Heaven's Promise

by Paolo Hewitt

  ‘Where are you off to now, boys?’ Marissa asked before Papa could work up a steam of head and truly go into one in the manner that I have described before.

  ‘We are off to check some new records,’ Brother P. replied.

  ‘Ah, that’s nice. I like music.’

  It was the smart move on my compadre’s behalf because if there was one thing guaranteed to ward off at least some of my troubled spirits it had to be my dear friend music, and so we made with the ciao’s ciao’s and headed off to The Vinyl Market, a shop I often frequent when on the prowl for new tunes.

  For a Saturday morning the shop, when we reached, was surprisingly quiet which, I have to say, was something of a bonus for it meant that I got first crack at all the new releases before my contemporaries but Dillon, the only assistant who had managed to reach his post that morning by the look of things, was about to let me down on that score.

  ‘Delivery has been held up until this afternoon,’ he nonchalantly told myself and my companion, as he donned his headphones for a day of manning the shop’s dex, playing new tunes and old to customers, ‘apparently there’s been some trouble at the airport.’

  Now, the one thing that has to be said in Dillon’s favour, and the reason that I have time for him, is that he does not follow the suit of so many other record shop numbers and try and pull a fast one on you by playing new tunes at the highest decibel there is, thus giving a false impression of its real worth.

  Back in the days, I was forever getting home and discovering that what had just sounded so brilliant in the shop an hour before, was actually, when you played it at home, all excited up, just another run of the mill tune. Dillon didn’t deal in such bad business which is why I frequented his premises because you get a little tired of feeling duped by people with smiling faces and an eye on your pocket.

  ‘Come back then. Nicky will be in soon and she might have some new tunes downstairs.’

  In the shop’s basement, Nicky looked after the rap and swingbeat tunes and this, incidentally, was where I first met Dillon before he was promoted upstairs, following a St. Paul like conversion to the varied delights of House music, and it was here, I had noticed over my last few visits, that more and more people had started to congregate.

  ‘Have you heard about this club tonight over Southside?’ Dillon enquired, pulling out a tune from its wrapper.

  ‘It’s at some gym or other. Should be good, you know.’ He picked up one of the many flyers that decorate the counter and handed it over. I scanned the card, which had a smiley face printed in the top hand corner and all the facts and figures written beneath it, and then handed it back to Dillon, which was when I noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the tight red veins on his forehead and the overall glazed nature of his face.

  To be straight, Dillon has always come on to Brother P. and I as a serious space cadet, a man not averse to tampering with his brain cells on a regular basis. His cheeks are pale and sinking, and his actual eyes, when he brushes his long brown fringe of hair out of them, have a slightly manic hunted look about them. It was no shocker, then, that Dillon was the first bod I heard talking about the drug ecstasy, an item he referred to by its street name.

  ‘You can get ‘E’ down there, you know,’ he said, placing the tune on the dex, although such info is of no use to either myself or Brother P. as we never indulge on the chemical trip, herb and brew being our favoured method of relaxing.

  ‘It’s good, man,’ continued Dillon, ‘I had one last night it was great.’ He mixed in the tune and that unmistakeable, basic House beat came thudding through the speakers. The tune being played was obviously a bit of a hit with Dillon because within seconds he was jerking his body and moving his arms in a style that was both weird and unfunky. I had just seen the future and I didn’t know it. With the music up so loud that you could hardly hear yourself parlare, Brother P. and I needed no more encouragement and, with a slight nod of the heads, we made for the exit sign, signalling our departure with sign language.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Brother P. as we hit the pavement and put some serious space between ourselves and Dillon, ‘did you see his eyes? I don’t think he’s landed since take off last night.’

  ‘You’re right on that one,’ I replied, ‘although to be honest, I wouldn’t mind checking out that club he was on about. Someone else was on about it last week. You up for it?’

  ‘Maybe,’ came the reply which was typical of Brother P. for he is a man who never likes to plan too far ahead and rarely decides to visit a club until at least an hour after it has kicked off.

  ‘Let’s go Portobello,’ he said. ‘There’s a jacket I’ve had put aside and I want to bag it before anyone else,’ and with that mission in mind, we journeyed to West London, an area in which both poor and rich live within breathing space of each other, and such a combination in any town, makes for a fascinating spectacle.

  Portobello Market, as expected, was crammed when we reached and, as ever, it was difficult to negotiate past all the citizens and keep a tab on my companion. There was noise all around us as rap, reggae and funk music came blasting out of ghetto blasters, smashing into each other in mid air to create glorious sonic explosions over our heads.

  Kiddiwinks appeared from nowhere and ran into your legs whilst people either jostled to get past or suddenly stopped right in front of you to examine an item, thus causing you to bump, like a dodgem car, into their backs. The whole area was full of life and colour and a great place to be in the City sunshine for you were often surrounded by cats of your own age or faces you knew from the clubs which you acknowledged with discreet nods of the head, here, there and everywhere.

  On the actual stalls, a colourful collection of bohemians, rastas, hustlers, students, artists, old timers, jack the lads, and the unemployed tried to move their wares, shouting the odds for all to hear, but the Brother P. cut through them like a shark intent on its victim, walking straight and fast towards an old boy who specialised in period clothing. He had only just put up shop but, not having done his homework, underpriced his goodies and Brother P. wanted to get to him before others cottoned onto his mistake or, worse still, picked up on the red and black striped, three button jacket, complete with epaulets, that Brother P. had spotted the day before and, not having the correct cashola on him, persuaded to have put by for him whilst he raised the necessary loot, and no questions asked. Reaching the stall, the old boy revealed that he had not gone back on his promise and produced the item in question.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked the Brother P. as he examined it and then tried it on.

  ‘Why, you will be the hit of the ball,’ I replied.

  Pleased with the analysis, Brother P. spent the next three minutes studying the effect of the jacket on him in front of a fading mirror as if he was not really sure of its place in his wardrobe but all the time playing the old boy along with pleasant humour until a deal had been struck and there were smiles all round.

  ‘Foodage time,’ I suggested as Brother P. proudly placed the jacket under his arm and nodded his agreement.

  The Portobello Cafe is a small West Indian joint where it takes ages to get your order dealt up but once it arrives and you take a bite, your impatience suddenly disappears as the flavour flav of the food invades your mouth.

  As we strolled in, I heard a soft voice from one of the tables beside me, say, ‘ah ah,’ and knew that it could only be Daddy Cecil, a serious young dude whose mocking humour had been devised for no other purpose than to casually and purposefully wound you.

  ‘Why, it’s the I Spy boys in the flesh,’ he said with an engaging grin for this was Daddy Cecil’s nickname for us and the only acquaintance we knew to make a song and dance about the fact that Brother P. and I carry different skin colours, a trait of Daddy Cecil’s that is derived from his ambition in life to become the first British black leader to lead his people into total separation from the white man.

  Daddy Cecil had adopted the Muslim faith many crescent moons ago a
nd had put his all behind the teachings and guidance of Minister Louis Farrakhan, the leader of America’s Nation Of Isla m, whose audio and video tapes Daddy Cecil studied, examined and memorised, a member of his family in New York shipping over a new batch every three months or so.

  When the tapes arrived, Daddy Cecil would invite his posse over to his yard for study time and late into the night they would parlare about such items as the white man as the devil, how Ethiopia was the cradle of civilization and not Greece, the place of the black woman in society, the commercialisation of black music by the music industry, the representation of blacks within cinema, and a hundred other subjects, with constant reference being made to the works of people such as Marcus Garvey, Patrice Lamumba, Stokely Carmichael, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X. and up to date cats such as the Reverend Al Sharpton. Daddy Cecil and the boys dressed downstyle but with a definite Afro-centric flavour, proudly sporting their African pendants, beads and Muslim hats to make their position in public loud and clear, and although there were few numbers in their team, Daddy Cecil’s undoubted charisma and passing resemblance to a young Muhammad Ali, marked him out as numero uno in his outfit.

  On the occasions that I had parlared with him, Daddy Cecil always adopted a patronising attitude, so I never gave him trust, nor did my closest companion, Brother P., who found his arguments on racism clear and correct but his proposed solution totally unrealistic and, in some ways, slightly humorous.

  He told me, ‘boy, us Caribbean people have enough trouble getting along with each other, let alone anybody else.’

  What the Brother P. had hit upon was truer than true and not just confined to his people. Many was the time that Papa, over a quick capo in the afternoon break, would lament about the Northern Italians who always dissed his people in the South, or, indeed, take this fair land with its North /South bickering running up and down its spine, and this amongst people of the same hue and complexion. All I knew is that it always suits someone somewhere to have the people at each other’s throats and exploit their tribal allegiances over the most dumbest of arguments and, on top of that, you can’t help but notice how people love to box up and label, like a birthday present, everything in this world just so that they can make sense of it all and know where they stand.

  ‘So what’s up, I Spy boys?’

  ‘Cool, man.’

  ‘Safe.’

  ‘Sit, have a drink. Tell me how things are,’ Daddy Cecil requested although he had addressed all his wordage to Brother P. and hardly glanced at me, although we knew each other from around the clubs.

  ‘They allowing you to make a buck?’ he asked the Brother P. as we pulled out chairs to the table.

  ‘I allow for myself,’ came the reply.

  ‘Good, good, I am glad to hear it. I too am getting by but, boy, it’s a struggle. Last night, I had the posse over at my yard and we spoke deep into the night until suddenly there was a knock at the door and the police were there. Some white neighbour had rung them to complain about noise.’

  He kissed his teeth in disgust. ‘We’re living in a fascist state and no one gives a shit about it.’

  The fact of the matter was that everytime Daddy C. had cause to use the word white, it was like putting a huge chunk of steak into a vegetarian’s mouth. It got spat out pretty quickly and with much venom.

  ‘Then, this morning, I was awoken by some silly little girl who wants to write a piece for one of these rag sheets about the so called new black militancy. She thinks it’s really trendy and all she wants is an in. She’ll be our friend for as long as we’re in fashion then she’ll be onto the next thing. I don’t trust these white liberals who sniff around us and our culture, they make me sick.’

  I ignored the bait for I was determined not to be dragged into one, the simple fact being that the Sandra business had definitely put my mood into some shadings which were not at all conducive towards a verbal argy bargy.

  Daddy Cecil was not to be put off.

  ‘Why does whitey want to be our friend?’ he asked, out loud and to no-one in particular, shaking his head and examining the ingredients of his Ribena carton as if the answer was somehow to be found there.

  ‘I know they like to bed our women because they haven’t stopped that particular activity since slavery when they raped every black sister in sight. Naturally, when it’s the other way round and a brother wants to check one of their women, why then boy, you’d better watch out. But everything is alright for the white boy. He’s still checking our sisters, I see.’

  Daddy Cecil was something of a regular at the Unity Club and kept an eye on a lot of people’s runnings, my business with Sandra included, and so when I muttered, ‘easy,’ under my breath, he knew he had hit a raw nerve and pounced like a bass line right on top of the beat.

  ‘Ah yes,’ he pointedly said, glancing over my way, ‘our sisters are much in demand these days amongst the white boys trying to make up for the sins of their forefathers.’

  My tongue moved without prompting as I saw red, not black, in front of me.

  ‘Perhaps if the sisters were better treated by their so called brothers,’ I stated, looking straight at Daddy C., ‘then they wouldn’t be crossing the tracks in such great numbers and leaving them behind.’

  In an instant Daddy C.’s face turned serious and he started in on me.

  ‘What do you know about the sisters?’ he demanded, ‘or the black man, come to that?’

  But before I could drop a line like, ‘only what a 1000 sisters have told me,’ or something equally as stupid because, face it, guys treated gals the same the world over and nothing it is to do with colour, Brother P. was ordering us to cool it, cool it and cool it. Daddy C. kept staring hard at me as I agreed we should drop it but he knew the value of getting in the last word, after all he had studied many politicians, and he wasn’t going to throw away the chance.

  ‘Trouble with a lot of people in this town,’ he said, ‘they think everything is cool and irie but they know jack shit. You should come round my yard. Large council estate, no one works and there’s a fucking war going down between us and the so called civilized white majority. We’re getting cuffed up every day, families, children, the lot and no one wants to help us. Not the pigs or anyone. The day we break free from this hell is the day we will start to live and the only way to do that is to unite amongst ourselves and break free. You see, Mr. DJ Man, you don’t check it, do you?’

  I couldn’t resist his question. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You play black music, seen?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So how many black DJ’s you know?’

  I couldn’t argue on that point because Daddy C. was stone cold correct. There were very few blacks manning the dex at clubs and it was the same, right across the board, wherever you looked. My momentary silence signalled victory for Daddy Cecil but before he could exult, Brother P. suddenly put in, ‘I read a report the other day which showed that there was one group of people which the cops hassle more than anyone. And that’s the Irish.’

  Just then, and before I could add anything else, a white girl entered the cafe and came over to the table.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, sitting down next to us. ‘Thank you for showing up for the interview. I was sure that you would not come.’

  Daddy C. didn’t even look at her but sensing our chance to break away, Brother P. said, ‘Well, we’ll leave you to it,’ and with that we rose to our feet because although Daddy C.’s grievances could be heard right across the Kingdom, and, unfortunately, had much substance to them, the fact still remained that he was not a man you could sit, eat and parlare with without voices being raised or tempers being disturbed.

  I went to touch skin in a gesture of friendship but he simply kissed his teeth, said, ‘That’s right, walk away from the truth,’ and, with that, we walked out into the market. On the quiet journey back to Westward Ho, Brother P. had nada to say about Daddy Cecil although I was still burning at his off hand treatment and it was only whe
n we reached Oxford St. that Brother P. announced, ‘You know, you can’t apply Afro American politics to this tight little island. It doesn’t work,’ and on that note we set sail for Davey Boy’s, a tailor that we both use when the bank account is full, healthy and bouncy bouncy. Davey Boy is the complete East Ender, a breed unto themselves, reared on their own strict traditions and, especially in Davey’s case, with a real sense of pride about the East End’s involvement in fashion. As he never tired of telling us, the skinhead, suedehead and soulboy (the tribe called S he named it), had all been born round his way and then spread, in different variations, right across the country.

  Although they had lost the casual to South London, no doubt somewhere in the East End, someone was planning a new look and style for, after all, at the heart of the area is a thriving rag trade and a black market, all of which need constant nourishment.

  Davey Boy, himself, was a motor mouth with balls who, as far as we were concerned, came from the right side of the tracks for it wasn’t that long ago he had been arrested for fighting fascist skinheads.

  ‘Not right, is it?’ he once explained to us, ‘going round calling people all kinds of names and beating the shit out of them because of the skin they were given. Fucking ridiculous. That kind of thing really offends me. Now, my grandfather, God rest his soul, that’s a different kettle of poisson altogether.

  ‘Dear old boy but he was a nutter and he loved to rumble. Joined up as one of Oswald’s boys, didn’t he, until he was made to see sense but, as I always say, we all take a wrong turning in life and as long as you realise you’ve gone astray and try and do something about it, then it’s not the end of the world by a long mark.’

  To give the man his laurels, Davey knew his gears inside out. All you had to give him was a year, say 1963, and he could tell you, on the spot, exactly what fashions were going off, who was running the scene and where it all went. Better still, just mention a film or a well known personage from the distant past, and he knew the design inside and out.