3 Two Families -1

It is better to marry than to burn, says Corinthians I, chapter seven, verse nine.

Good advice. Of course, Corinthians also informs us that we should not muzzle the ox while it

is treading out the grain so, go figure.

By February 1975, Clara had deserted the church and all its biblical literalism for Archibald

Jones, but she was not yet the kind of carefree atheist who could laugh near altars or entirely

dismiss the teachings of St. Paul. The second dictum wasn't a problem having no ox, she was

excluded by proxy. But the first was giving her sleepless nights. Was it better to marry? Even if the

man was a heathen? There was no way of knowing: she was living without props now, sans safety

net. More worrying than God was her mother. Hortense was fiercely opposed to the affair, on

grounds of colour rather than of age, and on hearing of it had promptly ostracized her daughter one

morning on the doorstep.

Clara still felt that deep down her mother would prefer her to marry an unsuitable man rather

than live with him in sin, so she did it on impulse and begged Archie to take her as far away from

Lambeth as a man of his means could manage Morocco, Belgium, Italy. Archie had clasped her

hand and nodded and whispered sweet nothings in the full knowledge that the furthest a man of his

means was going was a newly acquired, heavily mortgaged, two-storey house in Willesden Green.

But no need to mention that now, he felt, not right now in the heat of the moment. Let her down

gently, like.

Three months later Clara had been gently let down and here they were, moving in. Archie

scrabbling up the stairs, as usual

cursing and blinding, wilting under the weight of boxes which Clara could carry two, three at a

time without effort; Clara taking a break, squinting in the warm May sunshine, trying to get her

bearings. She peeled down to a little purple vest and leant against her front gate. What kind of a

place was this? That was the thing, you see, you couldn't be sure. Travelling in the front passenger

seat of the removal van, she'd seen the high road and it had been ugly and poor and familiar

(though there were no Kingdom Halls or Episcopalian churches), but then at the turn of a corner

suddenly roads had exploded in greenery, beautiful oaks, the houses got taller, wider and more

detached, she could see parks, she could see libraries. And then abruptly the trees would be gone,

reverting back into bus-stops as if by the strike of some midnight bell; a signal which the houses

too obeyed, transforming themselves into smaller, st airless dwellings that sat splay opposite

derelict shopping arcades, those peculiar lines of establishments that include, without exception,

one defunct sandwich bar still advertising breakfast one locksmith uninterested in marketing

frills (keys cut here)

and one permanently shut unisex hair salon, the proud bearer of some unspeakable pun (Upper

Cuts or Fringe Benefits or Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow).

It was a lottery driving along like that, looking out, not knowing whether one was about to

settle down for life amongst the trees or amidst the shit. Then finally the van had slowed down in

front of a house, a nice house somewhere midway between the trees and the shit, and Clara had felt

a tide of gratitude roll over her. It was nice, not as nice as she had hoped but not as bad as she had

feared; it had two small gardens front and back, a doormat, a doorbell, a toilet inside .. . And she

had not paid a high price. Only love. Just love. And whatever Corinthians might say, love is not

such a hard thing to forfeit, not if you've never really felt it. She did not love Archie, but had made

up her mind, from that first moment on the steps, to devote herself to him if he would take her away.

And now he had; and, though it wasn't Morocco or Belgium or Italy, it was nice not the promised

land but nice, nicer than anywhere she had ever been.

Clara understood that Archibald Jones was no romantic hero. Three months spent in one

stinking room in Cricklewood had been sufficient revelation. Oh, he could be affectionate and

sometimes even charming, he could whistle a clear, crystal note first thing in the morning, he drove

calmly and responsibly and he |was a surprisinglycompetent cook, but romance was beyond ,

passion, unthinkable. And if you are saddled with a man as age as this, Clara felt, he should at least

be utterly devoted t^^bi to your beauty, to your youth that's the least he could do^wnake up for

things. But not Archie. One month into their maiMce and he already had that funny glazed look

men have whel^fcey are looking through you. He had already reverted back ^^ his bachelorhood:

pints with Samad Iqbal, dinner with Samac^Bbal, Sunday breakfasts with Samad Iqbal, every spare

moment with the man in that bloody place, O'Connell's, in that bloody ABe. She tried to be

reasonable. She asked him: Why are you nevemRre? Why do you spend so much time with the

Indian? But a pat on[K back, a kiss on the cheek, he's grabbing his coat, his foot's oJ'e door and

always the same old answer: Me and Sam? We go vifback. She couldn't argue with that. They went

back to befonMie was born.

No JBte knight, then, this Archibald Jones. No aims, no hopesJK ambitions. A man whose

greatest pleasures were Eng|">reakfasts and DIY. A dull man. An old man. And yet 3d. He was a

good man. And good might not amount to i, good might not light up a life, but it is something. She

at ted it in him that first time on the stairs, simply, directly, the same way she could point out a good

mango on a Brixton stall without so much as touching the skin.

These were the thoughts Clara clung to as she leant on her

garden gate, three months after her wedding, silently watching the way her husband's brow

furrowed and shortened like an accordion, the way his stomach hung pregnant over his belt, the

whiteness of his skin, the blueness of his veins, the way his 'elevens' were up those two ropes of

flesh that appear on a man's gullet (so they said in Jamaica) when his time was drawing to a close.

Clara frowned. She hadn't noticed these afflictions at the wedding. Why not? He had been

smiling and he wore a white polo-neck, but no, that wasn't it she hadn't been looking for them then,

that was it. Clara had spent most of her wedding day looking at her feet. It had been a hot day, 14

February, but unusually warm, and there had been a wait because the world had wanted to marry

that day in a little registry office on Ludgate Hill. Clara remembered slipping off the petite brown

heels she was wearing and placing her bare feet on the chilly floor, making sure to keep them

firmly planted either side of a dark crack in the tile, a balancing act upon which she had randomly

staked her future happiness.

Archie meanwhile had wiped some moisture from his upper lip and cursed a persistentsunbeam

that was sending a trickle of salty water down his inside leg. For his second marriage he had chosen

a mohair suit with a white polo-neck and both were proving problematic. The heat prompted

rivulets of sweat to spring out all over his body, seeping through the polo-neck to the mohair and

giving off an unmistakable odour of damp dog. Clara, of course, was all cat. She wore a long brown

woollen Jeff Banks dress and a perfect set of false teeth; the dress was backless, the teeth were

white, and the overall effect was feline; a panther in evening dress; where the wool stopped and

Clara's skin started was not clear to the naked eye. And like a cat she responded to the dusty

sunbeam that was coursing through a high window on to the waiting couples. She warmed her bare

back in it, she almost seemed to unfurl. Even the registrar, who had seen it

all horsy women marrying weaselly men, elephantine men marrying owlish women raised an

eyebrow at this most unnatural of unions as they approached his desk. Cat and dog.

"Hullo, Father," said Archie.

"He's a registrar, Archibald, you old flake," said his friend Samad Miah Iqbal, who, along with

his wife Alsana, had been called in from the exile of the Wedding Guest Room to witness the

contract. "Not a Catholic priest

"Right. Of course. Sorry. Nervous."

The stuffy registrar said, "Shall we get on? We've got a lot of you to get through today."

This and little more had constituted the ceremony. Archie was passed a pen and put down his

name (Alfred Archibald Jones), nationality (English) and age (47). Hovering for a moment over the

box entitled "Occupation', he decided upon "Advertising: (Printed Leaflets)', then signed himself

away. Clara wrote down her name (Clara Iphegenia Bowden), nationality (Jamaican) and age (19).

Finding no box interested in her occupation, she went straight for the decisive dotted line, swept her

pen across it, and straightened up again, a Jones. A Jones like no other that had come before her.

Then they had gone outside, on to the steps, where a breeze lifted second-hand confetti and

swept it over new couples, where Clara met her only wedding guests formally for the first time: two

Indians, both dressed in purple silk. Samad Iqbal, a tall, handsome man with the whitest teeth and a

dead hand, who kept patting her on the back with the one that worked.

"My idea this, you know," he repeated again and again. "My idea, all this marriage business. I

have known the old boy since when?" '1945, Sam."

"That's what I am trying to tell your lovely wife, 1945 when you know a man that long, and

you've fought alongside him, then it's your mission to make him happy if he is not. And

he wasn't! Quite the opposite until you made an appearance! Wallowing in the shit-heap, if you

will pardon the French. Thankfully, she's all packed off now. There's only one place for the mad,

and that's with others like them," said Samad, losing steam halfway through the sentence, for Clara

clearly had no idea what he was talking about. "Anyway, no need to dwell on ... My idea, though,

you know, all this."

And then there was his wife, Alsana, who was tiny and tightlipped and seemed to disapprove of

Clara somehow (though she could only be a few years older); said only "Oh yes, Mrs. Jones' or "Oh

no, Mrs. Jones', making Clara so nervous, so sheepish, she felt compelled to put her shoes back on.

Archie felt bad for Clara that it wasn't a bigger reception. But there was no one else to invite.

All other relatives and friends had declined the wedding invitation; some tersely, some horrified;

others, thinking silence the best option, had spent the past week studiously stepping over the mail

and avoiding the phone. The only well-wisher was Ibelgaufts, who had neither been invited nor

informed of the event, but from whom, curiously, a note arrived in the morning mail:

14 February 1975 Dear Archibald,

Usually, there is something about weddings that brings out the misanthrope in me, but today, as

I attempted to save a bed of petunias from extinction, I felt a not inconsiderable warmth at the

thought of the union of one man and one woman in lifelong cohabitation. It is truly remarkable that

we humans undertake such an impossible feat, don't you think? But to be serious for a moment: as

you know, I am a man whose profession it is to look deep inside of' Woman and, like a psychiatrist,

mark her with a full bill of health or otherwise. And I feel sure, my friend (to extend a metaphor),

that you have explored your lady-wife-to-be in such a manner, both spirit

and mentally, and found her not lacking in any particular, and so what else can I offer but ike

hearty congratulations of your earnest competitor, Horst Ibelgaufts

What other memories of that day could make it unique and lift it out of the other 355 that made

up 1975? Clara remembered a young black man stood atop an apple crate, sweating in a black suit,

who began pleading to his brothers and sisters; an old bag-lady retrieving a carnation from the bin

to put in her hair. But then it was all over: the ding-filmed sandwiches Clara had made had been

forgotten and sat suffering at the bottom of a bag, the sky had clouded over, and when they walked

up the hill to the King Ludd Pub, past the jeering Fleet Street lads with their Saturday pints, it was

discovered that Archie had been given a parking ticket.

So it was that Clara spent the first three hours of married life in Cheapside Police Station, her

shoes in her hands, watching her saviour argue relentlessly with a traffic inspector who failed to

understand Archie's subtle interpretation of the Sunday parking laws.

"Clara, Clara, love '

It was Archie, struggling past her to the front door, partly obscured by a coffee table.

"We've got the Ick-Balls coming round tonight, and I want to get this house in some kind of

order so mind out the way."

"You wan' help?" asked Clara patiently, though still half in daydream. "I can lift so meting if-'

"No, no, no, no I'll manage."

Clara reached out to take one side of the table. "Let me jus' -'

Archie battled to push through the narrow frame, trying to hold both the legs and the table's

large removable glass top.

"It's man's work, love."



"But' Clara lifted a large armchair with enviable ease and brought it over to where Archie had

collapsed, gasping for breath on the hall steps. "Sno problem. If you wan' help: jus' arks farrit." She

brushed her hand softly across his forehead.

"Yes, yes, yes." He shook her off in irritation, as if batting a fly. "I'm quite capable, you know '

"I know dat '

"It's man's work."