Read Online Heaven's Promise by Paolo Hewitt - Free Book Online Page A

it, do you?’
    I couldn’t resist his question. ‘How do you mean?’
    â€˜You play black music, seen?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜So how many black DJ’s you know?’
    I couldn’t argue on that point because Daddy C. was stone cold correct. There were very few blacks manning the dex at clubs and it was the same, right across the board, wherever you looked. My momentary silence signalled victory for Daddy Cecil but before he could exult, Brother P. suddenly put in, ‘I read a report the other day which showed that there was one group of people which the cops hassle more than anyone. And that’s the Irish.’
    Just then, and before I could add anything else, a white girl entered the cafe and came over to the table.
    â€˜Hi,’ she said, sitting down next to us. ‘Thank you for showing up for the interview. I was sure that you would not come.’
    Daddy C. didn’t even look at her but sensing our chance to break away, Brother P. said, ‘Well, we’ll leave you to it,’ and with that we rose to our feet because although Daddy C.’s grievances could be heard right across the Kingdom, and, unfortunately, had much substance to them, the fact still remained that he was not a man you could sit, eat and parlare with without voices being raised or tempers being disturbed.
    I went to touch skin in a gesture of friendship but he simply kissed his teeth, said, ‘That’s right, walk away from the truth,’ and, with that, we walked out into the market. On the quiet journey back to Westward Ho, Brother P. had nada to say about Daddy Cecil although I was still burning at his off hand treatment and it was only when we reached Oxford St. that Brother P. announced, ‘You know, you can’t apply Afro American politics to this tight little island. It doesn’t work,’ and on that note we set sail for Davey Boy’s, a tailor that we both use when the bank account is full, healthy and bouncy bouncy. Davey Boy is the complete East Ender, a breed unto themselves, reared on their own strict traditions and, especially in Davey’s case, with a real sense of pride about the East End’s involvement in fashion. As he never tired of telling us, the skinhead, suedehead and soulboy (the tribe called S he named it), had all been born round his way and then spread, in different variations, right across the country.
    Although they had lost the casual to South London, no doubt somewhere in the East End, someone was planning a new look and style for, after all, at the heart of the area is a thriving rag trade and a black market, all of which need constant nourishment.
    Davey Boy, himself, was a motor mouth with balls who, as far as we were concerned, came from the right side of the tracks for it wasn’t that long ago he had been arrested for fighting fascist skinheads.
    â€˜Not right, is it?’ he once explained to us, ‘going round calling people all kinds of names and beating the shit out of them because of the skin they were given. Fucking ridiculous. That kind of thing really offends me. Now, my grandfather, God rest his soul, that’s a different kettle of poisson altogether.
    â€˜Dear old boy but he was a nutter and he loved to rumble. Joined up as one of Oswald’s boys, didn’t he, until he was made to see sense but, as I always say, we all take a wrong turning in life and as long as you realise you’ve gone astray and try and do something about it, then it’s not the end of the world by a long mark.’
    To give the man his laurels, Davey knew his gears inside out. All you had to give him was a year, say 1963, and he could tell you, on the spot, exactly what fashions were going off, who was running the scene and where it all went. Better still, just mention a film or a well known personage from the distant past, and he knew the design inside and out.
    â€˜Jacket like Sammy Davis’s in A Man Called Adam, no