Show Me A Mountain by Kerry Young

Author:Kerry Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408844342
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-04-23T14:05:48+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Beverley wasn’t enthusiastic.

‘What yu want to go do a thing like that for?’

‘To see for myself. To experience it.’

She sighed and turned her head away dismissively. ‘Yu not going to experience anything. You are an outsider. At best a tourist. At worst a voyeur.’

I continued to stir my coffee as we sat at the small grey Formica table in the ice-cream parlour in Times Store, a convenient meeting point for Beverley as she made her way home from the ordnance depot. It was late afternoon, so the place was empty apart from us and a young couple sitting at the far end.

I changed the subject. ‘You still happy being a Dues In/Dues Out clerk?’

She brightened. ‘I’m learning. I reckon when my time is done I’d like to open a store.’

I laughed, throwing my head back and letting out a great guffaw. ‘Beverley Chung, Chinese shopkeeper?’

She smiled meekly. ‘Why not?’ Trying to sound up-beat even though I could still hear a slight defensiveness in her voice.

‘Yu surprise me, that’s all. I didn’t expect that from you. A New York socialite, London, Paris. Maybe. But a Kingston shopkeeper? No.’ And then I added, ‘I guess I always thought you’d be like your grandmother. Partying and dining, and dancing the night away.’

She lowered her eyes and pouted her lips. ‘Well, I’m not like GC after all. Or maybe not so much as you like to think.’ At first I thought I’d offended her but then I wondered if maybe that wasn’t it.

‘Has something happened?’ I asked. And then for no good reason whatsoever I followed it with, ‘Was it to do with what you said? About her and Chiang Kai-shek.’

Beverley looked sharply at me but really I knew she was hurt. ‘I thought you were supposed to be hunting out communists?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

But no matter how much I tried to explain that I had just been careless and clumsy, Beverley would have none of it. She’d taken umbrage and could not be appeased.

Sissy said I shouldn’t do it. ‘Go over there? You?’

‘I’m not planning to go alone.’

‘I wouldn’t tek yu over there. What for?’ I stared at her tumbling grey hair with the pipe smoke swirling around it. ‘What is it yu so interested in?’

Honestly, I didn’t know, except I could feel something pulling me, an invisible force compelling me to go over there. A powerful tugging at my conscience, telling me that if I could see Bumper Hall I would understand what it meant to be poor. So poor that you would scavenge in a mountain of garbage, in the blistering sun, to salvage from it the things you needed to sustain your life. How could that be possible in a country rich in bauxite and home to the white sandy beaches and clear blue sea Americans were flocking to in their droves? How could it be possible in a country in which the likes of Fay Wong and Beverley Chung danced and dined and picked the best from Issa’s or Nathan’s department stores?

I knew I couldn’t go over there alone.

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