8

Truck

When Maureen was a child, her mother dressed her in frocks and white socks. The frocks she made herself on her electric sewing machine and added details by hand like smocking to the bodice, or puff sleeves. The only time Maureen really remembered her mother laughing was when she ran her fingers over a new roll of organza. And Maureen had liked those frocks. She had believed her father when he said she looked like a princess, as if looking like a princess was a good thing when you’re five and live in a farming hamlet slap bang in the middle of nowhere. It was only when she started school that it began to dawn on her she had been gravely misinformed. That a child in white lace, with a rosebud trim at the waist, or a moss-green silk sash with a bow the size of her head, is a walking target for other children, less fortunate, who will lie in wait for her as she skippetty-skips home in her little-girly frock, and they will splatter her with mud pies and worse. Similarly, that a child who carries a satchel and keeps her pencils sharp, and lays them on her desk in order of color, from dark to light, or who talks as if she has a plum in her mouth, or insists on telling the kind of long stories that so delighted her father, will never be popular. Will, in fact, become a laughingstock.

As Maureen approached Kate’s, she experienced the same feeling she’d had all those years ago as a child, that same low-belly horror at having got everything wrong. Until that day, it had not occurred to her—because why would it?—that other children would not admire her superior clothes and her nice neat pencils and the way she believed she knew the answers to absolutely everything, even when she didn’t, in the same way she had assumed Kate would live in a dear little cottage that she would have cleaned extra-specially since Maureen was coming to visit. In her mind, she had placed a casserole in the Aga that Kate would surely own—because even if she was an activist she still had to eat—and she had laid a table with a clean white cloth. In anticipation of these things, Maureen had stopped to buy wine and a box of chocolates.

Her mistake was obvious now she thought about the directions. No house name. Not even a number. Nor, come to think of it, a street name. Just instructions to follow a lane that turned out to be more of a wild track, and a few references to suspicious landmarks, like a disused phone box, and the old gates to a farm. Why had Kate never mentioned to Harold in any of her postcards that her home was no longer a home-home, in the traditional sense of the word, let alone a cottage, but actually a converted truck? And why had she omitted to say that it was not on its own, this mobile home, but part of a community of other campervans and trucks? All inhabited by the kind of women Maureen read about in the paper, who lived in trees to stop them being chopped down, or sat on bridges to protest about global warming?

She had driven for what felt like miles down the track, easing the car in the dark around a pothole only to bump it into a stone, and passed these trailers and caravans without giving them so much as a second thought—until she reached a gate that said “No trespassing.” She’d had to reverse, because it was too narrow to turn, hitting all the potholes and stones a second time, but this time with more force because she couldn’t see them properly in the dark out of her rear windscreen and, anyway, reversing had never been her strong point. She stopped close to the group of caravans and campervans, but she had no signal to call Rex.

“Can I help?” A blue woman had knocked at her window, with a rainbow shawl. The blue, Maureen later realized, was because she was heavily tattooed. The rainbow was her hair.

Maureen wound down her window but not too far and said she was looking for a person called Kate but she had made a mistake.

“No. You’re right. Kate is here,” the young woman had said. Her voice was as sweet as a child’s. She could only have been in her late twenties.

“Here?” said Maureen, unable to disguise her shock.

“That’s right.”

“I don’t know where to park.”

“Yeah. Here is cool.”

“Here?” said Maureen again.

“Cool,” said the young woman.

So Maureen straightened the car and parked, though she straightened it again, because with nothing to align it against, like a garage wall, it was hard to get it correct. Then she stepped out of the car, straight into mud in her driving shoes, and opened her boot, wondering if the rainbow-haired young woman might help with her suitcase, but apparently not because she had already drifted ahead.

Maureen followed her past the other caravans. Not wanting to dirty the wheels of her suitcase, she was forced to carry it. They passed about ten in all and she could see lights inside them and the silhouettes of other women. She hoped none of them would come out. She had no intention of meeting any more strangers.

“That’s it,” said the young woman.

“That’s it?” Maureen repeated.

“Yeah. Mum lives there.”

“Your mother?”

“That’s right.”

“Kate is your mother?”

So this was Kate’s daughter. Kate had a daughter. Another thing no one had thought to mention to Maureen. And her hair might have been rainbow-colored but it would have benefited from a wash. Then Maureen remembered she was trying to be nice, so she said, “I do like your hair.”

“Cool.”

“I’ll just go ahead, shall I?”

“Sure.” Away she had drifted.

Maureen picked her way in her driving shoes past a group of empty plastic chairs, a firepit, stepped around a pile of wooden pallets, and squeezed past a child’s purple bicycle. She thought of Harold cleaning her shoes only the night before and felt unbearably tired. Fossebridge Road seemed like another country.

The door opened before Maureen could knock on it. An unexpected blessing because until that point Maureen was not clear it was a door. From the truck came the cry, “Maureen!” A woman appeared, with wild gray hair woven with ribbons of fabric. She wore a thick green cardigan and large earrings that were feathers and beads, as well as many necklaces and something else that resembled a dream-catcher.

“Maureen, you poor love!” cried the woman, as she heaved down a steep set of steps and then threw her arms around her. “I’m Kate!” She kissed the side of Maureen’s cheek. Completely uninvited. Maureen recoiled.

“It’s such a joy to meet you. Come in, darlin’, come in.”

Maureen followed her up the wooden steps while Kate said over her shoulder how truly wonderful it was to meet her after all these years and how much she loved Harold. He had been such an inspiration, she said. She apologized that the truck was so cramped, and hoped Maureen wasn’t surprised. Maureen made herself say no, no, it was a very nice place. “Very unusual,” she said. She was aware of the artificial strain in her voice, and also the awful splodges of mud over her driving shoes.

Inside the truck, there was not one single place for the eye to rest that hadn’t already been claimed by something else. It was like looking directly into a migraine. Tiny Buddha ornaments, chakra stones, hanging quartzes, crystals, candles, exhortations to find your inner goddess and your angels, shelves draped with purple curtains. Everything carried a thin layer of filth and was either broken or about to be. And the smell. Dear God. She’d thought she’d smelled bad. Incense sticks were puffing away in every corner. She could barely breathe. There was no Aga. There was no casserole.

Maureen produced the wine and chocolates from her bag and offered them to Kate, who said, “You shouldn’t! You shouldn’t!” and placed them on top of a unit covered with so many other things, Maureen was not certain her gifts would ever see the light of day. She felt a pang of remorse for them.

The place was a hovel. She could try as hard as she liked to be nice but there was no nice way of saying it. There had been the holiday chalet they’d stayed in every year in Eastbourne when David was a boy and toward the end, it was true, the place had seen better days. A smell of mildew when you opened the front door, and dirt-colored carpet to hide stains. There had been the roadside motel where she’d stopped with Harold on the way home after his walk, which she hadn’t realized until too late was in the middle of a red-light district. But they could have been anywhere; he had slept and slept. It was Maureen who had eaten alone in the motel bar with a number of women who did not seem to be there for the pleasure of dining. But this. It had never occurred to Maureen that a person who sent postcards to Harold could live like this. It wasn’t even clean. It especially wasn’t clean.

The truck was designed like an open-plan studio—an idea that had never appealed to Maureen—with a miniature kitchenette near the door, the cupboards made of hardboard, with a tiny sink in the middle, and on the other side, a single wardrobe space, hung with another purple drape, alongside a shower that was a plastic-curtained cubicle, so narrow you would only be able to stand in it sideways. Then there was yet another purple drape, beyond which there appeared to be the world’s most uncomfortable sofa—more of a ledge—and a Formica table with two chairs and a stool. An incongruously large wing-back chair was covered with an old eiderdown that Maureen would honestly fear to disturb. “What a lovely place,” said Maureen again. “Isn’t this charming?”

She took off her coat, but there was nowhere to hang it so she put it back on again.

“How long are you holidaying here?” she said. Her voice was on its brightest setting.

Kate bustled through to the other end of the truck. She seemed to be saying to Maureen that this was her home, not a holiday let, and that it was also home to her daughter and the other women living there. They had decided to exist as a community, sharing whatever they owned. It was the best decision she had ever made, she said, apart from walking with Harold, of course. At the front of the truck, Maureen could see now there were two seats and a steering wheel.

Maureen was still holding her suitcase. Kate was only a step or two away from the man in his car. She could not understand why anyone would choose to leave their home to live in a vehicle, and her confusion made her panicky. She and Harold had been in the same house for more than fifty years. The idea of not living at 13 Fossebridge Road, with all her things safe in the correct places, appalled her. Kate switched on the kettle and reached for two chipped mugs.

“So how are you really?” she said, as if there were two versions of Maureen, one behind the other, and she didn’t believe the one who was standing at the front.

“I’m fine,” said Maureen.

“Harold told me you’ve done the whole drive in one day. I can’t believe you’ve done that. You must be exhausted. He said you’re going to visit Queenie’s Garden. I guess that’s tough, huh?”

“It isn’t really,” said Maureen.

“Darlin’. You must be hungry.”

Maureen was. She was starving. Her limbs were almost hot and shaking with it. She hadn’t eaten since her sandwiches. But her mouth said she wasn’t. “I’m fine, thank you. I don’t even need a cup of tea. I’ll just go to bed. Maybe you could show me to my room? It’s been a long day.”

Even as she said this, she experienced doubt and felt foolish, as if once again she was missing the point. There was clearly no other room, beyond the one they were standing in. Also, there was no bed.

“I thought you could have mine tonight,” said Kate. She pointed out the thing that was a ledge, not a bed, and explained it folded out. She spoke again about how great it was to get to know Maureen at last, and how meeting Harold had changed her life, while all the time Maureen stared at the ledge and thought of her bed at home with lovely pressed sheets and Harold inside it. Kate was still talking. She was telling Maureen about her marriage now and how it was lockdown that finished it, though things were good with her ex, and he still lived in their old house.

“I don’t understand,” Maureen said. “You gave him your house?”

“Yes, Maw. I wanted a clean start.”

The truck did not strike Maureen as a clean start. She tried to smile.

“And I wanted to be with my daughter and my granddaughter, you know?”

No, Maureen did not know, not until Kate pointed outside to the young woman Maureen had met earlier, caught in the light from the other trucks and caravans. Maureen could see she was holding a scrap of a child with long black hair. The little girl had her legs tucked around her mother and her head on her shoulder. Maureen experienced a coldness, a drawing-in. So Kate was a grandmother.

“Maple,” said Kate.

“I’m sorry?”

“She is the light of my life.”

“But her name is Maple? As in the syrup?”

Kate gave a polite not-quite smile, as if she wasn’t sure whether Maureen was being deliberately offensive. “No, not the syrup. More like the leaf.”

Oh, Maureen was exhausted. She was inside-out with it. All that driving and then all the people. People who had green fingernails and people who lived in cars and trucks and people who named their children after parts of nature. Harold had told her strange stories about his journey but he’d never mentioned anything like this. Her head was hurting. “You should come and visit us some time,” she said. “Harold would love to see you.” She imagined Kate’s truck parked outside 13 Fossebridge Road and knew she didn’t mean it.

“Yes, I will,” said Kate.

She knew Kate didn’t mean that either.

Nevertheless Kate showed Maureen how to unfold the ledge into what was basically a larger ledge and passed her sheets that were not ironed, but smelled clean enough. She said goodnight, though this time, thankfully, she did not attempt to hug her. Alone, Maureen unpacked her nightdress and put it on and cleaned her teeth. She got out her puzzle magazine but dropped it onto the floor and she was so tired she couldn’t be bothered to bend and pick it up. She lay on the bed.

Bed was a kindness. There was nothing bedlike about the pull-outy thing with its lumpy mattress on which Maureen was now doing her best to relax. She was beyond tired. She lay rigid and uncomfortable but she must have fallen asleep without noticing because she was woken by voices outside the truck, and heard a faraway clock strike ten.

“You okay, Kate?” It was Kate’s daughter, the sweet-voiced woman covered with tattoos. Maureen opened her eyes wide in order to hear more clearly.

“Yeah, sure,” said Kate.

“Where will you sleep?”

“I’ll hunker down with someone. It’s no problem.”

“So what’s the story? With Maureen?”

“Well, it’s been hard for her.” At this point her voice dropped and Maureen couldn’t make out any more words. Then she heard doors closing and the voices of other women calling to one another and laughing, asking how they were, if they needed anything.

“Good night, hon! Good night!”

It was quiet again but Maureen was too ill at ease to sleep. She had that feeling that she’d had as a child of being completely wrongly dressed, and with her things all precious and silly, but unable to change because her world presented no alternative. She thought of the kindness with which the women at the camp called to one another, the easy intimacy, and Kate, who had willingly given up her own bed, even if it was a ledge, and how she would never be like that. She got up and opened her handbag for a tissue and found the piece of paper on which she had written Lenny’s instructions. Another invitation to connect that she had failed.

Maureen sat stiff in the wing-back chair, taking care not to trouble the eiderdown. She had no idea what to do with herself. If only she was back in her own kitchen, where everything was clean and stowed away, even the cups, their handles all pointing in the same direction. In her mind, she allowed herself to creep along the beige carpet of the hallway, passing the hooks where she and Harold put their coats, to the sitting room with its patterned wallpaper, its matching upholstered chairs, and the mantelpiece where she now kept a framed wedding photograph and a portrait of David, along with a china shepherdess that had belonged to her mother. And from there she began to think of the house in which she’d grown up that was always cold, and suddenly she could see her mother, industrious at her sewing machine, while her father apologized so much for being a burden that he became one.

If only she had been more like the other children. If only she had learned how to dress like them and talk like them, instead of being kept apart. She remembered now walking across the fields with her father, even though the farmer let his dogs run loose. How the dogs had come at them and barked at her father, who held out his hands to placate them and told her not to run but to be calm, and how she had refused to listen as the dogs came close and decided to run after all, so that one had jumped up then and, when her father put himself in front of her, had taken a bite at her chin and mauled her father’s hand. Her mother had railed and railed at him and he had sat, so full of remorse he couldn’t even look at Maureen. Her mother had called him weak and good for nothing, and he had shaken his head, bearing it all, and Maureen had wished that for once he would stand up for himself. And yet, after he died, her mother had lost all interest in life. She was dead within three months. It struck Maureen that a person could be trapped in a version of themselves that was from another time, and completely miss the happiness that was staring them in the face.

For a few hours, Maureen managed to doze. She woke with her body stiff, but at least it was morning. She dressed in her slacks and a fresh blouse, straightening the sleeves of her cardigan, then put on her coat and driving shoes and picked up her suitcase. She would have taken her wine and her chocolates if only she could find them.

Outside the first shade of pale was coming but it wasn’t so much light as a little less dark. There was an atmosphere of stillness across the camp. Each of the trucks and mobile homes was closed up and unlit, except one where Maureen heard a woman’s voice softly chanting. Briefly she felt an intense longing for everything to stop so that she could go back and give it one more try. But how could she do that? It wasn’t in her. It was not how she was made. Nothing for it but to do what she had learned as a child and hold her head high and walk away. In the distance, traffic gave a muffled glow along the horizon, moving north. Maureen clicked the fob on her car key and the car popped alight. Its enthusiasm struck her as frivolous. But she got in.

Maureen went without leaving a note. She went without saying thank you or goodbye. It wasn’t as if she would ever see Kate again, or her awful truck. So she just left.