White Teeth

And so she calmed herself, putting her hand over her palpitating chest and breathing deeply as the bus approached the square and the pigeons circled. She would tell one of them and not the other; she would decide which; she would do it tonight.

‘You all right, love?’ Archie asked her, after a long period of silence had set in, putting his big pink hand on her knee, dotted with liver-spots like tea stains. ‘A lot on your chest, then.’

‘Fine, Dad. I’m fine.’

Archie smiled at her, and tucked a stray hair behind her ear.

‘Dad.’

‘Yes?’

‘The thing about the bus tickets.’

‘Yes?’

‘One theory goes it’s because so many people pay less than they should for their journey. Over the past few years the bus companies have been suffering from larger and larger deficits. You see where it says Retain for Inspection? That’s so they can check later. It’s got all the details there, so you can’t get away with it.’

And in the past, Archie wondered, was it just that fewer people cheated? Were they more honest, and did they leave their front doors open, did they leave their kids with the neighbours, pay social calls, run up tabs with the butcher? The funny thing about getting old in a country is people always want to hear that from you. They want to hear it really was once a green and pleasant land. They need it. Archie wondered if his daughter needed it. She was looking at him funny. Her mouth down-turned, her eyes almost pleading. But what could he tell her? New Years come and go, but no amount of resolutions seem to change the fact that there are bad blokes. There were always plenty of bad blokes.

‘When I was a kid,’ said Irie softly, ringing the bell for their stop, ‘I used to think they were little alibis. Bus tickets. I mean, look: they’ve got the time. The date. The place. And if I was up in court, and I had to defend myself, and prove I wasn’t where they said I was, doing what they said I did, when they said I did it, I’d pull out one of those.’

Archie was silent and Irie, assuming the conversation was over, was surprised when several minutes later, after they had struggled through the happy New Year crowd and tourists standing round aimlessly, as they were walking up the steps of the Perret Institute, her father said, ‘Now, I never thought of that. I’ll remember that. Because you never know, do you? I mean, do you? Well. There’s a thought. You should pick them up off the street, I suppose. Put ’em all in a jar. An alibi for every occasion.’

And all these people are heading for the same room. The final space. A big room, one of many in the Perret Institute; a room separate from the exhibition yet called an Exhibition Room; a corporate place, a clean slate; white/chrome/pure/plain (this was the design brief) used for the meetings of people who want to meet somewhere neutral at the end of the twentieth century; a virtual place where their business (be that rebranding, lingerie or rebranding lingerie) can be done in an emptiness, an uncontaminated cavity; the logical endpoint of a thousand years of spaces too crowded and bloody. This one is pared down, sterilized, made new every day by a Nigerian cleaning lady with an industrial Hoover and guarded through the night by Mr De Winter, a Polish nightwatchman (that’s what he calls himself – his job title is Asset Security Coordinator); he can be seen protecting the space, walking the borders of the space with a Walkman playing Polish folk-tunes; you can see him, you can see it through a huge glass front if you walk by – the acres of protected vacuity and a sign with the prices per square foot of these square feet of space of space of space longer than it is wide and tall enough to fit head-to-toe three Archies and at least half an Alsana and tonight there are (there will not be tomorrow) two huge, matching posters, slick across two sides of the room like wallpaper and the text says MILLENNIAL SCIENCE COMMISSION in a wide variety of fonts ranging from the deliberate archaism of VIKING to the modernity of IMPACT in order to get a feel of a thousand years in lettering (this was the brief), and all of it in the alternate colours grey, light blue and dark green because these are the colours research reveals people associate with ‘science and technology’ (purples and reds denote the arts, royal blue signifies ‘quality and/or approved merchandise’), because fortunately after years of corporate synaesthesia (salt amp; vinegarblue, cheese amp; oniongreen) people can finally give the answers required when a space is being designed, or when something is being rebranded, a room/furniture/Britain (that was the brief: a new British room, a space for Britain, Britishness, space of Britain, British industrial space cultural space space); they know what is meant when asked how matt chrome makes them feel; and they know what is meant by national identity? symbols? paintings? maps? music? air-conditioning? smiling black children or smiling Chinese children or [tick the box]? world music? shag or pile? tile or floorboards? plants? running water? they know what they want, especially those who’ve lived this century, forced from one space to another like Mr De Winter (ne Wojciech), renamed, rebranded, the answer to every questionnaire nothing nothing space please just space nothing please nothing space

20 Of Mice and Memory

It’s just like on TV! And that is the most superlative compliment Archie can think of for any real-life event. Except this is just like on TV but better. It’s very modern. It’s so well designed you wouldn’t want to breathe in it, no matter fart in it. There’s these chairs, plastic but without legs, curved like an s; they seem to work by means of their own fold; and they fit together, about two hundred of them in ten rows; and they snake around you when you sit in them – soft yet supportive! Comfy! Modern! And you’ve got to admire folding like that, Archie thinks, lowering himself into one, a far higher level of folding than he’d ever been involved with. Very nice.

The other thing that makes it all better than TV is it’s full of people Archie knows. There’s Millboid at the very back (scoundrel), with Abdul-Jimmy and Abdul-Colin; Josh Chalfen nearer the middle, and Magid’s sitting up at the front with the Chalfen woman (Alsana won’t look at her, but Archie waves anyway because it’d be rude not to) and facing them all (near Archie – Archie’s got the best seat in the house) sits Marcus at a long long table, just like on T V, with microphones all over it, like a bloody swarm, the huge black abdomens of killer bees. Marcus is sitting next to four other blokes, three his age and one really old bloke, dry-looking – desiccated, if that’s the word. And they’ve all got glasses to a man, the way scientists do on the telly. No white coats, though. All very casual: V-necks, ties, loafers. Bit disappointing.

Now he’s seen a lot of these press conference larks, Archie has (weeping parents, missing child, or, conversely, if it was a foreign-orphan-scenario, weeping child, missing parents), but this is miles better because in the centre of the table is something quite interesting (which you don’t usually get on TV, just the weeping people): a mouse. Quite a plain mouse, brown, and not with any other mice, but it’s very active, scurrying around in this glass box that’s about as big as a television with airholes. Archie was a bit worried when he first saw it (seven years in a glass box!), but it turns out it’s temporary, just for the photographs. Irie explained there’s this huge thing for it in the Institute, full of pipes and secret places, space upon space, so it won’t get too bored, and it’ll be transferred there later. So that’s all right. He’s a cunning-looking little blinder too, this mouse. He looks like he’s pulling faces a lot of the time. You forget how alert looking mice are. Terrible trouble to look after, of course. That’s why he never got one for Irie when she was small. Goldfish are cleaner – with shorter memories. In Archie’s experience anything with a long memory holds a grievance and a pet with a grievance (that time you got the wrong food, that time you bathed me) just isn’t what you want.

‘Oh, you’re right there,’ agrees Abdul-Mickey, plonking himself down in the seat next to Archie, betraying no reverence for the legless chair. ‘You don’t want some resentful fucking rodent on your hands.’

Archie smiles. Mickey’s the kind of guy you want to watch the footie with, or the cricket, or if you see a fight in the street you want him to be there, because he’s kind of a commentator on life. Kind of a philosopher. He’s quite frustrated in his daily existence because he doesn’t get much opportunity to show that side of himself. But get him free of his apron and away from the oven, give him space to manoeuvre – he really comes