Heaven's Promise

by Paolo Hewitt

  ‘About 30 to 40% I would like to think, and that’s a very reasonable level. Certainly less than your Adonis. He’s well up in the 90s on the lonely wanker scale, if you ask me.’

  ‘Really. Watch him for a minute.’

  I put the eye on him just as the dreamboat in shorts that I had spotted earlier, returned with two drinks in her hand, one for her and one for... him. He took a swig from the bottle, pulled her down to the ground and there they lay, loving it up all afternoon.

  ‘I think the lonely wanker just got busy,’ laughed Indigo and returned to her book. But I was not to be put off.

  ‘What you have just witnessed,’ I explained, ‘is the Gimp theory in full effect. Developed between myself and Amanda’s brother, this is a theory whose main law states unequivocally that the more beautiful the Mary, the uglier the man.’

  ‘And why is it,’ Indigo demanded, ‘that all the best looking Marys, as you call them, go for these types and not hunks such as yourself and your friend?’

  ‘One, because they have the bottle to approach good looking women because they’ve got nothing to lose. Two, they have money or a flash motor and three....’

  ‘Perhaps the women like their characters and love them for themselves,’ Indigo interjected, ‘and not all the superficial shit.’

  ‘Hadn’t thought of that one,’ I confessed.

  ‘I’m surprised at that,’ she retorted. ‘You don’t seem like the kind of guy who would judge a person on the colour of their skin.’

  ‘Most definitely not, madam.’

  ‘Then why judge them on the condition of their skin?’

  ‘Game, set and match to you,’ I had to concede but Indigo was not finished and far from it.

  ‘Women don’t see the world the way you men do. You lot, I’m sorry to say, think with your dicks all the time. You do! It’s true, I tell you. You ask most men and they’ll tell you that the first time they meet a woman one of their first thoughts is, would I sleep with her? True or false?’

  ‘True-ish.’

  ‘True or false?’ she repeated.

  ‘More true than false.’

  ‘It’s not completely your fault. Nature demands that you reproduce. Unfortunately, she totally forgot that interferes with your mind power.’

  ‘James Brown,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘James Brown. Godfather of soul. He cut a tune called “Mind Power.” One of his best actually.’

  She totally ignored me and carried on.

  ‘And if we’re going to get on then you’re going have to stretch your brains a bit further than just your trousers, if you get my meaning.’

  Such direct words and attitude, I have to tell, I really dig in women, and the warmth I had instantly felt for Indigo that morning when we met, now turned to hot.

  The obvious retort to all her theories was to go personal and ask her if that’s what she figured about me, I mean, the thought of sleeping with her was uppermost in my mind when we met. But it’s best, on certain occasions, not to say a thing, for some matters are best left unsaid, and that very silence can say more than words ever can.

  As the sun started to disappear and the air dropped to cold, we agreed to collect up our things and make our way to the tube.

  Picking our way through the crowd, it was one of those crucial moments when you both know you’re going to go your separate ways and if one of you doesn’t make a move, you might be lost to each other forever.

  Deep breath then, and, ‘Indigo, I’ve really enjoyed your company today. Is it cool to call you sometime?’

  ‘I was going to ask you exactly the same thing,’ she replied, and, people, my heart hit that bass line we all know, boom-boom-boom, so loudly that I thought everyone in a ten mile radius would hear it.

  Indigo and I wandered off to the tube, her to go eastside, me over to Westward Ho to meet up with the Brother P. as we were going to check, for the second time, Spike’s ‘Do The Right Thing,’ and so, after exchanging numbers, I made my way to the cinema in an excited, dreamy daze. Truth to say, I could hardly concentrate on the images that flickered in front of me because everytime I looked up at the screen all I could see was Indigo. Later on, at Bar Italia, (Papa’s is closed on a Sunday), Brother P. tried to engage me on the film’s merits, but it was all to no avail. My solar system could only revolve around one thing.

  ‘P., this is the one, I’m telling you. This gal is fly.’

  ‘Yeah? You back on those pills?’

  ‘Easy, you know I’ve knocked them on the head.’

  ‘I’ve seen her around with Amanda. Yes is all I can say.’

  ‘Do you think I should phone her or let her phone me? I don’t want to appear too eager.’

  Brother P. let off a small grin.

  ‘The bells will ring,’ he said, ‘the bells will ring.’

  Indeed they did and a week later, over at my yard, we fell into each other and it went off with such passion and care that it was like we were made for each other from day one.

  Afterwards, we lay on the bed listening to Lee Morgan’s ‘Search For The New Land,’ and, as a wind so gentle and cooling that it must have been the breath of Isis herself softly blew over us, tears unexpectedly started to fall down Indigo’s cheek.

  I pulled her close and kissed them away. ‘What’s up, baby?’

  ‘I don’t want this to be a one off,’ she gently confessed, ‘I’ve made mistakes in the past that I couldn’t stand again.’

  I pulled her even closer and Indigo told me of her l a st encounter, how she had kept this guy at bay for months until she was convinced he was cool but serious. They made it and two days later, Indigo called him and a gal answered the phone.

  ‘Might have been his sister or someone,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Sisters don’t tell their brother’s girlfriend to leave their husband alone, or die,’ she simply said.

  ‘Indigo, it’s alright, there are no sisters in my life. Believe that.’ Checking it now I see that Indigo developed an honesty between us that I had no idea could exist between guy and gal. Indigo knew about men but, unlike others, she didn’t pretend it was otherwise. She encouraged me to tell her of gals I had a passing fancy for and she did the same on the guy front. Sometimes, we would sit on a park bench and watch the passer bys, commentating on their appeal or if we were travelling by tube to some destination we would exchange secret nods and winks at certain, unsuspecting individuals.

  In our little games, for Indigo was straight on one point and that was if I wanted to go with another, then cool but don’t come back to her space, we killed that terrible suspicion which can poison the lover’s link. That is, she made me see the pitfall of trying to cover up aspects of your real character that you think the other will dislike, a trap which we all fall into.

  ‘Everyone looks at other people,’ she once told me, ‘so just because I’m with you doesn’t mean that is going to stop. Not that I’ll do anything about it but it’s a part of me. The same goes for you.’

  I fell in even deeper into her world. I don’t know if you’ve ever fallen in love, but I hope you have because it is truly one of life’s best highs. For weeks on end nothing, but absolutely nothing, matters except the person you want to be with.

  Fact is, when love hits you and hits you hard, it’s like entering an altered state where your world and everything in it, is turned gloriously upside down. In your mind’s eye all you can fix on is that person alone, and nothing else, at the time, matters. Your every thought is coloured by love, and all your normal runnings, literally fall by the wayside. You know how much my work means to me, yet if it meant having to miss a night at The Unity to be with Indigo, then there was no choice whatsoever, I would be there by her side.

  When, on the nights, she was at one of her study classes and then off to home alone, I would shape my hours around her, making tapes up with music such as Marvin’s ‘I Want You’ or Roy Ayers’s ‘You Send Me,’ all the time marvelling at my own sentiment
ality but always safe in the knowledge that Indigo would accept these gifts with a warmth that ignited my heart. I even tried to write her a couple of poems but when I read them out to Brother P. over the phone his initial silence, followed by a ‘Yeah, that’s... nice,’ was all the criticism I needed. I binned them. Living in this delicious haze, I savoured every moment as I forgot the world until, as it had to, it came crashing back in one night when Indigo and I were at my yard, checking out a film I insisted she see, this being a mad Harvey Keitel flick entitled, ‘Fingers.’

  In the flick, Keitel is a classical pianist with a Mafia man for a dad, and a penchant for walking around New York with his ghettoblaster playing at the highest decibel possible. It had just got to the point where he really coats a guy off in the restaurant for asking him to please turn the music down, (‘Turn it down? Don’t you know who this is? This is fucking Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, mutha...’) when the phone rang. ‘Yep.’

  ‘I got the money. Thanks. Now when are you going to see Kimberley?’

  I froze in space and time for, truth be told, I had kept back, from day one, news of the Sandra business from Indigo, scared it might frighten her away. I mean, to have a kiddiwink on your CV is hardly the best way to impress someone, and even though we had established an honesty vibe, I had compounded matters even further, by telling Indigo, when the subject arose, that I had no time or space for bambinos. Luckily, Indigo did not dig clubs so she never accompanied me to The Unity where, no doubt, someone would have informed her of my run in with Sandra, and as she also moved in an entirely different circle of people to me, my runnings were not publicly known. I kept meaning to make amends for this re-arrangement of the facts but, somehow, tomorrow never comes, and so I never parlared on the matter again, prefering instead to spend our nights together rubbing cocoa creme into Indigo’s rich body whilst Jazzie B.’s beats and melodies played in the background.

  ‘Soon,’ I said, ‘soon.’ Indigo glanced over at me.

  ‘It’ll be her birthday in a couple of months. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘So?’

  I felt a flush come to my face and prayed that Indigo could not hear her voice or my fumbling words.

  ‘Yeah, we’ll do something.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, it’ll be cool. Look, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Ain’t that a surprise.’

  ‘Sorry, but I do. We’ll talk soon.’

  ‘Thanks for the offer.’

  ‘I’ll call next week.’

  ‘Yeah and the Pope’s a protestant.’

  The phone went dead and I swallowed hard. ‘Who was that?’ Indigo asked.

  ‘Jill from the club. She wanted to know if I’d DJ at some party they’re having.’

  ‘Oh,’ replied Indigo and went back to the film which by now had no interest for me whatsoever. I knew I would have to come clean soon but I didn’t want to upset the idyllic time we were sharing, for the fact of the matter was that, Sandra aside, everything was coming my way. I had my girl, who gave me the strength of a gospel choir going full tilt, and I had my spot at The Unity Club, which on the nights I spun there, would be rammed with faces and characters of intrigue and interest, the summer sun making them even more agreeable to raving the night away and the spirit of the time bringing each and every one closer together.

  Take for instance, Jasmine, an Anglo Indian gal with her dark flashing eyes, petite figure and jet black shining hair. Jasmine was a ball of energy, never able to fully relax but always on the move, and forever bringing back the conversation round to sex, a trait that always ensured that, loitering in her radius, there would be two or three guys, hoping to cash in and get busy with her. Naturally, it took them some time to realise that despite all her bluster, it was not the casual she was after but the very opposite, and so when they approached her with various offers, they were always slightly shocked when they got a kickback.

  ‘You?’ you would hear her say to some poor unsuspecting soul, who was whispering in her ear. ‘I’d rather go home with the dustman, mate.’

  Jasmine had been kicked out of home at 16 for refusing to take part in the arranged marriage that her parents had tried to foist on her, and so she had been forced to make her way in a world that her people had sought to protect her from. Caught in a twilight world of cultures, where the strictness and traditions of her upbringing clashed with the society she now lived in, Jasmine covered up the confusion as best she could.

  Sometimes after a night at The Unity, a few of us would head back to Jasmine’s yard and, on certain occasions, she spoke of her P&M with such venom that you knew, deep down inside, that what she really craved was a truce to be established with them, based on mutual respect and some kind of understanding.

  Of course, Jasmine would never admit to these feelings but it always puzzled me, myself and I how people, such as her folks, could commit all their lives to a religion that told them to walk in peace and love, and then, in the name of that very religion, they blow precisely the opposite way by outcasting their own flesh and blood. Such actions escaped me but then I was always being surprised by the problemos and worries that you find in people once you cut through their smiling faces, so much so, in fact, that I eventually had to reason that we were all living in our personal world, not the world, and it was a wonder that somehow we didn’t all collide into each other at the same time and go off with a huge bang.

  What a pie that would have made, especially if you include the persona of another Unity regular, The Sheriff, in the frame. This was a number who had set himself on a direct collision course with anyone who tried to block his path, his excuse being that at a very early age, he had been set upon by a group of coppers, ‘bunch of freemasons freeloading on me,’ he snarled, for no reason at all, and had been, he claimed, irrevocably damaged beyond repair.

  The Sheriff’s name derived from his unerring ability to walk into anyplace at anytime and turn it, within five minutes, into something resembling a wild west saloon, with punches, bottles, chairs and tables, flying through the air with the greatest of ease.

  The Sheriff was a hustler of considerable charm when it came to the gals and it was his strikingly good looks that helped him in this department.

  Once in a while he would deign to be photographed for some trendy advertising campaign and for a whole week you would walk around town and not be able to avoid his unblemished face staring belligerently out at you from some poster or other. He was also the bearer of a violent, angry streak which he wisely, said some, foolishly, said others, tended to direct against all authority figures, and as he spent a lot of time in clubs, these tended to be security guards, such as Charlie, who, for The Sheriff, represented the worst aspect of the New Briton. ‘I’ve been reading George Orwell,’ he would announce, ‘and he believes that the English are a nation of shopkeepers. Well he’s wrong. They’re a nation of bouncers, mean, petty, narrowminded idiots who will never let you in for nothing.’

  The Sheriff gave his signature away every two weeks at the local dole office, so the cashola flow was always a major problemo for him but, recently, he had hit a silver streak and moved himself and his runnings into a Notting Hill pad, courtesy, he informed of us, of a middle aged, rich German lady he was forever promising to show off at The Unity but never quite did.

  They had met, he informed us, at a Soho coffee bar where, after a hard day’s shopping, the lady in question was resting, and after the introductions were through, he had then taken her on a sight seeing tour of London. Then it was back to the apartment she kept in Notting Hill for a night of champagne and canoodling that proved so satisfying to both partners, that The Sheriff, by early morning, had persuaded her to let him take over the yard so tha t every time she passed through the Capital, he would be waiting for her, ready and willing to pay his share of the rent, so to speak.

  This being his story, and as one couldn’t prove or disprove either way, one had to go with it although,
as in the coppers who beat up on him, it always seemed that he too lived in a world where fact and fiction were hard to separate. Like Jasmine, his words shot out like a crazy waterfall, splashing everyone within range, and it was this gift of verbal dexterity that attracted the people to him, gathering round, as they did, like children, eager for their bedtime story. A sample of an example, his opening line would be something like, ‘I woke up this morning in Manchester. You ever been there? You should go, they’ve got some great conga players up there. Anyway, I went up there to check this Tasmanian princess I nearly married years ago but couldn’t because she wanted children and I wanted to write poetry. So we argued again and that depressed me too much, so I hopped the train for London and met up with some gangsters who run Soho. They offered me a job but I had to turn them down as my landlady was coming into town for an hour. She was swapping planes down at Gatwick, so I went and met her, took her into the toilet and sucked her little finger for an hour and then bade her goodbye until the next time. By the way, what’s the first thing you think about in the morning?’

  Things got even more tangled up two weeks later when Charlie, the bouncer, handed in his notice to go and protect a high flying pop star, setting out on tour, from all the screaming kiddiwinks. Learning of this, Jasmine approached me one night, and, after the usual salvo of innuendo, ‘I see you’ve got your twelve inchers out...’, informed me that Rajan, her brother, had also flown the nest and was there a possibility that he take Charlie’s position just until he could find his bearings?

  According to the CV on her brother, he was a health fanatic, well versed in martial artistry and although he didn’t have Charlie’s bulk, he was not a boy to fool with. I told her that I thought it a fine idea but that one thing worried me and put my mind into anxious mode.

  Both Jasmine and The Sheriff were links of mi ne and, unfortunately, it was odds on that at some point, The Sheriff, given his penchant for goading bouncers, would no doubt take a swing at Rajan and, pardon me, but I could not be responsible for such an occurrence, especially as it placed me square in the middle.