Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind

by Deirdre Shanahan

  ‘Everyone feels lonely some time.’ Pauley’s mouth flexed into a thin smile as he leant over. He had looked deep into his heart and seen the well of emptiness. ‘When I was young,’ he said in a lower voice, ‘My dad’d come in late from the pub. That was why my mum left. He spent all their money and when he didn’t, he was out of his head causing fights and rows. I used to go to bed to get away. Home from school. Tea, a bit on the computer, then upstairs. Mum might be out at a friend’s, I used to try and sleep but would hear him come in from the pub. A slip of his footsteps on the stairs. I’d pretend to sleep. He’d sneak into my room. The shiver of his jacket in the dark. He’d get into bed beside me. He smelt awful. He’d do things. I was taken over by him. Like there was nothing left. Or I was nothing. Or only something he trampled. He scared the shit out of me. One time he broke the wheel of my bike. Hit it against a wall. It was so bloody cheap it fell apart.’ He rolled back, his arms wrapped around himself.

  In the echoey silence, Torin heard his own breath and his bones were cold.

  ‘But it’s good with you. I’ll go along with you when you go back to London.’

  ‘You mightn’t like it. It’s a big, mad place.’

  ‘Not a problem for me then?’ Pauley gave a little laugh and Torin turned away. ‘But you don’t want the bother of me.’ Pauley’s voice was pale and serious.

  ‘It’s not that. It’s…’ Bringing someone else was complicated. Torin didn’t know where he fitted in or where he’d stay, let alone anyone else. ‘You’d be lost.’

  ‘I’m lost here. In London, I could earn money. Do something. Be someone,’ Pauley said.

  ‘It might not work out.’

  ‘With you, I’d be all right. You know, I like you,’ Pauley said, with a slow, forlorn insistence. He stretched over Torin’s shoulders, putting his hands against his chest, moving upwards until he grasped Torin’s shoulders.

  Torin’s spine tickled, as a finger traced a path to his shoulder blades. The tracery of a leaf’s veins in the dazzle of the sun, an intense yellow, beyond green. Pauley’s fingers were going over the bones of his back. A whisper of pressure stroking, urging. He sensed the river of absence between them but it was no good. He could not be what Pauley wanted. Pauley had to be lonely, really lonely, to be coming on to him.

  ‘I like you too but…’ Torin withdrew, pulled up his legs.

  ‘But what?’ Pauley asked.

  Torin pulled the stiff, dark cover over him. His legs ached and a dullness surged in his head.

  ‘Not like that.’ He pulled the sheeting up closer, ‘Sorry. I need to sleep.’

  ‘Okay. I can deal with that.’ Pauley withdrew and breathed deeply behind him, into the night.

  Torin turned away. His legs and upper body were stiff. Ridges in the roof were clear. Behind him, the continual rise and fall of breath, Pauley’s words creeping like an old prayer. In the grip of the dark, the cold held. The inside of his bones strained. Rain clattered on the metal roof like hooves and he saw Caitlin riding across a field. A thunder of gallops. He saw her riding away. Everything going. Losing.

  Next morning, the doors rolled like thunder as Pauley opened them. Torin blinked towards the shaft of light. Pauley was the same as he had always been: optimistic, wanting so much. Torin rose, pushing the cover behind. He put his arm over Pauley’s shoulder and in the new day, was exposed, raw.

  4

  Stark trees slipped out of view and merged into the horizon. The HGV drew to a halt and the driver declared, ‘Blackrock.’ Early morning rain turned to a glimmer of sun. It would have been good to know exactly where he was, but the edge of Dublin would have to do.

  ‘Everything okay? You’ve gone awful quiet the last half hour,’ the driver said, a baseball cap reversed on his head, so he looked about twelve. ‘Know where you are?’

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ Torin lied, opened the truck door and jumped down. The man leant down from his little window. ‘Thanks.’

  The door slammed shut on the sweaty cabin. All he knew was, after getting on outside Longford, he had ended up on the outskirts of Dublin and the distance was grey with rows of houses. He pulled his jacket close and started walking. His grandad was probably still on the site or stumbling along a road from the pub. He should phone, but his granddad had never bothered much with them. Torin had left a note and saw the choke of pain on his grandad’s face as he read it. Leaving had been cruel. He’d dealt his grandad a blow but he couldn’t help it. Besides, most of his grandad’s life had been without them. What was different? But he’d grown to like him. Enjoyed his bits of songs. Snatches of an old life Torin would never know, stories of those who had lived in tents of willow with old coats and tarpaulins flung on the top, the most protection out of the rain. He would not hear again of the harvest jobs on farms in the midlands or slabs of thick ham in a sandwich from women in the big houses. He’d been good company. Especially at the end. But company was not enough.

  The beginning of December crept into his bones. Discount stores, garages, supermarkets. In cracks between pavement flagstones, weeds fought for life. Nothing else but strands of dry grass. Even if he found Caitlin, he did not know what he would say. Words he might try echoed around his head. He was empty of what he could offer. He was coming with only himself.

  The centre flowed with cars and trucks passing while the railings of a hospital lined the road. No one was walking. It was all traffic. He turned into an empty street. Rows of neat houses stretching. He could have been in London. Except it was different. More space. An airiness or perhaps, because he was on the brink of going back, the two places overlapped. For the first time in a long while he missed the run of fields. He had not realised how they had got to him but soon all this would be over and he would be gone. Clean out of the place. Soon as he found her. He would say what he had to say and go. She would be glad to see the back of him.

  At a junction a café was open, with thickset men bulked around tables. He was thirsty and it was somewhere to sit. A large woman with an apron and heavy make-up, approached.

  ‘What can I do for you, dear?’

  He ordered a fry and sat near the window. If she passed. If he saw her face, he could run out. But he knew she would not. The woman set a big plate of egg, bacon and sausage before him. While he ate, she sat, telling him about her husband who had died two years previously. She had a daughter abroad and one at the Mater Hospital, a nurse.

  ‘I go nowhere,’ she said. ‘But I love my garden in the spring and I’m waiting for it to come. When I’m not in here or cooking out the back, it’s there you’ll find me, for the pears’ll be out again next year, whatever happens.’

  The winter sun was on his neck and he ate, while half expecting his mum, laden with shopping, to come through the door. A smell of bacon and fried bread rose from the kitchen. He was hungrier than he had thought. When he finished, the woman directed him towards the centre, said it was as easy to walk as to catch a bus.

  The streets burst with men and women, slicker and better dressed than he had seen for a long time. They looked at him and away quickly. He was a stranger but he would be out of the country soon. It had claimed his mum but it would not take him. A woman with a red and gold turban crossed in front. On a bridge sweeping over the river, he was lost in the crowd. A little boy walked along, holding the hand of a grey-haired man. The child tugged and danced, nagged the older man, said he wanted sweets.

  A trail of lorries shot past. The wind echoed. Leaves swirling against bleak grey-stone terraces. He kept walking and realised he might have to bed down in a station, park bench or doorway of a shop. Sleeping outside would not be as easy as lying in a field.

  Near the millennium bridge a young boy busked, strains of a guitar lashing against the traffic and the rattle of people going by. Torin spent the afternoon in St. Stephen’s Green watching the pigeons and tiny birds hip-hopping to scatterings of crumbs. It seemed too
far to even think of finding her. It was too much to do more than find a bed for the night.

  In a pub wide as a barn, an old geezer with a solitary slick of black hair coiled over his bald head ordered a shandy and told the barman he had been to the races.

  ‘I won 100 euros in Galway and, in the summer, 350 in Dublin. Isn’t this the way to live?’ the old geezer hiccupped.

  A young man wearing a cap and a denim jacket joined them. They chatted about music and venues until the guy left. Torin went to the gents. It was only when coming out he noticed that the wodge of notes, a tight fist of euros which had been in his back pocket, was missing. It must have been taken while he was talking, when the young fella came in. He pulled out all his pockets. He swept through the bar, remains of beer in his glass. He walked by the river, glazed and alight with tall buildings. He did not know where to go, and the city with its lights lowered unnerved him.

  He stopped at a tiny bar north of the centre, and ordered only a Coke. A man with a red scarf and heavy rimmed glasses came in and chatted to the barman. They talked about the city, how so many flats and houses were empty.

  ‘I’m looking for somewhere for the night,’ Torin said, rising out of his seat to join them.

  ‘There’s a couple of hostels at the back of the station,’ one man said.

  ‘I don’t have much money.’

  ‘You could try a place north of here. A big old place. Was run by nuns. Home for kids,’ the red-scarf man said.

  ‘Nuns? I don’t want that.’

  ‘No, they’re long gone. Kind of squat with all sorts in it.’

  ‘Could I get there from here?’

  ‘Course you could. Take a bus. Or walk, if you want. On the way to the airport. Adelaide Street. Rough on the outside but you can’t miss it with the statue. Saint or someone, Joseph or one of them in the front garden. Ask for Maeve. If she’s still in it.’

  Not until he was on the bus heading south did he realise he was going the opposite direction for the squat. He jumped off at the traffic lights. Two old ladies tried to explain the correct direction but the one in a maroon hat did not understand him and he had to shout. The other pointed up the road, where she said her sister lived. Fearing he was going to hear her life history, he hurried on.

  The street full of neat red-brick houses was the most unlikely place to have a squat, but out of tiredness and curiosity, he kept walking. A world of gardens and curtains. He searched for an old house needing repair, arriving at a plain grey-stone face of a building with leaking pipes running down. In the garden the worn stone face of a man with a flower pressed close. The front door fell open at his touch and led into a hall with bags stashed against the wall, as if someone was moving out. A faint line of rock music drifted between rooms. A willowy blonde girl approached, her jeans slashed so the flesh of her thighs gaped.

  ‘I heard there might be a room going?’

  ‘For who? You?’

  ‘Yes. Someone in a bar suggested I ask.’

  ‘Alex, was it? What was he wearing?’

  ‘A scarf. Red with a diamond pattern.’

  ‘Tell me the bar, then I’ll know.’

  ‘Daly’s. He told me to ask for Maeve.’

  ‘He’s a smart one. Telling others about us and I haven’t seen a bit of him in a while. There’s a spare room upstairs at the back. No one’s been in it for ages. Five euros for the key if you want it.’

  She led him upstairs and along a corridor.

  ‘You working in town?’

  ‘No. Hoping to meet up with someone.’ He thought he’d have to scour and sift and it might take days to find her. He would be out of there soon. Starting to live again.

  ‘It’s draughty but empty. The curtains keep falling down but you can use safety pins. There’s a mattress. It isn’t much but…’ she shrugged, ‘it’s not meant to be a hotel.’

  She turned the key in a padlock, releasing them in. He let down his bag and his shoulders eased. Dingy light soaked through old nets on the windows while worn red plush curtains hung on either side.

  ‘How long you staying?’

  ‘It could be a couple of days. A week. I don’t know. Two weeks.’

  ‘Okay. That’s short term. Fine. All right for you?’ She opened her arm wide.

  ‘Sure. Definitely.’

  ‘Don’t lose the padlock. That’s the most we’ve got.’

  ‘The others here, they staying long?’

  ‘Some, yes. Kind of taken up residence. But that’s good. Continuity. A couple of artists and designers using the place to work in. We don’t know when it’ll be knocked. Could be anytime. They’ve made a start on houses further up. But no wild parties or bringing back loads of people.’ He paid and she smiled. ‘I’m in the basement so let me know when you’re leaving for good.’ She smiled more easily and walked back up the corridor, her curtain of blonde hair swinging.

  The mattress on the floor was grimy but dry. The springs were okay. He lay down. The emptiness of the room, big as the trailer, enveloped him. A dirty chest of drawers held a long mirror with chipped edges. Dust flew up from the floor. Ghosts. But he didn’t believe in them. Fifty-one days since his mum died. Fifty-two since she last spoke, her face turning in a whisper as she raised her hands, attempting to hold a cup. He had seen her in the faces of older women, dawdling over cups of tea and thin slices of toast in cafés as he had travelled across the country. He had seen her in women with worn-out eyes and thin cheeks. Sometimes, late at night, he saw her as she used to be, before they arrived here, before anything that had happened, had happened and life was simple; dozing in the heat and rush of a day before, walking along the High Road into the shops and pubs, to cleaning jobs. She came to him like mist around a mountain. She was probably waiting in heaven, crossing a field in the sky or sitting in the bus station in Dublin.

  He had spent days the previous week asking about Caitlin, only getting a lead at Breen’s when a man came in who had heard she had slid off to Dublin. His mum would have been little older than Caitlin when she left for London. Where had she gone first? And how, in all her wanderings, had she met his father? He was angry, for she had taken away all the information. But maybe she had not understood its meaning or how much he wanted it. She had to keep silent, he supposed, as some kind of protection. For both of them. From the past and the future. If only he could reach back and tell her it didn’t matter. If he could look in her eyes. Say it was all right. He had not understood her completely, but he saw something of what she had wanted for him.

  The belly of the dark came down and he slept, even though the moon leaked in through grubby net curtains.

  The next morning, he ate a roll from a café at the corner and walked into the city. A man with a ginger beard told him of a site.

  ‘California Row opened a year ago. They made a big splash, for there are facilities or whatever it is them people want. I’m thinking they have it better than the rest of us.’

  He caught a bus north to looming blocks of flats, scourging the sky. The site, bigger than Caulnamore, was bordered by a wall of planks around a sprawl of trailers. They were rough. One stripped of paint left a silvery underlay. Another’s door was half boarded and a smaller blue trailer had a stack of crates where the door should be. A silver trailer had a triumphant yellow moon painted on the side. He knocked and a grey-haired woman answered. She said a couple of trailers in the far corner were classrooms and to ask there.

  He walked past huge trailers with awnings and chrome decoration, canopies opening over the front doors. Caitlin might have attended for lessons or even to help. Two wiry dogs, their ribs visible, scampered. On a concreted area, a man with his sleeves rolled up revealing tanned forearms was shoeing a black horse. Beyond was barely a field but two horses strolled as far as they could, on the end of ropes, twitching up their heads as he neared.

  Lost to the trailer
s and caravans, small white ones, others painted red or the colours of the flag, he almost missed the wall of breeze blocks poking out, protecting a statue of a woman with a pale face and tiny eyes. Her hands were gathered together while bits of cloth tied to twigs flapped in the wind like lost flags. She was cool and calm, the way a girl he fancied would be, looking and waiting, while he knew he had to say something or the chance would be gone. The woman’s gown floated over painted cement, like gales of white sheets spreading. Her long blue dress swelled above bare feet whose nails were painted pink. She stood on half a football decorated with a crested moon and stars made from shiny paper. Dark plastic flowers and a cluster of stale milk bottles, burger cartons and sweet wrappers, cluttered the base. A note stuck into the ball, said two boys aged four and six had died a year ago. They had been run over by a car. That was how it was. Or how it could be. He saw them under the pressure of tyres. Nothing made sense. The woman’s sharp blue eyes deepened. Cars and vans had passed that night with Harjit, their lights burning into the dark, as he stood with the others on the pavement until slipping to the back of the crowd. The last he saw of him. His eyes closed, jacket fallen open, a trail of blood caught in the zipper.

  He wandered between caravans, trailers, wrecked cars and vans. The best trailer had a plastic table and lots of chairs outside. Small toys littered the ground like a school. At his knock, a gangly man with stubble and stringy hair appeared.

  ‘Hi. You all right, there?’

  ‘I’m looking for a girl.’

  ‘We only work with families if there are youngsters,’ the man said. He was young with the start of a goatee beard and a pale face. Torin saw him leaning over books, having the kind of inside life he had never had, knowing facts he never could know. ‘What age is this person?’

  ‘About my age.’ Torin shrugged.