Heaven's Promise Read Online Free Page B

such distress.
    Of course, the tube is not perfect by any stretch of the HQ and it’s even worse come the rush hour p.m. and the people cram in, just as they had to that morning, their exhausted pissed off faces as eloquent a testimony to the cruel nature of work as anything else.
    Yet come the weekend it’s slightly different because then most of them are travelling for pleasure and so I wasn’t too surprised, as I pulled out Sam Selvon’s ‘The Lonely Londoners,’ to hear a loud West Country accent assail me with an, ‘Easy Mr. DJ man, how’s your percentage of life?’ and realised that it was none other than Sammy The Foot who was addressing me.
    This is a character who I am on speaking terms with, such as I am with The Sheriff, Stinga or Jasmine, through my position at The Unity Club, and whose yard is in close proximity to mine.
    Sammy The Foot frequents The Unity but the location of most of our meetings has been at clubs where jazz is the only music played and which always attracts a small but dedicated crowd who are normally some of the best movers in town.
    Sammy The Foot is no exception, a jazz dancer of real excellence, capable of busting the kind of athletic and gracious moves that make you ashamed to be within ten yards of him on the dancefloor as he goes into his routine.
    When Sammy The Foot and his comrades, some of whom come from as far as Manchester to indulge in their passion, take to the floor, you know it is time to discreetly retire because that space is his true home and although he and his friends never flash it in a look-at-me-I’m-so-great manner, it is still best to simply pull back and watch, rather than compete in any way.
    Furthermore, such is Sammy’s love of jazz and dance, that his gears are all old style such as you see in fading pictures of various jazz musicians and their audience, his public attire of ten consisting of such items as large caps, zoot suits and brown and white spats, all of which give you the impression that Sammy just left The Cotton Club in Harlem and waltzed into the present. Today was no exception with Sammy sporting an eye catching grey pin striped baggy suit, a small flower in the left lapel of his double breasted jacket, white shirt and flowered tie, a walking stick and two tone shoes. On his head, tipped at an angle, was a large trilby. Sammy looked every bit the celebrity that he aspired to be and this desire, so legend had it, was first nurtured in him many years ago when he made his first TV appearance, albeit unwittingly, as a little kiddiwink.
    The story has it that Sammy was but seven years old when a general election was called and the local Conservative MP returned to Sammy’s home base of Yeovil for the first time in years, a camera crew in tow with which to capture him on the campaign trail routine of kissing bambinos, cuddling old folk and blaming everyone but himself and his party for society’s ills.
    Sammy’s folks are Nigerians and you don’t get too many of them to the pound in the British countryside. In fact, you don’t get any so when the aspiring MP spotted Sammy and his mum out and about, innocently walking the High Street to get the shopping, he saw a unique chance to do something for race relations in this country.
    â€˜Hello, young man,’ the MP boomed, picking up Sammy much to his astonishment, ‘what part of the world were you born in?’ The camera zoomed in expectantly on a bewildered Sammy and the old smiling politico who, no doubt, was expecting the name of some far off exotic country that the British had ‘civilized’ not so long ago to drop from Sammy’s lips.
    â€˜Yeovil,’ Sammy said. ‘I come from Yeovil.’
    The MP, momentarily stunned and bewildered, froze and then quickly put down Sammy saying, with a smile as transparent as water, ‘Yes, of course you are. Now whose this pretty little girl over here?’ and marched off,