White Teeth

‘She just didn’t know you then.’

‘Well, we surprised her, didn’t we!’

‘A lot of hard copulation went into pleasing that woman!’

‘Four grandchildren later!’

During this exchange, Irie tried to concentrate on Oscar, now creating an ouroboros from a big pink elephant by stuffing the trunk into its own rear end. She’d never been so close to this strange and beautiful thing, the middle class, and experienced the kind of embarrassment that is actually intrigue, fascination. It was both strange and wondrous. She felt like the prude who walks through a nudist beach, examining the sand. She felt like Columbus meeting the exposed arawaks, not knowing where to look.

‘Excuse my parents,’ said Joshua. ‘They can’t keep their hands off each other.’

But even this was said with pride, because the Chalfen children knew their parents were rare creatures, a happily married couple, numbering no more than a dozen in the whole of Glenard Oak. Irie thought of her own parents, whose touches were now virtual, existing only in the absences where both sets of fingers had previously been: the remote control, the biscuit tin lid, the light switches.

She said, ‘It must be great to feel that way after twenty years or whatever.’

Joyce swivelled round as if someone had released a catch. ‘It’s marvellous! It’s incredible! You just wake up one morning and realize monogamy isn’t a bind – it sets you free! And children need to grow up around that. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced it – you read a lot about how Afro-Caribbeans seem to find it hard to establish long-term relationships. That’s terribly sad, isn’t it? I wrote about one Dominican woman in The Inner Life of Houseplants who had moved her potted azalea through six different men’s houses; once by the windowsill, then in a dark corner, then in the south-facing bedroom, etc. You just can’t do that to a plant.’

This was a classic Joyce tangent, and Marcus and Joshua rolled their eyes, affectionately.

Millat, fag finished, sloped back in.

‘Are we going to get some studying done, yeah? This is all very nice but I want to go out this evening. At some point.’

While Irie had been lost in her reveries assessing the Chalfens like a romantic anthropologist, Millat had been out in the garden, looking through the windows, casing the joint. Where Irie saw culture, refinement, class, intellect, Millat saw money, lazy money, money that was just hanging around this family not doing anything in particular, money in need of a good cause that might as well be him.

‘So,’ said Joyce, clapping her hands, trying to keep them all in the room a little longer, trying to hold off, for as long as possible, the reassertion of Chalfen silence, ‘you’re all going to be studying together! Well, you and Irie are really welcome. I was saying to your headmaster, wasn’t I, Marcus, that this really shouldn’t feel like punishment. It’s not exactly a heinous crime. Between us, I used to be a pretty good marijuana gardener myself at one time…’

‘Way out,’ said Millat.

Nurture, thought Joyce. Be patient, water regularly and don’t lose your temper when pruning.

‘… and your headmaster explained to us how your own home environments aren’t exactly… well… I’m sure you’ll find it easier to work here. Such an important year, the GCSEs. And it’s so obvious that you’re both bright – anyone can tell that just by looking at your eyes. Can’t they, Marcus?’

‘Josh, your mother’s asking me whether IQ expresses itself in the secondary physical characteristics of eye colour, eye shape, etc. Is there a sensible answer to this inquiry?’

Joyce pressed on. Mice and men, genes and germs, that was Marcus’s corner. Seedlings, light sources, growth, nurture, the buried heart of things – that was hers. As on any missionary vessel, tasks were delegated. Marcus on the prow, looking for the storm. Joyce beneath deck, checking the linen for bedbugs.

‘Your headmaster knows how much I hate to see potential wasted – that’s why he sent you to us.’

‘And because he knows most of the Chalfens are four hundred times smarter than him!’ said Jack, doing a star jump. He was still young and hadn’t yet learnt to demonstrate his pride in his family in a more socially acceptable manner. ‘Even Oscar is.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said Oscar, kicking in a Lego garage he had recently made. ‘I’m the stupidest in the world.’

‘Oscar’s got an IQ of 178,’ whispered Joyce. ‘It’s a bit daunting, even when you’re his mum.’

‘Wow,’ said Irie, turning, with the rest of the room, to appreciate Oscar trying to ingest the head of a plastic giraffe. ‘That’s remarkable.’

‘Yes, but he’s had everything, and so much of it is nurture, isn’t it? I really believe that. We’ve just been lucky enough to give him so much and with a daddy like Marcus – it’s like having a strong sunbeam shining on him twenty-four hours a day, isn’t it, darling? He’s so fortunate to have that. Well, they all are. Now, you may think this sounds strange, but it was always my aim to marry a man cleverer than me.’ Joyce put her hands on her hips and waited for Irie to think that sounded strange. ‘No, I really did. And I’m a staunch feminist, Marcus will tell you.’

‘She’s a staunch feminist,’ said Marcus from the inner sanctum of the fridge.

‘I don’t suppose you can understand that – your generation have different ideas – but I knew it would be liberating. And I knew what kind of father I wanted for my children. Now, that’s surprised you, hasn’t it? I’m sorry, but we really don’t do small talk around here. If you’re going to be here every week, I thought it best you got a proper dose of the Chalfens now.’

All the Chalfens who were in earshot for this last comment smiled and nodded.

Joyce paused and looked at Irie and Millat the way she had looked at her Garter Knight delphinium. She was a quick and experienced detector of illness, and there was damage here. There was a quiet pain in the first one (Irieanthus negressium marcusilia), a lack of a father figure perhaps, an intellect untapped, a low self-esteem; and in the second (Millaturea brandolidia joyculatus) there was a deeper sadness, a terrible loss, a gaping wound. A hole that needed more than education or money. That needed love. Joyce longed to touch the site with the tip of her Chalfen greenfinger, close the gap, knit the skin.

‘Can I ask? Your father? What does he -?’

(Joyce wondered what the parents did, what they had done. When she found a mutated first bloom, she wanted to know where the cutting had come from. Wrong question. It wasn’t the parents, it wasn’t just one generation, it was the whole century. Not the bud but the bush.)

‘Curry-shifter,’ said Millat. ‘Bus-boy. Waiter.’

‘Paper,’ began Irie. ‘Kind of folding it… and working on things like perforations… kind of direct mail advertising but not really advertising, at least not the ideas end… kind of folding – ’ She gave up. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

‘Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes. When there’s a lack of a male role model you see… that’s when things really go awry, in my experience. I wrote an article for Women’s Earth recently. I described a school I worked in where I gave all the children a potted Busy Lizzie and told them to look after it for a week like a daddy or mummy looks after a baby. Each child chose which parent they were going to emulate. This lovely little Jamaican boy, Winston, chose his daddy. The next week his mother phoned and asked why I’d asked Winston to feed his plant Pepsi and put it in front of the television. I mean, it’s just terrible, isn’t it. But I think a lot of these parents just don’t appreciate their children sufficiently. Partly, it’s the culture, you know? It just makes me so angry. The only thing I allow Oscar to watch is Newsround for half an hour a day. That’s more than enough.’

‘Lucky Oscar,’ said Millat.

‘Anyway, I’m just really excited about you being here because, because, the Chalfens, I mean – it may sound peculiar, but I really wanted to persuade your headmaster this was the best idea, and now I’ve met