Heaven's Promise (19 page)

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.

He had come from Jamaica to London in the early '50s, more out of loneliness than financial need, for, as a young man in his native land, he worked in a garage, quickly making his way through application and skill.

His work was outside of town and he would spend a week there with his boss before returning on a Saturday night to meet up with his family and friends. As his teenage years rolled by, he increasingly found himself attending farewell parties for an ever dwindling number of friends, lured to Britain by streets of gold promises from the government.

In the end, Wilberforce had no one to share a bottle of rum with, let alone go chasing the gals, so he too cashed in his chips and boarded the ship for England.

When he finally reached Waterloo Station, his old spa Dalston – so named because that was the area he was plotted up in – was waiting to greet him and show him the ropes whilst he put his runnings into gear.

He was soon shocked by the reception he got when he searched the paper for digs, and found averts stating that no coloureds, paddies or dogs need apply. Wilberforce had never before considered his skin colour a problem, but he soon sussed that the growing London Caribbean community was not to the liking of some of the natives, and had taken the place of the Irish as everyone's favourite whipping boy.

Undeterred, Wilberforce finally located a sympathetic landlady in Brixton whose only house rules were strict and regular payment of the rent and no Mighty Sparrow records blaring out at three in the morning, which was cool by him as he was a strict ska man and cared nothing for the sound of soca.

Dalston, meanwhile, had spotted a vacancy at a garage and informed his friend who duly went down there to enquire about employment.

The boss took him to a car and with a sneer asked him to diagnose the problem. Wilberforce examined the engine, spotted the fault and said so. The rattled boss would have none of it. He asked him for his qualifications. Wilberforce pulled out his Jamaican mechanic's certificate. The boss glanced briefly at it. ‘That's no good. It's not up to British standards. Sorry,' and he walked off.

Two weeks later, Wilberforce was a bus conductor, working twelve hours a day and bitterly ruing his decision to leave Jamaica. London was not only strange and, in some quarters that he soon learned to avoid, hostile, but it was bitterly cold, the relentless wind biting through his very bones. To make matters worse, come winter time and the city would be continually covered in a smog so deep, created by the thick smoke that continually spewed out of chimneys, that sometimes you couldn't see your own hand in front of you.

Wilberforce dug in and after a year on the buses had just about saved up enough cashola to return home when he met Rose, his future wife, and, as love tends to do, altered his life irrevocably.

They met at a Joe Harriott gig at Ronnie Scott's one Friday night and fell for each other instantly. Within six months, Wilberforce had put his cashola down on a house in Hackney and they moved in, stretching themselves so much financially in these early days that sometimes there would be nothing but bread and water to nourish them.

It was here that Brother P. and Amanda were born and raised, their father exerting a strict check on them in their early years, instilling in them all those virtues and values that are such a drag as a bambino and which only start to make sense in later life.

As Wilberforce's motto was, do as I do and not as I say, he enrolled in a night class and studied the ins and outs of the insurance racket. At first it was a hard slog. The subject was dense and puzzling, and he was nearly discharged one time when the guy sitting behind him started calling him a monkey every time his higher marks were announced, and Wilberforce nearly put a chair over his head, but, that aside, he passed his exams with good grades and quit the buses for good, starting up his own business for the benefit of his countryfolk, his original dream of returning home now fully restored in his mind.

He looked forward to the day he and Rose could return to Jamaica, breathe in the invigorating sea air and feel at one with the world once more. It was not that he hated England, because – no doubt about it – there was a tolerance amongst the majority that allowed him and his family to make their own way.

Wilberforce always acknowledged that because throughout his stay he had come across more decent than good and despite the terrible tragedies he had witnessed, the New Cross fire for example, he knew it was the work of the minority.

On that scale, things had greatly improved although it still remained a fact that there was only so far you could go before you were stopped point blank. The problemo was that you could never fit a face to the injury.

‘Boy,' I overheard him say one day to Brother P., ‘in the old days it was different. People didn't like you, they'd tell you to your face. Nowadays it's different. You can smell it, you can touch it, but you will never see the person doing it to you. It's like a ghost that pops up once in a while to stop you in your tracks and then disappears before you can catch it.'

Now we sat, silent and brooding, in his daughter's flat, because the enemy had come out of hiding and attacked with a ferocity beyond belief.

It was Wilberforce who finally broke the silence. ‘Call the police,' he told his son.

‘What for?' came Brother P.'s reply.

‘Never mind what for,' he replied angrily. ‘I said call them.'

Brother P., sighing loudly, went to the phone and belled the boys in blue.

‘I want to report an assault,' I heard him say. ‘It happened last night. Riversdown estate. You hear correct. My sister. Three guys. White guys. Yes, she did. No. How long will you be? As long as that? No, she can't come down to the police station. Number 34. Okay.'

He put the phone down and with just a hint of sarcasm, added ‘They'll be here soon.'

For three hours we waited around, the silence only broken by intermittent snatches of conversation. Finally there was a knock at the door, and Wilberforce went to answer whilst Brother P. roused his sister and brought her into the room, his arm thrown protectively around her.

Sitting down on the sofa, the two policemen, having turned down the offer of tea or coffee, sat opposite. The youngest of the pair pulled out his notebook, whilst his superior asked Amanda to relay her frightening fable.

After she had finished, the policeman asked, ‘Why didn't you call us last night?'

‘Because she was too scared,' interjected P.

‘Let your sister answer if you don't mind,' he replied, and Brother P. kissed his teeth loudly. His dad immediately glared at him and the younger copper adopted a glacial stare which he directed at P., who, on clocking it, responded with an equally icy look.

‘Could you identify your assailants?' asked the interrogator. ‘I think so, but things happened so fast...'

‘And anyway,' put in Brother P., not shifting his gaze from the fresh-faced boy in blue opposite him, ‘a lot of the racist thugs around here tend to look the same.'

Wilberforce was on him in a flash. ‘Shut it, son. Let Amanda talk.'

‘Well,' the copper replied, ‘let's not call them racist until we have all the facts in. It could well be that they were nothing to do with attacking...' – and he looked over to his partner's notebook – ‘Mrs Punwabi's house. It could be they were out mugging at the same time.'

‘That's the first time I've heard you guys call white people muggers,' Brother P. said with a bite in his voice that had been formed by his own unhappy experiences with the boys in blue. Too many times Brother P. had been pulled over in his car and interrogated as to how and why he was driving it, having to wait in frustration as they searched his vehicle from top to bottom before reluctantly letting him go.

‘Son, leave the room,' Wilberforce said with an authority that could not be denied. Brother P. looked at him and for one awful second I thought it would go off between them, there and then, and right in front of two coppers.

Praise the Lord it was not to be. Brother P. stood up and exited and I followed him out onto the balcony where he stood in a palpable rage for at least five minutes, looking down on the wasteland below.

‘That's so typical of him,' he finally said, ‘bowing down to those wankers in front of his own family.' I knew better than to try and persuade him otherwise and so kept my counsel as we waited for the coppers to finish up and leave.

‘Go back in there and make sure things are cool,' Brother P. requested. ‘I'll be okay here.' When I came back to the room it was to hear Amanda saying, ‘So you don't think it was racially motivated, uh?'

‘We didn't say that, Miss. As I said before, let's keep an open mind.'

‘So what are you going to do?' Wilberforce asked.

‘Going on the description we have, we'll start making a few enquiries.'

‘You know, this is all your fault to begin with,' Amanda said bitterly. ‘I wrote to both the council and your boss about that bookshop they've opened and I haven't had one single reply. There's a race relation law in this country but you lot just ignore it, don't you? Don't mean shit to your lot. I'm sorry, daddy, but it's true. You won't catch those scum. You won't even bother. In fact, I bet you're glad they're around – saves you the task, doesn't it? Now, if you don't mind, I've got a life to get on with.'

‘It's no good getting angry at us,' said the older boy in blue, pulling on his cap. ‘It simply won't get you anywhere. Alright, love?'

Amanda simply stared them out as they packed up and left, Brother P. totally ignoring them as they pushed past him on the balcony. He watched their car slowly move away and then came back into the room where all three of us were gathered, lost in thought.

‘I'll stay the night, sis,' he announced to no one in particular. ‘No one else will protect you.' He went into Amanda's bedroom and shut the door.

Amanda was the first to speak. ‘You didn't have to come over,' she told me. ‘Thanks.'

‘No problem. I think it best I go now, yeah?'

Amanda softly nodded her head whilst Wilberforce sat firm in his chair as if he wasn't really with us and his mind had taken him to some place only he knew.

‘Say goodbye to P. for me. I'll bell him tonight if that's alright.'

‘Sure.'

I went to shake hands with her father, but Amanda signalled that such a gesture was meaningless, and so I exited, finding myself walking warily through the estate and its long passageways, keeping an eye out all the time for the local hoods but only clocking a variety of people of all ages and colour scurrying like small ants back to their homes.

I t was now about four in the afternoon, but despite my tiredness I felt a strange surge of adrenaline pumping through me and on a strange high caused by tiredness and nervousness, determined straight away to go find Indigo and try and heal the wound.

I knew she would be at college today and so I made for Kentish Town and loitered with intent across the road from her building, calculating in my mind how I would best approach her and all the time adrenaline running riot in my stomach.

I hadn't waited too long when I saw her push through the revolving door, skip down the steps and make her way down the street. For a moment, I was tempted to let her pass and not do a thing, but before I knew it, I was running up behind her and tapping her on the shoulder.

She swung round and faced me, her normally happy face set in a stone cold expression.

‘Indigo, we have to talk.'

‘No, we don't. There's nothing to talk about.'

‘Indigo, believe me, I was going to tell you that night,' but as soon as my words came out, I kicked myself they sounded so feeble.

‘Can we at least go for a coffee? All I want is five minutes with you.'

‘You had a lifetime to talk to me but you blew it. And right now I've got no interest in anything you have to say, now, tomorrow or in ten years' time.'

‘Don't say that.'

‘Tough. I just did.'

‘Look, at least give me a chance to explain.'

‘You don't have to. You're mistaking me for someone who gives a shit. I really don't care.'

‘I do.'

‘Well, find another sucker to play your games with and tell them about it. You know, I must have been a bit crazy to think you were going to be different. But you're not. In fact, you're worse. Now, please excuse me. I haven't got time to stand around on street corners with the likes of you.'

She turned on her heels and marched away. I ran after her, but just as I reached her, she suddenly twisted around and screamed, at the top of her voice, ‘Leave me alone!'

I stood dumbfounded as she walked slowly backwards, hate blazing in her large eyes where once I had only seen beauty and truth. Then she turned and ran.

I had not lost a lover but a true friend, and that in my book is the worst for sometimes this world can be so cold and deny you so much that in the end all you have to truly rely on is your close family of links and when one of them snaps, believe me, it will scar you forever.

Back at my yard, restless and at a complete loss as to how I could bring Indigo back into my world, I resisted the urge to call Brother P. and instead tried to bell her. The phone rang continuously, its relentless tone filling me with a quiet desperation. I tried her on the hour until, just as I was about to ring for the fifth time, my phone rang and I grabbed it quickly.