by Paolo Hewitt
I’m going to sort that out soon as well.’
‘Might be a good idea, loverboy.’
‘So not a word, okay?’
‘I said, I’ll see what I can do. Now, if you don’t mind, both of us have got work to do.’
I went back to the booth and started laying down some relaxed tunes, such as Lowrell’s ‘Mellow Mellow,’ and Kool and the Gang’s ‘Summer Madness,’ so as to build the calm before the storm, for DJ’ing is akin in some ways to the art of romping. You have to start off slowly, get everyone feelin’ fine before you gear up with the tunes that you know will shake everyone into action.
I was just moving onto another level when Jasmine and Stinga appeared, both of them j ust popping in for an hou r before heading off to Ronnie’s to catch Art Blakey’s last set of the night.
After the intros were through, Jasmine began skinning up whilst Stinga, still in his Thelonious Monk drag, stood quietly by. Just as Jasmine was lighting up the first of the night, Indigo appeared, dressed up in a very fetching outfit of Levi’s cut offs and a white vest. I tried to keep down the nerves in my voice and made with the greetings.
‘Hi baby. This is Jasmine and Stinga.’
‘Hi, pleasure to meet you. So this is where you get off to every week.’
‘Yep, this is the place and it’s got three weeks of life left in it. Costello told us this afternoon. They’re pulling it down.’
‘Is that true?’ Jasmine put in.
‘Afraid so.’
It was at precisely that point that Jill made her entrance.
‘Hello everyone,’ she announced in a. voice that was far too cheery for its own good. ‘Heard about the club?’
‘I was just telling them all about it.’
‘Shame isn’t it? Still, life will go on.’
I had no desire to introduce Indigo but it was one of those awkward moments when you have no option but to go against your better judgement, and so, ‘Oh, Jill this is Indigo. Indigo, Jill.’
‘Hi, I’ve heard a lot about you,’ she lied. ‘What do you think of his daughter, then. Beautiful isn’t she?’ You know those times in life when you have to tell yourself this really isn’t happening to me, and you know that mix of growing despair when you realise that it is? Well, double that feeling and you now know exactly how I felt.
‘I’m sorry,’ Indigo said, her face one of pure puzzlement. ‘Did you say daughter?’
‘That’s right,’ Jill replied as if nothing on this earth could be more natural. ‘His daughter. Haven’t you.... Oh, I am sorry. That’s me all over. Putting my foot in my mouth. Anyways, work to do. Good to meet you at last.’
Indigo turned to me with an expression of such pure sadness and anger that it broke my heart in two just to catch sight of it, and that first night when she had cried in my arms after being betrayed flashed back to me.
I went to say something but Indigo stopped me right away. ‘Don’t,’ she commanded, before turning and walking straight out of the club. Jasmine passed me the spliff and then touched Stinga on the arm.
‘I think we better be going. The set is starting soon. We’ll check you later, alright? I mean, jf you want to come round later, that’ll be cool, you know.’
‘Thanks, I know.’
‘Take care. Corne on, Stinga.’
Mumbling his goodbye, Stinga and Jasmine departed, leaving me to it. I desperately wanted to go find Indigo but to be God’s honest, I couldn’t move a muscle for I was literally nailed to the floor and, for a few dazed and agonising minutes, I really didn’t know what was what.
The club was now filling up and somehow I managed to get a grip and cue up the tunes but, boy-o-boy, was that the hardest night I’ve ever worked as I waited in a slow agony, constantly checking the watch, for the night to finish, all the time feeling as though my old world had just slipped away.
When the lights finally went up my first mission was to go in search of Jill and coat her off in a manner that she wouldn’t forget for the rest of her life but, surprise surprise, the Bitch Brutus had exited early that night.
My next move was to make for the club’s pay phone and bell Indigo but I already knew it was a fruitless exercise. Indigo would have snatched the phone off the hook and left it dangling the minute she reached her yard, a hunch of mine that was confirmed by the constant engaged tone I was forced to hear every time I punched out her number.
I thought of going round to see her but that gal would have died rather than let me in and, anyways, I didn’t want to cause a scene for her, she already had enough on her plate.
Like the large comedown you experience after a night on the small white pill, I felt deflated, anxious and worried. It seemed that every time I went out into the world, fresh and hopeful, it maliciously conspired to send me back to my yard, beaten and bloody. It was then that I realised what a fool I had been to try and beat time. When you checked it calmly and objectively, it was obvious that Indigo would one day suss the kiddiwink scenario, and I had tried to stall the hour of her discovery. Time had beaten me soundly for my ignorance and I was now going to pay the cost.
That night, sleep did not come, blocked by the hot tears of regret that kept falling till the morning sun, and when they finally relented, a feeling of being so scared and alone bit so hard into me, that I even briefly contemplated ending it all then and there, but to take that step, an urge that I’m sure the majority of us all experience, takes a terrible amount of courage which only the few possess.
In the end, I wallowed in self pity, building a huge morning spliff and playing Bobby Womack’s ‘Just my Imagination’ over and over again, for the emotional push of the song caught my mood exactly.
The smoke seeped into my mind but if there is one thing about the spliff, or a lot of drugs, come to that, is that you can’t fool with it if you’re on a serious downer, for, like alcohol, it has a very nasty habit of amplifying everything that is bad in your runnings, building them up to ludicrous proportions in your mind’s eye, and making everything seem a lot worse than it already is.
In this case, after the first smoke, my mind’s solar system went askew, painting such a frightening future that I wished I could remove the smoke from my body and brain and start all over again.
I was conjuring up all kinds of bleak visions when the phone rang and I answered it quickly, desperate to hear Indigo’s voice, hoping against hope that she would allow me a chance to clear up the mess that was now my life.
Instead I got Brother P. ‘Yep.’
‘Some mutha fuckas have done over my sister. Come now. I’m over at Amanda’s.’
‘Fuck, what happened?’
‘Never mind that. Just get over.’
‘Don’t do anything stupid, P.’
‘Just get over here. There’s business to attend to.’
‘What number is she again?’
‘34.’
‘I’m on my way.’
Brother P. sounded charged up and defiant, and, not wanting him to make some rash moves, I quickly started to gather up my things, cursing the spliff that ensured I spent five minutes turning the flat upside down looking for my door keys when they were in my pocket all the time.
Finally, I was ready and, jumping on a bus to take me down the Stroud Green to the tube, and then eastwards to the Riversdown estate, I rushed over there in quick time.
I knew Amanda’s pad from right back in the days when she had thrown a party to christen her new yard, and her family gathered together with friends, feasting on rice, peas and chicken, copious quantities of Appleton rum and Red Stripe, and a great selection of Jamaican tunes, ranging from ska to reggae, to see us through to dawn.
This was in the early days of the estate’s life, when to get plotted up in Riversdown was a prestigious number, such was the hype surrounding its birth. The main attraction of these living quarters was a planned shopping complex which would ensure that everything you ever needed was ready and available just outside your door. The only problemo was
that the complex was never built.
At the very last moment, the money boys suddenly pulled out, leaving the people who had moved in stranded and forced to watch all their hopes and dreams collapse.
Firstly, the builders, as was only right, automatically downed tools once their wage packets were stopped, leaving behind the debris of their wasted efforts, a wasteland of rubbish from which these flats, only half of which had been filled, rose high above.
Then the real nightmare kicked in. The local council, desperate for accommodation, bought up the remaining flats and started to move in families that had spent years living in the scandal and squalor of bed and breakfast joints, run by unscrupulous landlords who raked in a fortune by charging exorbitant rent.
Many of the families lived four to a room, literally sleeping on top of each other, surrounded by the dirt and damp that attacked their health, living off a diet of cheap food and venting their frustration on one another in horrendous ways. By the time they had been relocated to Riversdown, it was too late.
Violence, alcoholism, hate and hopelessness was the normal fabric of their everyday lives. And that was just the parents for into the midst of this hell came the drug dealers, openly targeting the young, guessing correctly that here was a ripe area to exploit.
No one cares to admit that one of the prime reasons for taking drugs is pleasure, to enjoy the thrill of it all as they work their magic, and, for a few hours at least, make life a real high. That’s a desire that crosses all class boundaries, from the beggar to the Crown, but when pleasure is in short supply, the need turns desperate.
Within a year of being abandoned, Riversdown started to suffer random outbreaks of violence as dealers and gangs started to fight for territory and control. Sporadic at first, the violence quickly escalated and then the unthinkable happened. The British National Party chose the site to open up a bookshop. Despite a wave of protest from some of the beleaguered residents, the unthinking greyers allowed the fascists their way, pointing out that we live in a democracy and therefore everyone has a right to express their views.
I get angered by such nonsense, really angered, for it strikes me that if you have something precious, which is what democracy, if practised to the max, undoubtedly is, you don’t go and hand it over to the very people whose whole aim is to destroy it.
That’s how you lose it and when the residents started receiving leaflets through their front doors, filled with hate towards anyone whose skin was not lily white and coursing with 100 per cent pure English blood – as if such a thing is possible – the battle lines started to appear.
Like the drug dealers, the BNP knew that here was a fruitful area of recruitment. Young impressionable kiddiwinks, bored out of their skulls, joined up because at that age it’s anything for a laugh and some kicks to get you noticed, whilst some of their parents, eager to blame anyone but the true villain for their sorry plight, signed up as well, openly displaying BNP stickers in their dirt-smeared kitchen windows.
Amanda, and everyone else on the estate who understood that social living is the best, made constant pleas to the Council to relent on their democracy-for-all line and see sense,•but the votes, like their fate, had already been cast. Even when an enterprising local journalist discovered that the council was secretly sending a car every morning to pick up a five-year-old named Sieta to take to school because her mother, following some threatening verbals from the local young ones, had withdrawn her from school, the story failed to sway the blind, indifferent council greyers.
Her mother, Mrs Punwabi, like a lot of the residents, lived in a state of complete twenty-four-hour fear, her every waking moment besieged by fright, the small sleep she was afforded besieged by apocalyptic visions.
She had been the victim of an arranged marriage, and, lacking the courage of a Jasmine at the time, had submitted to her parents’ wishes. Her husband came from a village in North Pakistan, and he carried with him the dreams of his impoverished parents that he support them in their fading years by sending the valuable sum of £10 a week over to them. For them he was their only hope.
Unable to speak English, the husband had demanded that his wife be docile and obedient, following his every whim without complaint. In his religion, women should never work outside of the home, and so ingrained was this idea that he would countenance no other way.
Work was impossible to come by, and soon he was signing on. Mrs Punwabi was forced to make good on the meagre money handed over, part of which was regularly sent to his parents.
One day she challenged him on this, pointing out that they could hardly feed themselves, let alone others.
His response was to break her nose. When she stumbled out of the flat to phone an ambulance, he dragged her back in and then beat her again. Then he forced himself upon her. Mrs Punwabi didn’t speak for two weeks, and then, on the day he went to sign on, she summoned up all her courage, packed her bags and headed over to her parents’ house to seek shelter.
At the front door her mother turned her away. She told her daughter to go back to her husband. She had caused a scandal on the family name and it would only be cleared if she went back to the man who rightfully owned her.
Luckily, a women’s shelter was near by and Mrs Pun wa bi desperately afraid, moved in. A month later, the morning sickness began. She was pregnant from her husband’s rape. Word then reached her that he had been out and about searching for her.
When the Riversdown estate opened up, she was one of the lucky ones who was granted a home, and a few months later her child was born.
Yet, throughout this torment, Mrs Punwabi had found herself and started to change, questioning her ties to family, country and religion to cope with the everyday as best as possible.
When the BNP leaflets had started dropping on her mat, her response was to make up a series of posters that she plastered all over the estate, inviting the righteous to come to her flat for a meeting. Amanda, amongst others, decided to attend and on the very night that Indigo was walking out of my life, a group of them had crammed into her flat to discuss the crisis.
It was just as Mrs Punwabi had finished her first speech ever in front of a small crowd, and was sitting down as their warm applause washed over her that the bricks and stones came crashing through her second-floor kitchen window with a noise so frightful that everyone present literally jumped out of their skins.
‘Where’s the phone?’ Amanda screamed as everyone ducked for cover. ‘There isn’t one,’ Mrs Punwabi sobbed back, running to her child’s bedroom where the sound of agonised crying could now be clearly heard.
Amanda and the rest of the group waited in a deathly silence to see what would happen next. But only a threatening quiet filled the room.
‘I’m going to phone the cops,’ she announced.
‘Don’t,’ said a resident, a middle-aged guy who lived two floor up. ‘Wait a bit.’
‘They’ve gone,’ Amanda replied, listening out intently for signs of more activity. ‘My flat is only one floor up – I’ll go get help.’
Opening the front door slowly, Amanda slipped out, ran softly along the balcony, turned to go up the stairs, and smashed head on into three guys standing on the stairs. Amanda screamed and swivelled as quick as she could to head back to Mr Punwabi’s, but one of the guys caught her around the waist and they both fell back onto the floor.
‘Keep her there, Jimmy,’ one of them shouted as he loomed menacingly over her, one of his hands reaching towards his flies. Amanda kicked her leg up as hard as she could and caught him square between the legs. He doubled up and fell against the stairs. The guy beneath Amanda let loose his grip momentarily and it was all she needed to struggle up, jump over the prostrate body of the guy she had kicked and bolt up the stairs.
As she did, she caught sight of the third guy w ho stood motionless throughout the whole incident, numb and scared.
‘My God,’ Amanda remembered thinking to herself as she flew by, ‘he can’t be any older than 10, if that.’
She made it to her flat and desperately bolted herself in.
People, I have no idea where such virulent hate comes from. All know is that violence begets violence. Kick a child from birth arid he’ll kick out for the rest of his life, so forgive the intrusion, but every time I picture Amanda in my mind’s eye, struggling on that dirt cold balcony, or imagine little Sieta cowering in fright as the cavemen threaten her, anger clouds my vision and I can only see mankind as nothing more than an untameable, ferocious monster, intent on damaging themselves and everyone else. And it is then that all hope drains instantly away, and I am left temporarily without any belief in humanity.
From Clapham Common to Riverside, two worlds so far apart and light years away from each other, and all within spitting distance of each other, I could only pray that the Common Tribe would somehow prevail.
Amanda didn’t call the cops that night. She spent the hours sitting against her front door, crying softly. At 6.30 she found herself able to move and called the one guy who would help – her brother. He reached her an hour later, and his sister insisted that he not call their father as his health had not been up to scratch of late and the worry could prove harmful.
That was when Brother P. belled me. But fate plays some very nasty blows when it has its wind up. Twenty minutes before I arrived, Amanda’s father, Wilberforce, unexpectedly popped in on his way to work with some rum that his sister had just brought over to these shores, following her holiday in Kingston.
Unable to hide the consequence of the night before, for what parent cannot instantly pick up on a daughter’s distress, the flat, when I entered, felt as if it was under siege. Wilberforce sat impassively in a chair, not saying a word, whilst his son paced the carpet, stopping every minute to peer out of the window to see if any of his sister’s attackers were making themselves public.
Meanwhile, Amanda had retreated to her bed, worn out and exhausted.
With his stocky build and no-nonsense way, Wilberforce tended to dominate the space he was in, casting his mood – be that happy or sad – over the whole proceedings.
