Excerpt from "A Caribbean Tale" by Rudy Gurley

Copyright © 2006 Rudy Gurley - All rights reserved

CHAPTER 13

Suitcases weighing me down, I cautiously descended the creaky wooden stairs that had known neither paint nor carpet. I would soon discover the room that awaited me in the basement of this squalid Victorian mansion in Paddington, West London.
   Paying rent to my mother in Milton Keynes, and then paying on top of that the daily train fare to London Euston from where I then took a long bus ride to college in Greenwich, all added up to no economic sense.
   Countless frustrating hours in freezing phone booths dialling dozens of listings under R. Greenidge had proved fruitless. So had my letters to Inland Revenue, and the Department of Health and Social Security, departments that I thought kept a database of UK citizens.
   Rodney Greenidge was nowhere to be found.
   But when I got in touch with my mother’s older brother things began to look up. During the two weeks that I spent with my uncle and his wife at their West London home, my hopes had soared, only to come crashing down the third week. Unlike in the Caribbean, it appeared that in England

Next Page >>