He shifted, wishing the old lady would stop. Leaning on her stick, she rose and pulled the lid from a biscuit tin. She took out two scones and placed them on a plate.
‘Take one. I’d the recipe from my mother and she from hers and manys the one had it before them. And it’ll not be long till I’m following after. The only road left. But you know, I do hardly leave the house, for I like to be in my own bed, under the blankets, nestled like an egg in a cup. I say my prayers to all the saints and the Virgin above, for there’s strength in numbers, to look after my stump of a leg so it won’t pain. The last time I was out, was to the Blessed Virgin in Castleallen. She was in the shrine with the real tears and all, beautiful with her white gown. I waited all day to get her picture. D’you see it?’
On the wall above the table, Our Lady wore a big crown. She had a quietness, with flowing white robes, pink lips and delicately arched brows. She was among an array of worn, tinged, unframed colour photographs, held on with yellowed Sellotape, while bits of dry wallpaper flaked.
‘Is this Caitlin?’ he asked. A small photograph showed a little girl with dark skin standing in front of a fence.
‘Indeed it is.’
Caitlin stood awkwardly, with a serious expression, her arms tucked behind her. She was plump and wore a short dress with a cardigan. Her hair was a shock of black curls around a face that looked more familiar the longer he stared at it.
‘She looks different.’
‘She is, certainly. Different from what she was: a wee one with hands like shells, eyes the brightness of pearl buttons and a flock of curls. She was mad for the music when she first came to me, and many’s the time she fell asleep and Tomeen playing. We’d great fun when the mood was on her. She’d be playing at kings and queens, shopkeepers and sailors, or a traveller on a white horse flying through the air. Nowadays I’ve enough minding myself.’ She took a swig from the flask.
‘Who’s this?’ He pointed to a black-and-white photograph of a young woman standing by the steps of a trailer, the old kind he had seen in pictures. A horse strayed in the distance and the woman wore a wide flowery skirt. She looked out strong and serious, like a teacher when he had been sent for detention.
‘Her mother, Eva. Before she ran away from all belonging to her, the way we were living at the backside of the world.’
The words dropped, colliding in a devilish dance as he tried to catch her meaning.
‘But the road took Eva off and she was ever in a hurry away.’
‘Caitlin’s mother?’
‘It is indeed.’
‘Eva? How?’
‘Amn’t I telling you so? Easy as ever it was to conceive the child. And soon as she’d left Caitlin with her mother she was off again.’
His mum, trapped in the picture, looked out at him looking at her. Fear beaded his neck.
‘But. She’s mine’
‘Is she indeed? Your mother? So she’d you over? You? There’s no knowing what a person’d be up to, but cities drew her.’
Delia’s words ran inside him. His head jangled and crashed. His eyes were blurring. He weakened and gripped the edge of the table.
The shapes of chairs and the dresser were changing. He was disappearing into her words. He was smothered in a tight box of words. He wanted to lash out at something. Anyone. Her. Or not her, but all she had said which slammed into the open space of his heart.
‘What are you saying? Where are you going? Don’t run. You’ll fall and hurt yourself. Oh, my lovely cup and saucer shattered. I’d it all the way over from Derby or was it another town? There are so many places in England, you’d get lost going from one to the other... but what are you saying? Come back!’
He ran off the estate until he could go no further, and gasping leant against the wall of a garage along the main road. His mum had not told him. The length of his life, she had said nothing. He was empty of all that mattered but he got his breath back and ran on, torn and raging. Ran not knowing where he was going. He ran past the fields, the warehouses and supermarkets on the outskirts of town. He ran until he picked up a track leading down to the sea.
The shore below the old house, in the depths of the evening, with the wind sweeping and the sea snarling for night, was the only place.
She had not told him. Not told him. The world rattled its bones.
He sat on a boulder, trying to hammer Delia’s words into sense. He closed his eyes. Caitlin could not have known. A small shift of nausea rose, as if he might spew out. His head reeled. He was not sure of anything and the big noise of waves filled his ears.
He walked along the sand, going up the coast, around rocks and towards the low cliff. All he could do was walk. Walk himself out of the place. On the ground, labels fell off the side of bottles. Wisps of torn rope and cord strayed from the broken-down netting of lobster pots. Silvery slashes of cloud were blades. His mum had been alarmed when she heard about Harjit. She had asked about his parents and three sisters. But she had not told him about Caitlin. He had been buried alive. Bandages were stripped from his eyes. Either Caitlin meant so much and his mum could not bring herself to talk of her, or she meant nothing. As though his mum had been asleep for years.
He kicked a dried crab, put down his foot and smashed it. He scraped off barnacles from a rock, squeezed the shell and pushed down on them with his foot. He stamped and pounded until flesh squirted out, a watery slime with black. He squashed them to mulch. He would leave them dead. Stinking. He flung a fistful of pebbles and they hit the rocks like gunfire. He kicked a beer can, sending it in a spin.
He smashed an empty beer bottle against the side of a red boat. With the rough glass edge, he ran it along the side, gouging with a cold wrath. He wrote his anger. Scarred it. A cutting energy drove him. A feather of wood stuck out from the outer layer. He pulled, ripping, to the golden-white naked lengths. The wood curled off in wisps. He would finish this. Damage. Kill it. Make sure nothing else hurt him. A splintering rage streamed so fast, it was numbing. He tugged the strips, breaking the bones of the boat. Crush the life. Fix it so the boat would never again be the boat it was. He fell to his knees. His hands were mucky with a ridge of dirt under his nails. Sand ran on his fingers. A strange pleasure filled him.
At the old house, no one was around. A pack of beer was stashed in the corner by Pauley’s sleeping bag. He pulled out three cans, drank them one after another and slid to his own bedding. He wanted to slam his eyes shut, cut out the light. Deaden the inside of himself.
6
Laughter rose from trailers on the site and three scraggly-maned horses rambled in the field. One belonged to the sprawling family of kids who played outside into the late evening. He wanted to yell at their door, ‘shut the fuck up’. Two women sat on small fabric garden chairs talking, while a group of kids nearby kicked a ball. It sprang into the air, landing at his feet. He kicked it. Kick her. Get her to tell him the truth. The ball shot towards a toddler with straggly blonde hair. He tottered, falling in a heap, and cried.
‘You devil. Look at the child. What you’ve done.’ A large woman with spiky short black hair rose out of her chair, ‘You could’ve hurt him.’ She waddled to the boy, bending to his tears.
Torin hurried on and, when he looked over his shoulder, the child was in his mother’s arms, his face nestled into her neck. Torin didn’t care. He had seen the boy around but he didn’t care about him. A gangly lad leaned against the door of a trailer, the peak of his cap down in his eyes as he played a harmonica. Strange whiney notes grazed out. The boy’s uncle, an old man with a grey goatee, rocked to and fro in his chair as if enjoying the music. Torin wanted to hit the boy, to trap and stop the notes. Nothing deserved to live and have expression. Not if he couldn’t.
He searched under the old tyre by the van for the spare key. Stabbing it in the lock, he kicked open the door. He hadn’t eaten but he was not hungry. Edgy, unable to sit, he made
tea. Had to do something. Keep busy. She was never around when he wanted her. He lay on the sofa bed. A fug of stale bread and old sprouts. Before he spent time at the old house, she made big slurpy stews which lasted days. He pushed against the trailer walls. Hammered them. He didn’t know if he was angry with himself for not knowing, or with her. He wanted to fight. To fight himself. Or her. To squash something in him. In her.
The place reeked. Bacon. The stink of days-old cabbage. Her perfume of stinky roses. Her blouses hung from the handle of a cupboard. He stretched for a magazine and brushed against a flimsy green dress hanging on the back of a door. It slipped off. He squashed the soft nylon into a ball. He jabbed, making it smaller and released the material so it unloosed itself. Lined with creases, it lay on the sofa. He found scissors in a drawer by the sink. Ripped it, streaking down with the blade. Jagged strands of green flared. Streamers. Ribbons. He drew down slits. He pulled open the wardrobe. He struck through the lengths of dresses. All her favourites. Threads loosened, flew like strands of hair. Ribboned, the skirts were shredded. He lay back on the sofa, tatters and rags of material on the floor.
Footsteps. Hers. Closing in. His mouth was dry. He swiped a glass under the tap for a drink.
‘You’re there. If I’d known. I’d have got you to help with this load.’ She came in, settling on the sofa, a hump of shopping bags at her feet.
He was leaden with exhaustion. But he had her. She would have to drag out everything into the light.
‘What’ve you done?’ Her thinned, pale face stared. ‘My lovely things.’ Her hands passed through them. She wept, brushing aside her hair. ‘What’ve you done?’
He had hurt her. He was exultant.
‘You should’ve told me,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Her. Caitlin.’ He forced his voice low. Might as well have hit her in the face. The stamp of the past.
She lay back. Done in. Good. He’d smash this silence. Smash her into some kind of truth.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He pushed on, even if his own voice alarmed him.
He would stalk her. His animal. He stood over her lying against cushions on the sofa. She pulled a tissue from her sleeve and blew her nose. She would not escape. She had brought him to a strange place. She had done him in. His hopes had tumbled down. He had only the complete rage of knowing he knew nothing at all. She had left him stranded.
‘I don’t know.’ She flinched. Her eyes were small and tight with fear and strain written across her face.
‘You cheated me out of my life.’ He tried to keep a hold on his voice but the buzzing in his head tightened. Knotted. Tension like a gathering of birds.
‘I meant to say something. It was in my head to every day.’ She wiped her hands across her eyes, smearing her cheeks with mascara and eyeliner. Her face was red. ‘I was afraid of what you’d say. But there wasn’t a day I didn’t think of her. You don’t know how hard it was.’ She stretched towards him. Pulling. Digging in her hands.
‘Don’t touch me. She, Caitlin, spent years with Delia when I could have known her. We could have grown up together.’ He pushed her off.
‘I couldn’t manage. I was afraid the Social Services’d be after me. I left her one time with a neighbour and didn’t her father, Kaybe, come and report me. I was afraid I’d lose her completely. He’d an awful temper. I thought he might snatch her. All I could think was, the one person who’d keep her safe was my mother. I always meant to come back and get her. But then I had you, and after she died I didn’t know what to do so I asked Delia. She’d no children of her own, d’you see, so it was company and a good turn I was doing in a way. And the loss hurt less for me as they were on the road. Travelling all over the country and I’d know I wouldn’t come across her. Of course, it was different after Tomeen passed on and she came back to parts she knew. But I only gave her over for it to be temporary. I wasn’t meaning it to last.’
‘Nice to know you cared,’ he spat out. ‘When did you bring her over?’
She blew her nose and sniffed.
‘Caitlin was over her first year. Getting big and had a lovely coat on I’d got from a lady I cleaned for. I saved so I could get the train to the boat and not the bother of a coach. I met my mother soon as I came off the boat, for they were on their way north. It was hard leaving her. I can see Caitlin to this day in the blue dress and a blue cardigan and little red shoes with black bows. It was awful hard. I was crying for weeks after.’
‘Why was it me wanted and not her? I don’t get it.’
‘I left her intending to go back. But you came along and how could I? I couldn’t search up and down the country to whatever place she might be in. And what’d people think, with the two of you and me not married? I was caught. But I wasn’t meant to be.’
He stared out the window. Her words came at him solid as bricks. He wanted to know more. Everything. And yet he didn’t.
‘I never forgot her. Not at all. She’d lovely springy hair like her dad, and his eyes. Kaybe wasn’t a bad man. Not at the start. He’d talk for hours, telling me how we both came from small places. But he left me on my own and I’d to work and London’s a big place. A person can get lost in it. But I’ll make things up. I will. The three of us’ll have a good time together.’
Loss rose through his thighs and guts; through every muscle and bone. A loss tearing. What he might have had. All the flats he had lived in across England, the miles they had travelled from one room to another, one small town to the next. And the last few in London, the one over the barbers, the school caretaker’s house where they had two rooms and the use of his kitchen. Evenings when his mum was out cleaning and he was alone. Empty days when she was at the pub and his company was a pile of sandwiches and the television.
‘And what about my dad? You haven’t told me much about him.’
‘Taylor’d come round an odd time but I never knew when. He was good till it all went wrong. A tall fella with a lovely smile and a rich Scottish accent that a person’d roll in. He was in London on the buildings and lived in West Ham. We used go to a pie and mash shop. Black and white tiles on the floor and crystal lights glittering on a Friday night. I would’ve walked on coals, pulled stars out of the sky for him. But he walked out on me. He was selfish. Always his own man.’
This was the most he’d have. A few facts twisted. Strangled. Knowing them made little difference. Fists of grief rose in his chest. The rug near the table was stained with a splodge of fat merging with breadcrumbs and broken crisps. Love was like this. Changing. Merging into something he could not work out. Against a purple background, gold and orange flowers coiled and meshed.
‘I promise—’ she began.
‘I don’t need promises.’ He sank to the bed. Tired of his voice. Tired of her.
On the table, slices of a white loaf tumbled out. A tin his grandad must have opened spewed out spaghetti. Neon drips of tomato sauce.
‘I’ll make it better. Whatever you want.’ Her eyes were pinched and thin. ‘We’ll go into town, the three of us. Buy nice bits. Jewellery, shoes, dresses, ribbons. Clips for her hair with diamonds, bright as stars.’ She opened her arms, rising towards him, daring to draw close.
‘We can what? What the hell can we do?’
‘Please...’ Her hands rose to grasp him but he flinched.
He was a tight coil, ready to spring, to get the hell away. She fell against the table and the milk carton shook. Drops bled out. Her hands were on his shoulders, stroking his hair.
‘Look at the grand pile of fruit I have.’ His grandad came in, carrying a box of green apples, bananas and plums. ‘I got the load off a fella who was driving a truck load, was in an accident. Didn’t the boxes fall off and they were no good to anyone.’ His face glowed with pleasure.
‘I’ve an awful ache. Where’s my medicine?’ Eva rubbed her stomach, her face in spasm.
She pulled down the small bottles from the shelf where the television stood; she unscrewed the tops but the tablets toppled, pink and brilliant green, across the floor.
Torin stepped away, towards the door.
‘Don’t be angry,’ she called. ‘I didn’t mean any harm.’
‘Don’t tell me what to feel.’
‘What’s the matter? What’ve I done?’ his grandad asked.
‘I never meant to hurt you. Where are you going?’
He pushed past his granddad and a plum fell and smashed on the floor. Juices ran and slipped. She could wait. His grandad could wait. His grandad stepped to one side as a squashed tangerine slurred across the floor. Mucked in with dirt and spills from milk on the floor.
‘Don’t rush, lad.’ His grandad grabbed the edge of the table and sank to a chair.
Out the door, Torin ran past the big trailers, dead bikes, empty crates and forlorn buggies.
As he reached the fence, his phone rang. Caitlin. He could explain. Make it all right. He could make her understand.
‘Torin?’ It was Marcus.
‘Oh.’
‘You sound awful.’
‘No, I’m okay.’
‘Good.’
‘What’s going on, then?’
‘Harjit died.’
‘What?’ he stuttered. His legs weakening, he slumped to the ground.
‘It was in the news. Complications.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘His blood. It went all funny. Infected or something. It did him in.’
Was that good or bad? What did complications mean? What could it ever mean except it was his fault.
‘I wish he hadn’t. It’s all gone wrong,’ he wailed, unable to rein his voice in.
‘Mate, it wasn’t your fault. Not all of it. Him being ill wasn’t. It just happened.’
Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind Page 17