Heaven's Promise by Paolo Hewitt Read Free Book Online

his shirt pocket and removed a pack of Du Maurier cigs and with smoke now issuing forth from our mouths and noses, I began my unhappy fable.
    â€˜You know that chick Sandra I’ve been checking these past few months.’
    â€˜Jill’s friend. The one with the legs.’
    â€˜Exactly. She’s pregnant.’ Brother P. didn’t blink.
    â€˜Is it yours?’
    â€˜I don’t know. She says it is but I am not with her every minute of the day so what do I know? She could be pulling a fast one but somehow I don’t think so. But then who is to say?’
    â€˜Exactly,’ said Brother P., he himself being quite averse to partnerships of most shadings except for family and a very few close links, such as myself. He was not one to be checking gals every minute of the day and often referred me, when we hit upon the subject, to a cab driver he had once found himself in deep concentration with some years ago and whose story had truly touched and influenced his own runnings.
    The driver, revealed his age as around the 50 mark whilst in the process of talking with obvious love and affectation about his 12 year old daughter. Putting two against two, Brother P. came up with four and wondered out aloud why the man had waited so long to sow seed.
    â€˜Ah,’ said the driver, ‘don’t get me wrong. I have loved women all my life. To me they are the finest race on this earth I have always thought this and so I have also ran around with a lot of them. Much better fun than hanging out at the bar with the men, I can say. I had a great time but as I went into my 20s and especially into my 30s, everyone started getting on my case about getting married. You must get married, they said, life is not complete without it. If you’re worried that you cannot carry on as before, you can always take a mistress. Everyone else does in Trinidad.
    â€˜They didn’t seem to realise that the reason for my big reluctance was very simple. I hadn’t met anyone. I liked very much all the women I hung out with but I never loved them in the way that you must love someone if you are to spend the rest of your days with them. Now, of course, that got everybody’s goat up. Family, friends, even the local priest, all of them like a chorus line in my ear singing, you have to marry, you have to marry.
    â€˜I just took my time because I knew that one day I would meet someone and if I didn’t what was the point of complaining? That was my roll of the dice. Simple as that. Sure enough, two weeks after my 40th birthday, I met a Spanish lady and the minute I saw her and she me, that was it. Six months later we were married and now I have four children, I have given up all my ladies and I have never been happier.’
    Brother P. loved that story because it told him one vital thing‘ never compromise your instincts. Believe in them and they will always see you through. This then was his outlook on it all and so, when it came to female company, the Brother P. moved in mysterious circles and silence and although I was one of the few to be privy to his dealings on this front, I always felt that he kept something back from me and never came through with the full melody.
    â€˜I really don’t know what to do about this one,’ I told the Brother P., draining off the capo and horrified at the tone of pleading I heard in my voice. ‘I can’t become a father. It’s ridiculous.’
    â€˜If you don’t mind me saying, the first thing to do is not worry yourself up until you have ascertained it’s your kiddiwink. As you say, you don’t know. Otherwise, you’ll sink into that spliff and Nina Simone on the turntable all day long and worry yourself to death when there’s no need.’
    â€˜I know a chick,’ Brother P, continued, ‘who has had dealings with Sandra before. I’ll see what the score is. She maybe bluffing or testing you out. You going to meet her