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sky stretching away behind.
    ‘My wife left me. I had a nervous breakdown. That’s when they put me in Pentonville. Dr Rhodes sent me here. You must have heard of Dr Rhodes. He sent me here. He sent me here.’
    The voice was echoing in Molly’s ears.
    ‘Help me. I must get back. I’m tryin’ to get me fare back.’
    ‘But … but,’ Molly stammered, ‘you’re English. You shouldn’t be doing this.’
    Something was happening to her. The sun seemed to have broken loose from its moorings and to be moving round in circles in the sky. She heard the voice faintly now:
    ‘Well just give me the money for me dinner. I’m starvin’.’
    Ralph came out of the bank. He pushed the man out of the way and got into the car. Molly was making little whimpering sounds in the back.
    ‘Girl – you all right?’ he asked anxiously.
    ‘He’s English … that beggar … a white man.’
    She became aware of Donella and Ralph looking over their shoulders at her curiously. Suddenly an enormous rage consumed the whole of her body as if somehow or other she had been tricked. She tried to speak but no words came. Ralph saw that she was gasping for breath and noticed little purple blotches appearing on her face. She tried to correct her mistake. What she wanted to say was perfectly clear in her head and it would make everything all right again. It would stop the doubtful accusing looks on the faces of those two people staring at her from the front seats. But her lips just moved without producing a sound like a fish out of water. Slumped against the back seat she started to gurgle. Her grey hair was soaked with sweat. A small child poked at her through the window trying to sell her some peanuts.
    ‘Blast it,’ thought Ralph. ‘Don’ tell me the woman has come all the way over here just to die in the back of my car.’ He started up the engine and headed for the Public Hospital.

The Conversion of Millicent Vernon
    IN THE DISTANCE, THE BELL FROM THE LUTHERAN church started to sound. A minute or so later it was joined by the lugubrious, deeper bell of the Anglican church. For a while these two bells limped along together, out of step, and then the high sweet chimes of the Catholic church rang out, intermingling with them and confusing the difference between all three.
    Millicent Vernon, a light-skinned girl of eighteen leaned her elbows on the rail of Canje Bridge and stared dejectedly into the brown creek waters. Selma, her friend, stood with her back to the rail jutting out her pointy breasts like an old poster of Jane Russell she had once seen and spitting the stones from purply-black jamoon fruit into the road.
    ‘Oh God, Selma, is how I goin’ get money to fix me teeth?’
    ‘Write your cousin in England and beg her the money. You know how we Guyanese like to beg.’ Selma gave a malicious smile.
    The two girls turned and began to stroll back to New Amsterdam. A carload of boys in an ancient jalopy passed them, whooping and hollering in the early evening light. Selma threw them one of her sultry, haughty looks as she strutted along in her skin-tight, shiny blue pants, slapping at the sandflies as they bit. Millie wore a white blouse and red shorts. Her long legs turned to gold in the evening sunlight. Somewhere, in the bush alongside the creek, a keskidee bird was calling.
    On their right, set back off the road in a patch of land that seemed a wilderness, stood the rambling ramshackle madhouse. From one of the upper storeys, as they passed, came the sound of a woman’s voice screaming like a cat:
    ‘Bring me someting, please. Bring me someting, please.’
    The girls shrieked and ran.
    It was dusk as the two girls walked into the centre of town. People stood in knots outside in the warm night air, lounging against the wall of a rum shop, liming, passing the time of day. Flambeaux, lit by the street-vendors, flickered on trestle tables lighting the meagre range of buns and peanuts and sweets. It was a ghost town in more ways