened the mouth of his grubby sports bag. Usually it held his good stuff: music and his new trainers. He sank the photograph to the bottom.

  ‘I’ll make the most of tonight, anyways. You never know who I might meet. Are you coming, Torin?’

  He pulled on a jacket and followed her to the field beyond the trailers, where a crowd gathered. Two men circled each other. The taller was thin and wiry, and moved edgily about the shorter, bulky man, who was from the trailer with a sheet of plywood boarding up the window. A woman goaded them but a man stepped between them, telling them to calm down. A man next to Torin said there was a long-running quarrel between two families about a woman who had married into one of them but now wanted a separation. He moved to the back of a crowd of men. Big Ian stood in front of him. He could tell from the slope of his shoulders and the cut of his hair. Sussed. He had been found out. He edged back. Easy. Quiet and slow. The man turned. He had stark red hair and a paunch. Torin felt sick in his gut with relief and fear. He bought a bottle of beer from a man who had a crate at his feet while he sat on guard, moved away to the back of the field and slugged it down. He had to be calm. Had to be.

  The atmosphere lightened when a lad handed around a few pounds of bananas he had lifted from a supermarket. An old man began to sing the low words of an Irish song and an older woman with a flourish of dark hair brought out an accordion. Notes throbbed through the light summer air. Two younger men started a fire. An older man threw on broken boxes, legs of a chair, parts of an old high chair and a small table. Flames jumped and spread, casting shadows. Men and women with children drew towards the heart of the flames. Night came down. Velvety and thick, it slammed fast against them. Torin was hemmed in by the crowd of people.

  They had stood around and gaped as Harjit’s face scrawled with pain, telling what Torin did not want to know. Harjit tried to catch breath. His jacket was messed with blood and his long lashes rested so he might have been sleeping.

  Torin kicked a stone, hitting a can, sending it rolling. He sat on an upturned box and was warmed by the fire. His mum appeared on the other side of the circle. In the firelight, a slow smile spread on her as she moved between people, talking and laughing.

  A thickset man with a frizz of black curly hair and a check shirt stood on a makeshift stage of planks and metal cases and called, ‘Anyone have a song? Do I hear any takers?’

  His mum walked from a clutch of women, towards the stage. He wished she would sit. The women clapped and cheered.

  ‘Give us a one,’ the man said.

  ‘I will. I’ll give it a whirl,’ his mum replied.

  ‘Mum, no.’ Torin ran to the other side and pulled her back.

  ‘I’ve a great voice.’ She waddled off, the dress shiny across her hips and thighs.

  He wished one of the men would get there before her, but the man with the curly hair greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Tell us the name of the song, darlin’.’

  ‘“She Moved Through The Fair”.’

  ‘A beauty. Let’s have it, then.’

  Torn between wanting to run back to the trailer or pretend she was no relation, Torin stayed in the crowd. She swayed, humming to herself while shimmers of light swam off her dress. She cleared her throat. A chord started but she was not ready, so the accordion player nodded and started again. The rhythm increased but no words came. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll start again. And my mother won’t slight you till our wedding day…’

  Her voice was small. Even Torin could tell that the words were not right. They skittered out of control.

  ‘A big clap for our singer.’ The man moved back in an attempt to shepherd her offstage. ‘Anyone else give us a song? We’ll have a job finding someone to follow you.’

  ‘Will I try another? I’d love if Dad could hear,’ she said, approaching Torin.

  ‘I haven’t seen him.’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll start anyways.’ She approached the stage, climbing up.

  ‘As down the glen one Easter morning, to a city fair rode I…’

  The words came sharp and clear. She was going to become a fixture, delighting in the new-found attention. He would be stuck, while Marcus and their mates would be out at the snooker hall or wandering the streets. They had proba
bly bought cans and gone back to someone’s flat, eating KFC or burgers and killing themselves over a film. If he could only run up and get her off… But when she finished, the man approached.

  ‘Thanks. We’ll be seeing you,’ he said, leading her from the platform.

  Lights from cars passed on the road and beyond.

  ‘How did I do?’ she asked, returning.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘D’you think any one of them’d want my autograph?’ Her eyes were strangely bright in the shadowy night.

  She was crazy but she was his mum. When she was carried away with a man, admiring his clothes or his voice, Torin wanted to protect her, but sometimes she cracked him up and would not listen to him, like when he said there was no point in going to school. He was learning nothing, only got duffed up. She understood the day he came home with a black eye.

  ‘If anyone does, they’ll come up to you. Don’t make a show of yourself.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I enjoy the night, for what else is it we’ve come all the way over for, but to be with our own?’

  The accordion player continued. Another song started from an old man, while his mum pushed out into the crowd before Torin could stop her. She glided off into a gang of people, chatting and cackling.

  ‘Take a photograph of us,’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘Get out the camera.’

  He ran to the trailer and found the camera among trousers and shirts bunched in a cupboard. His grandad had rescued it from a skip but it still worked.

  Torin ran back. Charged with energy, his mum danced towards the fire. She was taller, willowy, like a reed caught in the wind, yet she moved like a flame; her movements were dizzying. He looked through the viewfinder. She was within the tiny square of glass. He pressed down. Light flashed. Caught in shadows, as she skirmished near the fire, a spark leapt to her dress. Tigers of flame roared along the edge.

  ‘Mum!’ he called, dashing forward.

  He threw handfuls of earth at her skirt. It scrawled a muddy trail, catching in the glittering sequins. The verve of her body scared him as it tilted away, just in time, from the fire.

  3

  His grandfather was propped against fat pillows on the pull-out bed, eating toast. The smell of burning from the toaster lingered as he balanced a plate. Chunks of strawberry jam slid down the side of the toast when he ate. He licked his lips like a child.

  ‘This’ll see me till dinner,’ he announced from the mess of blankets. ‘Eva? You there?’ His face was washed with sleep, even though it was gone twelve. His growth of beard caught the light. ‘Those thin sausages were good.’ He pushed away his plate. ‘And you don’t mind the washroom, the way it’s boarded up?’

  The week-old paper fell apart as Torin turned a page. He could not concentrate, even on an article about the European Cup. If she didn’t hush up, he might hit her. He wouldn’t. But he might. If they didn’t stop talking. He slid to the fridge and bread bin and made a sandwich.

  ‘Course not, Dad. It’s grand.’ She balanced on the one foldaway stool, usually kept at the end of the bed.

  ‘Did they unblock that pipe?’ he asked.

  ‘A man from the corporation is supposed to be coming to do it later.’

  ‘I wouldn’t’ve wanted you coming back to this. Makes us look like savages.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She folded the clean washing and piled it into a cupboard un-ironed.

  ‘It isn’t healthy. Everyone needs clean water. We had it years ago, before ever there was a notion about sites. I do wonder if it isn’t some blackguard from the town has done this on us? They set us out here, miles beyond, I suppose so we’d cause nobody any offence. Though we’d be able to do that anywhere,’ he laughed.

  ‘We’ve barely room for clothes.’ She opened the door to a high cupboard and searched among the plates and cups, bottles of shampoo and soap.

  ‘It’s been good enough for me all the years. I thought you’d be grateful, saving you from having to look for a place. I don’t know where you’d have gone,’ his grandfather said.

  ‘I am, but…’

  ‘I’ve had it twenty years around the country with me, travelling wherever I wanted. It must’ve crossed the sea half a dozen times and only three others had it before me. Many’s the long night I’ve spent in it since your mother died, with it too big. I suppose you’ve plenty of fancy ideas from over, but look at the material in them curtains.’ He set his plate on the bedside table and leaned forward to grasp hold of the deep red fabric. ‘Feel it.’ She stroked down the textured material, its swirls and coils running riot.

  ‘You look tired, Eva. Are you fit to go into the town?’

  ‘Of course. I’m only pained at times with a kind of weight within. But I want to give a good look at the place.’

  She rubbed her fingers. The joints were thick and stubbed from arthritis. She passed them through each other. She complained of pains on damp days in England when they were stuck in the flat, when she had no job to go to and persuaded him to stay off school to keep her company. She said she knew of the time for a change in the weather, for aches dulled the fingers and made her rub them. Coming over had not helped. Instead, she was more forgetful and tearful. When he was young, she said the rosary on long nights when they were stuck together in a tight room, twenty floors up. They floated in the sky, he used to think, as tightly packed streets with the run of cars drained into the night, in the distance.

  ‘We’ll have a good feed this evening, for I’ve a nice side of bacon,’ his grandfather said.

  ‘I can’t abide meat very much.’ She rubbed her stomach.

  ‘A good cut never hurt anyone. Look what it did for me. How many more miles was I able to go with a plate of food inside me. You want to be looking after yourself. Have you your tablets?’

  ‘I have. The two yellow, one green and three white ones.’ She picked up three small brown bottles.

  ‘We’ve nothing else, for there’s no one with cures like your mother had.’

  Torin rose and put his mug and plate in the sink. Water gushed from the tap. He shook off the drips.

  ‘Are you ready to go to town, Dad?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course. Nothing’s stopping me.’ Crumbs flew off the bed as his grandad shifted the covers.

  ‘The day’s good, with the sky only scattered with clouds like the hide of a cow. Are you coming Torin?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Torin found his grandad’s shirt in the mess of bed-clothes, the tail lopping out from under a blanket where it was kept to warm.

  ‘I’ll get my trousers on. But there’s a bastard of a pain all the way from my knee up the top and the other one is going the same way, though I don’t know why. My leg was never bad years ago, but on a cold day I can hardly move. I think the pain in my back has gone, only to be landed someplace else.’ He struggled and fought the tails of his shirt. A pair of braces dangled. ‘Help me on with these, will you?’

  Torin stood behind and yanked up both straps.

  ‘I used find a wee tot of whiskey was good for it but I don’t drink like I used. I’m not fit for it any more. I’m not wanting to bring trouble on myself.’

  If his grandfather knew what he had done, he might chuck them off. Tell him to go on his way and not bring trouble around. He’d keep it wrapped up. Dug down and hidden.

  They passed caravans with awnings, with paving set in the front, others dry with rust on the corners, while in the neighbouring field horses roamed across scrubby grass. Feather nuzzled the grass, strode a few steps, paused and dropped dollops of shit. Torin leant on the gate; she raised her head, flicking her tail in wild confidence and drew close. Her eyes were large and very dark. He stared into their rich brown depths. Deep as Harjit’s. She watched. She knew. Her neck strained up as she blinked, her lashes laying down. He stroked her forehead to the cool, dark cuffs of her nose a
nd she pressed her head, warm, against his hand. When he gathered a fistful of grass, she took the bunch between her thick lips, into the pale skin of her mouth. She turned and pushed out into the deeper stretch of field through dandelions and pale daisies, her glossy coat catching the light, her hooves muddied. Life pulsed through Feather’s sleek muscles.

  ‘Let you not waste time staring. We’ve to be on our way. This creature’s living like a princess all the years I’ve had her, while I’ve to make do with this.’

  The car was rusted on the underside and the windows were smeary with grime. Torin ran a finger along a side window; a dark interior showed a pile of newspapers on the back seat along with a worn tweed jacket.

  ‘Can you drive, grandad?’

  ‘Drive? Didn’t I work on tractors years back. It’s near enough the same. I was riding the roads more than forty years. Poor Feather’s travelled up and down the country for me. I’d to give up on the old caravan but I’d no desire to give her up. But what d’you reckon to this lady?’ He slapped his palm on the side of a door. A shimmer of rust fell.

  Even though it was old, maybe he could borrow it. If he got a car of his own, it would be decent: a low smooth racer, metallic silver or red, or black.

  ‘You can’t say I do nothing for you.’

  ‘It looks worn.’ Torin opened a door, settling in.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong but it’s well used.’

  So well used it’s clapped out, Torin thought. ‘The seat’s low,’ he said.

  ‘D’you think this is a Rolls Royce? D’you want a ride into town or not?’

  ‘What’s this?’ A piece of metal stuck out aggressively

  ‘Only a spring gone. Take no notice. Push it back. You’ll find they go right in,’ his grandfather directed. ‘It may look old but that doesn’t mean it is. On the road for fifteen years and I never had much trouble out of it.’ He started the engine and tugged at the gear stick. A small roar of thunder rose.