ONLY TWO OF THEM were inside the caravan. A woman lay on a narrow banquette, a furry-looking blanket tucked round her and her head on a caseless pillow whose edges were stained from perspiration. She was an older woman, although it was impossible to tell how old because she was emaciated and her hair was thin, grey, and uncombed. Her colour was very bad. Her lips were scaly.
Her companion was a younger woman who could have been any age between twenty-five and forty. With quite short hair of a colour and a condition that peroxide encouraged, she wore a long pleated skirt of a tartan pattern heavily reliant on blue and yellow, red knee socks, and a heavy pullover. She had no shoes on and she wore no makeup. She squinted in their direction as they entered, which suggested she either regularly wore or currently needed glasses.
She said, “Mum, here’s Edrek.” She sounded weary. “Got a man with her as well. Not a doctor, are you? Not brought a doctor, have you, Edrek? I told you we’re finished with doctors.”
The woman on the banquette stirred her legs slightly but did not turn her head. She was gazing at the water stains that hovered above them, on the ceiling of the caravan, like clouds ready to rain down rust. Her breathing was shallow and quick, as evidenced by the rise and fall of her hands, which were clasped in a disturbing corpselike posture high on her chest.
Daidre spoke. “This is Gwynder, Thomas. My younger sister. This is my mother, my mother till I was thirteen, that is. She’s called Jen Udy.”
Lynley glanced at Daidre. She spoke as if he and she were observers of a tableau on a stage. Lynley said to Gwynder, “Thomas Lynley. I’m not a doctor. Just a…friend.”
Gwynder said, “Posh voice,” and continued what she’d been doing when they entered, which was carrying a glass to the woman on the banquette. It contained some sort of milky liquid. She said in reference to it, “Want you drinking this, Mum.”
Jen Udy shook her head. Two of her fingers rose, then fell.
“Where’s Goron?” Daidre asked. “And where’s…your father?”
Gwynder said, “Your father ’s well, no matter what you like.” Although her choice of words could have carried a bitter undercurrent, they did not do so.
“Where are they?”
“Where else would they be? Daylight.”
“At the stream or in the shed?”
“Don’t know, do I. They’re wherever. Mum, you got to drink this. Good for you.”
The fingers lifted and fell again. The head turned slightly, trying to pull itself towards the back of the banquette and out of sight.
“Are they not helping you care for her, Gwynder?” Daidre asked.
“Told you. Past the point of caring for her, aren’t we, and on to the point of waiting. You c’n make a difference in that.” Gwynder sat at the top of the banquette, by the stained pillow. She’d placed the glass on a ledge that ran along a window whose thin curtains were shut against the daylight, shedding a jaundiced glow against her mother’s face. She lifted both the pillow and her mother’s head and slid herself under them. She reached for the glass again. She held this to Jen Udy’s lips with one hand and with the other?curved round her head?she forced her mother’s mouth to open. Liquid went in. Liquid came out. The woman’s throat muscles moved as she swallowed at least part of it.
“You need to get her out of here,” Daidre said. “This place isn’t good for her. And it isn’t good for you. It’s unhealthy and cold and miserable.”
“Know that, don’t I?” Gwynder said. “That’s why I want to take her?”
“You can’t possibly believe that will do any good.”
“It’s what she wants.”
“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.”