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

out that they had been sleeping with each other behind his back for the last month. Uproar and recrimination quickly ensued with the two families, who had been warm and nice together all day, starting to exchange punches and insults, with tables being turned over, plates, cups and glasses smashing to the floor, until one of the younger boys pulled out a knife and everyone went screaming out into the street. When asked why, after this horrific discovery, he had gone ahead with the marriage, Cousin Ernie simply replied, ‘to get my own back. She’s still legally my wife.’ Then he kicked his crown across the floor and walked out a broken man. That night the wife told him she was pregnant. By him. They would stay together. They would have to. For the children. Which is all very honourable, no doubt about it, but I was not about to go the same way with Miss Sandra, no sir, and that’s what I was trying to tell the Brother P.
    â€˜It’s funny about children,’ Brother P. observed, going off on one of his tangents as he is wont to do when his HQ warms up, and now staring out of the window.
    â€˜The odd one out at my school was this kid who lived in the local children’s home. Nowadays, I bet it’s the kid with the P&M still together whose the strange one.’
    Papa’s voice suddenly boomed out from behind the counter. ‘Eh boys, you want some more coffee? A little cake and a sandwich maybe. Both of you should eat more. You’re like two scarecrows. One day I’ll put you in a field so you can scare the birds away, eh Marissa?’
    â€˜Leave them alone. They’re not doing any harm.’
    â€˜You want another capo?’ Brother P. offered.
    I shook my head in a manner that was meant to show how unconcerned I was but it must have come out as a miserable defeated gesture for Brother P. said, ‘You’ll have to let time clear the clouds for you on this one. There’s no other way... anything could happen. You just don’t know.’
    â€˜Yeah?’ I replied, totally unconvinced that any good could ever come of the situation unfolding before me, ‘that’s exactly what’s bugging me out. Let’s pay and split.’
    The two of us rose and went to hand over cashola to the boss. ‘I’ll get these,’ Brother P. offered, digging deep into his pocket. ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘how much I owe?’
    â€˜Two pounds but as it’s you, then let’s just say two pounds.’
    â€˜How, by the way, is your team Napoli? Prospering?’
    Above Papa and the Gaggia machine a huge poster of that chunky ball of muscle and pure skills known as Maradona, stared indolently down at us, the right hand clutching a ball to his hip (the same one he used to push the ball into the England net back in ’86 and left a nation gasping about cheating foreigners, everyone conveniently forgetting his tremendous second goal, 15 minutes later, when he picked the ball up on the half way line, left four defenders choking on his dust and scored), the face full of arrogance.
    The mention of Maradona was normally the cue for Papa to go into one about his beloved Napoli team but these days the subject of the world’s greatest sport was a touchy one.
    â€˜Ah, football,’ he said, with great seriousness, ‘only the lucky ones make it. The rest of us have to work the hours God sends us and not fill our heads with nonsense, thinking you can become something that you are not.’
    Papa was not talking about Napoli, in fact he wasn’t even talking to us, but to his absent son Paolo and as the argument between them was now further away than ever before from being resolved, deep frustration was creeping into his everyday moods.
    Brother P. nodded up to the poster.
    â€˜Maradona had to start somewhere. In the streets by the look of him.’
    Papa gave out a snort of disgust.
    â€˜There is only one Maradona, one Pele, one Gary