White Teeth 1-2

Then, on the 29th of December, he went to see his old friend Samad Miah Iqbal. An unlikely

compadre possibly, but still the oldest friend he had a Bengali Muslim he had fought alongside

back when the fighting had to be done, who reminded him of that war; that war that reminded some

people of fatty bacon and painted-on-stockings but recalled in Archie gunshots and card games and

the taste of a sharp, foreign alcohol.

"Archie, my dear friend," Samad had said, in his warm, hearty tones. "You must forget all this

wife-trouble. Try a new life. That is what you need. Now, enough of all this: I will match your five

bob and raise you five."

They were sitting in their new haunt, O'ConnelTs Pool House, playing poker with only three

hands, two of Archie's and one of Samad's - Samad's right hand being a broken thing, grey-skinned

and unmoving, dead in every way bar the blood that ran through it. The place they sat in, where

they met each evening for dinner, was half cafe, half gambling den, owned by an Iraqi family, the

many members of which shared a bad skin condition.

"Look at me. Marrying Alsana has given me this new lease on living, you understand? She

opens up for me the new possibilities. She's so young, so vital like a breath of fresh air. You come

to me for advice? Here it is. Don't live this old life it's a sick life, Archibald. It does you no good.

No good whatsoever

Samad had looked at him with a great sympathy, for he felt very tenderly for Archie. Their

wartime friendship had been severed by thirty years of separation across continents, but in the

spring of 1973 Samad had come to England, a middle-aged man seeking a new life with his

twenty-year-old new bride, the diminutive, moon-faced Alsana Begum with her shrewd eyes. In a

fit of nostalgia, and because he was the only man Samad knew on this little island, Samad had

sought Archie out, moved into the same London borough. And slowly but surely a kind of

friendship was being rekindled between the two men.

"You play like a faggot," said Samad, laying down the winning

queens back to back. He flicked them with the thumb of his left hand in one elegant move,

making them fall to the table in a fan shape.

"I'm old," said Archie, throwing his cards in, "I'm old. Who'd have me now? It was hard enough

convincing anybody the first time."

"That is nonsense, Archibald. You have not even met the right one yet. This Ophelia, Archie,

she is not the right one. From what you leave me to understand she is not even for this time '

He referred to Ophelia's madness, which led her to believe, half of the time, that she was the

maid of the celebrated fifteenth century art lover Cosimo de' Medici.

"She is born, she lives, simply in the wrong time! This is just not her day! Maybe not her

millennium. Modern life has caught that woman completely unawares and up the arse. Her mind is

gone. Buggered. And you? You have picked up the wrong life in the cloakroom and you must return

it. Besides, she has not blessed you with children .. . and life without children, Archie, what is it for?

But there are second chances; oh yes, there are second chances in life. Believe me, I know. You," he

continued, raking in the lop's with the side of his bad hand, 'should never have married her."

Bloody hindsight, thought Archie. It's always 20/20.

Finally, two days after this discussion, early on New Year's morning, the pain had reached such

a piercing level that Archie was no longer able to cling to Samad's advice. He had decided instead

to mortify his own flesh, to take his own life, to free himself from a life path that had taken him

down numerous wrong turnings, led him deep into the wilderness and finally petered out

completely, its bread crumb course gobbled up by the birds.

Once the car started to fill with gas, he had experienced the obligatory flashback of his life to

date. It turned out to be a short,

unedifying viewing experience, low on entertainment value, the metaphysical equivalent of the

Queen's Speech. A dull childhood, a bad marriage, a dead-end job that classic triumvirate they all

flicked by quickly, silently, with little dialogue, feeling pretty much the same as they did the first

time round. He was no great believer in destiny, Archie, but on reflection it did seem that a special

effort of predestination had ensured his life had been picked out for him like a company Christmas

present early, and the same as everyone else's.

There was the war, of course; he had been in the war, only for the last year of it, aged just

seventeen, but it hardly counted. Not front line nothing like that. He and Samad, old Sam, Sammy

boy, they had a few tales to tell, mind, Archie even had a bit of shrapnel in the leg for anyone who

cared to see it but nobody did. No one wanted to talk about that any more. It was like a club-foot, or

a disfiguring mole. It was like nose hair. People looked away. If someone said to Archie, What have

you done in life, then, or What's your biggest memory, well, God help him if he mentioned the war;

eyes glazed over, fingers tapped, everybody offered to buy the next round. No one really wanted to

know.

Summer of 1955 Archie went to Fleet Street with his best winkle-pickers on, looking for work

as a war correspondent. Poncey-looking bloke with a thin moustache and a thin voice had said, Any

experience, Mr. Jones? And Archie had explained. All about Samad. All about their Churchill tank.

Then this poncey one had leant over the desk, all smug, all suited, and said, We would require

something other than merely having fought in a war, Mr. Jones. War experience isn't really relevant.

And that was it, wasn't it. There was no relevance in the war not in '55, even less now in '74.

Nothing he did then mattered now. The skills you learnt were, in the modern parlance, not relevant,

not transferable.

Was there anything else, Mr. Jones?

But of course there bloody wasn't anything else, the British

education system having tripped him up with a snigger many years previously. Still, he had a

good eye for the look of a thing, for the shape of a thing, and that's how he had ended up in the job

at Morgan Hero twenty years and counting in a printing firm in the Euston Road, designing the way

all kinds of things should be folded envelopes, direct mail, brochures, leaflets not much of an

achievement, maybe, but you'll find things need folds, they need to overlap, otherwise life would be

like a broadsheet: flapping in the wind and down the street so you lose the important sections. Not

that Archie had much time for the broad sheets If they couldn't be bothered to fold them properly,

why should he bother to read them (that's what he wanted to know)?

What else? Well, Archie hadn't always folded paper. Once upon a time he had been a track

cyclist. What Archie liked about track cycling was the way you went round and round. Round and

round. Giving you chance after chance to get a bit better at it, to make a faster lap, to do it right.

Except the thing about Archie was he never did get any better. 62.8 seconds. Which is a pretty good

time, world-class standard, even. But for three years he got precisely 62.8 seconds on every single

lap. The other cyclists used to take breaks to watch him do it. Lean their bikes against the incline

and time him with the second hand of their wrist watches. 62.8 every time. That kind of inability to

improve is really very rare. That kind of consistency is miraculous, in a way.

Archie liked track cycling, he was consistently good at it and it provided him with the only truly

great memory he had. In 1948, Archie Jones had participated in the Olympics in London, sharing

thirteenth place (62.8 seconds) with a Swedish gynaecologist called Horst Ibelgaufts. Unfortunately

this fact had been omitted from the Olympic records by a sloppy secretary who returned one

morning after a coffee break with something else on her mind and missed his name as she

transcribed one list to another piece of paper. Madam Posterity stuck Archie down the

arm of the sofa and forgot about him. His only proof that the event had taken place at all were

the periodic letters and notes he had received over the years from Ibelgaufts himself. Notes like:

17 May 1957 Dear Archibald,

I enclose a picture of my good wife and I in our garden in front of a rather unpleasant

construction site. Though it may not look like Arcadia, it is here that I am building a crude

velodrome nothing like the one you and I raced in, but sufficient for my needs. It will be on afar

smaller scale, but you see, it is for the children we are yet to have. I see them pedalling around it in

my dreams and wake up with a glorious smile upon my face! Once it is completed, we insist that

you visit us. Who more worthy to christen the track of your earnest competitor,

Horst Ibelgaufts?

And the postcard that lay on the dashboard this very day, the day of his Almost Death:

28 December 1974 Dear Archibald,

I am taking up the harp. A New Year's resolution, if you like. Late in the day, I realize, but

you're never too old to teach the old dog in you new tricks, don't you feel? I tell you, it's a heavy

instrument to lay against your shoulder, but the sound of it is quite angelic and my wife thinks me

quite sensitive because of it. Which is more than she could say for my old cycling obsession! But

then, cycling was only ever understood by old boys like you, Archie, and of course the author of

this little note, your old contender,

Horst Ibelgaufts

He had not met Horst since the race, but he remembered him affectionately as an enormous man

with strawberry-blond hair, orange freckles and misaligned nostrils, who dressed like an

international playboy and seemed too large for his bike. After the race Horst had got Archie

horribly drunk and procured two Soho whores who seemed to know Horst well ("I make many

business trips to your fair capital, Archibald," Horst had explained). The last Archie had ever seen

of Horst was an unwanted glimpse of his humongous pink arse bobbing up and down in the

adjoining room of an Olympic chalet. The next morning, waiting at the front desk, was the first

letter of his large correspondence:

Dear Archibald,

In an oasis of work and competition, women are truly sweet and easy refreshment, don't you

agree? I'm afraid I had to leave early to catch the necessary plane, but I compel you, Archie: Don't

be a stranger! I think of us now as two men as close as our finish! I tell you, whoever said thirteenth

was unlucky was a bigger fool than your friend,

Horst Ibelgaufts

P.S. Please make sure that Dana and Melanie get home fine and well

Daria was his one. Terribly skinny, ribs like lobster cages and no chest to speak of, but she was

a lovely sort: kind; soft with her kisses and with double-jointed wrists she liked to show off in a

pair of long silk gloves set you back four clothing coupons at least. "I like you," Archie

remembered sayinghelplessly, as she replaced the gloves and put on her stockings. She turned,

smiled. And though she was a professional, he got the feeling she liked him too. Maybe he should

have left with her right then, run to the hills. But at the time it seemed impossible, too involved,

what with a young wife with one in the oven (an hysterical, fictional

pregnancy, as it turned out, a big bump full of hot air), what with his dodgy leg, what with the

lack of hills.

Strangely, Daria was the final pulse of thought that passed through Archie just before he

blacked out. It was the thought of a whore he met once twenty years ago, it was Daria and her smile

which made him cover Mo's apron with tears of joy as the butcher saved his life. He had seen her in

his mind: a beautiful woman in a doorway with a come hither look; and realized he regretted not

coming hither. If there was any chance of ever seeing a look like that again, then he wanted the

second chance, he wanted the extra time. Not just this second, but the next and the next all the time

in the world.

Later that morning, Archie did an ecstatic eight circuits of Swiss Cottage roundabout in his car,

his head stuck out the window while a stream of air hit the teeth at the back of his mouth like a

wind sock. He thought: Blimey. So this is what it feels like when some bugger saves your life. Like

you've just been handed a great big wad of Time. He drove straight past his flat, straight past the

street signs (Hendon 3%), laughing like a loon. At the traffic lights he flipped ten pence and smiled

when the result seemed to agree that Fate was pulling him towards another life. Like a dog on a

lead round a corner. Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a

family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly

back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable. In this manner, a new Archie is about to emerge.

We have caught him on the hop. For he is in a past-tense, future-perfect kind of mood. He is in a

maybe this, maybe that kind of mood. Approaching a forked road, he slows down, checks his

undistinguished face in the wing-mirror, and quite indiscriminately chooses a route he's never taken

before, a residential street leading to a place called Queens Park. Go straight past Go!" Archie-boy,

he tells himself; collect two hundred and don't for gawd's sake look back.

Tim Westleigh (more commonly known as Merlin) finally registered the persistent ringing of a

doorbell. He picked himself off the kitchen floor, waded through an ocean of supine bodies, and

opened the door to arrive face-to-face with a middle-aged man dressed head-to-toe in grey corduroy,

holding a ten pence coin in his open palm. As Merlin was later to reflect when describing the

incident, at any time of the day corduroy is a highly stressful fabric. Rent men wear it. Tax men too.

History teachers add leather elbow patches. To be confronted with a mass of it, at nine in the a.m."

on the first day of a New Year, is an apparition lethal in its sheer quantity of negative vibes.

"What's the deal, man?" Merlin blinked in the doorway at the man in corduroy who stood on his

doorstep illuminated by winter sunshine. "Encyclopedias or God?"

Archie noted the kid had an unnerving way of emphasizing certain words by moving his head in

a wide circular movement from the right shoulder to the left. Then, when the circle was completed,

he would nod several times.

"Cos if it's encyclopedias we've got enough, like, information . and if it's God, you've got the

wrong house. We're in a mellow place, here. Know what I mean?" Merlin concluded, doing the

nodding thing and moving to shut the door.

Archie shook his head, smiled and remained where he was.

"Em .. . are you all right?" asked Merlin, hand on the doorknob. "Is there something I can do for

you? Are you high on something?"

"I saw your sign," said Archie.

Merlin pulled on a joint and looked amused. "That sign?" He bent his head to follow Archie's

gaze. The white bedsheet hanging