White Teeth (32 page)

1952
Ali (Mickey’s father), and his three brothers arrive at Dover with thirty old pounds and their father’s gold pocket-watch. All suffer from disfiguring skin condition.

1954— 1963
Marriages; odd-jobs of all varieties; births of Abdul-Mickey, the five other Abduls and their cousins.

1968
After working for three years as delivery boys in a Yugoslavian dry-cleaning outfit, Ali and his brothers have a small lump sum with which they set up a cab service called Ali’s Cab Service.

1971
Cab venture a great success. But Ali is dissatisfied. He decides what he really wants to do is ‘serve food, make people happy, have some face to face conversations once in a while’. He buys the disused Irish pool house next to the defunct railway station on the Finchley Road and sets about renovating it.

1972
In the Finchley Road only Irish establishments do any real business. So despite his Middle Eastern background and the fact that he is opening a café and not a pool house, Ali decides to keep the original Irish name. He paints all the fittings orange and green, hangs pictures of racehorses and registers his business name as ‘Andrew O’Connell Yusuf’. Out of respect, his brothers encourage him to hang fragments of the Qurān on the wall, so that the hybrid business will be ‘kindly looked upon’.

13 May 1973
O’Connell’s opens for business.

2 November 1974
Samad and Archie stumble upon O’Connell’s on their way home and pop in for a fry-up.

1975
Ali decides to carpet the walls to limit food stains.

May 1977
Samad wins fifteen bob on fruit machine.

1979
Ali has a fatal heart attack due to cholesterol build-up around the heart. Ali’s remaining family decide his death is a result of the unholy consumption of pork products. Pig is banned from the menu.

1980
Momentous year. Abdul-Mickey takes over O’Connell’s. Institutes underground gambling room to make up for the money lost on sausages. Two large pool tables are used: the ‘Death’ table and the ‘Life’ table. All those who want to play for money play on the ‘Death’ table. All those who object for religious reasons or because out of pocket play on the friendly ‘Life’ table. Scheme a great success. Samad and Archie play on the ‘Death’ table.

December 1980
Archie gets highest ever recorded score on pinball: 51,998 points.

1981
Archie finds unwanted cut-out of Viv Richards on Selfridges shop floor and brings it to O’Connell’s. Samad asks to have his great-grandfather Mangal Pande’s picture on the wall. Mickey refuses, claiming his ‘eyes are too close together’.

1982
Samad stops playing on the ‘Death’ table for religious reasons. Samad continues to petition for the picture’s installation.

31 October 1984
Archie wins £268.72 on the ‘Death’ table. Buys beautiful new set of Pirelli tyres for clapped-out car.

New Year’s Eve 1989, 10.30 p.m.
Samad finally persuades Mickey to hang portrait. Mickey still thinks it ‘puts people off their food’.

‘I still think it puts people off their food. And on New Year’s Eve. I’m sorry, mate. No offence meant. ’Course my opinion’s not the fucking word of God, as it were, but it’s still my opinion.’

Mickey attached a wire round the back of the cheap frame, gave the dusty glass a quick wipe-down with his apron, and reluctantly placed the portrait on its hook above the oven.

‘I mean, he’s so bloody
nasty
-looking. That moustache. He looks like a right
nasty
piece of work. And what’s that earring about? He’s not a queer, is he?’

‘No, no, no. It wasn’t unusual, then, for men to wear jewellery.’

Mickey was dubious, giving Samad the look he gave to people who claimed to have got no game of pinball for their 50p and came seeking a refund. He got out from behind the counter and took a look at the picture from this new angle. ‘What d’you think, Arch?’

‘Good,’ said Archie solidly. ‘I think:
good
.’

‘Please. I would consider it a great personal favour if you would allow it to stay.’

Mickey tilted his head to one side and then the other. ‘As I said, I don’t mean no offence or nothing, I just think he looks a bit bloody
shady
. Haven’t you got another picture of him or sommink?’

‘That is the only one that survives. I would consider it a great personal favour, very great.’

‘Well . . .’ ruminated Mickey, flipping an egg over, ‘you being a regular, as it were, and you going on about it so bloody much, I suppose we’ll have to keep it. How about a public survey? What d’you think Denzel? Clarence?’

Denzel and Clarence were sitting in the corner as ever, their only concession to New Year’s Eve a few pieces of mangy tinsel hanging off Denzel’s trilby and a feathered kazoo sharing mouth space with Clarence’s cigar.

‘Was dat?’

‘I said, what d’you think of this bloke Samad wants up? It’s his grandfather.’

‘
Great
-grandfather,’ corrected Samad.

‘You kyan see me playing dominoes? You tryin’ to deprive an ol’man of his pleasure? What picture?’ Denzel grudgingly turned to look at it. ‘Dat? Hmph! I don’ like it. He look like one of Satan’s crew!’

‘He a relative of you?’ squeaked Clarence to Samad in his woman’s voice. ‘Dat explain much, my friend, much! He got some face like a donkey’s pum-pum.’

Denzel and Clarence exploded into their dirty laughter. ‘Nuff to put my belly off its digesting, true sur!’

‘There you are!’ exclaimed Mickey, victorious, turning back to Samad. ‘Puts the clientele off their food — that’s what I said right off.’

‘Assure me you are not going to listen to those two.’

‘I don’t know . . .’ Mickey twisted and turned in front of his cooking; hard thought always enlisted the involuntary help of his body. ‘I respect you and that, and you was mates with my dad, but — no disrespect or nuffin’ — you’re getting a bit fucking long-in-the-tooth, Samad mate, some of the younger customers might not—’

‘
What
younger customers?’ demanded Samad, gesturing to Clarence and Denzel.

‘Yeah, point taken . . . but the customer is always right, if you get my drift.’

Samad was genuinely hurt. ‘
I
am a customer.
I
am a customer. I have been coming to your establishment for fifteen years, Mickey. A very long time in any man’s estimation.’

‘Yeah, but it’s the majority wot counts, innit? On most other fings I defer, as it were, to your opinion. The lads call you “The Professor” and, fair dues, it’s not without cause. I am a respecter of your judgement, six days out of every seven. But bottom line is: if you’re one captain and the rest of the crew wants a bloody mutiny, well . . . you’re fucked, aren’t you?’

Mickey sympathetically demonstrated the wisdom of this in his frying pan, showing how twelve mushrooms could force one mushroom over the edge and on to the floor.

With the cackles of Denzel and Clarence still echoing in his ears, a current of anger worked its way through Samad and rose to his throat before he was able to stop it.

‘Give it to me!’ He reached over the counter to where Mangal Pande was hanging at a melancholy angle above the stove. ‘I should never have asked . . . it would be a dishonour, it would cast into
ignominy
the memory of Mangal Pande to have him placed here in this — this irreligious house of shame!’

‘You what?’

‘Give it to me!’

‘Now look . . . wait a minute—’

Mickey and Archie reached out to stop him, but Samad, distressed and full of the humiliations of the decade, kept struggling to overcome Mickey’s strong blocking presence. They tussled for a bit, but then Samad’s body went limp and, covered in a light film of sweat, he surrendered.

‘Look, Samad,’ and here Mickey touched Samad’s shoulders with such affection that Samad thought he might weep. ‘I didn’t realize it was such a bloody big deal for you. Let’s start again. We’ll leave the picture up for a week and see how it goes, right?’

‘Thank you, my friend.’ Samad pulled out a handkerchief and drew it over his forehead. ‘It is appreciated. It is appreciated.’

Mickey gave him a conciliatory pat between the shoulder blades. ‘Fuck knows, I’ve heard enough about him over the years. We might as well ’ave him up on the bloody wall. It’s all the same to me, I suppose. Comme-See-Comme-Sar, as the Frogs say. I mean, bloody
hell
. Blood-ee-
hell
. And that extra turkey requires hard cash, Archibald, my good man. The golden days of Luncheon Vouchers is over. Dear oh dear, what a
palaver
over nuffin’ . . .’

Samad looked deep into his great-grandfather’s eyes. They had been through this battle many times, Samad and Pande, the battle for the latter’s reputation. Both knew all too well that modern opinion on Mangal Pande weighed in on either side of two camps:

Again and again he had argued the toss with Archie over this issue. Over the years they had sat in O’Connell’s and returned to the same debate, sometimes with new information gleaned from Samad’s continual research into the matter — but ever since Archie found out the ‘truth’ about Pande, circa 1953, there was no changing his mind. Pande’s only claim to fame, as Archie was at pains to point out, was his etymological gift to the English language by way of the word ‘Pandy’, under which title in the
OED
the curious reader will find the following definition:

Pandy
/’pandi/
n
. 2
colloq
. (now
Hist
.) Also
-dee
. M19 [Perh. f. the surname of the first mutineer amongst the high-caste sepoys in the Bengal army.]
1
Any sepoy who revolted in the Indian Mutiny of 1857— 9
2
Any mutineer or traitor
3
Any fool or coward in a military situation.

‘Plain as the pie on your face, my friend.’ And here Archie would close the book with an exultant slam. ‘And I don’t need a dictionary to tell me that — but then neither do you. It’s common parlance. When you and me were in the army: same. You tried to put one over on me once, but the truth will out, mate. “Pandy” only ever meant one thing. If I were you, I’d start playing down the family connection, rather than bending everybody’s ear twenty-four hours a bloody day.’

‘Archibald, just because the word exists, it does not follow that it is a correct representation of the character of Mangal Pande. The first definition we agree on: my great-grandfather was a mutineer and I am proud to say this. I concede matters did not go quite according to plan. But traitor? Coward? The dictionary you show me is old — these definitions are now out of currency. Pande was no traitor and no coward.’

‘Ahhh, now, you see, we’ve been through this, and my thought is this:
there’s no smoke without fire
,’ Archie would say, looking impressed by the wisdom of his own conclusion. ‘Know what I mean?’ This was one of Archie’s preferred analytic tools when confronted with news stories, historical events and the tricky day-to-day process of separating fact from fiction.
There’s no smoke without fire
. There was something so vulnerable in the way he relied on this conviction, that Samad had never had the heart to disabuse him of it. Why tell an old man that there can be smoke without fire as surely as there are deep wounds that draw no blood?

‘Of course, I see your point of view, Archie, I do. But my point is, and has always been, from the very first time we discussed the subject; my point is that this is not the
full story
. And, yes, I realize that we have several times thoroughly investigated the matter, but the fact remains: full stories are as rare as honesty, precious as diamonds. If you are lucky enough to uncover one, a full story will sit on your brain like lead. They are difficult. They are long-winded. They are epic. They are like the stories God tells: full of impossibly particular information. You
don’t
find them in the dictionary.’

‘All right, all right, Professor. Let’s hear
your
version.’

Often you see old men in the corner of dark pubs, discussing and gesticulating, using beer mugs and salt-cellars to represent long-dead people and far-off places. At that moment they display a vitality missing in every other area of their lives. They light up. Unpacking a full story on to the table — here is Churchill-fork, over there is Czechoslovakia-serviette, here we find the accumulation of German troops represented by a collection of cold peas — they are reborn. But when Archie and Samad had these table-top debates during the eighties, knives and forks were not enough. The whole of the steamy Indian summer of 1857, the whole of that year of mutiny and massacre would be hauled into O’Connell’s and brought to semi-consciousness by these two makeshift historians. The area stretching from the jukebox to the fruit machine became Delhi; Viv Richards silently complied as Pande’s English superior, Captain Hearsay; Clarence and Denzel continued to play dominoes while simultaneously being cast as the restless sepoy hordes of the British army. Each man brought the pieces of his argument, laid them out and assembled them for the other to see. Scenes were set. Paths of bullets traced. Disagreement reigned.

According to the legend, during the spring of 1857 in a factory in Dum-Dum, a new kind of British bullet went into production. Designed to be used in English guns by Indian soldiers, like most bullets at the time they had a casing that must be bitten in order to fit the barrel. There seemed nothing exceptional about them, until it was discovered by some canny factory worker that they were covered in a grease — a grease made from the fat of pigs, monstrous to Muslims, and the fat of cows, sacred to Hindus. It was an innocent mistake — as far as anything is innocent on stolen land — an infamous British blunder. But what a feverish turmoil must have engulfed the people on first hearing the news! Under the specious pretext of new weaponry, the English were intending to destroy their caste, their honour, their standing in the eyes of Gods and men — everything, in short, that made life worth living. A rumour like this could not be kept secret; it spread like wildfire through the dry lands of India that summer, down the production line, out on to the streets, through town houses and country shacks, through barrack after barrack, until the whole country was ablaze with the desire for a mutiny. The rumour reached the large unsightly ears of Mangal Pande, an unknown sepoy in the small town of Barrackpore, who swaggered into his parade ground — 29 March 1857 — stepping forward from the throng to make a certain kind of history. ‘Make a fool of himself, more like,’ Archie will say (for these days he does not swallow Pandy-ology as gullibly as he once did).