White Teeth

30 per cent of his social and cultural circle was under the age of nine – and this all led, inevitably, to the position he now found himself in. He was a parent-governor.

By a strange process of symmetry, being a parent-governor perfectly mirrors the process of becoming a parent. It starts innocently. Casually. You turn up at the annual Spring Fair full of beans, help with the raffle tickets (because the pretty red-haired music teacher asks you to) and win a bottle of whisky (all school raffles are fixed), and, before you know where you are, you’re turning up at the weekly school council meetings, organizing concerts, discussing plans for a new music department, donating funds for the rejuvenation of the water-fountains – you’re implicated in the school, you’re involved in it. Sooner or later you stop dropping your child at the school gates. You start following them in.

‘Put your hand down.’

‘I will not put it down.’

‘Put it down, please.’

‘Let go of me.’

‘Samad, why are you so eager to mortify me? Put it down.’

‘I have an opinion. I have a right to an opinion. And I have a right to express that opinion.’

‘Yes, but do you have to express it so often?’

This was the hissed exchange between Samad and Alsana Iqbal, as they sat at the back of a Wednesday school governors meeting in early July ’84, Alsana trying her best to force Samad’s determined left arm back to his side.

‘Get off, woman!’

Alsana put her two tiny hands to his wrist and tried applying a Chinese burn. ‘Samad Miah, can’t you understand that I am only trying to save you from yourself?’

As the covert wrestling continued, the chairwoman Katie Miniver, a lanky white divorcee with tight jeans, extremely curly hair and buck teeth, tried desperately to avoid Samad’s eye. She silently cursed Mrs Hanson, the fat lady just behind him, who was speaking about the woodworm in the school orchard, inadvertently making it impossible to pretend that Samad’s persistent raised hand had gone unseen. Sooner or later she was going to have to let him speak. In between nodding at Mrs Hanson, she snatched a surreptitious glance at the minutes which the secretary, Mrs Khilnani, was scribbling away on her left. She wanted to check that it was not her imagination, that she was not being unfair or undemocratic, or worse still racist (but she had read Colour Blind, a seminal leaflet from the Rainbow Coalition, she had scored well on the self-test), racist in ways that were so deeply ingrained and socially determining that they escaped her attention. But no, no. She wasn’t crazy. Any random extract highlighted the problem:

13.0 Mrs Janet Trott wishes to propose a second climbing frame be built in the playground to accommodate the large number of children who enjoy the present climbing frame but unfortunately have made it a safety risk through dangerous overcrowding. Mrs Trott’s husband, the architect Hanover Trott, is willing to design and oversee the building of such a frame at no cost to the school.

13.1 Chairwoman can see no objection. Moves to put the proposition to a vote.

13.2 Mr Iqbal wishes to know why the Western education system privileges activity of the body over activity of the mind and soul.

13.3 The Chairwoman wonders if this is quite relevant.

13.4 Mr Iqbal demands the vote be delayed until he can present a paper detailing the main arguments and emphasizes that his sons, Magid and Millat, get all the exercise they need via headstands that strengthen the muscles and send blood to stimulate the somatosensory cortex in the brain.

13.5 Mrs Wolfe asks whether Mr Iqbal expects her Susan to undertake compulsory headstands.

13.6 Mr Iqbal infers that, considering Susan’s academic performance and weight problems, a headstand regime might be desirable.

‘Yes, Mr Iqbal?’

Samad forcefully removed Alsana’s fingers from the clamp grip they had assumed on his lapel, stood up quite unnecessarily and sorted through a number of papers he had on a clipboard, removing the one he wanted and holding it out before him.

‘Yes, yes. I have a motion. I have a motion.’

The subtlest manifestation of a groan went round the group of governors, followed by a short period of shifting, scratching, leg-crossing, bag-rifling and the repositioning of coats-on-chairs.

‘Another one, Mr Iqbal?’

‘Oh yes, Mrs Miniver.’

‘Only you’ve tabled twelve motions already this evening; I think possibly somebody else-’

‘Oh, it is much too important to be delayed, Mrs Miniver. Now, if I can just-’

‘Ms Miniver.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘It’s just… it’s Ms Miniver. All evening you’ve been… and it’s, umm… actually not Mrs. It’s Ms. Ms.’

Samad looked quizzically at Katie Miniver, then at his papers as if to find the answer there, then at the beleaguered chairwoman again.

‘I’m sorry? You are not married?’

‘Divorced, actually, yes, divorced. I’m keeping the name.’

‘I see. You have my condolences, Miss Miniver. Now, the matter I-’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Katie, pulling her fingers through her intractable hair. ‘Umm, it’s not Miss, either. I’m sorry. I have been married you see, so-’

Ellen Corcoran and Janine Lanzerano, two friends from the Women’s Action Group, gave Katie a supportive smile. Ellen shook her head to indicate that Katie mustn’t cry (because you’re doing well, really well); Janine mouthed Go On and gave her a furtive thumbs-up.

‘I really wouldn’t feel comforta – I just feel marital status shouldn’t be an issue – it’s not that I want to embarrass you, Mr Iqbal. I just would feel more – if you – it’s Ms.’

‘Mzzz?’

‘Ms.’

‘And this is some kind of linguistic conflation between the words Mrs and Miss?’ asked Samad, genuinely curious and oblivious to the nether wobblings of Katie Miniver’s bottom lip. ‘Something to describe the woman who has either lost her husband or has no prospect of finding another?’

Alsana groaned and put her head in her hands.

Samad looked at his clipboard, underlined something in pen three times and turned to the parent-governors once more.

‘The Harvest Festival.’

Shifting, scratching, leg-crossing, coat-repositioning.