Heaven's Promise (16 page)

‘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.

Jasmine gave me a sweet smile and told me not to worry my old grey matter on such a thing. That particular scenario, she mysteriously added, had already been sorted, so please, could I at least approach Costello with the idea. This I did and two weeks later, Rajan came to work, decked out in a turban and a tracksuit, he too caught between his family and the new world they inhabited. He made for a fine bouncer, meaning that he didn't hold a grudge against the people trying to get into the club, but treated everyone with a firm courtesy. What was more surprising was The Sheriff's attitude towards him who, in a remarkable scene, actually allowed Rajan to frisk him, the first time ever I saw another man's hands near him, without the gory sight of blood and bruises following. I couldn't get a hold on The Sheriff's accommodating mood swing towards Rajan until, one night, Brother P., after some close observation, informed me that he wouldn't be at all surprised if Jasmine and The Sheriff were getting it on, hence the biting of lips all round. My man's hunch was on the ball and, I figured, made sense. Both numbers were burdened down by their past and maybe together they could at least offload some of the weight and find peaceful contentment. Some hope. Two months after the fling begun, two months in which both had quietened down considerably, Jasmine, arrived, unannounced at The Sheriff's Notting Hill pad, to find him entwined in the arms of his landlady. As The Sheriff had informed her that the gaff belonged to his sister, Jasmine not only screamed betrayal but incest as well, before rushing down to The Unity where she downed, her head turned upside down, three whiskies, four beers and two large spliffs. Then she waited.

An hour later, The Sheriff walked in looking for her. A pint of beer being thrown into his face, a barrage of obscenities that I hesitate to record and a right hook from Jasmine that Ali himself would have been proud of, left him standing motionless, beer and blood dripping down his handsome visage.

The Sheriff turned calmly around, walked back to the front door, tapped Rajan on the shoulder, said, ‘don't you ever frisk me again,' and went to punch him.

Rajan, quicker than an arrow, saw the blow coming, ducked and then dragged The Sheriff out into the street and administered a series of punches and kicks that had an ambulance screaming up to the club ten minutes later to cart The Sheriff off to the emergency ward.

I didn't see the man again for two weeks although this amount of time was nothing compared to an incident, back in the days, when he was forced to spend double that amount in a hospital bed, following his mission to meet Prince and ask him a question that he badly needed an answer to. On tour in London, it was easy to establish on the grapevine that after each show, Prince would head for a small club to deliver an impromptu performance and, although you needed a special ticket to gain entry, and security was tighter than Fort Knox, it was precisely those sort of odds that served to inspire The Sheriff even further. At the stroke of midnight, at a northside club, The Sheriff bowled up.

‘Ticket mate,' said the security man.

‘Left it at home.'

‘Well, fuck off back there and get it.'

‘Eat shit. I'm going in to see Prince. He's expecting me. We have an appointment. Alright?'

‘Don't joke with me, son.'

‘Look dad, you haven't got the capacity to understand one of my jokes, even if it came up stark bollock naked and landed on your ugly face. Now move aside.'

‘I'm warning you.'

‘I'm shivering with fright.'

‘Okay, then, I've tried reason. Now try this.'

At which point, the crowd scattered as the security man's fisticuff landed square on The Sheriff's jaw, sending teeth, blood and his body clattering to the ground.

The Sheriff shook himself to and disappeared, and the crowd, shocked and shaken, started to regroup as the bouncers tried to calm everyone down. Some semblance of normality was just starting to return when suddenly a war cry went up and there was The Sheriff, dustbin lid in hand, bum rushing the show.

This time the bouncers didn't wait around to exchange pleasantries, because, boy-o-boy, they started in on him seriously. Bouncers spend the night at a door coiled up and waiting for trouble. When it arrives, all that pent up energy is released and that is not a sight to behold at anytime.

It was as The Sheriff was literally fighting off this ferocity, that a black limo pulled up and none other than Prince himself stepped out, surrounded by his bodyguards. Despite his predicament, The Sheriff saw his chance to ask the music man the question that had bugged him for so long.

‘Prince!' shouted The Sheriff, as the bouncers were momentarily stopped by his unexpected presence, ‘what key is “Sign Of The Times” in? I need to know, me and my mate have been trying to work it out.'

But the music man did not stay to answer and The Sheriff was hospitalised for a month, a time I was reliably told, he spent composing poems, one of which, ‘Kerouac meets The Supremes,' he showed to me on his return to The Unity and, impressed I was too, especially by the opening line that ran, ‘My pen is as a restless vulture that picks at the corpse of my memory,' and told me, at least, that underneath it all, he was not a ma n to be underrated.

‘Why, you should turn your anger to literature,' I informed him one night standing up at the booth. He was just about to reply when Stinga appeared and, as this character was now seeing Jasmine, The Sheriff was not too enamoured by his presence, although he knew that he had no cause to complain about the failure of his link with her. ‘Excuse me,' he said, ‘but I must go drown my sorrow in tomato and lemonade juice,' and with that he exited. Stinga shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not my fault,' he mumbled.

‘Sorry?' I said, trying to make sense although with Stinga that was always a problem. His angle on life was one of the strangest I've ever come across arid relates back to Jesus and his 12 disciples. Stinga's belief was that down the ages, certain people had arrived on earth who were also disciples.

His list numbered such cats as Muhammad Ali, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mandela, Stevie Wonder, et al. Therefore, went his reasoning, which was delivered, by the way, with absolute sincerity, through adopting their particular look for a month at a time, he would actually get close to God. Tonight, he was Thelonious Monk, sporting a dark suit, large Russian style hat, and shades, whilst fully indulging in the Monk's supposed habit of mumbling his words. He was also taking piano lessons though one shuddered to think how he would carry off Gorbachev when the time came. Jasmine, who had now come up to the booth as well, felt the same way.

‘These gears are alright,' she said, ‘but I'm gone when you get to Gandhi. I mean, are you really going to walk around with round spectacles and a bedsheet? Anyway, bedsheets can be put to much better purposes, know what I'm saying?'

Stinga mumbled a reply and the pair walked off as I pulled out The Night Writers ‘Let The Music Use You,' an awesome, let me tell you, production and song, and started pondering, as I cued it in, on how I was going to break the Sandra news to Indigo. It was a tricky one because either I laid my cards on the table and owned up to her, which might mean her walking on two counts of deception and perjury, or she would find out for herself, and that, my friends, was the whole problemo. Brother P. had advised the first course.

‘You talk about this honesty vibe you have between you,' he would point out with typical accuracy, ‘but you haven't told her you're a father? Shit man, you going to have to do better.'

‘I knows, I knows,' I would say, ‘but I should have told her first time ever I saw her face. Now I feel that if I let the rabbit out, she's going to think that everything I've told her is a crock.'