Kerry Young - Pao

I have to control myself because all I want to do is get up and walk ’cross the veranda and give Daphne a box in the mouth. That is all I can see in my mind’s eye. My arm swinging through the air and slapping her face and her head swivelling ’round to the side and her hair flying and the blood spurting from her nose and the split lip she got when her head swing back and me stepping back outta the way so the splash don’t catch my shoes.

But I don’t do none of that. I just sit there as still as I can and I say, ‘Daphne, is not like I can even do anything. I don’t know nobody in England to go cause no trouble. I not going risk a English jail to go try kidnap the children. I not going plague Fay to make her come back here. All I want to do is write a letter to my children. You can’t understand that?’

She sit there but I know she not think nothing ’bout what I say to her. I know she only waiting for me to finish talking just so she can pause and say, ‘I can’t do it, Pao.’

When Ethyl come to see me the next week she tell me that Miss Cicely try to make Daphne tell me Stanley’s address but she still won’t do it.

‘Miss Daphne say she understand how yu feel but she promise her sister. That yu shouldn’t feel so bad. Maybe Miss Fay not the best person for yu. Maybe yu realise yu better off without her. Maybe yu find somebody else that treat yu better and have some other children.’

So I say to her, ‘Ethyl, all the time yu busy running to the post office with Miss Fay’s letters to her brother did yu ever think to maybe make a note of the address?’

And she say, ‘No, Mister Philip. It never dawn on me to go do a thing like that, but I know it in London somewhere.’

When Judge Finley tell me that while I was busy trying to drink every drop of Appleton they got on the island Hampton and Desmond go find the two constables and give them a hiding I say to him, ‘Yu serious? Yu mean them same two constables that help Fay take the children?’

‘Yah, man.’

‘They lose their mind? Wasn’t it you and Clifton that sit right there and tell me there wasn’t nothing we could do ’bout them two piece of shit?’

‘We say yu couldn’t go kill them like you want, but they could take a hiding so Desmond and Hampton go do it.’

‘So how bad they hurt them?’

‘It not too bad. They survive. They alright.’

‘And what happen after that?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing? Yu sure?’ And Finley just nod him head. ‘So how long ago they go do all that?’

‘Six, maybe eight week.’

‘And nothing happen?’

‘Nothing.’

‘And what Mutt and Jeff doing now?’

‘They was off work a little while, but now they back in the police station just carry on like nothing happen. I reckon they know they do wrong and they take the punishment and now it done.’

Then George Morrison say Margaret want to go back to Scotland. So I ask him what she want to go do a thing like that for, and he say she not feel so comfortable here in Jamaica no more. There no place for her and her work.

‘She says Jamaica is changing. She says that even though we have been here for so many years she will never be Jamaican. She will never be able to claim the dream of a truly independent and equal Jamaica. She will always be on the wrong side of that power divide. She says it is different for the white Jamaicans who were actually born here. They have birthright. She does not.’

‘And what do you say, George?’

‘Jamaica is my home and you are my family; Finley, Clifton, Hampton. I cannot even begin to imagine a life without you. There is nothing for me in Edinburgh except the dark winter and biting cold.’

‘And yu son?’

‘John is a child but a Jamaican. Half Chinese and half English, I know, but a Jamaican through and through. After all, which Jamaican does not have a little mix of this and that? But he is only five years old so he will have to go with Margaret.’

‘So what you going to do, George?’

‘I am conflicted. I came here over twenty-five years ago because it was what Margaret wanted and now she wants to go back I cannot find it in my heart to follow. Yet I know that she would be devastated to return to Scotland without me and I would miss her deeply. Well I can’t even conceive of it. So I have agreed with her that we will go for a visit and explore the possibilities.’

So George getting ready to go back to Scotland and Finley decide that maybe George can go see if he can find where Stanley at, and Fay and the children. After all, Scotland only at the top of England. It seem like a good idea to me. He going that way anyway and then he can send back word to us ’bout what is happening.

But George not the only one going. They jumping on the plane by the dozen and they not looking back. And when I start take notice I see how things on the island getting real bad. Sure enough some people make a lot of money after Independence with all the development that was going on, but at the same time we had very high unemployment, and since we nuh got no welfare, the poor was just getting poorer, and the difference was really showing. Worse than anything we had before. Them with the money was affording the high life, mansions in Beverly Hills, Mercedes-Benz. They was busy buying up everything and hiring more help and jetting all over the place. The poor was just getting sick and tired and desperate.

The whole thing cause me a big problem as well because Chinatown was on the move. All these people I deal with all these years suddenly start take off for Canada or the US, and the ones that stay behind move uptown or go to Port Antonio, or Ocho Rios or Montego Bay like what Round One Chin do. Pretty soon, there was going to be nobody left in Chinatown to protect, because the people moving in didn’t need or want no protection from me. They got that all sorted out themselves.

And as far as the gambling go nobody want do it. They too busy saving their hard-earn cash for the next flight to Miami. Plus with all this unemployment and poverty what happen was a big increase in street trade, which mean business really take a dive for the girls stuck in them East Kingston houses. So they start talking ’bout go working on the street, and no matter how much I try talk them out of it, they do it anyway because that is the only way they can see to beat the competition. All the time I just worry for them, because I remember how all them years back Gloria’s sister get mash up by the American sailor bwoy and I think how I never want to see a sight like that again, or worse, that one of them go get killed.

The construction surplus, the goods off the dock, that all finish. Too much competition, too many people trying to make ends meet.

Finley say to me, ‘Yu think George going stay in Scotland?’

And I say to him, ‘Can you see George Morrison going back to regular doctoring in some cold, dingy hospital where he have to actually tend to the real sick and dying every day and at the end of the month they give him some little pay cheque that wouldn’t last a afternoon at Caymanas Park racecourse, where the most exciting thing going happen to him is reading little John’s school report and where he got to face the dark and the wind and the snow, and go back to being a church-going sober Presbyterian day in day out? Can you see that?’

And Finley look at me and just say, ‘No.’

Well, whether or not he stay there, Morrison was going to Scotland so I reckon he could have a go anyway at looking for Stanley. But the truth was we didn’t really have nothing to go on. Looking for Stanley Johnson was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack, there was that many Jamaican ex-servicemen in London. Stanley and Fay could have been anywhere.