For Ever and Ever Amen by Joe Pemberton

Author:Joe Pemberton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2008-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

‘Ships sinking, okay. Lemon fudgesicles, maybe. But Kenneth More?’

It was like waiting for a bus, the 53 on Great Western Street outside Greenheys School. The 53 used to be a trolley bus when all the buses were trolley buses. A criss-cross of wires crossed the skies which it followed with two long rods sticking out of its roof. James was just old enough to remember them. That and the smog so thick you bumped into lamp-posts, smog so thick the rods on the trolley buses would fall off and you had to wait until a man with a big stick put them back on again. Sometimes the man with the big stick wouldn’t turn up so you had to walk home and you’d be so tired you’d want to go to bed but you couldn’t because you had to cook salt fish and cornmeal for Aunty Vernice and Uncle Luke because you would always be grateful to them for paying your passage over to England because it was hard for a young mother to raise a baby all by herself, Mum said. But this wasn’t Great Western Street, or Moss Side or even the number 53. It was the port in Basseterre, the capital of St Kitts, ‘Town’ as people from back home called it. James and Aunty Mary were at the end of the queue waiting for the ferry to take them over to Nevis. It wasn’t James’s idea to board the Christina. He’d told Aunty Mary that it had sunk on the telly but she would have none of it.

‘You want a lemon fudgesicle or what?’ said Aunty Mary.

‘Why can’t we stay here for them?’ said James.

‘Because we can’t so don’t argue.’

James resisted Mary’s pushing. ‘I don’t want to die, not yet anyway.’

Mary patted his head. ‘You won’t die, I promise. Besides, nothing is ever certain, James, but death and taxes.’ And before James could ask her what the hell she meant the whistle blew for everyone to board.

‘I’ve never been to a Caribbean carnival before, might be fun,’ said Aunty Mary.

A Night to Remember, the film of the sinking of the Titanic, with Kenneth More. At the end of the film he ended up in a lifeboat with some women and children. Meanwhile the ship was sinking with a lot of people still on board, and all this while the brass band played tiddly om pom pom. It had been like that aboard the Christina, only there were a lot more coloured people. It was as if they’d seen the film the night before and knew all the parts by heart. And instead of a brass band there was a steel band. But apart from that it could have been straight off the film.

The Captain boomed instructions through his megaphone: ‘Everyone with blue tickets go into the lifeboats, anyone with red tickets must wait on board for further instructions.’

James raised his right hand. ‘Please sir, I haven’t got . . .’ a slap from Aunty Mary stopped him in mid-flow.

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