In World City by I. F. Godsland Read Free Book Online Page B

confront the darkness outside. By concentrating on the scene as abstract, moonlit shapes, she could will them to dematerialise, to become no more than symbols like the lines on her father’s screen; tractable, pretty, ready to move at her bidding. And though she did not succeed in actually reaching out with her mind to rearrange the jigsaw-puzzle pieces before her, the intensity of her effort and her fixity of purpose did ensure Miranda remained isolated from the full impact of what she had seen. Her father commented again, several times, on how well she had coped and Miranda began to believe him. She had stayed in control and that was what mattered.
    Her memories scabbed over.

5

    Dion’s father said, “Part of the deal is that I get work in Europe and full moving expenses for the family.”
    Dion’s grandmother said, “For the family, eh? That include me?”
    Dion stopped outside the window he had been passing by and continued to listen.
    â€œYou don’t want to come with us,” his father said.
    â€œLike fockin’ hell I don’t. I go with you, son, and I dead the day I leave. You know that. That what you want?”
    â€œI can set you up here with a house and enough to keep you going, if that’s what you want.”
    â€œWhat’s what I want got to do with anything? You want to make yourself some money, and you don’t want me costing you nothin’.”
    â€œListen, I don’t mind you costing me something. God knows, you’ve never cost me much.”
    â€œCost you much? Ha – cost you your fockin’ dignity is what you tell those money boys you keep company with down in Roseau. I know what they say. They say why don’t you turn her out, that nasty old witch of a mother of yours? And you say it because your daddy’s will got you tied up looking after me. You say you got to do what it tell you if you goin’ to keep control of the land around here. And I say the old white shit should have left it all to me. So why can’t I stay here? Your father bought this place for you and me to stay in. You want to go? Okay, and I want to stay, and I want to stay here in my house.”
    â€œYou can’t stay in this house. What you say about the will doesn’t hold anymore. There were irregularities and Whitlam’s lawyers got the land tenure invalidated. So there’s nothing now to hold me to you. It’s his company owns the land now. There’s going to be a golf course here.”
    â€œHah – might have known that arse of a father of yours messed up. Always talking big he was. Same as you. So maybe you buy me a fockin’ golf hole to live in.”
    *
    Into the house where Dion was born, light and air poured each morning, filling the day with a rich, warm core like cream or caramel. Then, at evening, there was a softer light, diffusing through the rooms, lighting the faded paint of the walls with a warm glow, picking out dust motes drifting in the old, familiar spaces. Their home – a small, stone-built plantation house, around which, over the decades and centuries, had grown a minor settlement of weatherboard chalets and bungalows. An occasional pig would wander up the unsurfaced track that ran between the brightly painted houses, casually defecating, rooting around an overturned rubbish bin. The scents of the place – bougainvillea in the midday heat, pigshit, the wooden veranda freshly painted and the hot, salt Caribbean wind blowing in through the open windows. In the morning, he would wake to a view across lanes and fields to the sea and the clear horizon. From the front porch he could look up to the tall, swaying trees with their bare trunks and topknot of broad leaves, and beyond to Morne Diablotin and the clouds piled high by the North-east Trades. School was only up the road – if he chose to put in an appearance. And there was a beach within walking distance where in the late afternoon he