White Teeth

something where something else was meant to be. ‘They need each other like Laurel and Hardy, like Crick needed Watson-’

‘Like East Pakistan needed West Pakistan.’

‘Well, I don’t think that’s very funny, Irie.’

‘I’m not laughing, Joyce.’

Joyce cut more cheese from the block, tore two hunks of bread from a loaf, and sandwiched the three together.

‘The fact is both these boys have serious emotional problems and it’s not helped by Millat refusing to see Magid. It upsets him so much. They’ve been split by their religions, by their cultures. Can you imagine the trauma?’

Irie wished at that moment she had allowed Magid to tell her to tell her to tell her. She would at least have had information. She would have had something to use against Joyce. Because if you listen to prophets, they give you ammunition. The nature of twins. The millionth position of pi (do infinite numbers have beginnings?). And most of all, the double meaning of the word cleave. Did he know which was worse, which more traumatic: pulling together or tearing apart?

‘Joyce, why don’t you worry about your own family for once? Just for a change. What about Josh? When’s the last time you saw Josh?’

Joyce’s upper lip stiffened. ‘Josh is in Glastonbury.’

‘Right. Glastonbury’s been over two months, Joyce.’

‘He’s doing a little travelling. He said he might.’

‘And who’s he with? You don’t know anything about those people. Why don’t you worry about that for a while, and keep the fuck out of everybody else’s business.’

Joyce didn’t even flinch at this. It is hard to explain just how familiar teenage abuse was to Joyce; she got it so regularly these days from her own children and other people’s that a swear-word or a cruel comment just couldn’t affect her. She simply weeded them out.

‘The reason I don’t worry about Josh, as you well know,’ said Joyce, smiling broadly and speaking in her Chalfen-guide-to-parenting voice, ‘is because he’s just trying to get a little bit of attention. Rather like you are at this moment. It’s perfectly natural for well-educated middle-class children to act up at his age.’ (Unlike many others around this time, Joyce felt no shame about using the term ‘middle class’. In the Chalfen lexicon the middle classes were the inheritors of the enlightenment, the creators of the welfare state, the intellectual elite and the source of all culture. Where they got this idea, it’s hard to say.) ‘But they soon come back into the fold. I’m perfectly confident about Joshua. He’s just acting up against his father and it will pass. But Magid has some real problems. I’ve been doing my research, Irie. And there are just so many signs. I can read them.’

‘Well, you must be misreading them,’ Irie shot back, because a battle was about to begin, she could sense it. ‘Magid’s fine. I was just talking to him. He’s a Zen master. He’s the most fucking serene individual I ever met in my life. He’s working with Marcus, which is what he wants to do, and he’s happy. How about we all try a policy of non- involvement for once? A little laissez-faire? Magid’s fine.’

‘Irie, darling,’ said Joyce, moving Irie along one chair and positioning herself next to the phone. ‘What you never understand is that people are extreme. It would be wonderful if everyone was like your father, carrying on as normal even if the ceiling’s coming down around his ears. But a lot of people can’t do that. Magid and Millat display extreme behaviour. It’s all very well saying laissez-faire and being terribly clever about it, but the bottom line is Millat’s going to get himself into terrible trouble with these fundamentalist people. Terrible trouble. I hardly sleep for worrying about him. You read about these groups in the news… And it’s putting a terrible mental strain on Magid. Now, am I meant to just sit back and watch them tear themselves apart, just because their parents – no, I will say it, because it’s true – just because their parents don’t seem concerned? I’ve only ever had those boys’ welfare at heart, you of all people should know that. They need help. I just walked past the bathroom and Magid is sitting in the bath with his jeans on. Yes. All right? Now,’ said Joyce, serene as a bovine, ‘I should think I know a traumatized child when I see one.’

17 Crisis Talks and Eleventh-hour Tactics

‘Mrs Iqbal? It’s Joyce Chalfen. Mrs Iqbal? I can see you quite clearly. It’s Joyce. I really think we should talk. Could you… umm… open the door?’

Yes, she could. Theoretically, she could. But in this atmosphere of extremity, with warring sons and disparate factions, Alsana needed a tactic of her own. She’d done silence, and word-strikes and food consumption (the opposite of a hunger-strike; one gets bigger in order to intimidate the enemy), and now she was attempting a sit-down protest.

‘Mrs Iqbal… just five minutes of your time. Magid’s really very upset about all of this. He’s worried about Millat and so am I. Just five minutes, Mrs Iqbal, please.’

Alsana didn’t rise from her seat. She simply continued along the hem, keeping her eye on the black thread as it shuttled from one cog to the next and down into the PVC, pressing the pedal of the Singer furiously, as if kicking the flank of a horse she wished to ride into the sunset.

‘Well, you may as well let her in,’ said Samad wearily, emerging from the lounge, where Joyce’s persistence had disturbed his appreciation of The Antiques Roadshow. (Aside from The Equalizer, starring that great moral arbiter Edward Woodward, it was Samad’s favourite programme. He had spent fifteen long televisual years waiting for some cockney housewife to pull a trinket of Mangal Pande’s out of her handbag. Oh, Mrs Winterbottom, now this is very exciting. What we have here is the barrel of the musket belonging to.. . He sat with the phone under his right hand so that in the event of such a scenario he could phone the BBC and demand the said Winterbottom’s address and asking price. So far only Mutiny medals and a pocket watch belonging to Havelock, but still he watched.)

He peered down the hallway at the shadowy form of Joyce through the glass and scratched his testicles, sadly. Samad was in his television mode: garish V-neck, stomach swelling like a tight hot-water bottle beneath it, long moth-eaten dressing gown, and a pair of paisley boxer-shorts from which two stick legs, the legacy of his youth, protruded. In his television mode action escaped him. The box in the corner of the room (which he liked to think of as an antique of its kind, encased in wood and on four legs like some Victorian robot) sucked him in and sapped all energy.

‘Well, why don’t you do something, Mr Iqbal? Make her go away. Instead of standing there with your flabby gut and your tiny willy on display.’

Samad grunted and tucked the cause of all his troubles, two huge hairy balls and a defeated- looking limp prick, back into the inner lining of his shorts.

‘She won’t go away,’ he murmured. ‘And if she does, she will only return with reinforcements.’

‘But why? Hasn’t she caused enough trouble?’ said Alsana loudly, loud enough for Joyce. ‘She has her own family, no? Why does she not go and for a change mess them up? She has boys, four boys? How many boys does she want? How bloody many?’

Samad shrugged, went into the kitchen drawer and fished out the earphones that could be plugged into the television and thus short-circuit the outside world. He, like Marcus, had disengaged. Leave them, was his feeling. Leave them to their battles.

‘Oh thank you,’ said Alsana caustically, as her husband retreated to his Hugh Scully and his pots and guns. ‘Thank you, Samad Miah, for your oh so valuable contribution. This is what the men do. They make the mess, the century ends, and they leave the women to clear up the shit. Thank you,