‘How’d it happen?’ he asked. She sat up, hugging her knees, rocking back and forth, deepening her impression on the bedspread. ‘Was it him?’
‘Sheridan?’ She shook her head. ‘No. A guy from Brazil. He was married. He said it didn’t matter and he’d go home to sort it out. But I couldn’t face it, so I left. I always run when I’m in a mess. Except he had a hold on me, but in the end I did it. I walked away.’
‘That was good.’
‘Part of me wants to keep walking. Walking out of here. Far away.’
He pulled back then leaned over her, his face to her arms and kissed the soft skin.
‘Couldn’t you leave?’
‘Where’d I go? I’ve lived so much of my life with Delia. Travelled the length of England with her. Been in Scotland in the winter. Seen the mountains capped with snow. Gone to Cornwall. Worked on farms there. I don’t know how I’d manage alone.’
‘What about the time with those other men?’
‘It was different. Delia and I’d big rows and I took off with them, though I was dependent on them and I didn’t like to be. But you’re different. I like you.’ She rolled close. ‘A leanh.’
‘What’s that mean?’ He rested his head in her lap, in the dozed warmth of the room, sealed in.
‘Sweetheart. Or darling. Loved one. Delia used to say a word can heal but sometimes silence is better. I keep hoping love will save me. Save me from myself.’
He didn’t know about that. He didn’t know anything, except that being with her was the only place to be; she resting against his side, he stroking her hair. The world was bigger out there and she had seen more of it, had a firmer grasp of it than he did. He wondered what it would be like to travel with her.
*
Afterwards, he turned to her sleeping, her skin richly dark as the night breathing. Although she didn’t think so, she was homed here, in a way he could not imagine. But being with her was the nearest thing. No one could get him. Not Big Ian. The police. Anyone. He had lain on his bed in the top flat in Kilburn, adrift among roofs in the listening dark, the breath of traffic below and calls of men working late in the garage across from their flat. A powdery smell from childhood among a tumult of blankets. A light, fragrance which soothed and the dangerous, unbalancing sensation of being alive.
An engine outside drew to a halt.
‘Oh no! It’s her.’ Caitlin leapt off the bed towards her jeans.
‘What?’
‘The bus.’ She pulled on a tee-shirt.
He jumped up, leaving a trail of sheets. He scrambled to put on his trousers. He slung his jacket on his shoulders.
‘They’re early.’ She searched the floor for her knickers. From the street, a woman’s voice rose, giving directions. ‘Go out the back, through the garden.’ Caitlin pulled on a sweater as she led the way downstairs and the door of the van thudded shut.
She opened the kitchen door while a key sounded in the front. He slipped out. The old lady was surprised to see Caitlin and a woman’s voice said she would call the following week. He ran out the back through the stubbly abandoned garden. He nearly caught himself on a straggly rose bush as he pushed open the gate. When he had cleared the houses, he stopped to tie up his trainers.
Torin was hot and sweaty, gulping for air, unable to get enough. He hurried, gathering pace until he pounded the concrete strip leading to the garages and onto the main street.
Ceol na Mara: 1
During the warm night, giving only broken rest, Eva threw off the duvet. It muddled with a sprawl of blankets on the floor. She woke in the early morning, out of a slug of sleep which had eventually trapped her, even if the dreams were ragged and torn and she saw a train cutting through the countryside, long carriages with endless doors and small compartments that she tried to enter.
A whiff of cigarettes hung in the air. She coughed. Her father must have been up a while.
‘Is it food you want?’ he asked.
He wore his tweed jacket over his pyjamas and might have had it on in bed, for all its creases. He shifted and covered his ways. Never liked explaining himself, so she had no clue when he might go out or who he was with. He had said he knew no one, yet he had spent time with a couple of old fellas he had met up with in a bar in town. She did not ask. It was his life. She had left him to it the day she took off.
‘You don’t look well.’
‘I’m grand.’ She rose, tidying the blankets.
A smell of fried bread and bacon wafted. She would have loved a cup of sweetened tea.
‘If your mother was here, she’d have you better. She’d great healing…’
Only too clearly, she saw her mother making cures for any they met on the road: a woman who had headaches with a child coming; a man with a rash on his face; an old woman who lived in a small house by the sea, complaining of pains in her back like the waves. It was unsettling, bringing back her mother too vividly. The past clamoured. Fell on top of her like a shower of bullets.
‘Is it the new fella you’re thinking of? Are you a wee bit gone on him?’
‘Course not.’ She combed her hair.
‘He has a notion for you, surely,’ he declared, sitting on the edge of the bed and munching a sandwich of bacon and egg. Gloopy bright yolk dripped; curls of overcooked rind hung down.
‘Why not? Are you surprised?’ She flattened the blankets with a swipe of her palm across the length of the bed and folded it up to make a long seat.
‘Any fella’d be glad to have time with you. I always said, you didn’t give the lads who were your own kind a chance. You were gone in an instant with them foreign fellas when there were lads over here’d have you… There were plenty who asked. And we’d no way of knowing where you were, until the few bits of news back from whoever might have run into you over.’
At the table, in her nightdress, she spread hefts of butter on a slice of bread. If only she could sleep; let the pains of night drain out. She knew too well how she had left in a hurry, not giving the briefest care to him or her mother. If they had been waiting for her to travel home, she had not known or cared. The day she left Caitlin with her mother, she vomited in the ladies toilets at the bus station in Cork, wiping away the puke before the tetchy woman who looked after the place noticed. She had fought back tears, wanting the bus driver to go fast as the wind on the rough road to Dublin.
She dressed, keeping open the tall cupboard door to separate them. She would have some piece of modesty at least. Show her father she had standards, whatever about the past. She must not let him trawl over the old days. It would smother her, the way a blanket would be thrown over a one to keep out the cold. Lord knows, after all the running, she had not wanted to be landed with a young one on her own in England the two times.
‘Joe’ll look out a trailer.’ She smoothed down the front of a blue sweater which should have been ironed.
Her father pulled on his trousers and a check shirt.
‘Good luck to him, so. But you might have a notion and go off with him.’ He shuffled the newspaper back and forth, searching for the horse racing pages.
‘How could I, the state I’m in? Fit for nothing. Those damn tablets, I don’t think they’re doing a bit of good.’ She rubbed her stomach as a lug of pain shot through her.
‘You want to look after yourself. You worrying about the lad?’
She shook her head. It was not him, though she wished he was not gone so many days. She had no way of knowing where he was or what kind of people he was with.
‘I won’t be long,’ she shouted, going down the steps.
‘Why are you leaving so fast? Anyone’d think the banshees were after you. Can’t I come?’
‘I wouldn’t want to tire you. I’m only going for a walk.’
‘For the love of God.’ He waved his arms distractedly. ‘The doctor said you were to rest. Where are you
going?’
The door clattered and swung. His words trailed until she no longer heard them, but when she glanced over her shoulder, he was still looking after her.
She passed the small blue caravan and the red trailer. A woman drove a van out. Bony and fierce, the woman had no sign of a man by her. Eva would like to have driven, taken herself all over the country. Visited places she had only heard of. Giants Causeway. The mountains of Mourne. She wanted to put places to the songs. Duneen. Dungloe. Tipperary. But she could just about tell one end of a car from another.
Beyond the fence, she was free. Tired, but free. Light-headed with relief, she walked off the clodding ache. A bare light picked out every living thing. A rage of spring, the hedges thick with leaves and the nips of hawthorn buds. The breeze refreshed her, though her feet were heavy as lead. She would go on, like the times she had walked into the sea with a giddiness and delight in the spray of waves. If she found Delia, what would she say? And if Caitlin was with her, what could she offer? What words after so long? Her throat caught and she could not breathe, but she pressed on. ‘Keep going,’ she thought.
For months after she had left Caitlin with her mother, she had seen her own child in every one passing. Her heart lurched towards them. She had to keep a hold on herself so as not to rush forward and take the infant out of its pushchair. She used make-up every day, but inside she was falling apart. She saw Caitlin everywhere, in the blue check dress with tiny embroidered flowers and the white collar. As each day passed, she had wondered what way her mother dressed the child. She saw the run of dresses and cardigans Caitlin might have worn and longed to touch them, but they were gone, packed in a brown holdall with a broken zip. All the clothes Caitlin used to wear were ready for wearing on all the other days running to a future she would not be part of.
Fields glistened, leaving the grass sodden. She walked in scratchy sandals, fleshy leaves brushing against her. The curve of the bridge to the shops rode over the river like a sigh. A man passed on his bike and a boy played with a stick and a dog. The land unfolded in stretches of small farms like those her father worked, fixing walls, mending pots and pans, sharpening shears, or to bigger houses where he might find a job for a week or so digging potatoes. Getting used to the walk, to the stretch of it, she could go miles.
A twenty minute wait for a bus. How did they manage? She had forgotten how few ran, but a bus arrived heading for Waterford. The driver told her of housing developments along the way. She would hang on until she arrived and he would tell her where to get off. The bus wove through villages and fine-looking houses, some with grey stone like those she had called to years back with her mother. She recalled a story of her mother’s. A woman, Elizabeth Worthington had lived in a big grey-stone house, brought over by her husband, who was often away in London. Elizabeth was lonely without the social life she was used to in London. She missed the round of parties and dances and being able to play the piano, for her husband would not allow one in the house. He had a nervous condition from the Boer War and could not abide noise. Elizabeth saw few people except her husband’s groom, a great horseman with whom she fell in love. Her husband returned from London and found them together. He was so full of rage he brought out his shotgun. The groom ran off and, knowing the lie of the land, escaped easily while Elizabeth, chasing after, fell into a river and was said to have drowned. Eva heard the hooves cracking along the road at speed.
She should have come back when her mother was alive. She should have borrowed money and come. Or stolen it. But this time would be different. She would watch herself and not go on with the drinking. It did her no good, the doctor had said before she left. He had told her to change her lifestyle. Lifestyle. She did not know what it was and did not want to disappoint him by asking.
Beyond the town, when the driver indicated, she got off. Near a network of roads, a couple of teenage girls hitched. No one would be bothered with her if she attempted it. She might have once, smiling, giving the glad eye, her skirt riding up. She walked on towards rows of new houses. An estate, surely. No. Dead end. Up here, a right turn, then left. One road leading to another. All the houses looking the same, it was confusing but she would keep walking. Even if it was dark when she arrived, even if Delia was not there, at least she would know. Her bones ached. She had little breath but walked the rise of a hill and made out a cluster of signs: Roseland. Broadfields. Templevane. Even if Delia was not here, Eva would keep on looking. She would not hide in the back roads. She would move up the country, travel around, find her.
The houses were tightly packed tiny boxes, clinging to each other like toys with white wood cladding at the front on the upper parts. Some had drawn curtains. Three cars were lumped on grass verges where tyre tracks made muddy ridges; one had a dented side, and the front of a dark green car was smashed. In a garden, an ice-cream van had ‘Antonio’s Exclusive Ices’ and ‘Watch the Child’ spread on the back windows in worn-out lettering.
She knocked on the nearest door, but no one came. The neighbouring door, bashed in at the end and a crack in a square of glass, brought a woman in slippers, dripping a fag from her lips.
‘Yes, missus?’
‘Is there an old woman living round about?’
‘There’s a few, yes, that took up with houses a while ago. Were you wanting one of them?’
‘I am.’
The woman looked over her shoulder and yelled, ‘Stace. D’you hear that? Seen an old lady around? No? No, she didn’t. I didn’t either, sorry.’
‘Thank you, anyways.’
On the next row of houses, the gardens were as small as stamps; a scrub of green but no flowers. A baldy man in a white vest came out of a front door and got into a car. There was barely room for him to drive, but after several goes he swung round until he edged the car off and came to a halt.
‘You all right, missus?’ He peered out of the car window. Nosey, the way everyone was if they got a chance.
‘I’m fine thanks. Would there be any old ones around here?’
‘Who you after?’
‘A one by the name of Delia. Delia McArdle.’
‘There were some put in the houses and one man died a month back. You’d not see them much would you, if they’re old? You could try the blue door near the corner. I seen an old one in it a few weeks ago.’ He nodded towards the end of the row.
He put his head back inside the car, glanced over his shoulder and the wheels squealed off, leaving squelchy mud. She went up the path of a straggly looking house.
Her heart was a brick thumping. She raised her hand to the half-open door. She should run away while she had time and before she made a fool of herself. She took in short breaths, unable to stop the shake in her legs. All this was wrong. She should not be here. Delia was clever and neat enough to have found the chance of a house in a place like this. To have taken up the offer with the Council. And yet was as likely to have gone off travelling, abandoning the house for the summer. Eva could see her slip out of the house early of a morning, a dainty handbag with her, her face made up, devilishly charming, having found a lift with a man who was going up the country.
‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Is anyone here by the name of Delia?’
‘Who’s wanting her?’ a dragged, worn voice called.
‘Myself. Eva. Eva Finnerty.’
A pad, pad on the floor, inched near. A whistle of wind along an alley. It was all wrong. Wrong place. Wrong time.
‘Who did you say you were?’
The crabbed voice took hold, spun around as a ball of wool passed through women’s hands on evenings when Delia and the other women sat by the side of the wagons, singing quiet songs, an evening when one or two mothers keened for a lost or broken one who had died on the road before a doctor would come. The voice took her back to when they last met, when her mother was living, when the world was open and new, and travel and freedom, love and the tie of it, all thin
gs she had known under the sky, were possible.
‘It’s me. Kate’s girl. Eva.’
The old lady clutched the door frame with one hand.
‘Indeed, it is. Eva. And you’ve the one you’re seeking in front of you.’ Delia leant on a stick, around which her striped skirt fell to the ground, so no one would guess it hid a wooden leg in the folds, beyond the muddied hem. Her face was grey and creeping with wrinkles. The past roared. She was smaller and more delicate than Eva remembered. Years drained out. Eva was weak. She was soaked with longing to hear of the past and the present, but this was not the woman she had known. Where was the youthful woman, the lively woman who had been the close friend of her mother? She had let too many years slip.
‘I wouldn’t know you,’ Delia grabbed Eva’s hand, ‘but don’t they say the calf always returns to where it got the milk? Come in.’
The hall led to a kitchen with a table and two plastic garden chairs. A cooker stood in one corner with a worn saucepan of stew cooking. An electric fire blared with two bright orange bars.
From the basement of memory, Eva saw gold hoops of earrings and dresses with lace trim, others with velvet, and violet eyes the envy of other women. Until her accident, when she was run over and her leg damaged, Delia moved with grace and ease through the body of dances by the side of the road, the eyes of men and women upon her. She had an energy which had taken her door to door, carrying baskets, or helping her husband bend the metal for pails, washing in streams, cutting turf or peeling a sack of potatoes.
‘Come in and sit down. You were great to come a-finding me. And not in the old places but in these new houses.’ Under a dark blue scarf, Delia’s black hair straggled, flecked with grey. ‘I’d a longing to come.’
‘You’d great gradh for your own people. It’s how you must’ve been taking after your parents, the way they ran off together, making their own road, for your mother’d a blighter of a husband and they were lucky he didn’t come after.’ Delia sat in front of the cooker, from where an aroma of overcooked meat and vegetables rose. ‘And here you’ve the benefit of good fresh air blowin’ on your face. Living in cities did nobody any good, with never a bit of green but only old factories and shops. At least it was the way in England. D’you mind when we were on a site near Staples Corner?’
Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind Page 11