“Gwynder, she’s not religious. Miracles are for believers. To take her all the way to…Look at her. She doesn’t even have the strength for the journey. Look at her, for heaven’s sake.”
“Miracles are for everyone. And they’re what she wants. What she needs. ’F she doesn’t go, she’s going to die.”
“She is dying.”
“’S that what you want? Oh, I expect it is. You with your posh boyfriend there. Can’t believe you even brought him down here.”
“He’s not my…He’s a policeman.”
Gwynder slowly clutched at the front of her pullover as she took in this detail. She said, “Why’ve you brought…?” And to Lynley, “We’re doing nought wrong. Can’t make us leave. The town council know…We’ve the rights of travellers. Aren’t bothering anyone.” And to Daidre, “Are there more of them out there? You come to take her? She won’t go without a fight. She’ll begin to scream. Can’t believe that you would do this to her. After everything…”
“After what exactly?” Daidre’s voice sounded pinched. “After everything she did for me? For you? For all three of us? You seem to have a very short memory.”
“And yours goes back to the start of time, eh?” Gwynder forced more of the liquid into their mother’s mouth. The result was much the same as before. What drained out of her dribbled down her cheeks and onto the pillow. Gwynder tried to sort this out by brushing it off, with little success.
“She can be in hospice,” Daidre said. “It doesn’t have to go on this way.”
“We’re meant to leave her there alone? Without her family? Lock her up and wait till they give us the word she’s gone? Well, I won’t do that, will I. And if you come to tell me tha’s the limit of what you mean to do to help her, you leave with your fancy man. Whoever he says he is. Because he’s not a cop. Cops don’t talk like him.”
“Gwynder, please see reason.”
“Get out, Edrek. Asked for your help and you said no. Tha’s how it is and we’ll cope from here.”
“I’ll help within reason. But I won’t send the lot of you to Lourdes or Medjugorje or Knock or anywhere else because it isn’t reasonable, it doesn’t make sense, there are no miracles-”
“Are! And one could happen to her.”
“She’s dying of pancreatic cancer. No one walks away from that. She’s got weeks or days or perhaps even hours and…Is this how you want her to die? Like this? In this place? Inside this hovel? Without air or light or even a window to look at the sea?”
“With people who love her.”
“There is no love in this place. There never was.”
“Don’t you say that!” Gwynder began to weep. “Just because…just because…Don’t you say that.”
Daidre made a move towards her but stopped. She raised a hand to her mouth. Behind her glasses, Lynley saw that her eyes filled with tears.
“Leave us to our weeks or days or hours, then,” Gwynder said. “Just go.”
“Do you need-”
“Go!”
Lynley put his hand on Daidre’s arm. She looked at him. She removed her glasses and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her coat, which she’d not removed. He said to her, “Come,” and he urged her gently to the door.
“Hard fucking cunt,” Gwynder said to their backs. “D’you hear me, Edrek? Hard fucking cunt. Keep your money. Keep your fancy boy. Keep your life. Don’t need you or want you, so don’t come back. Hear me, Edrek? I’m sorry I even asked you in the first place. Don’t come back.”
Outside the caravan, they paused. Lynley saw that tremors ran through Daidre’s body. He put his arm round her shoulders. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said.
“Who the hell’re you lot?” The question came in a shout. Lynley looked in its direction. Two men had emerged from the shed. They would be Goron and Daidre’s father, he decided. They approached in a hurry. “Wha’s this, then?” the older man said.
The younger said nothing. There seemed to be something wrong with him. Openly, he scratched at his testicles. He snuffled loudly and, like his twin in the caravan, he squinted. He nodded at them in a friendly fashion. His father did not.
“What d’you lot want?” Udy asked. His gaze went from Lynley to Daidre and back to Lynley. He seemed to be assessing everything about them but most particularly their shoes for some reason. Lynley saw why when he looked at Udy’s own feet. He wore boots but they were long past their prime. The soles were split at the toes.
“Paying a call…” Daidre had stepped away from Lynley’s embrace. Face-to-face with her father, she bore no resemblance either to him or to her brother.
“What you doing here, then?” Udy said. “We got no need of do-gooders round here. We make it on our own and always have done. So you lot clear out. This’s private property, this is, and there’s a sign posted.”
It came to Lynley that while the women in the caravan knew who Daidre was, the men did not, that for some reason Gwynder had sought and found her sister on her own, perhaps knowing at some level that her mission was futile. Hence, Udy had no idea that he was speaking to his own daughter. But when Lynley considered this, it seemed reasonable. The thirteen-year-old who had been his daughter was someone from the past, not the accomplished, educated woman before him. Lynley waited for Daidre to identify herself. She did not do so.
Instead, she gathered herself together, fumbling with the zip on her jacket, as if with the need to do something with her hands. She said to the man, “Yes. Well, we’re leaving.”
“You do that,” he said. “We got a business we’re running here and we don’t fancy trespassers comin’ round on the off-season. We open in June and there’ll be bits and bobs aplenty for sale then.”
“Thank you. I’ll remember that.”
“And mind the sign as well. If it says no trespassing, that’s what it bloody means. And it’ll say no trespassing till we’re opened, understand?”
“Certainly. We understand.”
There was actually no posted sign that Lynley had seen, either one forbidding trespass or one indicating this desolate spot was a place of business. But there seemed little enough reason to point out the man’s delusion to him. Far wiser to clear out and to put this place and its people and their way of life behind them. He understood, then, that this was exactly what Daidre had done. He also saw what her struggle now was.
He said, “Come away,” and he put his arm round her shoulders once again and led her in the direction of her car. He could feel the stares of the two men behind them and, for reasons he didn’t wish to consider just then, he hoped they wouldn’t realise who Daidre was. He didn’t know what would happen if they realised it. Nothing dangerous, surely. At least nothing dangerous as one typically thought of danger. But there were other hazards here besides the removal of one’s personal safety. There was the emotional minefield that lay between Daidre and these people, and he felt an urgency to remove her from it.
When they returned to the car, Lynley said he would drive. Daidre shook her head. She said, “No, no. I’m fine.” When they climbed inside, though, she didn’t start the engine at once. Instead, she pulled some tissues from the glove box and blew her nose. Then she rested her arms on the top of the steering wheel and peered out at the caravan in the distance.
“So you see,” she said.
He made no reply. Again, her hair had fallen over the frames of her glasses. Again, he wanted to push it away from her face. Again, he did not.
“They want to go to Lourdes. They want a miracle. They have nothing else to hang their hopes on and certainly no money to finance what they want. Which is where I come in. Which is why Gwynder found me. So do I do this for them? Do I forgive these people for what they did, for how we lived, for what they couldn’t be? Am I responsible for them now? What do I owe them besides life itself? I mean the fact of life and not what I’ve done with it. And what does it mean, anyway, to owe someone for having given birth to you? Surely that’s not the most difficult part of taking on parenthood, is it? I hardly think so. Which means the rest of it-the rest of being a parent-they utterly mangled.”