White Teeth

air fare? And who wants to live in a shack with fourteen servants on the payroll? Who knows what Shiva Bagwhati would have turned out like back in Calcutta? Prince or pauper? And who,’ said Shiva, some of his old beauty returning to his face, ‘can pull the West out of ’em once it’s in?’

Samad continued to pace. ‘I should never have come here – that’s where every problem has come from. Never should have brought my sons here, so far from God. Willesden Green! Callingcards in sweetshop windows, Judy Blume in the school, condom on the pavement, Harvest Festival, teacher-temptresses!’ roared Samad, picking items at random. ‘Shiva – I tell you, in confidence: my dearest friend, Archibald Jones, is an unbeliever! Now: what kind of a model am I for my children?’

‘Iqbal, sit down. Be calm. Listen: you just want somebody. People want people. It happens from Delhi to Deptford. And it’s not the end of the world.’

‘Of this, I wish I could be certain.’

‘When are you next seeing her?’

‘We are meeting for school-related business… the first Wednesday of September.’

‘I see. Is she Hindu? Muslim? She ain’t Sikh, is she?’

‘That is the worst of it,’ said Samad, his voice breaking. ‘English. White. English.’

Shiva shook his head. ‘I been out with a lot of white birds, Samad. A lot. Sometimes it’s worked, sometimes it ain’t. Two lovely American girls. Fell head-over-heels for a Parisian stunner. Even spent a year with a Romanian. But never an English girl. Never works. Never.’

‘Why?’ asked Samad, attacking his thumbnail with his teeth and awaiting some fearful answer, some edict from on high. ‘Why not, Shiva Bhagwati?’

‘Too much history,’ was Shiva’s enigmatic answer, as he dished up the Chicken Bhuna. ‘Too much bloody history.’

8.30 a.m., the first Wednesday of September, 1984. Samad, lost in thought somewhat, heard the passenger door of his Austin Mini Metro open and close – far away in the real world – and turned to his left to find Millat climbing in next to him. Or at least a Millat-shaped thing from the neck down: the head replaced by a Tomytronic – a basic computer game that looked like a large pair of binoculars. Within it, Samad knew from experience, a little red car that represented his son was racing a green car and a yellow car along a three-dimensional road of l.e.d.’s.

Millat parked his tiny backside on the brown plastic seat. ‘Ooh! Cold seat! Cold seat! Frozen bum!’

‘Millat, where are Magid and Irie?’

‘Coming.’

‘Coming with the speed of a train or coming with the speed of a snail?’

‘Eeek!’ squealed Millat, in response to a virtual blockade that threatened to send his red car spinning off into oblivion.

‘Please, Millat. Take this off.’

‘Can’t. Need one, oh, two, seven, three points.’

‘Millat, you need to begin to understand numbers. Repeat: ten thousand, two hundred and seventy-three.’

‘Men blousand, poo bumdred and weventy-wee.’

‘Take it off, Millat.’

‘Can’t. I’ll die. Do you want me to die, Abba?’

Samad wasn’t listening. It was imperative that he be at school before nine if this trip were going to have any purpose whatsoever. By nine, she’d be in class. By nine-oh-two, she’d be opening the register with those long fingers, by nine-oh-three she’d be tapping her high-mooned nails on a wooden desk somewhere out of sight.

‘Where are they? Do they want to be late for school?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Are they always this late?’ asked Samad, for this was not his regular routine – the school run was usually Alsana’s or Clara’s assignment. It was for a glimpse of Burt-Jones (though their meeting was only seven hours and fifty-seven minutes away, seven hours and fifty-six minutes away, seven hours…) that he had undertaken the most odious parental responsibility in the book. And he’d had a hard time convincing Alsana there was nothing peculiar in this sudden desire to participate fully in the educational transportation of his and Archie’s offspring:

‘But Samad, you don’t get in the house ’til three in the morning. Are you going peculiar?’

‘I want to see my boys! I want to see Irie! Every morning they are growing up – I never see it! Two inches Millat has grown.’

‘But not at eight thirty in the morning. It is very funnily enough that he grows all the time – praise Allah! It must be some kind of a miracle. What is this about, hmm?’ She dug her fingernail into the overhang of his belly. ‘Some hokery-pokery. I can smell it – like goat’s tongue gone off.’

Ah, Alsana’s culinary nose for guilt, deceit and fear was without equal in the borough of Brent, and Samad was useless in the face of it. Did she know? Had she guessed? These anxieties Samad had slept on all night (when he wasn’t slapping the salami) and then brought to his car first thing so that he might take them out on his children.

‘Where in hell’s name are they?’

‘Hell’s bells!’

‘Millat!’

‘You swore,’ said Millat, taking lap fourteen and getting a five-oh-oh bonus for causing the combustion of Yellow Car. ‘You always do. So does M’ster Jones.’

‘Well, we have special swearing licences.’

Headless Millat needed no face to express his outrage. ‘NO SUCH THING AS-’

‘OK, OK, OK,’ back-pedalled Samad, knowing there is no joy to be had in arguing ontology with a nine-year-old, ‘I have been caught out. No such thing as a licence to swear. Millat, where’s your saxophone? You have orchestra today.’

‘In the boot,’ said Millat, his voice at once incredulous and disgusted: a man who didn’t know the saxophone went in the boot on Sunday night was some kind of a social retard. ‘Why’re you picking us up? M’ster Jones picks us up on Mondays. You don’t know anything about picking us up. Or taking us in.’

‘I’m sure somehow I will muddle through, thank you, Millat. It is hardly rocket science, after all. Where are those two!’ he shouted, beeping the horn, unhinged by his nine-year-old son’s ability to recognize the irregularity in his behaviour. ‘And will you please be taking that damn thing off!’ Samad made a grab for the Tomytronic and pulled it down around Millat’s neck.

‘YOU KILLED ME!’ Millat looked back in the Tomytronic, horrified, and just in time to witness his tiny red alter-ego swerving into the barriers and disappearing in a catastrophic light show of showering yellow sparks. ‘YOU KILLED ME WHEN I WAS WINNING!’

Samad closed his eyes and forced his eyeballs to roll up as far as possible in his head, in the hope that his brain might impact upon them, a self-blinding, if he could achieve it, on a par with that other victim of Western corruption, Oedipus. Think: I want another woman. Think: I’ve killed my son. I swear. I eat bacon. I regularly slap the salami. I drink Guinness. My best friend is a kaffir non-believer. I tell myself if I rub up and down without using hands it does not count. But oh it does count. It all counts on the great counting board of He who counts. What will happen come Mahshar? How will I absolve myself when the Last Judgement comes?

… Click-slam. Click-slam. One Magid, one Irie. Samad opened his eyes and looked in the rear-view mirror. In the back seat were the two children he had been waiting for: both with their little glasses, Irie with her wilful Afro (not a pretty child: she had got her genes mixed up, Archie’s nose with Clara’s awfully buck