It’s just like on TV! And that is the most superlative compliment Archie can think of for any real-life event. Except this is just like on TV but better. It’s very modern. It’s so well designed you wouldn’t want to breathe in it, no matter fart in it. There’s these chairs, plastic but without legs, curved like an s; they seem to work by means of their own fold; and they fit together, about two hundred of them in ten rows; and they snake around you when you sit in them – soft yet supportive! Comfy! Modern! And you’ve got to admire folding like that, Archie thinks, lowering himself into one, a far higher level of folding than he’d ever been involved with. Very nice.
The other thing that makes it all better than TV is it’s full of people Archie knows. There’s Millboid at the very back (scoundrel), with Abdul-Jimmy and Abdul-Colin; Josh Chalfen nearer the middle, and Magid’s sitting up at the front with the Chalfen woman (Alsana won’t look at her, but Archie waves anyway because it’d be rude not to) and facing them all (near Archie – Archie’s got the best seat in the house) sits Marcus at a long long table, just like on T V, with microphones all over it, like a bloody swarm, the huge black abdomens of killer bees. Marcus is sitting next to four other blokes, three his age and one really old bloke, dry-looking – desiccated, if that’s the word. And they’ve all got glasses to a man, the way scientists do on the telly. No white coats, though. All very casual: V-necks, ties, loafers. Bit disappointing.
Now he’s seen a lot of these press conference larks, Archie has (weeping parents, missing child, or, conversely, if it was a foreign-orphan-scenario, weeping child, missing parents), but this is miles better because in the centre of the table is something quite interesting (which you don’t usually get on TV, just the weeping people): a mouse. Quite a plain mouse, brown, and not with any other mice, but it’s very active, scurrying around in this glass box that’s about as big as a television with airholes. Archie was a bit worried when he first saw it (seven years in a glass box!), but it turns out it’s temporary, just for the photographs. Irie explained there’s this huge thing for it in the Institute, full of pipes and secret places, space upon space, so it won’t get too bored, and it’ll be transferred there later. So that’s all right. He’s a cunning-looking little blinder too, this mouse. He looks like he’s pulling faces a lot of the time. You forget how alert looking mice are. Terrible trouble to look after, of course. That’s why he never got one for Irie when she was small. Goldfish are cleaner – with shorter memories. In Archie’s experience anything with a long memory holds a grievance and a pet with a grievance (that time you got the wrong food, that time you bathed me) just isn’t what you want.
‘Oh, you’re right there,’ agrees Abdul-Mickey, plonking himself down in the seat next to Archie, betraying no reverence for the legless chair. ‘You don’t want some resentful fucking rodent on your hands.’
Archie smiles. Mickey’s the kind of guy you want to watch the footie with, or the cricket, or if you see a fight in the street you want him to be there, because he’s kind of a commentator on life. Kind of a philosopher. He’s quite frustrated in his daily existence because he doesn’t get much opportunity to show that side of himself. But get him free of his apron and away from the oven, give him space to manoeuvre – he really comes into his own. Archie’s got a lot of time for Mickey. A lot of time.
‘When they gonna get on wiv it, then?’ he says to Archie. ‘Taking their time, eh? Can’t look at a mouse all bloody night, can you? I mean, you get all these people here on New Year’s Eve, you want something resembling entertainment.’
‘Yeah, well,’ says Archie, not disagreeing but not completely agreeing either, ‘I ’spect they’ve got to go through their notes and that… ’Snot like just getting up and telling a few howlers, is it? I mean, it’s not just about pleasing all the people all of the time, now, is it? It’s Science.’ Archie says Science the same way he says Modern, as if someone has lent him the words and made him swear not to break them. ‘Science,’ Archie repeats, handling it more firmly, ‘is a different kettle of fish.’
Mickey nods at this, seriously considering the proposition, trying to decide how much weight he should allow this counterargument Science, with all its connotations of expertise and higher planes, of places in thought that neither Mickey nor Archie has ever visited (answer: none), how much respect he should give it in the light of these connotations (answer: fuck all. University of Life, innit?), and how many seconds he should leave before tearing it apart (answer: three).
‘On the contrary, Archibald, on the bloody contrary. Speeshuss argument, that is. Common fucking mistake, that is. Science ain’t no different from nuffink else, is it? I mean, when you get down to it. At the end of the day, it’s got to please the people, you know what I mean?’
Archie nods. He knows what Mickey means. (Some people – Samad for example – will tell you not to trust people who overuse the phrase at the end of the day – football managers, estate agents, salesmen of all kinds – but Archie’s never felt that way about it. Prudent use of said phrase never failed to convince him that his interlocutor was getting to the bottom of things, to the fundamentals.)
‘And if you think there’s any difference between a place like this and my caff,’ Mickey continues, somehow full throated and yet never increasing above a whisper in terms of decibel, ‘you’re having a laugh. ’Sall the same in the end. ’Sall about the customer in the end. Exempli fuckin’ gratia: it’s no good me putting Duck à l’orange on the menu if nobody wants it. Vis-à-vis, there’s no point this lot spending a lot of money on some clever ideas if they’re not going to do some fucking good for someone. Think about it,’ says Mickey, tapping his temple, and Archie follows the instruction as best he can.
‘But that don’t mean you don’t give it a bloody chance,’ continues Mickey, warming to his theme. ‘You’ve got to give these new ideas a chance. Otherwise you’re just a philistine, Arch. Now, at the end of the day, you know I’ve always been your cutting-edge type of geezer. That’s why I introduced Bubble and Squeak two years ago.’
Archie nods sagely. The Bubble and Squeak had been a revelation of sorts.
‘Same goes here. You’ve got to give these things a chance. That’s what I said to Abdul-Colin and my Jimmy. I said: before you jump the gun, come along and give it a chance. And here they are.’ Abdul-Mickey flicked his head back, a vicious tick of recognition in the direction of his brother and son, who responded in kind. ‘They might not like what they hear, of course, but you can’t account for that, can you? But at least they’ve come along with an open mind. Now, me personally, I’m here on good authority from that Magid Ick-Ball – and I trust him, I trust his judgement. But, as I say, we shall wait and see. We live and fucking learn, Archibald,’ says Mickey, not to be offensive, but because the F-word acts like padding to him; he can’t help it; it’s just a filler like beans or peas, ‘we live and fucking learn. And I can tell you, if anything said here tonight convinces me that my Jimmy might not have sprogs wiv skin like the surface of the fucking moon, then I’m converted, Arch. I’ll say it now. I’ve not the fucking foggiest what some mouse’s got to do with the old Yusuf skin, but I tell you, I’d put my life in that Ick-Ball boy’s hands. I just get a good feeling off that lad. Worth a dozen of his brother,’ adds Mickey slyly, lowering his voice because Sam’s behind them. ‘A dozen easy. I mean, what the fuck was he thinking, eh? I know which one I’d’ve sent away. No fear.’
Archie shrugs. ‘It was a tough decision.’
Mickey crosses his arms and scoffs, ‘No such thing, mate. You’re either right or you ain’t. And as soon as you realize that, Arch, suddenly your life becomes a lot fucking easier. Take my word for it.’
Archie takes Mickey’s words gratefully, adding them to the other pieces of sagacity the century has afforded him: You’re either right or you ain’t. The golden age of Luncheon Vouchers is over. Can’t say fairer than that. Heads or tails?
‘Oi-oi, what this?’ says Mickey with a grin. ‘Here we go. Movement. Microphone in action. One-two, one-two. Looks like the manneth beginneth.’
‘… and this work is pioneering, it is something that deserves public money and public attention, and it is work the significance of which overrides, in any rational person’s mind, the objections that have been levied against it. What we need…’
What we need, thinks Joshua, are seats closer to the front. Typical cuntish planning on the part of Crispin. Crispin asked for seats in the thick of it, so FATE could kind of merge with the crowd and slip the balaclavas on at the last minute, but it was clearly a rubbish idea which relied upon some kind of middle aisle in the seating, which just isn’t here. Now they are going to have to make an ungainly journey to the side aisles, like terrorists looking for their seat in the cinema, slowing down the whole operation, when speed and shock tactics are the whole fucking point. What a performance. The whole plan pisses Josh off. So elaborate and absurd, all designed for the greater glory of Crispin. Crispin gets to do a bit of shouting, Crispin gets to do some waving-of-gun, Crispin does some pseudo-Jack Nicholson-psycho twitches just for the drama of it. FANTASTIC. All Josh gets to say is Dad, please. Give them what they want, though privately he figures he’ll have some room for improvisation: Dad, please. I’m so fucking young. I want to live. Give them what they want, for Chrissake. It’s just a mouse… I’m your son, and then possibly a phoney faint in response to a phoney pistol-whip if his father proves to be hesitant. The whole plan’s so high on the cheese factor it’s practically Stilton. But it will work (Crispin had said), that stuff always works. But having spent so much time in the animal kingdom, Crispin is like Mowgli: he doesn’t know about the motivations of people. And he knows more about the psychology of a badger than he will ever know about the inner workings of a Chalfen. So looking at Marcus up there with his magnificent mouse, celebrating the great achievement of his life and maybe of this generation, Joshua can’t stop his own perverse brain from wondering whether it is just possible that he and Crispin and FATE have misjudged completely. That they have all royally messed up. That they have underestimated the power of Chalfenism and its remarkable commitment to the Rational. For it is quite possible that his father will not simply and unreflectingly save the thing he loves like the rest of the plebs. It is quite possible that love doesn’t even come into it. And just thinking about that makes Joshua smile.
‘… and I’d like to thank you all, particularly family and friends who have sacrificed their New Year’s Eve… I’d like to thank you all for being here at the outset of what I’m sure everybody agrees is a very exciting project, not just for myself and the other researchers but for a far wider…’
Marcus begins and Millat watches the Brothers of KEVIN exchange glances. They’re figuring about ten minutes in. Maybe fifteen. They’ll take their cue from Abdul-Colin. They’re following instructions. Millat, on the other hand, is not following instructions, at least not the kind that are passed from mouth to mouth or written on pieces of paper. His is an imperative secreted in the genes and the cold steel in his inside pocket is the answer to a claim made on him long ago. He’s a Pandy deep down. And there’s mutiny in his blood.
As for the practicalities, it had been no biggie: two phone calls to some guys from the old crew, a tacit agreement, some KEVIN money, a trip to Brixton and hey presto it was in his hand, heavier than he had imagined, but, aside from that, not such a headfuck of an object. He almost recognized it. The effect of it reminded him of a small car-bomb he saw explode, many years ago, in the Irish section of Kilburn. He was only nine, walking along with Samad. But where Samad was shaken, genuinely shaken, Millat hardly blinked. To Millat, it was so familiar. He was so unfazed by it. Because there aren’t any alien objects or events any more, just as there aren’t any sacred ones. It’s all so familiar. It’s all on TV. So handling the cold metal, feeling it next to his skin that first time: it was easy. And when things come to you easily, when things click effortlessly into place, it is so tempting to use the four-letter F-word. Fate. Which to Millat is a quantity very much like TV: an unstoppable narrative, written, produced and directed by somebody else.
Of course, now that he’s here, now that he’s stoned and scared, and it doesn’t feel so easy, and the right-hand side of his jacket feels like someone put a fucking cartoon anvil in there – now he sees the great difference between TV and life, and it kicks him right in the groin. Consequences. But even to think this is to look to the movies for reference (because he’s not like Samad or Mangal Pande; he didn’t get a war, he never saw action, he hasn’t got any analogies or anecdotes), is to remember Pacino in the first Godfather, huddled in the restaurant toilet (as Pande was huddled in the barracks room), considering for a moment what it means to burst out of the men’s room and blast the hell out of the two guys at the checkered table. And Millat remembers. He remembers rewinding and freeze-framing and slow-playing that scene countless times over the years. He remembers that no matter how long you pause the split-second of Pacino reflecting, no matter how often you replay the doubt that seems to cross his face, he never does anything else but what he was always going to do.
‘… and when we consider that the human significance of this technology… which will prove, I believe, the equal of this century’s discoveries in the field of physics: relativity, quantum mechanics… when we consider the choices it affords us… not between a blue eye and a brown eye, but between eyes that would be blind and those that might see…’
But Irie now believes there are things the human eye cannot detect, not with any magnifying glass, binocular or microscope. She should know, she’s tried. She’s looked at one and then the other, one and then the other – so many times they don’t seem like faces any more, just brown canvases with strange protrusions, like saying a word so often it ceases to make sense. Magid and Millat. Millat and Magid. Majlat. Milljid.
She’s asked her unborn child to offer some kind of a sign, but nothing. She’s had a lyric from Hortense’s house going through her head – Psalm 63 – early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee… But it asks too much of her. It requires her to go back, back, back to the root, to the fundamental moment when sperm met egg, when egg met sperm – so early in this history it cannot be traced. Irie’s child can never be mapped exactly nor spoken of with any certainty. Some secrets are permanent. In a vision, Irie has seen a time, a time not far from now, when roots won’t matter any more because they can’t because they mustn’t because they’re too long and they’re too tortuous and they’re just buried too damn deep. She looks forward to it.
‘He who would most valiant be. ’Gainst all disaster…’
For a few minutes now, beneath Marcus’s talk and the shutters of cameras, another sound (Millat in particular has been attuned to it), a faint singing sound, has been audible. Marcus is doing his best to ignore it and continue, but it has just got considerably louder. He has begun to pause between his words to look around, though the song is clearly not in the room.
‘Let him with constancy, follow the master…’
‘Oh God,’ murmurs Clara, leaning forward to speak in her husband’s ear. ‘It’s Hortense. It’s Hortense. Archie, you’ve got to go and sort it out. Please. It’s easiest for you to get out of your seat.’
But Archie is thoroughly enjoying himself. Between Marcus’s talk and Mickey’s commentary, it’s like watching two TVs at once. Very informative.
‘Ask Irie.’
‘I can’t. She’s too far in to get out. Archie,’ she growls, lapsing into a threatening patois, ‘you kyan jus leddem sing trew de whole ting!’
‘Sam,’ says Archie, trying to make his whisper travel, ‘Sam, you go. You don’t even want to be in here. Go on. You know Hortense. Just tell her to keep it down. ’Sjust I’d quite like to listen to the rest of this, you know. Very informative.’
‘With pleasure,’ hisses Samad, getting out of his seat abruptly, and not troubling to excuse himself as he steps firmly on Neena’s toes. ‘No need, I think, to save my place.’
Marcus, who is now a quarter of the way through a detailed description of the mouse’s seven years, looks up from his paper at the disturbance, and stops to watch the disappearing figure with the rest of the audience.
‘I think somebody realized this story doesn’t have a happy ending.’
As the audience laughs lightly and settles back into silence, Mickey nudges Archibald in his ribs. ‘Now you see, that’s a bit more like it,’ he says. ‘A bit of a comic touch – liven things up a bit. Layman’s terms, innit? Not everybody went to the bloody Oxbridge. Some of us went to the-’
‘University of Life,’ agrees Archie, nodding, because they were both there, though at different times. ‘Can’t beat it.’
Outside: Samad feels his resolve, strong when the door slammed behind him, weaken as he approaches the formidable Witness ladies, ten of them, all ferociously be-wigged, standing on the front steps, banging away at their percussion as if they wish to beat out something more substantial than rhythm. They are in full voice. Five security guards have already admitted defeat, and even Ryan Topps seems slightly in awe of his choral Frankenstein’s monster, preferring to stand at a distance on the pavement, handing out copies of the Watchtower to the great crowd heading for Soho.
‘Do I get a concession?’ inquires one drunken girl, inspecting the kitschy painting of heaven on the cover, adding it to her handful of New Year club fliers. ‘Has it got a dress code?’
With misgivings, Samad taps the triangle-player on her rugby-forward shoulders. He tries the full range of vocabulary available to an Indian man addressing potentially dangerous elderly Jamaican women (ifIcouldplease sorrypossiblypleasesorry – you learn it at bus stops), but the drums proceed, the kazoo buzzes, the cymbals crash. The ladies continue to crunch their sensible shoes in the frost. And Hortense Bowden, too old for marching, continues to sit on a fold-up chair, resolutely eyeballing the mass of dancing people in Trafalgar Square. She has a banner between her knees that states, simply,
THE TIME IS AT HAND – Rev. 1:3
‘Mrs Bowden?’ says Samad, stepping forward in a pause between verses. ‘I am Samad Iqbal. A friend of Archibald Jones.’
Because Hortense does not look at him or betray any twinge of recognition, Samad feels bound to delve deeper into the intricate web of their relations. ‘My wife is a very good friend of your daughter; my step-niece also. My sons are friends with your-’
Hortense kisses her teeth. ‘I know fe who you are, man. You know me, I know you. But at dis point, dere are only two kind of people in de world.’
‘It is just that we were wondering,’ Samad interrupts, spotting a sermon and wanting to sever it at the root, ‘if you could possibly reduce the noise somewhat… if only-’
But Hortense is already overlapping him, eyes closed, arm raised, testifying to the truth in the old Jamaican fashion: ‘Two kind of people: dem who sing for de Lord and dem who rejeck ’im at de peril of dem souls.’
She turns back. She stands. She shakes her banner furiously in the direction of the drunken hordes moving up and down as one in the Trafalgar fountains, and then she is asked to do it again for a cynical photo-journalist with a waiting space to fill on page six.
‘Bit higher with the banner, love,’ he says, camera held up, one knee in the snow. ‘Come on, get angry, that’s it. Lovely Jubbly.’
The Witness women raise their voices, sending song up into the firmament. ‘Early will I seek thee,’ sings Hortense. ‘My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is…’ Samad watches it all and finds himself, to his surprise, unwilling to silence her. Partly because he is tired. Partly because he is old. But mostly because he would do the same, though in a different name. He knows what it is to seek. He knows the dryness. He has felt the thirst you get in a strange land – horrible, persistent – the thirst that lasts your whole life.
Can’t say fairer than that, he thinks, can’t say fairer than that.
Inside: ‘But I’m still waiting for him to get to the bit about my skin. Ain’t heard nothing yet, have you, Arch?’
‘No, nothing yet. I ’spect he’s got a lot to get through. Revolutionary, all this.’
‘Yeah, naturally… But you pays your money, you gets your choice.’
‘You didn’t pay for your ticket, did you?’
‘No. No, I didn’t. But I’ve still got expectations. The principle’s the same, innit? Oi-oi, shut it a minute… I thought I heard skin just then…’
Mickey did hear skin. Papillomas on the skin, apparently. A good five minutes’ worth. Archie doesn’t understand a word of it. But at the end of it, Mickey looks satisfied, as if he’s got all the information he’s been looking for.
‘Mmm, now that’s why I came, Arch. Very interesting. Great medical breakthrough. Fucking miracle workers, these doctors.’
‘… and in this,’ Marcus is saying, ‘he was elemental and indispensable. Not only is he a personal inspiration, but he laid the foundations for so much of this work, particularly in his seminal paper, which I first heard in…’
Oh, that’s nice. Giving the old bloke some credit. And you can tell, he’s chuffed to hear it. Looks a bit tearful. Didn’t catch his name. Still, nice not to take all the glory for yourself. But then again, you don’t want to overdo it. The way Marcus is going on, sounds like the old bloke did everything.
‘Blimey,’ says Mickey, thinking the same thing, ‘fulsome praise, eh? I thought you said it was this Chalfen who was the Mr Big.’
‘Maybe they’re partners in crime,’ suggests Archie.
‘… pushing the envelope, when work in this area was seriously underfunded and looked to remain in the realms of science fiction. For that reason alone he has been the guiding spirit, if you like, behind the research group, and is, as ever, my mentor, a position he has filled for twenty years now…’
‘You know who my mentor is?’ says Mickey. ‘Muhammad Ali. No question. Integrity of mind, integrity of spirit, integrity of body. Top bloke. Wicked fighter. And when he said he was the greatest, he didn’t just say “the greatest”.’
Archie says, ‘No?’
‘Nah, mate,’ says Mickey, solemn. ‘He said he was the greatest of all times. Past, present, future. He was a cocky bastard, Ali. Definitely my mentor.’
Mentor… thinks Archie. For him, it’s always been Samad. You can’t tell Mickey that, obviously. Sounds daft. Sounds queer. But it’s the truth. Always Sammy. Through thick and thin. Even if the world were ending. Never made a decision without him in forty years. Good old Sam. Sam the man.
‘… and so if any one person deserves the lion’s share of recognition for the marvel you see before you, it is Dr Marc-Pierre Perret. A remarkable man and a very great…’
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. Archie does recognize the name, faintly, somewhere inside, but he is already twisting in his seat by then, trying to see if Samad is returning. He can’t see Samad. Instead he spots Millat, who looks funny. Who looks decidedly funny. Peculiar rather than ha-ha. He’s swaying ever so slightly in his seat, and Archie can’t catch his eye for a you-all-right-mate-look because his eyes are locked on to something and when Archie follows the path of this stare, he finds himself looking at the same peculiar thing: an old man weeping tiny tears of pride. Red tears. Tears Archie recognizes.
But not before Samad recognizes them; Captain Samad Miah, who has just stepped soundlessly through the modern door with its silent mechanism; Captain Samad Miah, who pauses for a moment on the threshold, peers through his reading glasses, and realizes that he has been lied to by his only friend in the world for fifty years. That the cornerstone of their friendship was made of nothing more firm than marshmallow and soap bubbles. That there is far, far more to Archibald Jones than he had ever imagined. He realizes everything at once like the climax of a bad Hindi musical. And then, with a certain horrid glee, he gets to the fundamental truth of it, the anagnorisis: This incident alone will keep us two old boys going for the next forty years. It is the story to end all stories. It is the gift that keeps on giving.
‘Archibald!’ He turns from the doctor towards his Lieutenant and releases a short, loud, hysterical laugh; he feels like a new bride looking at her groom with perfect recognition just at the moment when everything between the two of them has changed. ‘You two-faced buggering bastard trickster misā mātā, bhainchute, shora-baicha, syut-morāni, haraam jaddā…’
Samad tumbles into the Bengali vernacular, so colourfully populated by liars, sister-fuckers, sons and daughters of pigs, people who give their own mothers oral pleasure…
But even before this, or at least simultaneous with this, while the audience looks on, bemused by this old brown man shouting at this old white man in a foreign tongue, Archie senses something else going on, some movement in this space, potential movement all over the room (the Indian guys at the back, the kids sitting near Josh, Irie looking from Millat to Magid, Magid to Millat, like an umpire) and sees that Millat will get there first; and Millat is reaching like Pande; and Archie has seen TV and he has seen real-life and he knows what such a reach means, so he stands. So he moves.
So as the gun sees the light, he is there, he is there with no coin to help him, he is there before Samad can stop him, he is there with no alibi, he is there between Millat Iqbal’s decision and his target, like the moment between thought and speech, like the split-second intervention of memory or regret.
At some point in the darkness, they stopped walking through the flatlands and Archie pushed the Doctor forward, made him stand just in front, where he could see him.
‘Stay there,’ he said, as the Doctor stepped inadvertently into a moonbeam. ‘Stay right bloody there.’
Because he wanted to see evil, pure evil; the moment of the great recognition, he needed to see it – and then he could proceed as previously arranged. But the Doctor was stooping badly and he looked weak. His face was covered in pale red blood as if the deed had already been done. Archie’d never seen a man so crumpled, so completely vanquished. It kind of took the wind out of his sails. He was tempted to say You look like I feel, for if there was an embodiment of his own pounding headache, of the alcoholic nausea rising from his belly, it was standing opposite him now. But neither man spoke; they just stood there for a while, looking at each other across the loaded gun. Archie had the funny sensation that he could fold this man instead of killing him. Fold him up and put him in his pocket.
‘Look, I’m sorry about it,’ said Archie desperately, after thirty long seconds of silence. ‘War’s over. I’ve nothing against you personal… but my friend, Sam… well, I’m in a bit of a situation. So there it is.’
The Doctor blinked several times and seemed to be struggling to control his breathing. Through lips red with his own blood he said, ‘When we were walking… you said that I might plead…?’
Keeping his hands behind his head, the Doctor made a move to get on his knees, but Archie shook his head and groaned. ‘I know what I said… but there’s no… it’s just better if I – ’ said Archie sadly, miming the pull of the trigger and the kick-back of the gun. ‘Don’t you think? I mean, easier… all round?’
The Doctor opened his mouth as if to say something, but Archie shook his head again. ‘I’ve never done this before and I’m a bit… well, pissed, frankly… I drank quite a bit… and it wouldn’t help… you’d be there talking and I probably wouldn’t make head nor tail of it, you know, so…’
Archie lifted his arms until they were in line with the Doctor’s forehead, closed his eyes, and cocked the gun.
The Doctor’s voice jumped an octave. ‘A cigarette?’
And it was at that moment that it started to go wrong. Like it went wrong for Pande. He should have shot the bloke then and there. Probably. But instead he opened his eyes to see his victim struggling to pull out a battered cigarette packet and a box of matches from his top pocket like a human being.
‘Could I – please? Before…’
Archie let all the breath he had summoned up to kill a man come out through his nose. ‘Can’t say no to a last request,’ said Archie, because he’d seen the movies. ‘I’ve got a light, if you like.’
The Doctor nodded, Archie struck a match, and the Doctor leaned forward to light up.
‘Well, get on with it,’ said Archie, after a moment; he never could resist a pointless debate, ‘if you’ve got something to say, say it. I haven’t got all night.’
‘I can speak? We are to have a conversation?’
‘I didn’t say we were going to have a conversation,’ said Archie sharply. Because this was a tactic of Movie Nazis (and Archie should have known; he spent the first four years of the war watching flickering Movie Nazis at the Brighton Odeon), they try to talk their way out of stuff. ‘I said you were going to talk and then I was going to kill you.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
The Doctor used his sleeve to wipe his face, and looked at the boy curiously, double-checking to see if he were serious. The boy looked serious.
‘Well, then… If I may say so…’ The Doctor’s mouth hung open, waiting for Archie to insert a name but none came. ‘Lieutenant… if I may say so, Lieutenant, it appears to me you are in something of a… a… moral quandary.’
Archie didn’t know what quandary meant. It reminded him of coal, metal and Wales, somewhere between quarry and foundry. At a loss, he said what he always said in these situations. ‘I should cocoa!’
‘Er… Yes, yes,’ said Dr Sick, gaining some confidence; he had not yet been shot and a whole minute had so far passed. ‘It seems to me you have a dilemma. On the one hand… I do not believe you wish to kill me-’
Archie squared his shoulders. ‘Now look, sunshine-’
‘And on the other, you have promised your overzealous friend that you will. But it is more than that.’
The Doctor’s shaking hands tapped his own cigarette inadvertently, and Archie watched the ash fall like grey snow on to his boots.
‘On the one hand, you have an obligation to – to – your country and to what you believe is right. On the other hand, I am a man. I am speaking to you. I breathe and I bleed as you do. And you do not know, for certain, what type of a man I am. You have only hearsay. So, I understand your difficulty.’
‘I don’t have a difficulty. You’re the one with the difficulty, sunshine.’
‘And yet, though I am not your friend, you have a duty to me, because I am a man. I think you are caught between duties. I think you find yourself in a very interesting situation.’
Archie stepped forward, and put the muzzle two inches from the Doctor’s forehead. ‘You finished?’
The Doctor tried to say yes but nothing came except a stutter.
‘Good.’
‘Wait! Please. Do you know Sartre?’
Archie sighed, exasperated. ‘No, no, no – we haven’t any friends in common – I know that, because I’ve only got one friend and he’s called Ick-Ball. Look, I’m going to kill you. I’m sorry about it but-’
‘Not a friend. Philosopher. Sartre. Monsieur J. P.’
‘Who?’ said Archie, agitated, suspicious. ‘Sounds French.’
‘He is French. A great Frenchman. I met him briefly in ’41, when he was imprisoned. But when I met him he posed a problem, which is similar, I think, to yours.’
‘Go on,’ said Archie slowly. The fact was he could do with some help.
‘The problem,’ continued Dr Sick, trying to control his hyperventilation, sweating so much there were two little pools in the hollows at the base of his neck, ‘is that of a young French student who ought to care for his sick mother in Paris but at the same time ought to go to England to help the Free French fight the National Socialists. Now, remembering that there are many kinds of ought – one ought to give to charity, for example, but one doesn’t always do so; it is ideal, but it is not required – remembering this, what should he do?’
Archie scoffed, ‘That’s a bloody stupid question. Think about it.’ He gesticulated with the gun, moving it from the Doctor’s face and tapping his own temple with it. ‘At the end of the day, he’ll do the one he cares about more. Either he loves his country or his old mum.’
‘But what if he cares about both options, equally? I mean, country and “old mum”. What if he is obligated to do both?’
Archie was unimpressed. ‘Well, he better just do one and get on with it.’
‘The Frenchman agrees with you,’ said the Doctor, attempting a smile. ‘If neither imperative can be overridden, then choose one, and as you say, get on with it. Man makes himself, after all. And he is responsible for what he makes.’
‘There you are, then. End of conversation.’
Archie placed his legs apart, spread his weight, ready to take the kick-back – and cocked the gun once more.
‘But – but – think – please, my friend – try to think – ’ The Doctor fell to his knees, sending up a cloud of dust that rose and fell like a sigh.
‘Get up,’ gulped Archie, horrified by the streams of eye-blood, the hand on his leg and then the mouth on his shoe. ‘Please – there’s no need for-’
But the Doctor grabbed the back of Archie’s knees. ‘Think – please – anything may happen… I may yet redeem myself in your eyes… or you may be mistaken – your decision may come back to you as Oedipus’s returned to him, horrible and mutilated! You cannot say for sure!’
Archie grabbed the Doctor by his skinny arm, hauled him upright and began yelling, ‘Look, mate. You’ve upset me now. I’m not a bloody fortune-teller. The world might end tomorrow for all I know. But I’ve got to do this now. Sam’s waiting for me. Please,’ said Archie, because his hand was shaking and his resolve was doing a runner, ‘please stop talking. I’m not a fortune-teller.’
But the Doctor collapsed once more, like a jack-in-the-box. ‘No… no… we are not fortune-tellers. I could never have predicted my life would end up in the hands of a child… Corinthians I, chapter thirteen, verse eight: Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. But when will it come? For myself, I became tired of waiting. It is such a terrible thing, to know only in part. A terrible thing not to have perfection, human perfection, when it is so readily available.’ The Doctor lifted himself up, and tried to reach out to Archie just as Archie backed away. ‘If only we were brave enough to make the decisions that must be made… between those worth saving and the rest… Is it a crime to want-’
‘Please, please,’ said Archie, ashamed to find himself crying, not red tears like the Doctor’s, but thick and translucent and salty. ‘Stay there. Please stop talking. Please.’
‘And then I think of the perverse German, Friedrich. Imagine the world with no beginning or end, boy.’ He spat this last word, boy, and it was a thief that changed the balance of power between them, stealing whatever strength was left in Archie and dispersing it on the wind. ‘Imagine, if you can, events in the world happening repeatedly, endlessly, in the way they always have…’
‘Stay where you fucking are!’
‘Imagine this war over and over a million times…’
‘No thanks,’ said Archie, choking on snot. ‘ ’Sbad enough the first time.’
‘It is not a serious proposition. It is a test. Only those who are sufficiently strong and well disposed to life to affirm it – even if it will just keep on repeating – have what it takes to endure the worst blackness. I could see the things I have done repeated infinitely. I am one of the confident ones. But you are not one of them…’
‘Please, just stop talking, please, so I can-’
‘The decision you make, Archie,’ said Dr Sick, betraying a knowledge that he had possessed from the start, the boy’s name, which he had been waiting to employ when it would have the most power, ‘could you see it repeated again and again, through eternity? Could you?’
‘I’ve got a coin!’ yelled Archie, screamed it with joy, because he had just remembered it. ‘I’ve got a coin!’
Dr Sick looked confused, and stopped his stumbling steps forward.
‘Ha! I have a coin, you bastard. Ha! So balls to you!’
Then another step. His hands reaching out, palms up, innocent.
‘Stay back. Stay where you are. Right. This is what we’re going to do. Enough talking. I’m going to put my gun down here… slowly… here.’
Archie crouched and placed it on the floor, roughly between the two of them. ‘That’s so you can trust me. I’ll stand by my word. And now I’m going to throw this coin. And if it’s heads, I’m going to kill you.’
‘But – ’ said Dr Sick. And for the first time Archie saw something like real fear in his eyes, the same fear that Archie felt so thoroughly he could hardly speak.
‘And if it’s tails, I won’t. No, I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not much of a thinker, when you get down to it. That’s the best I can offer. All right, here goes.’
The coin rose and flipped as a coin would rise and flip every time in a perfect world, flashing its light and then revealing its dark enough times to mesmerize a man. Then, at some point in its triumphant ascension, it began to arc, and the arc went wrong, and Archibald realized that it was not coming back to him at all but going behind him, a fair way behind him, and he turned round to watch it fall in the dirt. He was bending to pick it up when a shot rang out, and he felt a blistering pain in his right thigh. He looked down. Blood. The bullet had passed straight through, just missing the bone, but leaving a shard of the cap embedded deep in the flesh. The pain was excruciating and strangely distant at the same time. Archie turned back round to see Dr Sick, half bent over, the gun hanging weakly in his right hand.
‘For fuckssake, why did you do that?’ said Archie furious, grabbing the gun off the Doctor, easily and forcefully. ‘It’s tails. See? It’s tails. Look. Tails. It was tails.’
So Archie is there, there in the trajectory of the bullet, about to do something unusual, even for TV: save the same man twice and with no more reason or rhyme than the first time. And it’s a messy business, this saving people lark. Everybody in the room watches in horror as he takes it in the thigh, right in the femur, spins round with some melodrama and falls right through the mouse’s glass box. Shards of glass all over the gaff. What a performance. If it were TV you would hear the saxophone around now; the credits would be rolling.
But first the endgames. Because it seems no matter what you think of them, they must be played, even if, like the independence of India or Jamaica, like the signing of peace treaties or the docking of passenger boats, the end is simply the beginning of an even longer story. The same focus group who picked out the colour of this room, the carpet, the font for the posters, the height of the table, would no doubt tick the box that asks to see all these things played to their finish… and there is surely a demographic pattern to all those who wish to see the eyewitness statements that identified Magid as many times as Millat, the confusing transcripts, the videotape of uncooperating victim and families, a court case so impossible the judge gave in and issued four hundred hours community service to both twins, which they served, naturally, as gardeners in Joyce’s new project, a huge millennial park by the banks of the Thames…
And is it young professional women aged eighteen to thirty-two who would like a snapshot seven years hence of Irie, Joshua and Hortense sitting by a Caribbean sea (for Irie and Joshua become lovers in the end; you can only avoid your fate for so long), while Irie’s fatherless little girl writes affectionate postcards to Bad Uncle Millat and Good Uncle Magid and feels free as Pinocchio, a puppet clipped of paternal strings? And could it be that it is largely the criminal class and the elderly who find themselves wanting to make bets on the winner of a blackjack game, the one played by Alsana and Samad, Archie and Clara, in O’Connell’s, 31 December 1999, that historic night when Abdul-Mickey finally opened his doors to women?
But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to speed the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect. And as Archie knows, it’s not like that. It’s never been like that.
It would make an interesting survey (what kind would be your decision) to examine the present and divide the onlookers into two groups: those whose eyes fell upon a bleeding man, slumped across a table, and those who watched the getaway of a small brown rebel mouse. Archie, for one, watched the mouse. He watched it stand very still for a second with a smug look as if it expected nothing less. He watched it scurry away, over his hand. He watched it dash along the table, and through the hands of those who wished to pin it down. He watched it leap off the end and disappear through an air vent. Go on my son! thought Archie.