White Teeth (8 page)

Go Bye Ello Sag, please.

Chicken Jail Fret See wiv Chips, fanks.

From six in the evening until three in the morning; and then every day was spent asleep, until daylight was as rare as a decent tip. For what is the point, Samad would think, pushing aside two mints and a receipt to find fifteen pence, what is the point of tipping a man the same amount you would throw in a fountain to chase a wish? But before the illegal thought of folding the fifteen pence discreetly in his napkin hand even had a chance to give itself form, Mukhul — Ardashir Mukhul, who ran the Palace and whose wiry frame paced the restaurant, one benevolent eye on the customers, one ever watchful eye on the staff — Mukhul was upon him.

‘Saaamaad’ — he had a cloying, oleaginous way of speaking — ‘did you kiss the necessary backside this evening, cousin?’

Samad and Ardashir were distant cousins, Samad the elder by six years. With what joy (pure bliss!) had Ardashir opened the letter last January, to find his older, cleverer, handsomer cousin was finding it hard to get work in England and could he possibly . . .

‘Fifteen pence, cousin,’ said Samad, lifting his palm.

‘Well, every little helps, every little helps,’ said Ardashir, his dead-fish lips stretching into a stringy smile. ‘Into the Piss-Pot with it.’

The Piss-Pot was a black Balti pot that sat on a plinth outside the staff toilets and into which all tips were pooled and then split at the end of the night. For the younger, flashy, good-looking waiters like Shiva, this was a great injustice. Shiva was the only Hindu on the staff — this stood as tribute to his waitering skills, which had triumphed over religious differences. Shiva could make a four quid tip in an evening if the blubberous white divorcee in the corner was lonely enough and he batted his long lashes at her effectively. He could also make his money out of the polo-necked directors and producers (the Palace sat in the centre of London’s theatreland, and these were still the days of the Royal Court, of pretty boys and kitchen-sink drama) who flattered the boy, watched his ass wiggle provocatively to the bar and back, and swore that if anyone ever adapted
A Passage to India
for the stage he could have whichever role tickled his fancy. For Shiva, then, the Piss-Pot system was simply daylight robbery and an insult to his unchallenged waitering abilities. But for men like Samad, in his late forties, and for the even older, like the white-haired Muhammed (Ardashir’s great-uncle), who was eighty if he was a day, who had deep pathways dug into the sides of his mouth where he had smiled when he was young, for men like this the Piss-Pot could not be complained about. It made more sense to join the collective than pocket fifteen pence and risk being caught (and docked a week’s tips).

‘You’re all on my back!’ Shiva would snarl, when he had to relinquish five pounds at the end of the night and drop it into the pot. ‘You all live off my back! Somebody get these losers off my back! That was my fiver and now it’s going to be split sixty-five-fucking-million ways as a hand-out to these losers! What is this: communism?’

And the rest would avoid his glare and busy themselves quietly with other things, until one evening, one fifteen pence evening, Samad said, ‘Shut up, boy,’ quietly, almost under his breath.

‘You!’ Shiva swung round to where Samad stood, crushing a great tub of lentils for tomorrow’s dal. ‘You’re the worst of them! You’re the worst fucking waiter I’ve ever seen! You couldn’t get a tip if you mugged the bastards! I hear you trying to talk to the customer about biology this, politics that — just serve the food, you idiot — you’re a waiter, for fuck’s sake, you’re not Michael Parkinson. “
Did I hear you say Delhi
” ’ — Shiva put his apron over his arm and began posturing around the kitchen (he was a pitiful mimic) — ‘ “I was there myself, you know, Delhi University, it was most fascinating, yes — and I fought in the war, for England, yes — yes, yes, charming, charming.” ’ Round and round the kitchen he went, bending his head and rubbing his hands over and over like Uriah Heep, bowing and genuflecting to the head cook, to the old man arranging great hunks of meat in the walk-in freezer, to the young boy scrubbing the underside of the oven. ‘Samad,
Samad
 . . .’ he said with what seemed infinite pity, then stopped abruptly, pulled the apron off and wrapped it round his waist. ‘You are such a sad little man.’

Muhammed looked up from his pot-scrubbing and shook his head again and again. To no one in particular he said, ‘These young people — what kind of talk? What kind of talk? What happened to respect? What kind of talk is this?’

‘And you can fuck off too,’ said Shiva, brandishing a ladle in his direction, ‘you old fool. You’re not my father.’

‘Second cousin of your mother’s uncle,’ a voice muttered from the back.

‘Bollocks,’ said Shiva. ‘Bollocks to that.’

He grabbed the mop and was heading off for the toilets, when he stopped by Samad and placed the handle inches from Samad’s mouth.

‘Kiss it,’ he sneered; and then, impersonating Ardashir’s sluggish drawl, ‘Who knows, cousin, you might get a rise!’

And that’s what it was like most nights: abuse from Shiva and others; condescension from Ardashir; never seeing Alsana; never seeing the sun; clutching fifteen pence and then releasing it; wanting desperately to be wearing a sign, a large white placard that said:

I AM NOT A WAITER. I HAVE BEEN A STUDENT, A SCIENTIST, A SOLDIER, MY WIFE IS CALLED ALSANA, WE LIVE IN EAST LONDON BUT WE WOULD LIKE TO MOVE NORTH. I AM A MUSLIM BUT ALLAH HAS FORSAKEN ME OR I HAVE FORSAKEN ALLAH, I’M NOT SURE. I HAVE A FRIEND — ARCHIE — AND OTHERS. I AM FORTY-NINE BUT WOMEN STILL TURN IN THE STREET. SOMETIMES.

But, no such placard existing, he had instead the urge, the need, to speak to every man, and, like the Ancient Mariner, explain constantly, constantly wanting to reassert something, anything. Wasn’t that important? But then the heart-breaking disappointment — to find out that the inclining of one’s head, poising of one’s pen, these were important, so important — it was important to be a good waiter, to listen when someone said—

Lamb Dawn Sock and rice. With chips. Thank you.

And fifteen pence clinked on china. Thank you, sir. Thank you so very much.

On the Tuesday after Archie’s wedding, Samad had waited till everyone left, folded his white, flared trousers (made from the same fabric as the tablecloths) into a perfect square, and then climbed the stairs to Ardashir’s office, for he had something to ask him.

‘Cousin!’ said Ardashir, with a friendly grimace at the sight of Samad’s body curling cautiously round the door. He knew that Samad had come to inquire about a pay increase, and he wanted his cousin to feel that he had at least considered the case in all his friendly judiciousness before he declined.

‘Cousin, come in!’

‘Good evening, Ardashir Mukhul,’ said Samad, stepping fully into the room.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ said Ardashir warmly. ‘No point standing on ceremony now, is there?’

Samad was glad this was so. He said as much. He took a moment to look with the necessary admiration around the room, with its relentless gold, with its triple-piled carpet, with its furnishings in various shades of yellow and green. One had to admire Ardashir’s business sense. He had taken the simple idea of an Indian restaurant (small room, pink tablecloth, loud music, atrocious wallpaper, meals that do not exist in India, sauce carousel) and just made it bigger. He hadn’t improved anything; everything was the same old crap, but it was all bigger in a bigger building in the biggest tourist trap in London, Leicester Square. You had to admire it and admire the man, who sat now like a benign locust, his slender insectile body swamped in a black leather chair, leaning over the desk, all smiles, a parasite disguised as a philanthropist.

‘Cousin, what can I do for you?’

Samad took a breath. The matter was this . . .

Ardashir’s eyes glazed over a little as Samad explained his situation. His skinny legs twitched underneath the desk, and in his fingers he manipulated a paperclip until it looked reasonably like an A. A for Ardashir. The matter was . . . what was the matter? The house was the matter. Samad was moving out of East London (where one couldn’t bring up children, indeed, one couldn’t, not if one didn’t wish them to come to bodily harm, he agreed), from East London with its NF gangs, to North London, north-west, where things were more . . . more . . . liberal.

Was it his turn to speak?

‘Cousin . . .’ said Ardashir, arranging his face, ‘you must understand . . . I cannot make it my business to buy houses for all my employees, cousin or not cousin . . . I pay a wage, cousin . . . That is business in this country.’

Ardashir shrugged as he spoke as if to suggest he deeply disapproved of ‘Business in this country’, but there it was. He was forced, his look said, forced by the English to make an awful lot of money.

‘You misunderstand me, Ardashir. I have the deposit for the house, it is
our
house now, we have moved in—’

How on earth has he afforded it, he must work his wife like a bloody slave, thought Ardashir, pulling out another paperclip from the bottom drawer.

‘I need only a small wage increase to help me finance the move. To make things a little easier as we settle in. And Alsana, well, she is pregnant.’

Pregnant. Difficult. The case called for extreme diplomacy.

‘Don’t mistake me, Samad, we are both intelligent, frank men and I think I can speak frankly . . . I know you’re not a
fucking
waiter’ — he whispered the expletive and smiled indulgently after it, as if it were a naughty, private thing that brought them closer together — ‘I see your position . . . of course I do . . . but you must understand
mine
 . . . If I made allowances for every relative I employ I’d be walking around like bloody Mr Gandhi. Without a pot to piss in. Spinning my thread by the light of the moon. An example: at this very moment that wastrel Fat Elvis brother-in-law of mine, Hussein-Ishmael—’

‘The butcher?’

‘The butcher, demands that I should raise the price I pay for his stinking meat! “But Ardashir, we are brothers-in-law!” he is saying to me. And I am saying to him, but Mohammed, this is
retail
 . . .’

It was Samad’s turn to glaze over. He thought of his wife, Alsana, who was not as meek as he had assumed when they married, to whom he must deliver the bad news; Alsana, who was prone to moments, even fits — yes, fits was not too strong a word — of rage. Cousins, aunts, brothers, thought it a bad sign, they worried if there wasn’t some ‘funny mental history’ in Alsana’s family, they sympathized with him the way you sympathize with a man who has bought a stolen car with more mileage on it than first thought. In his naivety Samad had simply assumed a woman so young would be . . . easy. But Alsana was not . . . no, she was not easy. It was, he supposed, the way with these young women these days. Archie’s bride . . . last Tuesday he had seen something in her eyes that wasn’t easy either. It was the new way with these women.

Ardashir came to the end of what he felt was his perfectly worded speech, sat back satisfied, and laid the M for Mukhul he had moulded next to the A for Ardashir that sat on his lap.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Samad. ‘Thank you so very much.’

That evening there was an awful row. Alsana slung the sewing machine, with the black studded hotpants she was working on, to the floor.

‘Useless! Tell me, Samad Miah, what is the point of moving here — nice house, yes, very nice, very nice — but where is the food?’

‘It is a nice area, we have friends here.’

‘Who are they?’ She slammed her little fist on to the kitchen table, sending the salt and pepper flying, to collide spectacularly with each other in the air. ‘I don’t know them! You fight in an old, forgotten war with some Englishman . . . married to a black! Whose friends are they? These are the people my child will grow up around? Their children — half blacky-white? But tell me,’ she shouted, returning to her favoured topic, ‘where is our food?’ Theatrically, she threw open every cupboard in the kitchen. ‘Where is it? Can we eat china?’ Two plates smashed to the floor. She patted her stomach to indicate her unborn child and pointed to the pieces. ‘Hungry?’

Samad, who had an equally melodramatic nature when prompted, yanked upon the freezer and pulled out a mountain of meat which he piled in the middle of the room. His mother worked through the night preparing meat for her family, he said. His mother did not, he said, spend the household money, as Alsana did, on prepared meals, yoghurts and tinned spaghetti.

Alsana punched him full square in the stomach.

‘Samad Iqbal the traditionalist! Why don’t I just squat in the street over a bucket and wash clothes? Eh? In fact, what about my clothes? Edible?’

As Samad clutched his winded belly, there in the kitchen she ripped to shreds every stitch she had on and added them to the pile of frozen lamb, spare cuts from the restaurant. She stood naked before him for a moment, the yet small mound of her pregnancy in full view, then put on a long, brown coat and left the house.

But all the same, she reflected, slamming the door behind her, it was true: it was a nice area; she couldn’t deny it as she stormed towards the high road, avoiding trees where previously, in Whitechapel, she avoided flung-out mattresses and the homeless. It would be good for the child, she couldn’t deny it. Alsana had a deep-seated belief that living near green spaces was morally beneficial to the young, and there to her right was Gladstone Park, a sweeping horizon of green named after the Liberal Prime Minister (Alsana was from a respected old Bengal family and had read her English History; but look at her now; if they could see what depths . . . !), and in the Liberal tradition it was a park without fences, unlike the more affluent Queens Park (Victoria’s), with its pointed metal railings. Willesden was not as pretty as Queens Park, but it was a nice area. No denying it. Not like Whitechapel, where that madman E-knock someoneoranother gave a speech that forced them into the basement while kids broke the windows with their steel-capped boots. Rivers of blood silly-billy nonsense. Now she was pregnant she needed a little bit of peace and quiet. Though it was the same here in a way: they all looked at her strangely, this tiny Indian woman stalking the high road in a mackintosh, her plentiful hair flying every which way.
Mali’s Kebabs
,
Mr Cheungs
,
Raj’s
,
Malkovich Bakeries
— she read the new, unfamiliar signs as she passed. She was shrewd. She saw what this was. ‘Liberal? Hosh-kosh nonsense!’ No one was more liberal than anyone else anywhere anyway. It was only that here, in Willesden, there was just not enough of any one thing to gang up against any other thing and send it running to the cellars while windows were smashed.