Archie and the North Wind by Angus Peter Campbell Page B

enough to me. And two Spanish transvestites, Alquino and Alberto, who masqueraded as Alphonse and Ariadne, the king and queen of Spanish acrobatics. God, you should have seen Alberto stuffing cotton wool inside his purple leotard and crushing his balls into a leather pouch strapped tight between his legs. But he did look magnificent, twirling and glittering on that high-bar like the Queen of Sheba, all snaky and sexy. Remarkable what razzle-dazzle can do to your brain.’
    Archie knew fine she was talking about him as much as about everything and everyone around her. Like Gobhlachan, for her, the more colourful the story was, the better.
    Wasn’t there any kind of bare story, which revealed rather than hid the truth? Fact, not fiction. Standing, not running. Staying not moving. But who was he to judge anyone else’s tale? Didn’t it belong to her, and to her alone? Especially in the telling.
    ‘The Troubles!’ she would spit out. ‘Now there’s a show for you, to be sure. Appearing tonight at your village, no names, no pack drill – The Troubles! Starring Merlin the Magician, who can make thousands disappear at the drop of a bomb! Johnny the Jolly Juggler, who can spin all the Six Counties and make them appear like thirty-eight! Philomena the Fabulous, who can change Terrorists into Freedom Fighters. And of course the Ringmaster himself, who pretends to be in charge. Oh, and don’t forget the Clown, who can make us all laugh.’
    She often cried at that point. Real tears that came unwanted, without performance, without any whip cracked. She didn’t have to say that she was the clown, covering herself with paint and flour and water, walking about with her courageous bravado, in her over-large shoes, her dotted costume, with her bucket and sponge.
    On and off, Sergio was her boyfriend, though neither of them ever revealed how they came to be an item, as the saying has it. Maybe it really was as simple as it looked: as if these two young people had bumped into each other in this kitchen, had talked to each other, and became lovers.
    Sergio the potato-peeler was a unique breed in the kitchen. While everyone else, Archie and Angelina included, had to be Jacks and Jills of all trades (obviously the restaurant manager, in his weekly briefing, called it ‘multi-skilling’) Sergio was given an exemption. Some said – and this was just a complete pack of lies – that he was given preferential treatment because Luigi (the restaurant manager) fancied him. Others said that he was given the sole job of potato-peeling simply because he was too dull and stupid to do anything else, though still others argued that it was the very opposite, and that no one else in the whole wide world could peel potatoes so sharply, so swiftly, so accurately and so beautifully for so long.
    Which certainly looked like the truth, for to watch him for even a few seconds, potato in one hand and screw-knife in the other, was an utter joy. Like watching Einstein himself in that old newsreel, scrawling that stuff, E = M C 2 , so very rapidly in chalk on to the old blackboard. One moment the potato would be there, all lumpy and dirty-skinned, and the next, with what appeared to be a single flick of his right wrist, the peel was cascading off in exquisite loops and circles, like a ballerina’s leg when she does that swift rolling movement, the rond de jambe, which spins against gravity.
    ‘Hey, they should put him out front of house,’ all the kitchen staff bellowed. ‘What a joy that would be for the diners! An added attraction! A free extra! A bonus! An individual stamp of triumph for this restaurant! Value added!’
    Luigi was reluctant at first, but they persisted: ‘Don’t these foreign restaurants have fish tanks next to the dining tables for you to choose which fish you’ll have for your dinner? Go on, sweetie, darling, coochie-coochie-pie.’
    And then, appealing to his baser instincts, they all shouted, ‘You can dress him up nice and