4 Three Coming -1

Archie was at work when he heard the news. Clara was two and a half months up the spout.

"You're not, love!"

"I am!"

"You're not!"

"I am! And I arks de doctor what it will look like, half black an' half white an' all dat biz ness

And 'im say any ting could happen. Dere's even a chance it may be blue-eyed! Kyan you imagine

dat?"

Archie couldn't imagine that. He couldn't imagine any piece of him slugging it out in the gene

pool with a piece of Clara and winning. But what a possibility! What a thing that would be! He

dashed out of the office on to the Euston Road for a box of cigars. Twenty minutes later he

swaggered back into Morgan Hero with a huge box of Indian sweets and started making his way

round the room.

"Noel, have a sticky thing. That one's good."

Noel, the office junior, looked inside the oily box with suspicion. "What's all this in aid .. . ?"

Archie pounded him on the back. "Going to have a kid, ain't I? Blue eyes, would you credit it?

I'm celebrating! Thing is, you can get fourteen types of dal, but you can't get a bloody cigar in the

Euston Road for love nor money. Go on, Noel. How about this one?"

Archie held up a half-white, half-pink one with an unwelcoming odour.

"Em, Mr. Jones, that's very .. . But it's not really my cup of.. ." Noel made as if to return to his

filing. "I'd better get on with.. ."

"Oh, go on, Noel. I'm going to have a kid. Forty-seven and I'm going to have a little baby. That

calls for a bit of a party, don't it? Go on ... you won't know till you try. Just give it a nibble."

"Just them Pakistani foods aren't always .. . I've got a bit of a funny .. ."

Noel patted his stomach and looked desperate. Despite being in the direct mail business, Noel

hated to be spoken to directly. He liked being the intermediary at Morgan Hero He liked putting

calls through, telling one person what another person said, forwarding letters.

"Bloody hell, Noel .. . it's just a sweet. I'm just trying to celebrate, mate. Don't you hippies eat

sweets or something?"

Noel's hair was ever so slightly longer than everyone else's, and he had once bought an incense

stick to burn in the coffee room. It was a small office, there was little to talk about, so these two

things made Noel second only to Janis Joplin, just as Archie was the white Jesse Owens because he

came thirteenth in the Olympics twenty-seven years ago, Gary from Accounts had a French

grandmother and blew cigarette smoke out of his nose so he was Maurice Chevalier, and Elmott,

Archie's fellow paper folder, was Einstein because he could manage two thirds of The Times

crossword.

Noel looked pained. "Archie .. . Did you get my note from Mr. Hero about the folds on

the .. . ?"

Archie sighed. "On the Mothercare account. Yes, Noel, I've told Elmott to move the

perforation."

Noel looked thankful. "Well, congratulations about the ... I'll be getting on with .. ." Noel

returned to his desk.

Archie left to try Maureen the receptionist. Maureen had good legs for a woman her age legs

like sausages tightly packed in their skins and she'd always fancied him a bit.

"Maureen, love. I'm going to be a father!"

"Are you, love? Oh, I am pleased. Girl or '

"Too early to tell as yet. Blue eyes, though!" said Archie, for

whom these eyes had passed from rare genetic possibility to solid fact. "Would you credit it!"

"Did you say blue eyes, Archie, love?" said Maureen, speaking slowly so she might find a way

to phrase it. "I'm not being' funny . but in't your wife, well, coloured?

Archie shook his head wonderingly. "I know! Her and me have a child, the genes mix up, and

blue eyes! Miracle of nature!"

"Oh yes, miracle," said Maureen tersely, thinking that was a polite word for what it was.

"Have a sweet?"

Maureen looked dubious. She patted her pitted pink thighs encased in their white tights. "Oh,

Archie, love, I shouldn't. Goes straight on the legs and hips, don't it? An' neither of us is getting any

younger, are we, eh? Are we, eh? None of us can turn back the clock, can we, eh? That Joan Rivers,

I wish I knew how she does it!"

Maureen laughed for a long time, her trademark laugh at Morgan Hero shrill and loud, but with

her mouth only slightly open, for Maureen had a morbid dread of laughter lines.

She poked one of the sweets with a sceptical, blood-red fingernail. "Indian, are they?"

"Yes, Maureen," said Archie with a blokeish grin, 'spicy and sweet at the same time. Bit like you."

"Oh, Archie, you are funny," said Maureen sadly, for she had always fancied Archie a bit but

never more than a bit because of this strange way he had about him, always talking to Pakistanis

and Caribbeans like he didn't even notice and now he'd gone and married one and hadn't even

thought it worth mentioning what colour she was until the office dinner when she turned up black

as anything and Maureen almost choked on her prawn cocktail.

Maureen stretched over her desk to attend to a ringing telephone. "I don't think I will, Archie, love .. ."

"Please yourself. Don't know what you're missing, though."

Maureen smiled weakly and picked up the receiver. "Yes, Mr. Hero, he's right here, he's just

found out he's going to be a daddy . yes, it'll have blue eyes, apparently .. . yes, that's what I said,

something to do with genes, I suppose ... oh yes, all right .. . I'll tell him, I'll send him in ... Oh,

thank you, Mr. Hero, you're very kind." Maureen stretched her talons across the receiver and spoke

in a stage-whisper to Archie, "Archibald, love, Mr. Hero wants to see you. Urgent, he says. You

been a naughty boy or som mink

"I should cocoa!" said Archie, heading for the lift.

The door said:

Kelvin Hero Company Director

Morgan Hero Direct Mail Specialists

It was meant to intimidate and Archie responded in kind, rapping the door too lightly and then

too hard and then kind of falling through it when Kelvin Hero, dressed in moleskin, turned the

handle to let him in.

"Archie," said Kelvin Hero, revealing a double row of pearly whites that owed more to

expensive dentistry than to regular brushing. "Archie, Archie, Archie, Archie."

"Mr. Hero," said Archie.

"You puzzle me, Archie," said Mr. Hero.

"Mr. Hero/ said Archie.

"Sit down there, Archie," said Mr. Hero.

"Right you are, Mr. Hero," said Archie.

Kelvin wiped a streak of grimy sweat from around his shirt collar, turned his silver Parker pen

over a few times in his hand and took a series of deep breaths. "Now, this is quite delicate .. . and I

have never considered myself a racialist, Archie .. ."

"Mr. Hero?"

Blimey, thought Kelvin, what an eye-to-face ratio. When you want to say something delicate,

you don't want that eye-to-face ratio staring up at you. Big eyes, like a child's or a baby seal's; the

physiognomy of innocence looking at Archie Jones is like looking at something that expects to be

clubbed round the head any second.

Kelvin tried a softer tack. "Let me put it another way. Usually, when confronted with this type

of delicate situation, I would, as you know, confer with you. Because I've always had a lot of time

for you, Arch. I respect you. You're not flashy, Archie, you've never been flashy, but you're '

"Sturdy," finished Archie, because he knew this speech.

Kelvin smiled: a big gash across his face that came and went with the sudden violence of a fat

man marching through swing doors. "Right, yeah, sturdy. People trust you, Archie. I know you're

getting on a bit, and the old leg gives you a bit of trouble but when this business changed hands, I

kept you on, Arch, because I could see straight off: people trust you. That's why you've stayed in

the direct mail business so long. And I'm trusting you, Arch, to take what I've got to say in the right way."

"Mr. Hero?"

Kelvin shrugged. "I could have lied to you, Archie, I could have told you that we'd made a

mistake with the bookings, and there just wasn't room for you; I could have fished around in my

arse and pulled out a juicy one but you're a big boy, Archie. You'd phone the restaurant, you're not a

baboon, Archie, you've got something upstairs, you'd have put two and two together '

"And made four."

"And made four, exactly, Archie. You would have made four. Do you understand what I'm

saying to you, Archie?" said Mr. Hero.

"No, Mr. Hero," said Archie.

Kelvin prepared to cut to the chase. "That company dinner last

month it was awkward, Archie, it was unpleasant. And now there's this annual do coming up

with our sister company from Sunderland, about thirty of us, nothing fancy, you know, a curry, a

lager and a bit of a boogie ... as I say, it's not that I'm a racialist,

"A racialist.. ."

"I'd spit on that Enoch Powell.. . but then again he does have a point, doesn't he? There comes a

point, a saturation point, and people begin to feel a bit uncomfortable .. . You see, all he was saying '

"Who?"

"Powell, Archie, Powell try and keep up- all he was saying is enough is enough after a certain

point, isn't it? I mean, it's like Delhi in Euston every Monday morning. And there's some people

around here, Arch and I don't include myself here who just feel your attitude is a little strange."

"Strange?"

"You see the wives don't like it because, let's face it, she's a sort, a real beauty incredible legs,

Archie, I'd like to congratulate you on them legs and the men, well, the men don't like it 'cos they

don't like to think they're wanting a bit of the other when they're sitting down to a company dinner

with their lady wives, especially when she's .. . you know .. . they don't know what to make of that at all."

"Who?"

"What?"

"Who are we talking about, Mr. Hero?"

"Look, Archie," said Kelvin, the sweat now flowing freely, distasteful for a man with his

amount of chest hair, 'take these." Kelvin pushed a large wad of Luncheon Vouchers across the

table. "They're left over from that raffle you remember, for the Biafrans."

"Oh no I already won an oven mitt in that, Mr. Hero, there's no need'

"Take them, Archie. There's fifty pounds' worth of vouchers in there, redeemable in over five

thousand food outlets nationwide. Take them. Have a few meals on me."

Archie fingered the vouchers like they were so many fifty pound notes. Kelvin thought for a

moment he saw tears of happiness in his eyes

"Well, I don't know what to say. There's a place I go to, pretty regular like. If they take these I'm

made for life. Ta very much."

Kelvin took a handkerchief to his forehead. "Think nothing of it, Arch. Please."

"Mr. Hero, could I.. ." Archie gestured towards the door. "It's just that I'd like to phone some

people, you know, give them the news about the baby .. . if we've finished here."

Kelvin nodded, relieved. Archie lifted himself out of his seat. He had just reached for the handle

of the door when Kelvin snatched up his Parker pen once more and said, "Oh, Archie, one more

thing.. . that dinner with the Sunderland team ... I talked to Maureen and I think we need to cut

down on the numbers we put the names in a hat and yours came out. Still, I don't suppose you'll be

missing much, eh? These things are always a bit of a bore."

"Right you are, Mr. Hero," said Archie, mind elsewhere; praying to God that O'Connell's was a

'food outlet'; smiling to himself, imagining Samad's reaction when he copped fifty quids' worth of

bloody Luncheon Vouchers.

Partly because Mrs. Jones becomes pregnant so soon after Mrs. Iqbal and partly because of a

daily proximity (by this point Clara is working part time as a supervisor for a Kilburn youth group

which looks like the fifteen-man line-up of a ska and roots band six-inch Afros, Adidas track suits

brown ties, Velcro, sun-tinted shades and Alsana attends an Asian Women's Pre-natal Class in

Kilburn High Road round the corner), the two women begin

to see more of each other. Hesitant in the beginning a few lunch dates here and there, the

occasional coffee what begins as a rear guard action against their husbands' friendship soon

develops. They have resigned themselves to their husbands' mutualappreciation society and the

free time this leaves is not altogether unpleasant; there is time for picnics and outings, for

discussion and personal study; for old French movies where Alsana screams and covers her eyes at

the suggestion of nudity ("Put it away! We are not wanting to see the dangly bits!") and Clara gets a

glimpse of how the other half live: the half who live on romance, passion and joie de vivre. The

other half who have sex. The life that might have been hers had she not been at the top of some

stairs one fine day as Archibald Jones waited at the bottom.
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