White Teeth (29 page)

Samad slammed the boot down.

‘No pen knife, no edibles, no light sources. Bloody great. No prizes for guessing which one of the Iqbals is the war veteran. Nobody even thinks to pick up the Qurān. Key item in emergency situation: spiritual support. I am going back in there. Sit in the car and don’t move a muscle.’

Once in the kitchen Samad flashed his torch around: kettle, oven hob, teacup, curtain and then a surreal glimpse of the shed sitting happy like a treehouse in next door’s horsechestnut. He picked up the Swiss army knife he remembered leaving under the sink, collected his gold-plated, velvet-fringed Qurān from the living room and was about to leave when the temptation to feel the gale, to see a little of the formidable destruction, came over him. He waited for a lull in the wind and opened the kitchen door, moving tentatively into the garden, where a sheet of lightning lit up a scene of suburban apocalypse: oaks, cedars, sycamores, elms felled in garden after garden, fences down, garden furniture demolished. It was only his own garden, often ridiculed for its corrugated-iron surround, treeless interior and bed after bed of sickly smelling herbs, that had remained relatively intact.

He was just in the process of happily formulating some allegory regarding the bending Eastern reed versus the stubborn Western oak, when the wind reasserted itself, knocking him sideways and continuing along its path to the double glazing, which it cracked and exploded effortlessly, blowing glass inside, regurgitating everything from the kitchen out into the open air. Samad, a recently airborne collander resting on his ear, held his book tight to his chest and hurried to the car.

‘What are
you
doing in the driving seat?’

Alsana held on to the wheel firmly and talked to Millat via the rear-view mirror. ‘Will someone please tell my husband that
I
am going to drive.
I
grew up by the Bay of Bengal. I watched my mother drive through winds like these while my husband was poncing about in Delhi with a load of fairy college boys. I suggest my husband gets in the passenger seat and doesn’t fart unless I tell him to.’

Alsana drove at three miles an hour through the deserted, blacked-out high road while winds of 110 m.p.h. relentlessly battered the tops of the highest buildings.

‘England, this is meant to be! I moved to England so I wouldn’t have to do this. Never again will I trust that Mr Crab.’

‘Amma, it’s Mr Fish.’

‘From now on, he’s Mr Crab to me,’ snapped Alsana with a dark look. ‘BBC or no BBC.’

The lights
had
gone out at Archie’s, but the Jones household was prepared for every disastrous eventuality from tidal wave to nuclear fallout; by the time the Iqbals got there the place was lit with dozens of gas lamps, garden candles and night lights, the front door and windows had been speedily reinforced with hardboard, and the garden trees had their branches roped together.

‘It’s all about preparation,’ announced Archie, opening the door to the desperate Iqbals and their armfuls of belongings, like a DIY king welcoming the dispossessed. ‘I mean, you’ve got to protect your family, haven’t you? Not that you’ve failed in that depar — you know what I mean — ’sjust the way I see it: it’s me against the wind. If I’ve told you once, Ick-Ball, I’ve told you a million times:
check the supporting walls
. If they’re not in tip-top condition, you’re buggered, mate. You really are. And you’ve got to keep a pneumatic spanner in the house. Essential.’

‘That’s fascinating, Archibald. May we come in?’

Archie stepped aside. ‘ ’Course. Tell the truth, I was expecting you. You never did know a drill bit from a screw handle, Ick-Ball. Good with the theory, but never got the hang of the practicalities. Go on, up the stairs, mind the night lights — good idea that, eh? Hello, Alsi, you look lovely as ever; hello, Millboid, yer scoundrel. So Sam, out with it: what have you lost?’

Samad sheepishly recounted the damage so far.

‘Ah, now you see, that’s not your glazing — that’s fine,
I
put that in — it’s the
frames
. Just ripped out of that crumbling wall, I’ll bet.’

Samad grudgingly acknowledged this to be the case.

‘There’ll be worst to come, mark mine. Well, what’s done is done. Clara and Irie are in the kitchen. We’ve got a Bunsen burner going, and grub’s up in a minute. But what a bloody storm, eh? Phone’s out. ’Lectricity’s out. Never seen the likes of it.’

In the kitchen, a kind of artificial calm reigned. Clara was stirring some beans, quietly humming the tune to
Buffalo Soldier
. Irie was hunched over a notepad, writing her diary obsessively in the manner of thirteen-year-olds:

8.30 p.m. Millat just walked in. He’s sooo gorgeous but ultimately irritating! Tight jeans as usual. Doesn’t look at me (as usual, except in a FRIENDLY way). I’m in love with a fool (stupid me)! If only he had his brother’s brains . . . oh well, blah blah. I’ve got puppy love and puppy fat — aaaagh! Storm still crazy. Got to go. Will write later.

‘All right,’ said Millat.

‘All right,’ said Irie.

‘Crazy this, eh?’

‘Yeah, mental.’

‘Dad’s having a fit. House is torn to shit.’

‘Ditto. It’s been madness around here too.’

‘I’d like to know where you’d be without me, young lady,’ said Archie, banging another nail into some hardboard. ‘Best-protected house in Willesden, this is. Can’t hardly tell there’s a storm going on from here.’

‘Yeah,’ said Millat, sneaking a final thrilling peek through the window at the apoplectic trees before Archie blocked out the sky entirely with wood and nails. ‘That’s the problem.’

Samad clipped Millat round the ear. ‘Don’t you start in on the cheekiness. We know what we’re doing. You forget, Archibald and I have coped with extreme situations. Once you have fixed a five-man tank in the middle of a battlefield, your life at risk at every turn, bullets whizzing inches from your arse, while simultaneously capturing the enemy in the harshest possible conditions, let me be telling you, hurricane is little tiny small fry. You could do a lot worse than — yes, yes, very amusing I’m sure,’ muttered Samad, as the two children and the two wives feigned narcolepsy. ‘Who wants some of these beans? I’m dishing out.’

‘Someone tell a story,’ said Alsana. ‘It’s going to get oh so boring if we have to listen to old warhorse big mouths all night.’

‘Go on, Sam,’ said Archie with a wink. ‘Give us the one about Mangal Pande. That’s always good for a laugh.’

A clamour of
Nooo
’s, mimed slitting of throats and self-asphyxiation went round the assembled company.

‘The story of Mangal Pande,’ Samad protested, ‘is no laughing matter. He is the tickle in the sneeze, he is why we are the way we are, the founder of modern India, the big historical cheese.’

Alsana snorted. ‘Big fat nonsense. Every fool knows Gandhi-gee is the big cheese. Or Nehru. Or maybe Akbar, but he was crook-backed, and huge-nosed, I never liked him.’

‘Dammit! Don’t talk nonsense, woman. What do you know about it? Fact is: it is simply a matter of market economy, publicity, movie rights. The question is: are the pretty men with the big white teeth willing to play you, et cetera. Gandhi had Mr Kingsley — bully for him — but who will do Pande, eh? Pande’s not pretty enough, is he? Too Indian-looking, big nose, big eyebrows. That’s why I am always having to tell you ingrates a thing or two about Mangal Pande. Bottom line: if I don’t, nobody will.’

‘Look,’ said Millat, ‘I’ll do the short version. Great-grandfather—’

‘
Your
great-
great
-grandfather, stupid,’ corrected Alsana.

‘What
ever
. Decides to fuck the English—’

‘Millat!’

‘To
rebel
against the English, all on his Jack-Jones, spliffed up to the eyeballs, tries to shoot his captain, misses, tries to shoot himself, misses, gets hung—’

‘Hanged,’ said Clara absent-mindedly.

‘Hanged or hung? I’ll get the dictionary,’ said Archie, laying down his hammer and climbing off the kitchen counter.

‘What
ever
. End of story.
Bor
-ing.’

And now a mammoth tree — the kind endemic to North London, the ones that sprout three smaller trees along the trunk before finally erupting into glorious greenery, city-living for whole diaspora of magpie — a tree of this kind tore itself from the dog shit and the concrete, took one tottering step forward, swooned and collapsed; through the guttering, through the double glazing, through the hardboard, knocked over a gas lamp, and then landed in an absence that was Archie-shaped, for he had just left it.

Archie was the first to leap into action, throwing a towel on the small fire progressing along the cork kitchen tiles, while everyone else trembled and wept and checked each other for injury. Then Archie, visibly shaken by this blow to his DIY supremacy, reclaimed control over the elements, tying some of the branches with kitchen rags and ordering Millat and Irie to go around the house, putting out the gas lamps.

‘We don’t want to burn ourselves to death, now do we? I better find some black plastic and gaffer tape. Do something about this.’

Samad was incredulous. ‘
Do something about it
, Archibald? I fail to see how some gaffer tape will change the fact there is a half a tree in the kitchen.’

‘Man, I’m terrified,’ stuttered Clara, after a few minutes’ silence, as the storm lulled. ‘The quiet is always a bad sign. My grandmother — God rest her — she always said that. The quiet is just God pausing to take a breath before he shouts all over again. I think we should go into the other room.’

‘That was the only tree on this side. Best stay in here. Worst’s done here. Besides,’ said Archie, touching his wife’s arm aff ectionately, ‘you Bowdens have seen worse than this! Your mother was born in a bloody earthquake, for Christ’s sake. 1907, Kingston’s falling apart and Hortense pops into the world. You wouldn’t see a little storm like this worrying her. Tough as nails, that one.’

‘Not toughness,’ said Clara quietly, standing up to look through the broken window at the chaos outside, ‘luck. Luck and faith.’

‘I suggest we pray,’ said Samad, picking up his novelty Qurān. ‘I suggest we acknowledge the might of the Creator as he does his worst this evening.’

Samad began flicking through and, finding what he wanted, brought it patrician-like under his wife’s nose, but she slammed it shut and glared at him. Ungodly Alsana, who was yet a nifty hand with the word of God (good schooling, proper parents, oh yes), lacking nothing but the faith, prepared to do what she did only in emergency: recite: ‘I do not serve what you worship, nor do you serve what I worship. I shall never serve what you worship, nor will you ever serve what I worship. You have your own religion, and I have mine. Sura 109, translation N. J. Dawood.’ Now, will someone,’ said Alsana, looking to Clara, ‘please remind my husband that he is not Mr Manilow and he does not have the songs that make the whole world sing. He will whistle his tune and I will whistle mine.’

Samad turned contemptuously from his wife and placed both hands rigidly on his book. ‘Who will pray with me?’

‘Sorry, Sam,’ came a muffled voice (Archie had his head in the cupboard and was searching for the bin bags). ‘Not really my cup of tea, either. Never been a church man. No offence.’

Five more minutes passed without the wind. Then the quiet burst and God shouted just as Ambrosia Bowden had told her granddaughter he would. Thunder went over the house like a dying man’s bile, lightning followed like his final malediction, and Samad closed his eyes.

‘Irie! Millat!’ called Clara, then Alsana. No answer. Standing bolt upright in the cupboard, smashing his head against the spice shelf, Archie said, ‘It’s been ten minutes. Oh blimey.
Where are the kids
?’

One kid was in Chittagong, being dared by a friend to take off his lungi and march through a renowned crocodile swamp; the other two had sneaked out of the house to feel the eye of the storm, and were walking against the wind as if thigh-high in water. They waded into Willesden recreation ground, where the following conversation took place.

‘This is
incredible
!’

‘Yeah,
mental
!’

‘
You’re
mental.’

‘What do you mean? I’m fine!’

‘No, you’re not. You’re always
looking
at me. And what were you writing? You’re such a nerd. You’re always writing.’

‘Nothing. Stuff. You know, diary stuff.’

‘You’ve got the blatant hots for me.’

‘I can’t hear you! Louder!’

‘THE HOTS! BLATANTLY! YOU CAN HEAR ME.’

‘I have not!
You’re
an egomaniac.’

‘You want my arse.’

‘Don’t be a wanker!’

‘Well, it’s no good, anyway. You’re getting a bit big. I don’t like big. You can’t have me.’

‘I wouldn’t want to,
Mr
Egomaniac.’

‘Plus: imagine what our kids would look like.’

‘I think they’d look
nice
.’

‘Browny-black. Blacky-brown. Afro, flat nose, rabbit teeth and freckles. They’d be freaks!’

‘You can talk. I’ve seen that picture of your grandad—’

‘GREAT-GREAT-GRANDAD.’

‘Massive nose, horrible eyebrows—’

‘That’s an artist’s impression, you chief.’

‘And they’d be crazy —
he
was crazy — your whole family’s crazy. It’s genetic.’

‘Yeah, yeah. What
ever
.’

‘And for your information, I don’t fancy you, anyway. You’ve got a bent nose. And you’re trouble. Who wants trouble?’

‘Well, watch out,’ said Millat, leaning forward, colliding with some buck teeth, slipping a tongue in momentarily, and then pulling back. ‘ ’Cos that’s all the trouble you’re getting.’

14 January 1989

Millat spread his legs like Elvis and slapped his wallet down on the counter. ‘One for Bradford, yeah?’

The ticket-man put his tired face close up to the glass. ‘Are you asking me, young man, or telling me?’