Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind

by Deirdre Shanahan

  The man rubbed his chin and looked to the end of the site.

  ‘There are a few trailers up by those cars, with girls in.’

  It was pointless chasing with no hope of finding her. And if he did, what would she say? But he would press on. See her and leave. Get the hell out.

  At a cluster of crazily coloured caravans, a gang of small kids rode a plastic trike and another had a toy tractor he kept getting in and out of. Torin knocked at the first. A long silence followed. He tried one with brightly painted flowers. Footsteps, and a woman with curlers stood in the doorway.

  ‘Is there a Caitlin here?’ He managed to make a sentence out of the words stoked inside him.

  ‘Who?’ the girl drawled.

  ‘Caitlin. I wondered…’

  The woman looked over her shoulder. She was here. He had found her. He expanded inside. All the searching was over. They would talk and things would be better.

  ‘No one that name. Only my Ma and sisters.’

  ‘But have you seen anyone? I mean, someone you didn’t know?’

  ‘I’ve enough to do watching over the ones of me own. What would I be doing looking for people I didn’t know?’ She stood defiantly, arms crossed over her chest. ‘Try them over there and a couple of trailers further up has girls in.’ She closed the door.

  He shifted off. At the smallest caravan, there was no answer. He tried one decorated like the night sky. The door opened and a girl with long blonde hair and a bare midriff stared at him. A ring hung in her belly button and she sucked strands of hair.

  ‘Anyone here called Caitlin?’

  ‘Who’s wanting her?’

  ‘Torin.’

  ‘Torin.’ She twirled a necklace round her neck. ‘That’s a nice name. Haven’t seen you around here before?’ He wished she would shut up and stop wasting his time. ‘There’s a Caitlin here. It doesn’t mean she’d be the one you’d be looking for.’ Her pouty face challenged.

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘If she were here, maybe. She’s out.’ The girl’s bare arms hung loose, lightly tanned, as if she belonged to another season.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Shops. That’s where she usually is.’

  ‘Can I call back later?’

  ‘S’pose so. Tomorrow, maybe. Early.’ She shrugged.

  The door shut. She was bound to tell. Next time he called Caitlin would have cleared off, so all he had to do was find out about the ferries, get a ticket or sneak on board.

  Maeve told him about a party she was having in one of the downstairs rooms, the largest in the house. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, knocking on his door that evening.

  At the opportunity of food, he slunk down late, when he hoped most of the people had arrived. The room was packed. Maeve was draped over a man. Torin looked for Alex but could not see him. He got talking to a Chinese girl who wore a short, tight dress and he drank more than he should. The girl sat on his knees and stroked his hair. The night tore on until he did not recall leaving and making his way back to his room.

  When he woke next day, at midday, his head split and he was tired. But he had to make it to the site. He stumbled out of his room at nearly one and caught a bus.

  ‘She’s out.’ The blonde girl stood at the door of her trailer in large gold earrings and smiling a lipsticky smile. She was enjoying messing around with excuses. ‘But she might be back in half an hour.’ She chewed gum, her lips going lazily up and down.

  He wandered around caravans and trailers. Three boys clambered on two abandoned fridges. A washing machine lay on its side. He sat on an upturned crate watching two little boys in wellingtons jump over a puddle. Caitlin might pass and he would catch her attention, without having the bother of others knowing more than they had to. He would go somewhere quiet. They would talk. He would be calm and explain. She would listen and whatever had gone on between them would be done and over.

  He hated having to make his way back but giving up was pointless. She could not so easily strike him out of her life. Beyond the trailers, a hill of sand and cement stood. Skirts and tee-shirts draped from small washing lines. Two men stood near an outside tap, talking, with hard, serious faces. One pulled on a fag. They would know he was a stranger. Might even know why he was calling. Of course. The blonde girl would have spread the word.

  He waited at the steps, his neck hot, his hands clammy. Running off would be easier. He knocked and in less than a breath, the door opened. Caitlin. In a jumper and skirt with heavy black make-up around her eyes making them larger, though her lips were bare. A wave hit his stomach. She was different. Her hair was electric. Blonde, almost white, cut close to her head, accentuating her cheekbones.

  ‘You,’ she said.

  She knew everything there was to know. About him. And her. She stood, idling against the door frame. Her. And yet not her. He stared weak with relief, fearing she might disappear into the depths of the trailer where a radio sang and a red-haired girl looked up from doing her nails. That girl most likely knew about them. Every detail which had split them.

  ‘Who’s that?’ The girl peered.

  ‘No one,’ Caitlin called.

  The sooner he got out, the better.

  ‘You okay?’ the girl called.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Caitlin pulled close the door, but stayed on the step.

  Once he had kissed her fingers, turning them in his mouth, loving and sucking them and she had laughed. His heart shrank to a tiny bouldering weight. He thought, she will calm down. And I will… what? What could he do?

  ‘My mum.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Caitlin was in front of him, but there were miles between them. He was in a strange, dark cavern. ‘Did you know about me?’

  ‘How would I? Delia knew nothing. Only living in a world of holy pictures and statues.’ She slunk down, her shoulders rounded, flicking at a ridge of old paint.

  He would see this out. Talk and keep talking. Make her understand the little he knew about her. About them.

  ‘I used to wonder what my mother was like. I’d imagine her face, the kind of lipstick she’d have and then the thought would leave and I’d never think of her until months later and it would start all over again.’ She stared at the ground. ‘She screwed up my life.’

  The words bruised and the day was bottomless.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Why not? It’s true.’ She beat his chest and he took it until he caught her arms but she twisted and hit on, her small rage rising.

  ‘She didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘How d’you know?’ Her voice was hard in a way he had not heard before. ‘I was shunted away. Delia wouldn’t’ve told me the price of a pound of butter, if it didn’t suit her.’ Her voice grated as though she had been up too many nights. Or plain did not want to see him. ‘But what are you doing here?’

  ‘You could’ve said you were leaving,’ he said but with a flick of her head she went back up the step. ‘You didn’t see her, Eva, then?’ He wanted to bang on the side of the caravan. To split the walls.

  ‘I’ll see her next time.’

  ‘There won’t be a next time. The cancer got her.’

  His soul was sand. There was no point hanging around. He crossed into a cemetery on the other side of the site. It was darkened with trees heavy with overarching branches, where even the headstones could not stand straight. A couple had corners knocked off, others were so old that dark moss crusted the face. One angel had hair curled about her shoulders and was in bare feet. They opened their arms holding books or lilies or nothing, waiting to be given something: a drink, a sandwich. Rosaries draped and eyeballs were rounded, and the lips so full he would think they were alive. Headstones were sunk into the ground. In a far part where trees were thick and clustered with leaves, a couple sat on a graves
tone in the long grass. Even though it was freezing, and the days were stumbling towards Christmas, trees at the back were a lavish green, growing thickly against each other. A stone figure held a bunch of flowers to its chest. He could not decide whether it was a boy or a girl. He rubbed his eyes at the trick of the light, working out how long it would be until he got back to streets he was used to.

  5

  When he called to the trailer the next day, a girl he had not seen before answered. She stood in the door with slick dark hair and a black leather skirt barely covering her thighs. White lettering on her black tee-shirt said, ‘If you think I’m a bitch, meet my sisters.’ She said Caitlin was not there. Of course not. She was lazing on her bed, fiddling with nails or hair, listening to him. Him at the door performing for her. If that was the way she wanted it, he should leave for good.

  ‘She’s at work.’ The girl slouched.

  ‘Where’s that? I didn’t know she had a job.’

  ‘Give her a break. She’s not interested,’ the girl said in a tauntingly sing-song voice, and she shut the door.

  Battered and worn, it stared back. A woman jabbered on the radio inside.

  He roamed the streets like a lost dog. He sat in doorways. He sat on the wall of the cemetery. He would not let this go. It trapped him but he would fight a way out. Fight to see her and go. Get out of her life, the way she wanted him to.

  He picked up an old newspaper left by the side of the wall. From weeks past, the front page had a photograph of a space-probe. Slim as a lighter, it hung suspended in the galaxy. He read of probes searching for grooves in rock, signs of water. While it was up there, out of the way of things, he’d had his first days on earth without his mother. The craft had gone in a far place. A platform had extended, supporting a telescope with a huge lens. Angular as an insect, it had wheeled over the dry surface, tracking rock formations and changes, rummaging and digging the planet’s surface, outside time.

  In late afternoon, he watched the entrance. A gaggle of older kids moped in doorways, waiting for something to happen. A lanky boy kicked a ball against the flimsy wooden fence as a girl passed. Caitlin. Walking between trailers. Dodging between vans, he shouted her name. But she quickened her pace, steps smacking the air. Even as she made distance, he ran, calling her. The back of her blonde head. He would know the shape and fall of her shoulders anywhere. He wanted to put his hands on her, feel her shoulders, stroke her. In the greying light, she was hurrying, not quite running but walking fast.

  ‘Do what you want but don’t drive me away. Not yet,’ he called. But she broke into a run. ‘Give me some time and I’ll go. You won’t see me again.’ She stopped and faced him. Her eyes were darkly ringed and heavy lidded. Worse than yesterday, her skin was blotchy and unwashed. He should not have come. Should have shifted back to London, where he fitted in. ‘You’re all I’ve got. Aren’t we anything to each other?’ Our mother… he wanted to say. The words would not come. But words were all he had. This was it. She would slam shut the past on them.

  ‘She’s brought all this down on top of me, on us. I thought you were different. Ha!’ Her words strangled out in a cackle. ‘It took her long enough to come back. To see what the baby had grown into. It only took all my life. While you had her all the time, and she you.’

  ‘Can’t we talk?’ He grasped her arm.

  ‘I’m done with talking.’ She twisted out of his hold.

  She was right. There was nothing between them. It was easy for her. Easy to make him think he didn’t matter. Quick and clever. She always had the edge of him.

  ‘One more time and I’ll clear off. You won’t hear from me again.’

  ‘If you say so. One more time can’t hurt.’

  ‘Is there somewhere we can go?’

  ‘The café at the end of the street, if you like?’ She led the way and he fell into step beside her. After so long it was unreal, and he kept looking to check she was beside him. ‘I’m starving. The girls spent what we had on wine and crisps,’ she said and sneezed as they entered.

  She pulled off the cardigan and sat opposite him, her eyes watery and red rimmed. She had been crying or had a cold. Her slender fingers with bright nails spread on the table as she leant forward to unfurl a silky scarf from her neck. The stark rise of her breasts startled him and he had an impulse to touch her. But no. It was over. They were not lovers. There could be no playing at what they could not be, only a strange distance through which he tried to see her differently, as when he was a kid looking through a kaleidoscope to shatterings of gold or red or blue, sprinkling from a central point to the edges, making up a star in the middle before disintegrating again.

  ‘I could do with a load of chips with tons of vinegar,’ she said.

  ‘But you don’t like vinegar.’

  ‘I do now. I’ve got an awful taste for it.’ She gave an odd half-laugh, chucking back her head, but her eyes were sharp with a malicious brightness he had not seen before.

  ‘I wondered if I’d see you again.’

  ‘Well, you have. I’ve appeared.’ Her voice was a mocking sing-song.

  He fidgeted. He wanted to grasp her hand, say it was all right, they could work out this stuff together, but she had a mad sprightliness which unsettled him. In this place she had the advantage and was showing it off. But it would all end soon, he thought. Soon. And he would scarper.

  ‘You been here a while?’

  ‘A few weeks.’ She licked butter off the toast and it melted on her fingers.

  ‘You know people?’

  ‘Shane does,’ she said.

  ‘Shane?’

  ‘We came here. We’d hung around the coast. Stayed in a caravan for a bit until he said we may as well come and stay with his cousins. They’re round about.’

  He sank in his chair. The café was hot with the smell of bacon and chips. She pulled off a jumper, stretching her arms in an arch over her head, a necklace falling around her neck, a stump of grey and brown fur hanging.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘He gave it to me.’ She ran her fingers over the fur. ‘Rabbit’s foot. He said he shot it.’ She fiddled with the tab and pressed it against her chest, stroking down the fur.

  ‘So he knows? About us?’

  She shook her head, avoiding his gaze.

  ‘Not the whole business, if that’s what you mean.’ She kicked out the words and folded the fried egg into the toast; the yolk dripped out along with the grease.

  ‘I’ve been all over, looking for you.’

  ‘That was how it was meant to be. But how’d you know to come here?’

  ‘I called to Breen’s.’

  ‘They were supposed to say nothing.’ She fiddled with the salt and pepper, clutching and releasing the plastic containers. ‘We had to get out. Shane was upset. Pauley… You didn’t hear about him?’

  The folds around her eyes had shadows. He shook his head.

  ‘He had an accident.’ She pushed around the crust of bread on her plate.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was at his dad’s. They’d had a row. He went up to his room. Fell from a top window. It might’ve been an accident but we don’t know.’

  Her face was a blur coming and going out of focus. Tiny lines around her eyes were pronounced. What she said did not make sense. He had seen Pauley. He loved swimming and climbing. He had an alertness, a verve, a kind of bravery not even his mates at home had. Nor anyone. Who was she talking about? Someone else.

  ‘He’d taken a load of his old man’s tablets. His dad had so much stuff, Pauley used to say it was like a bloody pharmacy.’

  He should have let Pauley come. They would have gone to London. He was weighted, unable to arrange the facts which broke. Facts which she was in charge of, while the small part of the world he lived in fell apart.

  ‘He was trying to fly. He was so out of it. He
got like that sometimes. You’d never know what mood he’d be in.’

  Torin pulled himself upright.

  ‘It started around the time some man who owned one of the boats accused him of damage. But he was always on the shore, wasn’t he?’ she continued.

  The shore was Pauley’s place. He belonged there more than anywhere else. But it was useless. It was all useless. Even hearing her talk, having found her, was useless.

  ‘He was cut badly and bleeding after. Shane couldn’t handle seeing him.’

  Her words, far off, coiled in his head. He shifted, to stretch his legs. Part of him had left, shadowed out. Gone elsewhere. He saw the shine of Pauley’s gold cross, catching the sun as he dived. Going down. Taken into the earth. What was worse, losing a mother? Losing your life? The choice twirled and spun.

  ‘You all right?’ She leant towards him.

  Her eyes were soft and saw deep inside, to the cool heart of him, to the day when he had dragged the bottle across the breast of the boat. He caught the side of her face. Their glances touched.

  The table surface was dark blue Formica with tiny gold stars shaken up by crescent moons. The answer might be within the galaxy under his hands.

  ‘You have all the advantages.’ She sat back. He did not know what she was she talking about. ‘You knew your mum. So you know who you are.’ She took two huge teaspoons of sugar and stirred them into a mug of tea.

  ‘I’m not sure I do.’ Beyond the café window, a light fall of snow dusted the pavement, smeared the glass. The cold had come to something. He dragged a tissue from his pocket, felt the edges of the photo and lay it on the table.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Caitlin asked.

  ‘Mum dancing.’

  She was thinner, the folds of a dress flapped, the camera capturing a tantalising gaze. She was in flight, in time with the music. Her own rhythm. Those eyes and lips. Her hair long because she had not bothered to go to a hairdresser. It straggled and ran, tearing away.

  ‘You don’t look like her. I mean you do, but different.’ Caitlin lifted the photo and put it up against him, turning it side to side. She squinted and placed the photo on the table. He picked it up and held it near her.