by Pauline Fisk
Kid went home and told Kyle what he’d done. Nadine was nowhere to be seen. Kyle looked deeply uncomfortable. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ he said.
‘I’ve never been surer,’ Kid said.
There was one last thing that Kid had to do, except for pack. That night he rode out to Richmond on the underground and tracked down his unknown grandmother’s address.
The house looked very grand, with a lawn in the front garden and steps up to the front door. Kid stood looking up at it. All he knew about the woman inside was that she’d thrown his mother out for hanging about with a wild crowd, drinking too much and having a baby – who’d been him, of course.
For a long time, Kid stood across the road, looking up at the windows. He knew he wanted to ring the bell but in the end he simply stuffed the envelope through the letter box instead and turned and fled.
3
A ONE-WAY TICKET
After that Kid was shocked by the speed at which things happened. All next day he was plunged into a frenzy of last-minute preparations. There were possessions to be given away, because no way was Kid taking everything with him, and then there was shopping to be done, including everything from malaria pills to a rucksack. Kid spent a long time trying to pack his rucksack, forcing everything in, and then rushed off to Jet’s for a final shift that he was determined no one would forget.
It was traditional at Jet’s for food fights to take place when anybody left. Eggs would be pelted, bombs made out of bags of mayonnaise, and water-pistols fired with ketchup and tartar sauce. This time, however, Kid wanted to do something a bit different. Whilst everybody’s back was turned, he sneaked round the kitchen setting all the burger timers for eleven o’clock, then screwing them all away behind the grills where no one would be able to reach them to switch off.
Sure enough, next morning at eleven, Kid received a call from Jet. The timers were all screaming and nobody could get to them because the grills were at their hottest at eleven o’clock.
‘You’ve lost me all my bloody customers,’ Jet yelled. ‘You’re finished in the burger business. Don’t think I’ll ever have you back!’
Kid knew that Jet didn’t mean it. He was still laughing about it all when Kyle appeared, to drive him to the airport. As he’d been expecting to make his way there on public transport, this came as a surprise. So, too, did the present that Kyle held out to him.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘These are for you.’
Kid took possession of a pair of thick-soled army boots which, by a happy coincidence, happened to fit. ‘Cheers,’ he said, throwing away his aged trainers with worn soles.
‘You’re welcome,’ Kyle replied.
Downstairs – also to Kid’s surprise – he found Nadine waiting in Kyle’s car, ready for the airport too and looking decidedly guilty.
‘All this stuff you’ve been saying about not coming back,’ she said, ‘you don’t mean it, do you? You do know that you can stay with us again. Any time you’re stuck. You’ve only got to ask.’
‘Just don’t stay too long, hey?’ Kid said.
Nadine flushed. ‘Actually, I’ve enjoyed your company,’ she said, which Kid took as some kind of victory.
At the airport, Kid found everybody going places and in a rush. He was surrounded by backpackers, business people huddled over laptops, families making fond farewells, old people struggling with luggage, children dashing about and air hostesses in crisp uniforms heading purposefully down the great hall, looking as if they were the only ones who knew what was going on.
Feeling nervous and agitated, Kid attempted to run his passport through the automatic check-in machine but it kept on being spat out. After three attempts, a voice behind him said, ‘You’ve got the thing the wrong way round.’ Kid turned about to find a straggly, blonde-haired girl behind him, with startlingly green eyes and a rucksack just like his.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘This is what you do …’
Like an old hand, she took Kid’s passport, turned it round and shoved it back into the machine. Immediately everything started working properly.
‘Thanks,’ Kid said, thinking that if he couldn’t even get this right, what hope was there for him alone in Belize?
‘No problem,’ the girl replied.
Later, Kid saw her again. By this time, he’d said goodbye to Kyle and Nadine and gone through security where his hand luggage had bleeped and he’d had to empty out its entire contents, including his mother’s hat, which had caused a few wry smiles. Now he was mooching round the duty-free shops, and the girl caught his attention, buying magazines and chocolate. She looked up, saw him watching her, smiled and walked away to join a group of friends.
Everybody else, it seemed, had friends to talk to, if not in person at least on the phone. Only Kid was all alone. He bought himself a Coke and waited for his plane to be called. It was the first time for days now that he’d sat down without something that needed to be done.
A couple sat next to him – an old man and his son. The old man was flying out to Hong Kong, where he’d once lived.
‘It was fifty years ago to this very day,’ he said, ‘that I sailed out. Sailed, mark you, not flew. And do you know how I chose it as my destination? I opened the map, and there were all the countries coloured in British Empire red and I thought which shall I choose, because all of them were mine. My inheritance, don’t you know. My birthright. Well, I went to Hong Kong and that’s where I met your mother. And the rest is history.’
It sure was, Kid thought. The British Empire – what was that about? When Kid’s gate was called, he found a group of backpackers ready to board, all reminding him of Jaydene Lewis and her noisy, show-off group of friends. His heart sank at the thought of being stuck with rich, spoilt types like these, but amongst them all he saw the blonde-haired girl who’d helped him with his passport. And, though he didn’t want to admit it, it was good to feel that someone on the plane wasn’t a total stranger.
Kid walked through the gate as if ordinary life had been left behind. His sense of standing on the edge of the unknown was overwhelming. He tried to imagine Belize waiting to greet him at the end of his journey, but all he could conjure up was blankness. Everything he’d read about the country was lost to him.
What am I doing? Kid asked himself. This is crazy. What does Belize mean to me? I hadn’t even heard of it until a few months ago. And as for my father – he probably doesn’t even live there any more. And, even if he does, how am I going to find him? I haven’t worked out a plan or anything.
Kid was on the plane by now, being greeted by the cabin crew. It was the first time he’d ever flown, and every instinct in him said to turn and run. But he walked down the aisle instead, checking the numbers and then stowing his hand luggage. His seat was right next to the window, and Kid sat and buckled up. The screen in front of him flickered into life, explaining important safety information, but he closed his eyes. He didn’t want to know about emergencies. Things like that were too scary to think about.
The cabin crew came down the aisles closing all the overhead compartments. Everybody was seated now and the jet’s massive engines had started to throb. Either this had to be the worst day of his life, Kid decided, or it was the best. But he didn’t know which.
The plane eased out of its berth and started taxiing. A strange calmness descended upon Kid. It was too late to turn back, wasn’t it? He looked through the window at the distant airport perimeter. Suddenly the moment he’d been planning for all this time had arrived. It was right here. Right now. It was happening.
The plane let out a furious roar, then started down the runway, hurtling ever faster, pinning Kid back in his seat. And this was the best day of his life, no matter how nervous he felt. Here he was, taking a risk, seizing his chance. No way could it be anything else.
Suddenly, in the single most beautiful moment of Kid’s life, the plane rose into the air. For an instant he caught a glimpse of airport buildings and of other planes behind theirs,
queuing up for take-off, their tails gleaming like sharks’ fins in the wintry light. Then they were gone, and the airport was gone too. And then London was gone, because the grid of roads beneath him didn’t look like anywhere Kid recognised. And then the only world he had ever known was gone too.
He let out his breath. Up here in the sky, the air was golden. But the land beneath him lay wintry and dark. It was yesterday’s land and it belonged to the past. Yet here there was no past, or future either for that matter. Only a sun setting somewhere on the edge of the sky, and a plane chased after it, holding back time.
4
WELCOME TO BELIZE
That sense of time being held back lasted for all seven hours of the flight across the Atlantic. Even after Kid had watched an entire movie on the screen in front of him, nothing much had changed – the sun, still evident in the sky, seemingly unwilling to set. Kid watched it through the window, reduced to a thin strip of red. He was determined to witness the moment when it finally disappeared. But, in the end, it beat him because he fell asleep.
Kid awoke later to find that darkness had fallen and the cabin crew were bringing round a meal. Unexpectedly hungry, he ate everything in front of him. There was something comforting about aeroplane food. It certainly didn’t look much, stuck inside its cellophane wrappers, but when he’d finished eating, Kid felt surprisingly full.
He watched another film after that. Then he listened to some music and tried to relax. The flight continued smoothly, cutting through the darkness with no end in sight. Even the rowdy backpackers were silenced by the length of the flight. Kid peered all around him. Across a sea of faces he could see the blonde girl looking bored. He willed her to glance his way. Her smile would have broken up the monotony. But it never happened.
Kid slept again until awoken by the pilot’s announcement that they were making their descent. The cabin crew came down the aisles, handing out landing passes and customs declarations along with dire warnings of what the US authorities might do if they weren’t completed properly.
Kid filled in his details, agonising over whether his handwriting was clear and his spelling correct. What would happen if he’d got something wrong? Would he be arrested? Kid had never met an American before. All he knew was what he’d seen on the telly – a nation of fast-talking men and women who carried guns and didn’t stand for shit.
An hour later, however, leaving the US Immigration area with his face scrutinised, his fingerprints recorded and his passport in his hand, Kid was a free man. A massive neon sign welcomed him to JOHN F. KENNEDY, NEW YORK but the enormous arrivals hall where he now stood looked remarkably similar to the airport he’d left seven hours before.
Kid looked round for somewhere to make himself comfortable until his connecting flight early next morning. It was midnight now. All the bars and restaurants had closed and the best seats for sleeping on had been grabbed by hardened travellers who knew the score. He found a bit of floor and curled up, keeping his belongings close for fear of being robbed. The hall was broken into sound zones. At one end he could hear a cleaning machine whirring as it picked up litter and polished the floor. Then, closer, he could hear the clack of a coffee machine. Then, closer still, he could hear the snoring of fellow travellers.
Kid wriggled on the floor, sleeping sometimes but sometimes wide awake, thinking not only about the long journey that had brought him here, but the one that had started years before this flight. He thought about his mother and all the places they had lived. There had been times when things had been steady for a while, with proper cooked meals and the two of them watching telly together and sometimes even sharing the same bed, as if he was still a baby.
But things had always gone wrong. There had always been some freak-out with his mother losing her rag and whoever they were living with wanting them out. Every time she’d sworn it wouldn’t happen again, but in the end it had been Kid who’d said never again. His mother could do her thing, and he’d do his. She could look after herself and he’d look after Number One.
Kid awoke at regular intervals to check the clock, but he still managed to oversleep and nearly miss his connecting flight. In a panic he dashed for the gate and was the last person to board the plane. By the time he’d woken up properly, New York was a thing of the past and so was the winter.
Kid shivered with excitement. Summertime lay ahead of him now and so did Belize. Even so, it took several more hours, flying over the strange wilderness of the Florida Everglades, before he finally sensed the world beneath him really changing. Khaki-coloured mud flats lay beneath him, and weird turquoise lagoons. The sun shone on them, making them sparkle like baked enamel.
Kid drifted off to sleep, waking once or twice to see what his neighbour said was the Gulf of Mexico glistening beneath him. Finally he awoke to find that the sea had disappeared and miles of jungle lay beneath him, stretching away to the horizon like a green tufted carpet. Occasionally a sandy track broke it up, then disappeared. In the distance Kid could see a mountain range. Once he glimpsed an empty road running straight as an arrow with not a car in sight.
It took Kid a while to realise that this had to be Belize. Even though he’d seen the jungle on Google Earth, nothing had prepared him for how big it was, rolling on for what looked like ever. Only when the pilot announced that Belize City was approaching, and they were making their descent, did he really grasp that he’d arrived.
Kid saw a green river breaking out of the jungle, then beyond it the first real sign of habitation in the form of electricity pylons, a network of small roads and a smattering of tiny, matchstick buildings. The plane banked steeply and Kid looked down, unable to tear his eyes away. After such a long journey, everything was suddenly happening so quickly. There was the river again, flowing into the sea, and there the city centre and there, beyond the trees on the rim of the city, the airport.
In fact, here was the airport, not there, and the undercarriage was engaging with it, and the plane was tearing along the runway and finally juddering to a halt. And this was it at last, Belize at last. Kid had arrived.
Grabbing his hand luggage, Kid was amongst the first down the aisle, stepping out into a wall of heat that slapped him in the face like a hot wet towel. Kid had known that a tropical region like this was bound to be hot, but nothing had prepared him for how hot heat could be. He staggered down the steps to an airport concourse that sizzled like the fryers at Jet’s. Reaching the shade of the terminal building came as a relief.
Kid queued in a blissfully air-conditioned hall to hand in his landing papers, shuffling forwards slowly, in no hurry to return outside. Ahead of him he could see the Belizean flag with two men on it, one black, one white, sheltering in the shade of a huge green tree. They’d need it, he reckoned, if the weather outside was typical.
Kid handed in his papers and showed his passport, then collected his rucksack from the baggage recovery point and finally headed for the door at the end of the hall. He could sense the heat beyond it waiting to pounce. But something else was out there, waiting too.
Kid had noticed it the minute he’d got off the plane. A smell had hit him that he couldn’t find words for because ‘earthy’, ‘wet’ or ‘spicy’ wouldn’t have been quite right. And, caught up with the smell, Kid had heard a voice.
It was as if the two things were sides of the same coin, the smell and the voice. And now, as the doors slid back to allow Kid through, he heard it again. The smell was of trees, and the voice was theirs as well, whispering, ‘Welcome to Belize.’
PART TWO
BELIZE
5
BAD STREETS
As Kid stood squinting in the sun, a press of people rushed to greet him claiming to be taxi drivers and trying to get his luggage off him. He knew from life back home never to trust strangers, not even smiling ones with offers of help. But here, blinking in the sunlight of a strange country, he found his rucksack being taken off him before he could stop it happening, and bundled into a battered-looking car. Then
he was bundled in too and, before he’d got his bearings, the car was pulling away from the curb.
‘Where yu goin’?’ his driver asked.
Kid hoped he hadn’t been picked up by some crook who’d charge him a small fortune and dump him if he couldn’t pay. He was booked into the Ocean Hotel, he said. Had the driver heard of it?
The taxi driver nodded. ‘Dat’s a good place, maan, good cheap, good sounds, good food,’ he said, tearing out of the airport complex, music blaring from his speakers.
Kid tried to relax. The sun was shining, so why not, the windows were down and the driver seemed genuinely friendly. Not only that, but the music he was playing couldn’t have suited its surroundings better. It was dusty music, sun-shining music, the music of dirt roads and sizzling heat.
The driver sang along, stopping occasionally to ask Kid questions. Where did he come from, England or the US? And how long was he staying?
Kid said he didn’t know. The driver said that was the best way. ‘See how tings go,’ he said, speaking what Kid realised had to be the Kriol language he’d read about on the internet. ‘Keep yu opshaans open, stay loose. Dat’s de way we do tings in Beleez.’
By now, the taxi was following the path of a river, the sunlight sparkling on its surface making it look a luscious emerald green. It wasn’t the only car on the road, but it tore along as if it was. At the city limits, a row of clapboard houses came into view, with shuttered windows and built on stilts. The taxi passed a couple of factories, followed by a cement works, and the streets began to narrow. Suddenly they were hemmed in by massive logging trucks and dusty four-by-fours with smoke-grey windows and huge chrome fenders.
The taxi slowed down for the only set of traffic lights Kid would ever see in Belize, but didn’t stop completely. Kid just had time to see the ‘Jesus Lover of My Soul’ Baptist Church before the driver jumped the lights, and then he saw the ‘Jesus Lover of My Soul’ school beyond it, followed by a cinderblock supermarket and a nightclub with chains on all the doors and windows, and men sitting out front as if waiting for it to open.