White Teeth

straightened his green bow-tie and slunk forward like Liotta (all menace and charm) and pushed open the kitchen door (Ever since I can remember…), waiting for two pairs of eyes, like two of Scorsese’s cameras, to pan on to his face and focus.

‘Millat!’

‘Amma.’

‘Millat!’

‘Joyce.’

(Great, supwoib, so we all know each other, went Millat’s inner monologue in Paul Sorvino’s voice, Now let’s get down to business.)

‘All right, gentlemen. There is no reason to be alarmed. It is simply my son. Magid, Mickey. Mickey, Magid.’

O’Connell’s once more. Because Alsana had eventually conceded Joyce’s point, but did not care to dirty her hands. Instead, she demanded Samad take Magid ‘out somewhere’ and spend an evening persuading him into meeting with Millat. But the only ‘out’ Samad understood was O’Connell’s and the prospect of taking his son there was repellent. He and his wife had a thorough wrestle in the garden to settle the point, and he was confident of success until Alsana fooled him with a dummy trip, then an armlock-knee-groin combination. So here he was: O’Connell’s, and it was as bad a choice as he’d suspected. When he, Archie and Magid walked in, trying to make a low-key entrance, there had been widespread consternation amongst both staff and clientele. The last stranger anybody remembered arriving with Arch and Sam was Samad’s accountant, a small rat-faced man who tried to talk to people about their savings (as if people in O’Connell’s had savings!) and asked not once but twice for blood pudding, though it had been explained to him that pig was unavailable. That had been around 1987 and nobody had enjoyed it. And now what was this? A mere five years later and here comes another one, this time all dressed in white – insultingly clean for a Friday evening in O’Connell’s – and way below the unspoken minimum age requirement (thirty-six). What was Samad trying to do?

‘Whattareya tryin’ to do to us, Sammy?’ asked Johnny, a mournful-looking stick of an ex- Orangeman, who was leaning over the hot plate to collect some bubble and squeak. ‘Overrun us, are ya or sumthin?’

‘Oo ’im?’ demanded Denzel, who had not yet died.

‘Your batty bwoy?’ inquired Clarence, who was also, by God’s grace, hanging on in there.

‘All right, gentlemen. There is no reason to be alarmed. It is simply my son. Magid, Mickey. Mickey, Magid.’

Mickey looked a little dumbfounded by this introduction, and just stood there for a minute, a soggy fried egg hanging off his spatula.

‘Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim Iqbal,’ said Magid serenely. ‘It is a great honour to meet you, Michael. I have heard such a great deal about you.’

Which was odd, because Samad had never told him a thing.

Mickey continued to look over Magid’s shoulder to Samad for confirmation. ‘You what? You mean the one you, er, sent back ’ome? This is Magid?’

‘Yes, yes, this is Magid,’ replied Samad rapidly, pissed off by all the attention the boy was getting. ‘Now, Archibald and I will have our usuals and-’

‘Magid Iqbal,’ repeated Mickey slowly. ‘Well, I bloody never. You know you’d never guess you was an Iqbal. You’ve got a very trusting, well, kind of sympathetic face, if you get me.’

‘And yet I am an Iqbal, Michael,’ said Magid, laying that look of total empathy on Mickey and the other dregs of humanity huddled around the hot counter, ‘though I have been gone a long time.’

‘Say that again. Well, this is a turn-up for the books. I’ve got your… wait a minute, let me get this right… your great-great- grandfather up there, see?’

‘I noticed it the moment I came in, and I can assure you, Michael, my soul is very grateful for it,’ said Magid, beaming like an angel. ‘It makes me feel at home, and, as this place is dear to my father and his friend Archibald Jones I feel certain it shall also be dear to me. They have brought me here, I think, to discuss important matters, and I for one can think of no better place for them, despite your clearly debilitating skin condition.’

Mickey was simply bowled over by that, and could not conceal his pleasure, addressing his reply both to Magid and the rest of O’Connell’s.

‘Speaks fuckin’ nice, don’t he? Sounds like a right fuckin’ Olivier. Queen’s fucking English and no mistake. What a nice fella. You’re the kind of clientele I could do wiv in here, Magid, let me tell you. Civilized and that. And don’t you worry about my skin, it don’t get anywhere near the food and it don’t give me much trouble. Cor, what a gentleman. You do feel like you should watch your mouth around him, dontcha?’

‘Mine and Archibald’s usual, then, please, Mickey,’ said Samad. ‘I’ll leave my son to make up his mind. We will be over by the pinball.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Mickey, not bothering or able to turn his gaze from Magid’s dark eyes.

‘Dat a lovely suit you gat dere,’ murmured Denzel, stroking the white linen wistfully. ‘Dat’s what de Englishmen use ta wear back home in Jamaica, remember dat, Clarence?’

Clarence nodded slowly, dribbling a little, struck by the beatific.

‘Go on, get out of it, the pair of you,’ grumbled Mickey, shooing them away, ‘I’ll bring it over, all right? I want to talk to Magid here. Growing boy, he’s got to eat. So: what is it I can get you, Magid?’ Mickey leant over the counter, all concern, like an over-attentive shopgirl. ‘Eggs? Mushrooms? Beans? Fried slice?’

‘I think,’ replied Magid, slowly surveying the dusty chalkboard menus on the wall, and then turning back to Mickey, his face illumined, ‘I should like a bacon sandwich. Yes, that is it. I would love a juicy, yet well-done, tomato ketchup-ed bacon sandwich. On brown.’

Oh, the struggle that could be seen on Mickey’s kisser at that moment! Oh, the gargoylian contortions! It was a battle between the favour of the most refined customer he had ever had and the most hallowed, sacred rule of O’Connell’s Pool House. NO PORK.

Mickey’s left eye twitched.

‘Don’t want a nice plate of scrambled? I do a lovely scrambled eggs, don’t I, Johnny?’

‘I’d be a liar if I said ya didn’t,’ said Johnny loyally from his table, even though Mickey’s eggs were famously grey and stiff, ‘I’d be a terrible liar, on my mother’s life, I would.’

Magid wrinkled his nose and shook his head.

‘All right – what about mushrooms and beans? Omelette and chips? No better chips in the Finchley Road. Come on, son,’ he pleaded, desperate. ‘You’re a Muslim, int ya? You don’t want to break your father’s heart with a bacon sandwich.’

‘My father’s heart will not be broken by a bacon sandwich. It is far more likely that my father’s heart will break from the result of a build-up of saturated fat which is in turn a result of eating in your establishment for fifteen years. One wonders,’ said Magid evenly, ‘if a case could be made, a legal case, you understand, against individuals in the food service industry who fail to label their meals with a clear fat content or general health warning. One wonders.’

All this was delivered in the sweetest, most melodious voice, and with no hint of threat. Poor Mickey didn’t know what to make of it.

‘Well, of course,’ said Mickey nervously, ‘hypothetically that is an interesting question. Very interesting.’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Yeah, definitely.’

Mickey fell silent and spent a minute elaborately polishing the top of the hot plate, an activity he indulged in about once every ten years.

‘There. See your face in that. Now. Where were we?’