Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind

by Deirdre Shanahan

  ‘You been up there?’

  ‘Once.’

  ‘Not sure I could do it. The highest I’ve been’s the twentieth floor of a block in Hackney where my mate Marcus lives.’

  Marcus. He hadn’t heard from Marcus for a while. Life was going on without him. It meant bad news. Or was it good? He was strung out on a line, dangling. The police must have questioned everyone by now. Was it likely anyone would split? He didn’t know who knew and. if they did, what they would say.

  ‘You all right?’ Caitlin asked.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘You’re far away. What is it?’ She faced him.

  Strokes of dry grass rustled in the wind. Bare patches, then reedy parts.

  ‘The police might come here.’

  ‘Why? What’d they want?’

  ‘A mate was stabbed. I mean, he was there at the wrong time. And I was.’

  ‘The police are after you?’

  ‘Maybe. I ended up with a knife. Someone handed it to me. It all happened so quick.’

  ‘But they don’t know where you are?’ she asked. He shook his head. ‘Good.’ She grasped his arm, squeezed up to him, running her fingers over his cheek. ‘I won’t let them get you. I’ll hide you.’

  He smiled. ‘Thanks. He didn’t deserve it. If he hadn’t been there... If I wasn’t, it would all be different.’

  ‘Did you know him, the one who got stabbed?’

  ‘I knew him. And it wasn’t meant to end that way.’

  Stairs and a passageway had led to Harjit’s front door. It was streaked with sun from a gap in the lift shaft. How would his sisters manage? His mum? His dad? All the different parts of his life. Bits which fitted.

  Caitlin led the way across the bog as the mountain ranged higher, streaks of silvered rock. ‘Whatever went on, you’re safe here. Let’s go along this way. Try to take you away from all that stuff. If we follow the track down the other side, it leads to a beach that’s great for swimming. And it’s warmer, as the bay’s protected, but you can’t get there any other way than climbing.’

  Rock slammed the horizon, blocking the sky. A person could hide in the mountains. His grandfather had told him of when there had been a war in the country and families were split with the fighting. His grandfather had said his own father had been caught up in it. A young man of seventeen, he had taken to the hills, travelling dirt tracks with the sky for a ceiling. The land could protect, if he knew where to go. For days and nights, he could be secreted away. However long it took. If he knew how to ride, he might have been able to escape on Feather.

  ‘The boggy earth crumbles, so be careful. Especially if you’re on your own. One man from England was killed last summer. Lost his hold and fell into the waves.’

  A jagged line of rock. Cloud shadow filtered to one side; on the other, the sun picked up sharp ridges.

  ‘You’re doing a good job of putting me off.’

  ‘This way,’ she smiled.

  He followed along a wide slit of bog, sliced down on one side into a sheer drop. He picked up a dark piece of wood lying in the dry grass. Slim and angular at each end, two triangular parts opened like wings. He ran his fingers along the length. Knotty, leathery bark coiled away. He pulled it to reveal sleek whiteness. The wood arched like a naked shoulder. Pale as bone. Taut and slim, the way his mum’s arms angled as she hung clothes on the small line strung outside the trailer. Her constant bending and stretching. She never complained of pain, but in the months since Christmas she had not been well. He put the wood in his pocket where it sat, an awkward, difficult shape he could not hide.

  ‘The roots are thousands of years old. Dark ones are oak, older than the rest.’ She knelt to a tangle exposed by a cut into the earth.

  ‘Like the land’s asleep.’

  ‘Not much sleeping if you’re working. I used to help when I was a kid, when we stopped places and there was work. Once, it was awful dry and I didn’t have gloves. So I put on socks to cover my hands. The farmer’d only a big pair which kept falling off me. Bloody tough work it was, and any time we got we’d jump and run at the big pools in the drains where they used to keep butter years ago.’

  She walked ahead and knelt at a pile of stones in front of a scrabble of bush. It was wiry and stunted, branches leaning, pulling towards the light. She crouched low and removed a thin cover of slate from the middle. A hole held a pool of dark water. The pool reflected their faces darkened with shadow. The sky’s light was behind them.

  ‘A mountain spring. Supposed to be a holy place. People prayed here in the old days. They’d hang bits of rags on the bush behind, kind of gifts to the saints.’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘Special intentions. Prayers.’

  ‘What? Prayers?’

  ‘Yes. They worked. Seemed to. Once, a minister arrived from England, giving relief during the famine. He set up a soup kitchen near the well. The kitchen was said never to have run out because of saints guarding it. So you see, they say if you pray from here, your need’ll be answered.’

  An old story. The same as his grandfather had. Tangled and webbed so you could not tell one bit of truth from another. The ground was ragged, offering nothing except nettles and dock leaves. What was the use of it? Even he could see that nothing much could be grown but a tangle of weeds, thorns and thistles, grasses and reeds.

  ‘Where’d you learn this?’

  ‘Delia.’

  ‘You can’t believe it?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I often came here with a worry and prayed and it turned out all right. You know, there might be something you could pray for?’

  ‘I don’t know how.’ He could not drag out any words. Not prayers. More like questions. It was ridiculous, gazing at a crust of dried grasses and wilting flowers. ‘What’ll I pray for, anyway?’

  ‘You must have something?’

  ‘My mum’s not well. She takes a load of tablets but she won’t talk about it.’

  He sank onto his haunches, grasses sticking. This was weird, but if it pleased her, he would do it. He closed his eyes. Shimmerings of scarlet. Blue streaks. Fidgety particles of orange showering.

  He stood and they walked on, to a field where a bike lay, all angled and upturned but in one piece.

  ‘Let’s try a ride,’ she said.

  ‘But it looks crap.’ The cycle was clunky with leaves of rust flaking. It had a weight of no other bike he’d come across. He’d last ridden a bike near the flat, when someone nicked a mountain bike and they’d all had turns until it got chucked into the canal.

  ‘It’s got two wheels. What more do we want?’

  He steadied the bike. The leather saddle was ragged but he got on. She sat on the cross-bar. Up close, he was warmed, uncertain, but he reached round her and grasped the handle-bars.

  They set off, crunching over stones and grit. The bike was lumpen and he strained to get control to raise speed, for there were no gears. As they swept on down a slope, she swung out her legs.

  ‘I love this,’ she said.

  He was charged by her words. He might have said the same, but meaning more. Love itself, or something like it. He didn’t know what had happened, but this was bigger and warmer than anything he’d known and he was pleasing her in a way he had not expected and he wanted to go on, with her against his chest, her hands between the span of his own, as they creaked along. Careless. Delighted.

  The chain crunched and slipped but the bike ran on. They kept going and going and their speed increased until they toppled, landing in a heap. He lay against the frame, the wheels spinning.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine. We landed on grass at least.’ She stood up. ‘It was a blast,’ she said.

  He raised the bike. The oily chain was slack and the saddle had shifted out of place.

&nb
sp; ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should head back.’

  ‘You working later?’

  ‘I always am, it seems.’

  ‘I’ll be along with you.’

  ‘We can shove it off the path. It was dumped when we found it, so no one’ll be after us.’

  He pulled the bike into longer grass, where it sprawled like a thin drunk. It might have been a good bike once but its day was done.

  *

  ‘It’s really blowy.’ She pulled her jacket close, as he came to stand beside her. ‘But I like the rough weather, keeps visitors away.’

  ‘I don’t hate it,’ he said, sensing her judgement. ‘It’s just different. I don’t know it like you do.’

  If the lads at home could see him, they’d double up. They’d think... He could not imagine what they would think.

  ‘Follow this path towards the sea,’ she said, running ahead against the swell of the wind. Her voice battled through the gusts. ‘I like it wild. I feel part of the place.’

  He caught up and they took the path through a cleft in the dunes towards the shore. She strode on, possessing the land, while he hung back. Pale sand softened underfoot. Tough grasses fought each other in the wind and lashed his legs. The salty air caught his breath. At the edge of the sand lay shells and dried seaweed. Where did all these dead things come from? The shell was dry, seaweed cracked and fell, disintegrating. He walked towards the sea, where rocks were larger and shimmered with light.

  ‘Mind the wrack. It’s lethal when it’s wet, if you step on it,’ she called.

  At his feet a flow of bright green algae trickled around rock pools. He threw small grey pebbles into the sleep of the sea where scrags of seaweed splayed. Wind pummelled his face. She was a bit screwy, but if she liked being there, he did not mind. He hugged his jacket, wanting to feel her, her dark eyes, her warm skin. She was unlike any girl he’d met, and there had been plenty. But this was different. Wanting Caitlin alarmed him. He was lost. She disturbed his being. Filled it. He was more alive and alert, as if whatever she said or thought sank deeply in. He moved after her but she climbed through the dunes to get further down.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Sand in my eyes.’ He rubbed them, feeling the grit on his skin and under his nails.

  ‘We can go back, if you want?’

  ‘I’m all right.’ He blinked, fearing she was making fun of him. When he opened them, the wide expanse of beach was still there. ‘Ugh!’ He stepped back from a pale globule muscling fluid in and out, at his feet.

  ‘Only a jellyfish,’ she said, while he shied away. ‘It won’t eat you.’ She laughed, bending to pick it up and holding it out while he flinched and felt foolish.

  They walked into the endless sky, passing boulders and smaller rocks near the sea edge.

  ‘We’ve come miles,’ he said. The town was a smudge of indistinguishable buildings.

  ‘We have.’ She shaded her eyes, looking up the coast, and he followed her line of vision. ‘But I come here a lot. Especially at night. I’ve seen the drowned moon. One time it’s coasting the horizon, the next it’s gone. Laid down on the water and drowned.’

  He didn’t quite get what she meant and started to go on, but his foot knocked against the maggot-ridden body of a sheep. Half of the body lay on its side, prey to a flurry of flies hovering like a gauze. They were a continuous haze around the curve of ribs and the knuckles of joints.

  ‘Sheep fall over the cliff edge. Especially old ones, when they’re blind and there’s no fence.’

  ‘What’ll happen to this?’ The dried skin and whitened bone was a mad tangle. He wanted to kick it out of the way but was scared it would break down even more.

  ‘Nothing. It’ll be there ’til it’s eaten,’

  ‘How long’ll that take?’

  ‘A few months. The sea’ll wash it off. Take away those bones, spread them somewhere else and leave another pile of rubbish. One for the other.’

  She walked towards the sea and a clutch of boulders. When he caught up, she was hunkered down at a broken bird sunk in the sand. It shivered, trying to fly. The fibres of the wing separated in places, like lashes, and flecks of mud scattered its wing. She leant to stroke the tiny body as it trembled; its beady, dark eyes were bright as she cupped it.

  ‘Can you get it some food?’ she asked.

  ‘How?’ He did not even know what they ate and was surprised the bird did not struggle.

  ‘Pick up a stone and knock off one of them limpets on the boulder.’

  He searched the big rocks. Strands of seaweed unravelled. He pushed the trails aside and scraped until the shells squelched off. A sickening green slime. He pushed it onto his hand. The squadge of flesh made his stomach turn. She lay the watery food near the bird.

  ‘We can’t do any more except leave it and hope it’ll have a scrap of a life before it becomes dead meat.’

  ‘Something’ll eat it?’ he asked.

  ‘Some old dog or cat. Maybe a fox.’

  This outside world overwhelmed him. There were no limits. The horizon slipped into the sea, one merged into the other. It was difficult to know where one began and the other ended. Where anything fitted. He was small against the hugeness of the waves. They fell back into the belly of the ocean, while a flurry of white spread at his feet. He was lost against the vast sky which swept down, brilliant and gaudy in its silver and gold light, exposing him.

  Up ahead, Caitlin bent to pick up a clutch of pebbles. Turning back, she waited for him to catch up.

  ‘What’ve you got?’

  ‘Only these.’ She opened her hand.

  ‘They’re nice.’

  ‘Gems. Kind of.’ She slipped the stones in her pocket. ‘Well, as near as you’d ever get here.’ Her face was open with pleasure, while he pulled his jacket close. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m freezing.’ Raw wind was on his face, an echo billowing in his ears.

  She ran along the shore and he chased after. He could barely catch up, unable to get a steady footing on the slippery sand trying to trap him. He fell, his hair messed up and his eyes tired with sand and light.

  ‘Come back to the house,’ she shouted against the beating wind.

  ‘What about the old woman?’

  ‘Delia’ll be at the clinic. They collect her on a Thursday and it takes all afternoon to deliver her back. Please. She doesn’t like me going out and she doesn’t want me to see anyone but she can’t have a hold of me all the time. I have to keep some piece of myself that’s mine.’

  They walked over the dunes to the small road. He did not want to meet the old woman. They could be difficult. The old lady on the site had shouted at kids who played around the trailers, and the one in the trailer near his grandfather had moaned into the night.

  ‘Come on.’ She raised his hand to hers and played with his fingers.

  The idea of being coiled up beside her warmed him. He thought he had put her off but he wanted her, and either she wanted the same or she did not.

  Leaving behind the beach and fields, they walked until they came to new houses in an area he did not know.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Carlington. Not much further.’

  She led through a network of roads of new houses to one at the corner of a square. She slipped a key in the back door and led him upstairs. Her room held the barest of furniture: a bed, a dressing table and a wardrobe. Dried seaweed draped a wall and pieces of driftwood stood in a corner. The air was salty. Her bed was under a window showing mountains in the distance. Oyster shells littered a shelf, along with shells long as knives. Chalk-white pointed skulls and coils of rope and netting lay amid tangles of branches, stones and shells.

  ‘A sheep and a goat. But they can’t hurt,’ she smiled.

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘Yes. And
this,’ she dropped a stone into his palm, ‘is yours.’ He opened his palm to a pale stone. ‘Quartz. You liked it.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘You said so.’

  ‘Thanks. How’d you get all this up here?’ he asked, lifting the netting.

  ‘Carried them. Had to, to make it the way I wanted. I’ve nowhere else. Delia doesn’t want my stuff downstairs.’

  She looked pained and it scared him. Whatever was going on with her and the old woman, he could not help. He could barely help himself. He was useless, wishing he could offer more, understand what she understood, what she was going through.

  ‘I suppose I’ve to be grateful. I’ve little else, except maybe this. Give me your hand.’

  He let her take his fingers, curving them round, making a ball shape. Opening them, she placed his palm within her own, looking at the pads of grubby skin, the rim of dirt clogging his nails.

  ‘I see a figure in grey. A woman. I’m not sure. There’s pure, clear water flowing across the rocks.’

  His palm was grubby, with a graze from when he had scrabbled on the rocks for the oysters, and the beginning of a blister.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve only pictures in my head. I didn’t ask to be able to do this. Often I feel a right eejit.’ She removed her fingers, beautiful pale handcuffs. He wanted them around him always. For a long time, at least. ‘I’ve told you all I can. You’ll find this place far from here and there’ll be peace.’

  ‘What place is it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘No one’s ever done that to me.’

  ‘Most girls have tech skills or are into beauty and make-up or are good at cooking. They might have a brain in their head and go to college. But I never stayed in one place long enough to learn anything. That’s the most I have. Delia says it was handed on to me from my grandmother. All I know is, lots of people pretend they can do it and it’s easy to play on others.’

  He lay back on the bed and took her face in his hands. His eyes were liquid as he moved easily on her, pinning her to the bed, his arms locked over her head. She loosened herself and pulled off her top. On her upper arm, in squirls and lines of pinks and red, with others of blue merging, the wings of a butterfly spread. On her forearm, feathers of red slashes and pink weals criss-crossed. Scarred tracks. A flare of violence stirred and frightened him.