White Teeth

corner pocket, is immediately disappointed to find the place is neither Irish nor a pool house. He will survey the carpeted walls, the reproductions of George Stubbs’s racehorse paintings, the framed fragments of some foreign, Eastern script, with not a little confusion. He will look for a snooker table and find instead a tall, brown man with terrible acne standing behind a counter, frying up eggs and mushrooms. His eye will land with suspicion upon an Irish flag and a map of the Arab Emirates knotted together and hung from wall to wall, partitioning him from the rest of the customers. Then he will become aware of several pairs of eyes upon him, some condescending, some incredulous; the hapless stranger will stumble out, warily, backwards, knocking over the life-size cut-out of Viv Richards as he goes. The customers will laugh. O’Connell’s is no place for strangers.

O’Connell’s is the kind of place family men come to for a different kind of family. Unlike blood relations, it is necessary here to earn one’s position in the community; it takes years of devoted fucking around, time-wasting, laying-about, shooting the breeze, watching paint dry – far more dedication than men invest in the careless moment of procreation. You need to know the place. For example, there are reasons why O’Connell’s is an Irish pool house run by Arabs with no pool tables. And there are reasons why the pustule-covered Mickey will cook you chips, egg and beans, or egg, chips and beans, or beans, chips, eggs and mushrooms but not, under any circumstances, chips, beans, eggs and bacon. But you need to hang around for that kind of information. We’ll get into that later. For now, suffice to say this is Archie’s and Samad’s home from home; for ten years they have come here between six (the time Archie finishes work) and eight (the time Samad starts) to discuss everything from the meaning of Revelation to the prices of plumbers. And women. Hypothetical women. If a woman walked past the yolk-stained window of O’Connell’s (a woman had never been known to venture inside) they would smile and speculate – depending on Samad’s religious sensibilities that evening – on matters as far reaching as whether one would kick her out of bed in a hurry, to the relative merits of stockings or tights, and then on, inevitably, to the great debate: small breasts (that stand up) vs big breasts (that flop to the sides). But there was never any question of real women, real flesh and blood and wet and sticky women. Not until now. And so the unprecedented events of the past few months called for an earlier O’Connell’s summit than usual. Samad had finally phoned Archie and confessed the whole terrible mess: he had cheated, he was cheating; he had been seen by the children and now he was seeing the children, like visions, day and night. Archie had been silent for a bit, and then said, ‘Bloody hell. Four o’clock it is, then. Bloody hell.’ He was like that, Archie. Calm in a crisis.

But come 4.15 and still no sign of him, a desperate Samad had chewed every fingernail he possessed to the cuticle and collapsed on the counter, nose squished up against the hot glass where the battered burgers were kept, eye to eye with a postcard showing the eight different local charms of County Antrim.

Mickey, chef, waiter and proprietor, who prided himself on knowing each customer’s name and knowing when each customer was out of sorts, prised Samad’s face off the hot glass with an egg slice.

‘Oi.’

‘Hello, Mickey, how are you?’

‘Same old, same old. But enough about me. What’s the fucking matter wiv you, mate. Eh? Eh? I’ve been watching you, Sammy, since the minute you stepped in here. Face as long as shit. Tell your uncle Mickey.’

Samad groaned.

‘Oi. No. None of that. You know me. I’m the sympathetic side of the service industry, I’m service with a fucking smile, I’d wear a little red tie and a little red hat like them fuckwits in Mr Burger if my fuckin’ head weren’t so big.’

This was not a metaphor. Mickey had a very large head, almost as if his acne had demanded more room and received planning permission.

‘What’s the problem?’

Samad looked up at Mickey’s big red head.

‘I am just waiting for Archibald, Mickey. Please, do not concern yourself. I will be fine.’

‘ ’Sbit early, innit?’

‘Pardon?’

Mickey checked the clock behind him, the one with the palaeolithic piece of encrusted egg on the dial. ‘I say ’Sbit early, innit? For you and the Archie-boy. Six is when I expect you. One chips, beans, egg and mushroom. And one omelette and mushrooms. With seasonal variations, naturally.’

Samad sighed. ‘We have much to discuss.’

Mickey rolled his eyes. ‘You ain’t starting on that Mangy Pandy whateverthefuckitis again, are you? Who shot who, and who hung who, my grandad ruled the Pakis or whateverthefuckitwas, as if any poor fucker gives a flying fuck. You’re driving the custom away. You’re creating – ’ Mickey flicked through his new bible, Food for Thought: A Guideline for Employers and Employees Working in the Food Service Industry – Customer Strategy and Consumer Relations. ‘You’re creating a repetitive syndrome that puts all these buggers off their culinary experience.’

‘No, no. My great-grandfather is not up for discussion today. We have other business.’

‘Well, thank fuck. Repetitive syndrome is what it is.’ Mickey patted his book, affectionately. ‘ ’Sall in ’ere, mate. Best four ninety-five I ever spent. Talking of moolah, you ’aving a flutter today?’ asked Mickey, signalling downstairs.

‘I am a Muslim, Mickey, I don’t indulge any more.’

‘Well, obviously, yeah, we’re all Brothers – but a man’s gotta live, now. Hasn’t he? I mean, hasn’t he?’

‘I don’t know, Mickey, does he?’

Mickey slapped Samad firmly on the back. ‘ ’Course he does! I was saying to my brother Abdul-’

‘Which Abdul?’

It was a tradition, both in Mickey’s wider and nuclear family, to name all sons Abdul to teach them the vanity of assuming higher status than any other man, which was all very well and good but tended to cause confusion in the formative years. However, children are creative, and all the many Abduls added an English name as a kind of buffer to the first.

‘Abdul-Colin.’

‘Right.’

‘So, you know Abdul-Colin went a bit fundamental – EGGS, BEANS, CHIPS, TOAST – big fucking beard, no pig, no drink, no pussy, the fuckin’ works, mate – there you are, guvnor.’

Abdul-Mickey pushed a plate of festering carbohydrate to a sunken old man whose trousers were so high up his body they were gradually swallowing him whole.

‘Well, where do you think I slap eyes on Abdul-Colin last week? Only in the Mickey Finn, down Harrow Road way, and I says, “Oi, Abdul-Colin, this is a fucking turn-up for the fucking books” and he says, all solemn, you know, all fully bearded, he says-’

‘Mickey, Mickey – do you mind very much if we leave the story for later… it is just that…’

‘No, fine, fine. Wish I knew why the fuck I bother.’

‘If you could possibly tell Archibald I am sitting in the booth behind the pinball when he comes in. Oh, and my usual.’

‘No problemo, mate.’

About ten minutes later the door went and Mickey looked up from Chapter 6, ‘There’s a Fly in My Soup: Dealing with Frameworks of Hostility Regarding Health Issues’, to see Archibald Jones, cheap suitcase in hand, approaching the counter.

‘All right, Arch. How’s the folding business?’

‘Oh, you know. Comme si, comme sar. Samad about?’

‘Is he about? Is he about? He’s been hanging round like a bad fucking smell for half a fucking hour. Face as long as shit. Someone wants to get a Poop-a-Scoop and clean him up.’

Archie put his suitcase on the counter and furrowed his brow. ‘In a bad way, is he? Between you and me, Mickey, I’m really worried about him.’