Zadie Smith - White Teeth

‘It’s just, in a lot of Indian poetry, they talk about using breasts for pillows, downy breasts, pillow breasts. I just – just – just wondered, if white sleeps on brown, or, as one might expect, brown sleeps on white? Extending the – the – the – pillow metaphor, you see, I was just wondering which… way…’

The silence was long, broad and malingering. Neena shook her head in disgust and dropped her cutlery on to her plate with a clatter. Maxine tapped her fingers on the tablecloth, marking out a nervous ‘William Tell’. Josh looked like he might cry.

Finally, Marcus threw his head back, clapped his hands and let out an enormous Chalfen guffaw. ‘I’ve been wanting to ask that all night. Well done , Mother Chalfen!’

And so for the first time in her life Neena had to admit that her auntie was absolutely right. ‘You wanted a report, so here’s a full report: crazy, nutso, raisins short of a fruitcake, rubber walls, screaming-mad basket-cases. Every bloody one of them.’

Alsana nodded, open-mouthed, and asked Neena to repeat for the third time the bit during dessert when Joyce, serving up a trifle, had inquired whether it was difficult for Muslim women to bake while wearing those long black sheets – didn’t the arm bits get covered in cake mixture? Wasn’t there a danger of setting yourself alight on the gas hobs?

‘Bouncing off the walls,’ concluded Neena.

But, as is the way with these things, once confirmation had arrived nobody knew quite what to do with the information. Irie and Millat were sixteen and never tired of telling their respective mothers that they were now of the legal age for various activities and could do whatever, whenever. Short of putting locks on the doors and bars on the windows, Clara and Alsana were powerless. If anything, things got worse. Irie spent more time than ever immersing herself in Chalfenism. Clara noticed her wincing at her own father’s conversation, and frowning at the middle-brow tabloid Clara curled up with in bed. Millat disappeared from home for weeks at a time, returning with money that was not his and an accent that modulated wildly between the rounded tones of the Chalfens and the street talk of the KEVIN clan. He infuriated Samad beyond all reason. No, that’s wrong. There was a reason. Millat was neither one thing nor the other, this or that, Muslim or Christian, Englishman or Bengali; he lived for the in between, he lived up to his middle name, Zulfikar , the clashing of two swords:

‘How many times,’ Samad growled, after watching his son purchase the autobiography of Malcolm X, ‘is it necessary to say thank you in a single transaction? Thank you when you hand the book over, thank you when she receives it, thank you when she tells you the price, thank you when you sign the cheque, thank you when she takes it! They call it English politeness when it is simply arrogance. The only being who deserves this kind of thanks is Allah himself!’

And Alsana was once again caught between the two of them, trying desperately to find the middle ground. ‘If Magid was here, he’d sort you two out. A lawyer’s mind, he’d make things straight.’ But Magid wasn’t here, he was there, and there was still not enough money to change the situation.

Then the summer came and with it exams. Irie came in just behind Chalfen the Chubster, and Millat did far better than anyone, including he, had expected. It could only be the Chalfen influence, and Clara, for one, felt a little ashamed of herself. Alsana just said, ‘Iqbal brains. In the end, they triumph,’ and decided to mark the occasion with a joint Iqbal/Jones celebration barbecue to be held on Samad’s lawn.

Neena, Maxine, Ardashir, Shiva, Joshua, aunties, cousins, Irie’s friends, Millat’s friends, KEVIN friends and the headmaster, all came and made merry (except for KEVIN, who formed a circle in one corner) with paper cups filled with cheap Spanish bubbly.

It was going well enough until Samad spotted the ring of folded arms and green bow-ties.

‘What are they doing here? Who let in the infidels?’

‘Well, you’re here, aren’t you?’ sniped Alsana, looking at the three empty cans of Guinness Samad had already got through, the hotdog juice dribbling down his chin. ‘Who’s casting the first stone at a barbecue?’

Samad glared and lurched away with Archie to admire their shared handiwork on the reconstructed shed. Clara took the opportunity to pull Alsana aside and ask her a question.

Alsana stamped a foot in her own coriander. ‘No! No way at all. What should I thank her for? If he did well, it was because of his own brains. Iqbal brains. Not once, not once has that long-toothed Chaffinch even condescended to telephone me. Wild horses will have to drag my dead body, lady.’

‘But… I just think it would be a nice idea to go and thank her for all the time she’s spent with the children… I think maybe we misjudged her-’

‘By all means, go, Lady Jones, go if you like,’ said Alsana scornfully. ‘But as for me, wild horses, wild horses could not do it.’

‘And that’s Dr Solomon Chalfen, Marcus’s grandfather. He was one of the few men who would listen to Freud when everybody in Vienna thought they had a sexual deviant on their hands. An incredible face he has, don’t you think? There’s so much wisdom in it. The first time Marcus showed me that picture, I knew I wanted to marry him. I thought: if my Marcus looks like that at eighty I’ll be a very lucky girl!’

Clara smiled and admired the daguerreotype. She had so far admired eight along the mantelpiece with Irie trailing sullenly behind her, and there were at least as many left to go.

‘It’s a grand old family, and if you don’t find it too presumptuous, Clara – is “Clara” all right?’

‘Clara’s fine, Mrs Chalfen.’

Irie waited for Joyce to ask Clara to call her Joyce.

‘Well, as I was saying, it’s a grand old family and if you don’t find it too presumptuous I like to think of Irie as a kind of addition to it, in a way. She’s just such a remarkable girl. We’ve so enjoyed having her around.’

‘She’s enjoyed being around, I think. And she really owes you a lot. We all do.’

‘Oh no, no, no. I believe in the Responsibility of Intellectuals… besides which, it’s been a joy . Really. I hope we’ll still see her, even though the exams are over. There’s still A-levels, if nothing else!’

‘Oh, I’m sure she’d come anyway. She talks about you all the time. The Chalfens this, the Chalfens that…’

Joyce clasped Clara’s hands in her own. ‘Oh, Clara, I am pleased. And I’m pleased we’ve finally met as well. Oh now, I hadn’t finished. Where were we – oh yes, well here are Charles and Anna – great-uncles and aunts – long buried, sadly. He was a psychiatrist – yes, another one – and she was a plant biologist – woman after my own heart.’

Joyce stood back for a minute, like an art critic in a gallery, and put her hands on her hips. ‘I mean, after a while, you’ve got to suspect it’s in the genes, haven’t you? All these brains. I mean, nurture just won’t explain it. I mean, will it?’

‘Er, no,’ agreed Clara. ‘I guess not.’

‘Now, out of interest – I mean, I really am curious – which side do you think Irie gets it from, the Jamaican or the English?’

Clara looked up and down the line of dead white men in starched collars, some monocled, some uniformed, some sitting in the bosom of their family, each member manacled into position so the camera could do its slow business. They all reminded her a little of someone. Of her own grandfather, the dashing Captain Charlie Durham, in his one extant photograph: pinched and pale, looking defiantly at the camera, not so much having his picture taken as forcing his image upon the acetate. What they used to call a Muscular Christian. The Bowden family called him Whitey. Djam fool bwoy taut he owned everyting he touched.