Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind

by Deirdre Shanahan

  ‘You’re like her too.’ Her skin was warmer, a luscious brown, and her lips were rounder. Her eyes were more almond shaped and widely placed; they were heavy lidded with thin brows, but they both had a round chin. There she was. His mother in front of him. ‘I thought she could fight but the cancer got her.’ His hands were awkward and he did not know what to do with them.

  ‘There’s something else.’ She raised her eyes to his. ‘I’m pregnant.’

  The nerve endings in his fingers went cold.

  ‘What? What are you going to do?’ His voice was hoarse, out of control, not making the words he wanted, like ‘this is all a mistake. I did not mean this.’

  ‘The girls say I’d be mad to keep it. How’d I cope? They say I should get hold of a doctor. Get sorted.’ She frowned. ‘Funny. The only place I planned to go was America.’

  ‘We… I...’ He was stiff with fear at all this going on without him. Because of him.

  ‘It’s not yours.’ She laid her hands on the table, like cards from a pack. ‘It’s Shane’s.’

  ‘Does he know, then?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m not sure if he’ll need to. The girls say there are places in England.’

  ‘Places? Oh.’

  ‘Except I don’t really know what to do. I don’t want it ripped out of me.’ She fiddled with the sugar shaker.

  The mound of her belly rose under her jumper. A baby was growing inside her. She had changed. Grown beyond him. He could not keep up. No matter what was going on, he was always behind.

  ‘Hey, it’s not going to jump out,’ she announced with a small laugh and rubbed her hand over the mound, flattening crinkles of her top. ‘I suppose though, I can’t make a worse job than was made with me.’ Her voice sank, her eyes glassy with tears. ‘What will happen to us?’

  ‘Nothing will happen.’

  ‘I mean, how we are?’

  ‘We’ll still be ourselves. To each other. It doesn’t matter what went on. What happens ahead is all that matters.’

  ‘What’s behind seems long ago. But you know you can get to the sea from here,’ she said.

  ‘I thought it was far.’

  ‘Not if you follow on this way. You want to go along there?’

  They finished up and walked down the street, steps matching in the drawing light of evening. She led through narrow, cramped streets where washing lines hung across yards. The air was cold when he opened his mouth, freezing breath charging into him. They stopped at a small supermarket, bought crisps and sausage rolls.

  At the harbour, cranes were loading containers, sailing like dragonflies against the sky. He could steal away on a boat. Leave quickly, quick as his mother who lay in the cemetery under the wings of a flyover. She had been all he had for years. All he had belonged to. She had been misguided. Daft. Crazy. But in her own way she had loved him, he saw, because she had brought him back.

  At the sea, Caitlin walked close to the water. She shivered and sneezed.

  ‘Here. Put this on.’ He pulled off his jacket, draping it over her shoulders.

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Take it. You don’t want to get cold.’

  She slipped easily into the sleeves while the body of the jacket flapped around.

  ‘This is nice. A bit big, but nice.’ She pulled on the sleeves.

  ‘It was hers.’

  ‘I like the collar.’ She sleeked her fingers along the satin. Light and shadow caught on it. ‘They wear this kind of thing to operas.’

  ‘She kept a lot of junk. Even if she didn’t want it, she kept it.’

  She drew out a scrap of yellowed paper from the chest pocket.

  ‘What’s this?’ She gave it to him.

  ‘Mrs Finch. 11. Mrs Simpson. 2.00. Present for T. One week pay- my sore foot. Wax for Number 36.’

  ‘Might be the people she worked for? And that might be you.’ She pointed to the letter ‘T’.

  The scrap was torn from a notebook with a thin red line down the side like a margin. The edges curled. It was hard to know what to believe.

  ‘Can I keep this?’ She patted down the collar of the jacket.

  ‘If you want.’

  She could have the jacket for all he cared. Further down, two teenage boys sat throwing pebbles uselessly at the waves. He walked to them, leaving her sitting on a boulder. Thin, crispy curls of shells crushed under his feet. He picked up a dry scrag of seaweed. Empty shells strayed by stones. All these dead things. It wasn’t the way he had hoped. The tide fluttered at his feet. If he kept walking, he would be all right. If he kept walking.

  He slipped off his trainers and went near the edge. The water tipped his toes. Swimming in winter. Pauley could, but Torin was not brave enough. He let the waves, chill as glass, rise up his shins. It lashed in little weals. Scrawls of shiny dark strands of seaweed ran on scratchy grey stones. Minute particles of sand were suspended in the water. The air was salty and sharp, driving. Gulls screeched and the edges of his trousers seeped.

  The waves crept faster. The foam rode high. His legs were uncertain and knocked against each other. Words of his mother echoed. Her voice called inside him. He could forgive her, easy as water flowing over stone. If he didn’t, he would carry it with him. What was the point? But how easy it would be to let go, to lie down, sleep and let loose the bird in the cage fluttering wildly in his head.

  If he went in deeper, the weight of water would pull him down and his arms, freed, might float away, lifted up. The whole of him taken and gone beyond gravity. He walked out, back up the shore. He wanted to ask what Caitlin thought of their mother but it hardly seemed worth it.

  ‘You want to keep it? I mean, the kid?’

  ‘I didn’t know I did. But I do now.’ She walked on the sand, purposefully, with force.

  ‘I’ll help. If you want, I’ll help you,’ he said.

  She probably did not believe him, or care about what he said, so he kept walking because it was something to do.

  ‘You would?’ She slowed.

  ‘Why not?’

  Waves rolled and leapt in the distance.

  He walked beside her and a train hurtled by, breaking the far sigh of traffic.

  ‘I’ll bring the child to the sea. We’ll walk on the beach and the sand’ll tickle its toes. I’ll dress it in lovely clothes.’ She rolled up her sleeves, bending to the water.

  The underside of her arms had the fish skeleton of scars. She stepped back, shaking her arms dry. He had something to hold onto. Someone. No more than that. His grandad as well. All his mum had led him to.

  When he had been on the shore with her in Yarmouth, she’d said the sea was where they came from. He had been about ten and tried to work out how they could have descended from fish, not knowing what she meant. He had not realised either, how she had travelled along the coast, going between men in London and other cities, men who brought her promises, who had taken the range of her feelings or her time and left. Maybe this was all there was, travelling from one place to another, finding and losing and finding. And finding out, after all the years of cramped rooms, as Caitlin walked ahead by the scrawl of waves, there was room enough for all of them.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you, thank you Kevin Duffy and all at Bluemoose Books for having faith in me. Thanks to Lin Webb for navigating a way through my own writing. And many thanks to Tim Pears for his support.

  In the course of completing this novel I was fortunate to have valuable input from Bernadine Evaristo and encouragement from Joanna Briscoe. A reading of an early draft by Rodge Glass was very helpful, as was the publication of an excerpt on WritersHub from Birkbeck, University of London, directed by Julia Bell.

  Thank you Samuel for being around. For everything and more, thank you Jonathan Barker.

  Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind