Heaven's Promise

London, 1988, and the winds of change are blowing through the city, kicking up a storm. A gal pregnant and a DJ running for cover. The birth of the E generation and a race riot erupting.

The Sheriff is trying to talk to Prince and Sammy the Foot is dancing up a treat. Everything was Tuesday until she quit without an explanation whilst a young Italian is looking to score and a mother is fighting off the fascists. Someone just dropped one and said ‘it's as if we were in heaven' whilst outside the club a seven-month-old baby is crying hard.

Heaven's Promise
stands, underrated, in the intersection of great modern London novels, between
Absolute Beginners
and
Trainspotting
– a tradition of youthful struggle and creative ambition embodied in a City of Dreams, a vision as potent in the rave culture of the late eighties as it was in the fifties – and as it is today.

 

Sarah Jane, (One day we will be free),

Stephanie Hardy, for a love supreme,

My own Brother P., for enduring loyalty and wisdom,

The Supino famiglia from here to Sorrento,

Jeff Barrett, for spotting the potential,

And to an extraordinary circle of friends who, without a word being said, gathered around and caught me everytime I fell.

Love and happiness to each and every one.

 

It's easy now, with the commercialisation of dance music and the ubiquity of (often bad) drugs, to be blasé about Acid House and forget what a life-changing scene it was. House music, and its demon cousin, ecstasy, were amazing, masterly phenomena. They came along at just the right time, when the energy of punk was fizzling away and the dull, Thatcherite hegemony of money-grubbing had wankered out youth culture.

Suddenly we were all flying again, literally, in many cases, as the interface between a drug and a genre of music had never been so pronounced. When you were out on one everybody was a potential life-long friend.

One night in London I was out with some buddies and I met Paolo. As so often happens we found we had a lot of mutual friends, and ended up back at the home of one of them, surrounded by the usual procession of cool men and smart, beautiful women.

Paolo and I had been through the defining experience of punk in our youth. In that time-honoured way of those enlightened people who refuse to grow up, we recognized each other as kindred spirits; men who were enjoying the fuck out of the house scene, when many of our contemporaries were succumbing to mortgages and children.

Later Paolo told me that he was writing a book called
Heaven's Promise
, which was about the emergence of the house/rave scene in London. I had been working on something with a similar theme for a while, and I admit that my first thought was a jealous one, something along the lines of ‘that Tottenham wanker has beaten me to writing a novel about the house scene.' When you're a younger writer you tend not to believe the truths about there being many paths up the mountain, you just think that you've been beaten to the punch. 

Paolo send me proof copies of his book, which was brought out by our mutual pal Jeff Barratt, on his Heavenly imprint. The bad news was that I thought it was very good, the better news that it was stylistically very different from my own offerings.
Heaven's Promise
is a soulful ride through the London of those heady days, a love letter to the city as much as a scene. It evokes the times when the already overwhelmingly anticipated night out was kicked up further by the waiting, the rumours and the cat-and-mouse games with the authorities. Then – finally – the rapture as we all bounced irresistibly to a four-four beat blasting out a warehouse in East London, punctuated by mad conversations with deranged geezers, melting smiles from pretty girls, and queues for dodgy toilets. It also contains the best description of, for the first time, coming up on a quality E, that I've ever read. 

Acid House has inspired a lot of creativity, in fiction as well as other art forms. But there are very few novelistic accounts of what it felt like to be young and naive in this era.
Heaven's Promise
is therefore indispensible, the
Absolute Beginners
of Acid House.   

 

Looking back on it now and having been granted a somewhat sensitive impulse, a bitter sweet quality that can bring both joy and pain into one's daily runnings, it was not strange to me that when the phone started up in my yard that Saturday morning, I somehow knew my world was going to change forever.

This was not, I hasten to add, a fully formed clear-as-blue thought that came into my mind's eye but one which flashed by with very little attention paid to its distant, rainbow like journey. It was only much later that my HQ, in its inimitable and unique style, ran past me again this distant premonition thus prompting the putting of pen to paper.

I should also state that when the phone kicked sharply into life I was hardly in full control of my wide and diverse facilities, given the relatively early nature of the day. It takes space, solitude and numerous coffee cups to clear the fog of sleep from my mind and prepare me for the events ahead, and it is not until the clock has slipped an hour that I become fully compos mentis and ready for whatever the world wants to throw at me and, of course, vice versa.

It was 10.30 in the a.m. when I picked up the receiver and killed the phone's shrill noise, situated as I was in the front room of my small London abode.

‘Yep.'

‘It's Sandra.'

This was a gal that I had been seeing off and on, on and off, over the past few weeks and if truth be told my feelings towards her were hardly of the Romeo and Juliet type such as you can occasionally see in certain couples who, lost in the glow of new found love, can hardly walk ten yards down the road without loving each other up.

‘Oh hi,' I replied, ‘how's it going?'

‘Fine. I'm pregnant.'

‘You are what?'

‘I said, I am pregnant.'

I have sometimes wondered in my numerous day dreams, when my HQ gladly pushes reality aside to conjure up all manner of fanciful thoughts, how I would feel if I was ever confronted with the words that Sandra had just used and, although I took the painful and, let's face it, not exactly the cleverest route to answering that question, I can at least jot down the answer now with complete and utter certainty.

Numb. Your body and mind turn numb. Every emotion or feeling inside instantly ices over and your mind, like a TV as it's just been switched off, goes blank, unless, of course, the gal in question is your fulltime squeeze and you planned the whole caboodle from start to finish. This, I have to relate, was not my position and so I said the first thing that came to mind.

‘Is it mine?'

‘You fucking bastard, I knew you'd say that. Who do you think I am?' she demanded.

I realised my error and quickly scrambled for cover although there was some logic behind my question. In the nature of a casual affair, which is how I read it, I have always been of the notion that neither partner can really make claims on the other's runnings.

Where Sandra went and how she conducted her time when she was away from me was down to her and her alone.

‘I'm sorry,' I said, ‘I didn't it mean that way.'

An uncomfortable silence settled in between us, each waiting for the other to speak. Sandra finally went first.

‘Well, hot shot, got anything to say or has the cat got your tongue?'

‘I thought you were taking precautions. We talked about it.'

‘They failed.'

I couldn't help but think, right then and there as I held the phone in disbelief, just how seriously unpredictable life can be. A piece of rubber snaps in half and suddenly two people are hurtling down a road they never knew existed, their lives turned upside down and careering towards who knew where.

‘Aren't you happy?' Sandra asked in a tentative tone, her voice tailing off. I really couldn't tell if she was joking or not but knowing the quick silver temper that I have seen rear up in her on a couple of occasions I thought it best not to ask.

If the truth be known, I was actually praying that this was a huge wind up being played out at my expense and in a few seconds Sandra would burst into laughter and this whole nightmare would be over. Which is the kind of desperate thinking you get into when something appears out of the nowhere blue and knocks you clean off your feet with a force that is ten times your strength.

‘Well, we'd better meet,' I heard her say, the words cutting through the air of silence and shock that I was being forced to breathe in.

‘No, now now, not today,' I quickly replied. ‘I'm busy all over the weekend.'

This was not a true statement on my behalf but I needed time to stall and get myself and my thoughts together.

‘How you fixed up Monday?'

There was no answer and I suddenly imagined her sitting at her yard, a sinking feeling opening up her stomach as she came to realise that I was not the best person to have been recruited for the job of fatherhood.

‘Call me first thing, Monday. Alright?'

I held the phone carefully and then she exploded

‘No, it's not alright you bastard. You fucking well call me.'

Sandra smashed down the phone and the line crashed. I put down the phone and sat there in complete silence, unable to believe what had just passed. I reached for a cigarette, sparked up and then swung back into action. Picking up the phone, I hit a number and twenty seconds later, much to my relief, my closest confidant, the Brother P. came on the line.

I can't tell you how glad I was to find him for he is an elusive man and very prone towards the unpredictable, this being one of the reasons I dig him.

‘P. man, it's me. We need a meet fast.'

‘Yeah?' came his cool reply delivered as if it was a question, ‘Papa's in an hour?'

‘That's the one. Check you then.'

Putting the phone to rest, I snapped on the answer machine. desperately wanted to clear the buzzing in my head and had no inclination whatsoever to parlare with anyone else, especially if Sandra took it upon herself to call back.

I have to say here that what did me up the most was Sandra's little line about being happy as if on receiving her disaster bulletin she somehow expected that I would be hiring out the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate.

How she got to that point I have no idea but what I do know, to paint a clearer picture, is that this loose link between us had started at The Unity Club where I can be found DJ'ing three nights a week, this being my chosen profession and how I am able to provide a roof over my head, foodage on the table, gears in the wardrobe and enough tunes to keep me happy and employable. I had only just started spinning there having gained the job through a lucky squeeze. Costello, the club's middle aged and gruff manager, had caught the club's regular DJ with his headphones around his neck and his hands in the till and personally marched him out of the club. Appealing to the Brother P., the boy to call when such situations arise, and who, as fate would have it, luckily happened to be present and correct that night, for assistance, my main link dialled my number and I have held down the post ever since. On my fourth nervous night there, as it is not often that such golden chances arise, Jill, w ho works the cloak room, brought a drink and a friend up to the booth.

‘This is Sandra,' she announced, clutching her arm.

‘She's a good friend of mine and she wants to know if you will play a record for her, and because you're such a good DJ and a sweetie to boot, I told her that I'm sure you would.'

I made a slight grimace for Jill, a small, blond haired gal with a wide smile and unflappable nature, which comes in very useful when fifty people are rushing to get their coats and then home, knows as well as I do that this asking for records business is something every DJ hates.

It's either odds on that he or she hasn't got the tune in question or, if they have, it is always one that will automatically kill stone dead the mood they are trying to build.

‘Oh, forget it,' Sandra said, noting my small expression of disapproval and starting to turn away. ‘You probably haven't got it anyway.'

Now there are many things you can say to a DJ but if you really want to get to him or her, just simply suggest that their collection is not up to par and then retire ten yards after lighting. Shame to say it but DJ's are by nature's cruel design zealous hoarders of vinyl, self obsessed individuals who always want to be one step ahead of the pack and who see nothing wrong in dedicating their lives and cashola to building up an unrivalled amount of tunes, this being their version of the Holy Grail and how to achieve meaning in life.

They are also not above telling out and out lies about tunes they claim to possess and even I have to plead guilty on that score. ‘That Billy Brooks track? Yeah, I know it. Got it a few months back. Safe track, man.'