White Teeth

Joely retrieved the box from the floor. She worked crouching with the Rizla resting on Joshua’s knee, her long neck exposed, her breasts falling forward until they were practically in his hands.

‘Are you nervous?’ she asked him, flicking her head back once the joint was rolled.

‘How d’you mean, nervous?’

‘About tonight. I mean, talk about conflict of loyalties.’

‘Conflict?’ murmured Josh hazily, wishing he were out there with the happy people, the conflict-free people, the New Year people.

‘God, I really admire you. I mean, FATE are dedicated to extreme action… And you know, even now, I find some of the stuff we do… difficult. And we’re talking about the most firmly held principle in my life, you know? I mean, Crispin and FATE… that’s my whole life.’

OH GREAT, thought Joshua, OH FANTASTIC.

‘And I’m still shit scared about tonight.’

Joely sparked the joint and inhaled. She passed it straight to Joshua, as the minibus took a right past Parliament. ‘It’s like that quote: “If I had to choose between betraying my friend or my country, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” The choice between a duty or a principle, you know? You see, I don’t feel torn like that. I don’t know if I could do what I do if I did. I mean, if it was my father. My first commitment is to animals and that’s Crispin’s first commitment too, so there’s no conflict. It’s kind of easy for us. But you, Joshi, you’ve made the most extreme decision out of us all… and you just seem so calm. I mean, it’s admirable… and I think you’ve really impressed Crispin, because you know, he was a little unsure about whether…’

Joely kept on talking, and Josh kept on nodding in the necessary places, but the hardcore Thai weed he was smoking had lassoed one word of hers – calm – and reined it in as a question. Why so calm, Joshi? You’re about to get into some pretty serious shit – why so calm?

Because he imagined he seemed calm from the outside, preternaturally calm, his adrenalin enjoying an inverse relationship with the rising New Year sap, with the jittery nerves of the FATE posse; and the effect of the skunk on top of it all… it was like walking under water, deep under water, while children played above. But it wasn’t calm so much as inertia. And he couldn’t work out, as the van progressed down Whitehall, whether this was the right reaction – to let the world wash over him, to let events take their course – or whether he should be more like those people, those people out there, whooping, dancing, fighting, fucking… whether he should be more – what was that horrible late twentieth- century tautology? Proactive. More proactive in the face of the future.

But he took another deep hit on the joint and it sent him back to twelve, being twelve; a precocious kid, waking up each morning fully expecting a twelve hours until nuclear apocalypse announcement, that old cheesy end-of-the-world scenario. Round that time he had thought a lot about extreme decisions, about the future and its deadlines. Even then it had struck him that he was unlikely to spend those last twelve hours fucking Alice the fifteen-year-old babysitter next door, telling people that he loved them, converting to orthodox Judaism, or doing all the things he wanted and all the things he never dared. It always seemed more likely to him, much more likely, that he would just return to his room and calmly finish constructing Lego Medieval Castle. What else could you do? What other choice could you be certain about? Because choices need time, the fullness of time, time being the horizontal axis of morality – you make a decision and then you wait and see, wait and see. And it’s a lovely fantasy, this fantasy of no time (TWELVE HOURS LEFT TWELVE HOURS LEFT), the point at which consequences disappear and any action is allowable (‘I’m mad – I’m fucking mad for it!’ came the cry from the street). But twelve-year-old Josh was too neurotic, too anal, too Chalfenist to enjoy it, even the thought of it. Instead he was there thinking: but what if the world doesn’t end and what if I fucked Alice Rodwell and she became pregnant and what if-

It was the same now. Always the fear of consequences. Always this terrible inertia. What he was about to do to his father was so huge, so colossal, that the consequences were inconceivable – he couldn’t imagine a moment occurring after that act. Only blankness. Nothingness. Something like the end of the world. And facing the end of the world, or even just the end of the year, had always given Josh a strangely detached feeling.

Every New Year’s Eve is impending apocalypse in miniature. You fuck where you want, you puke when you want, you glass who you want to glass – the huge gatherings in the street; the television round- ups of the goodies and baddies of time past; the frantic final kisses; the 10! 9! 8!

Joshua glared up and down Whitehall, at the happy people going about their dress rehearsal. They were all confident that it wouldn’t happen or certain they could deal with it if it did. But the world happens to you, thought Joshua, you don’t happen to the world. There’s nothing you can do. For the first time in his life, he truly believed that. And Marcus Chalfen believed the direct opposite. And there in a nutshell, he realized, is how I got here, turning out of Westminster, watching Big Ben approach the hour when I shall topple my father’s house. That is how we all got here. Between rocks and hard places. The frying pan and the fire.

Thursday, December 31 ^st 1992, New Year’s Eve

Signalling problems at Baker Street

No Southbound Jubilee Line Trains from Baker Street

Customers are advised to change on to the Metropolitan Line at Finchley Road

Or Change at Baker Street on to the Bakerloo

There is no alternative bus service

Last Train 02.00 hours

All London Underground staff wish you a safe and happy New Year!

Willesden Green Station Manager, Richard Daley

Brothers Millat, Hifan, Tyrone, Mo Hussein-Ishmael, Shiva, Abdul-Colin and Abdul-Jimmy stood stock-still like maypoles in the middle of the station while the dance of the New Year went on around them.

‘Great,’ said Millat. ‘What do we do now?’

‘Can’t you read?’ inquired Abdul-Jimmy.

‘We do what the board suggests, Brothers,’ said Abdul-Colin, short-circuiting any argument with his deep, calming baritone. ‘We change at Finchley Road. Allah provides.’

The reason Millat couldn’t read the writing on the wall was simple. He was stoned. It was the second day of Ramadan and he was cained. Every synapse in his body had clocked out for the evening and gone home. But there was still some conscientious worker going round the treadmill of his brain, ensuring one thought circulated in his skull: Why? Why get stoned, Millat? Why? Good question.

At midday he’d found an ageing eighth of hash in a drawer, a little bundle of cellophane he hadn’t had the heart to throw away six months ago. And he smoked it all. He smoked some of it out of his bedroom window. Then he walked to Gladstone Park and smoked some more. He smoked the great majority of it in the car park of Willesden Library. He finished it off in the student kitchen of one Warren Chapman, a South African skateboarder he used to hang with back in the day. And as a result, he was so cained now, standing on the