12 Canines: The Ripping Teeth -1

It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sita

and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name)

and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best less trouble). Yet, despite all the mixing up,

despite the fact that we have finally slipped into each other's lives with reasonable comfort (like a

man returning to his lover's bed after a midnight walk), despite all this, it is still hard to admit that

there is no one more English than the Indian, no one more Indian than the English. There are still

young white men who are angry about that; who will roll out at closing time into the poorly lit

streets with a kitchen knife wrapped in a tight fist.

But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection,

penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears

dissolution, disappearance. Even the unflappable Alsana Iqbal would regularly wake up in a puddle

of her own sweat after a night visited by visions of Millat (genetically BB; where B stands for Bengali-ness) marrying someone called Sarah (aa where 'a' stands for Aryan), resulting in a child

called Michael (Ba), who in turn marries somebody called Lucy (aa), leaving Alsana with a legacy

of unrecognizable great-grandchildren (Aaaaaaa!), their Bengali-ness thoroughly diluted, genotype

hidden by phenotype. It is both the most irrational and natural feeling in the world. In Jamaica it is

even in the grammar: there is no choice of personal pronoun, no splits between me or you or they,

there is only the pure, homogenous I. When Hortense Bowden, half white herself, got to hearing

about Clara's marriage, she came round to the house, stood on the doorstep, said, "Understand: I

and I don't speak from this moment forth," turned on her heel and was true to her word. Hortense

hadn't put all that effort into marrying black, into dragging her genes back from the brink, just so

her daughter could bring yet more high-coloured children into the world.

Likewise, in the Iqbal house the lines of battle were clearly drawn. When Millat brought an

Emily or a Lucy back home, Alsana quietly wept in the kitchen, Samad went into the garden to

attack the coriander. The next morning was a waiting game, a furious biting of tongues until the

Emily or Lucy left the house and the war of words could begin. But with Me and Clara the issue

was mostly unspoken, for Clara knew she was not in a position to preach. Still, she made no

attempt to disguise her disappointment or the aching sadness. From Irie's bedroom shrine of

green-eyed Hollywood idols to the gaggle of white friends who regularly trooped in and out of her

bedroom, Clara saw an ocean of pink skins surrounding her daughter and she feared the tide that

would take her away.

It was partly for this reason that Me didn't mention the Chalfens to her parents. It wasn't that she

intended to mate with the Chalfens.. . but the instinct was the same. She had a nebulous

fifteen-year-old's passion for them, overwhelming, yet with no real direction or object. She just

wanted to, well, kind of, merge with them. She wanted their Englishness. Their Chalfishness. The

purity of it. It didn't occur to her that the Chalfens were, after a fashion, immigrants too (third

generation, by way of Germany and Poland, nee Chalfenovsky), or that they might be as needy of

her as she was of them. To Me, the Chalfens were more English than the English. When Me

stepped over the threshold of the Chalfen house, she felt an illicit thrill, like a Jew munching a

sausage or a Hindu grabbing a Big Mac. She was crossing borders, sneaking into England; it felt

like some terribly mutinous act, wearing somebody else's uniform or somebody else's skin.

She just said she had netball on Tuesday evenings and left it at that.

Conversation flowed at the Chalfen house. It seemed to Me that here nobody prayed or hid their

feelings in a toolbox or silently stroked fading photographs wondering what might have been. Conversation was the stuff of

life.

"Hello, Me! Come in, come in, Joshua's in the kitchen with Joyce, you're looking well. Millat

not with you?"

"Coming later. He's got a date."

"Ah, yes. Well, if there are any questions in your exams on oral communication, he'll fly

through them. Joyce! Irie's here! So how's the study going? It's been what? Four months now? The

Chalfen genius rubbing off?"

"Yeah, not bad, not bad. I never thought I had a scientific bone in my body but... it seems to be

working. I don't know, though. Sometimes my brain hurts."

"That's just the right side of your brain waking up after a long sleep, getting back into the swing of things. I'm really impressed; I told you it was possible to turn a wishy-washy arts student into a

science student in no time at all oh, and I've got the Future Mouse pictures. Remind me later, you

wanted to see them, no? Joyce, the big brown goddess has arrived!"

"Marcus, chill out, man .. . Hi, Joyce. Hi, Josh. Hey, Jack. Oooh, hell-low, Oscar, you cutie."

"Hello, Me! Come here and give me a kiss. Oscar, look, it's Irie come to see us again! Oh, look

at his face .. . he's wondering where Millat is, aren't you, Oscar?"

"No, I'm not."

"Oh dear, yes he is ... look at his little face ... he gets very upset when Millat doesn't turn up.

Tell Irie the name of the new monkey, Oscar, the one Daddy gave you."

"George."

"No, not George you called it Millat the Monkey, remember? Because monkeys are

mischievous and Millat's just as bad, isn't he, Oscar?"

"Don't know. Don't care."

"Oscar gets terribly upset when Millat doesn't come."

"He'll be along in a while. He's on a date."

Me 1990, 1907

"When isn't he on a date! All those busty girls! We might get jealous, mightn't we, Oscar? He

spends more time with them than us. But we shouldn't joke. I suppose it's a bit difficult for you."

"No, I don't mind, Joyce, really. I'm used to it."

"But everybody loves Millat, don't they, Oscar! It's so hard not to, isn't it, Oscar? We love him,

don't we, Oscar?"

"I hate him."

"Oh, Oscar, don't say silly things."

"Can we all stop talking about Millat, please."

"Yes, Joshua, all right. Do you hear how he gets jealous? I try to explain to him that Millat

needs a little extra care, you know. He's from a very difficult background. It's just like when I give

more time to my peonies than my Michaelmas daisies, daisies will grow anywhere .. . you know

you can be very selfish sometimes, Joshi."

"OK, Mum, OK. What's happening with dinner-before study or after?"

"Before, I think, Joyce, no? I've got to work on Future Mouse all night."

Future Mouse

"Shh, Oscar, I'm trying to listen to Daddy."

"Because I'm delivering a paper tomorrow so best have dinner early. If that's all right with you,

Me, I know how you like your food."

"That's fine."

"Don't say things like that, Marcus, dear, she's very touchy about her weight."

"No, I'm really not'

"Touchy? About her weight? But everybody likes a big girl, don't they? I know I do."

"Evening all. Door was ajar. Let myself in. One day somebody's going to wander in here and

murder the fucking lot of you."

"Millat! Oscar, look it's Millat! Oscar, you're very happy to see Millat, aren't you, darling?"

Oscar screwed up his nose, pretended to barf and threw a wooden hammer at Millat's shins.

"Oscar gets so excited when he sees you. Well. You're just in time for dinner. Chicken with

cauliflower cheese. Sit down. Josh, put Millat's coat somewhere. So. How are things?" Millat sat down at the table with violence and eyes that looked like they had recently seen tears.

He pulled out his pouch of tobacco and little bag of weed.

"Fuckin' awful."

"Awful how?" inquired Marcus with little attention, otherwise engaged in cutting himself a

chunk from an enormous block of Stilton. "Couldn't get in girl's pants? Girl wouldn't get in your

pants? Girl not wearing pants? Out of interest, what kind of pants was she '

"Dad! Give it a rest," moaned Joshua.

"Well, if you ever actually got in anybody's pants, Josh," said Marcus, looking pointedly at Me,

"I'd be able to get my kicks through you, but so far'

"Shhh, the two of you," snapped Joyce. "I'm trying to listen to Millat."

Four months ago, having a cool mate like Millat had seemed to Josh one hell of a lucky break.

Having him round his house every Tuesday had upped Josh's ante at Glenard Oak by more than he

could have imagined. And now that Millat, encouraged by Me, had begun to come of his own

accord, to come socially, Joshua Chalfen, the Chalfen the Chubster, should have felt his star rising.

But he didn't. He felt pissed off. For Joshua had not bargained on the power of Millat's

attractiveness. His magnet-like qualities. He saw that Me was still, deep down, stuck on him like a

paper clip and even his own mother seemed sometimes to take Millat as her only focus; all her

energy for her gardening, her children, her husband, streamlined and drawn to this one object like

so many iron filings. It pissed him off.

"I can't talk now? I can't talk in my own house?"

"Joshi, don't be silly. Millat's obviously upset.. . I'm just trying to deal with that at the moment."

"Poor little Joshi," said Millat in slow, malicious, purring tones. "Not getting enough attention

from his mummy? Want mummy to wipe his bottom for him?"

"Fuck you, Millat," said Joshua.

"OooooooOOO .. ."

"Joyce, Marcus," appealed Joshua, looking for an external judgement. "Tell him."

Marcus popped a great wedge of cheese in his mouth and shrugged his shoulders. "I'm afwaid

Miyat's oar mu'rer's jurishdicshun." "Let me just deal with this first, Joshi," began Joyce. "And then

later .. ." Joyce allowed the rest of her sentence to get jammed in the kitchen door just as her eldest

son slammed it.

"Shall I go after .. . ?" asked Benjamin.

Joyce shook her head and kissed Benjamin on the cheek. "No, Benji. Best leave him to it."

She turned back to Millat, touching his face, tracing the salt path of an old tear with her finger.

"Now. What's been going on?"

Millat began slowly rolling his spliff. He liked to make them wait. You could get more out of a

Chalfen if you made them wait.

"Oh, Millat, don't smoke that stuff. Every time we see you these days you're smoking. It upsets

Oscar so much. He's not that young and he understands more than you think. He understands about

marijuana."

"What's mary wana?" asked Oscar.

"You know what it is, Oscar. It's what makes Millat all horrible, like we were talking about

today, and it's what kills the little brain cells he has."

"Get off my fucking back, Joyce." "I'm just trying to .. Joyce sighed with melodrama, and drew

her fingers through her hair. "Millat, what's the matter? Do you need some money?"

"Yeah, I do, as it happens

"Why? What happened? Millat. Talk to me. Family again?"

Millat tucked the orange cardboard roach in and stuck the joint between his lips. "Dad chucked

me out, didn't he?"

"Oh God," said Joyce, tears springing immediately, pulling her chair closer and taking his hand,

'if I was your mother, I'd well, anyway I'm not, am I ... but she's just so incompetent ... it makes me

so.. . I mean, imagine letting your husband take away one of your children and do God knows what

with the other one, I just-'

"Don't talk about my mother. You've never met her. I wasn't even talking about her."

"Well, she refuses to meet me, doesn't she? As if it were some kind of competition."

"Shut the fuck up, Joyce."

"Well, there's no point, is there? Going into ... it upsets you to ... I can see that, clearly, it's all

too close to the .. . Marcus, get some tea, he needs tea."

"For fucks sake I don't want any fucking tea. All you ever do is drink tea! You lot must piss

pure bloody tea."

"Millat, I'm just try '

"Well, don't."

A little hash seed fell out of Millat's joint and stuck on his lips. He picked it off and popped it in

his mouth. "I could do with some brandy, though, if there is any."

Joyce motioned to Irie with a what can you do look and mimed a tiny measure of her

thirty-year-old Napoleon brandy between forefinger and thumb. Irie stood on an overturned bucket

to get it off the top shelf.

"OK, let's all calm down. OK? OK. So. What happened this time?"

"I called him a cunt. He is a cunt." Millat walloped Oscar's

Me 1990, 1907

creeping fingers that were looking for a plaything and reaching speculatively for his matches.

Till need somewhere to stay for a bit."

"Well, that's not even a question, you can stay at ours, naturally."

Me reached between the two of them, Joyce and Millat, to place the big-bottomed brandy glass

on the table.

"OK, Me, give him a little space right now, I think."

"I was just-'

"Yes, OK, Me he just doesn't need crowding right at this moment-'

"He's a bloody hypocrite, man," Millat cut in with a growl, looking into the middle distance and

speaking to the conservatory as much as to anyone, 'he prays five times a day but he still drinks and

he doesn't have any Muslim friends, then he has a go at me for fucking a white girl. And then he's

pissed off about Magid. He takes all his shit out on me. And he wants me to stop hanging around

with KEVIN. I'm more of a fucking Muslim than he is. Fuck him!"

"Do you want to talk about it with all this lot about," said Joyce, looking meaningfully round

the room. "Or just us?"

"Joyce," said Millat, downing his brandy in one, "I don't give a fuck'

Joyce took that to mean just us and ushered the rest of them out of the room with her eyes.

Me was glad to leave. In the four months that she and Millat had been turning up to the

Chalfens, ploughing through Double Science, band I, and eating their selection of boiled food, a

strange pattern had developed. The more progress Me made whether in her studies, her attempts to

make polite conversation or her studiedimitation of Chalfenism the less interest Joyce showed in

her. Yet the more Millat veered off the rails turning up uninvited on a Sunday night, off his face,

bringing round girls, smoking weed all over the house, drinking their 1964 Dom

Perignon on the sly, pissing on the rose garden, holding a K E VIN meeting in the front room,

running up a three hundred pound phone bill calling Bangladesh, telling Marcus he was queer,

threatening to castrate Joshua, calling Oscar a spoilt little shit, accusing Joyce herself of being a

maniac the more Joyce adored him. In four months he already owed her over three hundred pounds,

a new duvet and a bike wheel.

"Are you coming upstairs?" asked Marcus, as he closed the kitchen door on the two of them,

and bent this way and that like a reed while his children blew past him. "I've got those pictures you

wanted to see."

Irie gave Marcus a thankful smile. It was Marcus who seemed to keep an eye out for her. It was

Marcus who had helped her these four months as her brain changed from something mushy to

something hard and defined, as she slowly gained a familiarity with the Chalfen way of thinking.

She had thought of this as a great sacrifice on the part of a busy man, but more recently she

wondered if there was not some enjoyment in it. Like watching a blind man feeling out the contours

of a new object, maybe. Or a laboratory rat making sense of a maze. Either way, in exchange for his

attention, Irie had begun to take an interest, first strategic and now genuine, in his Future Mouse

Consequently invitations to Marcus's study at the very top of the house, by far her favourite room,

had become more frequent.

"Well, don't stand there grinning like the village idiot. Come on up."

Marcus's room was like no place Irie had ever seen. It had no communal utility, no other

purpose in the house apart from being Marcus's room; it stored no toys, bric-a-brac, broken things,

spare ironing boards; no one ate in it, slept in it or made love in it. It wasn't like Clara's attic space,

a Xanadu of crap, all carefully stored in boxes and labelled just in case she should ever need to flee

this land for another one. It wasn't like the spare rooms of immigrants packed to the rafters with all

that they have ever possessed, no matter how defective or damaged, mountains of odds and ends that

stand testament to the fact that they have things now, where before they had nothing.) Marcus's

room was purely devoted to Marcus and Marcus's work. A study. Like in Austen or Upstairs,

Downstairs or Sherlock Holmes. Except this was the first study Me had ever seen in real life.

The room itself was small and irregular with a sloping floor, wooden eaves that meant it was

possible to stand in certain places but not others and a skylight rather than a window which let light

through in slices, spotlights for dancing dust. There were four filing cabinets, open-mouthed beasts

spitting paper; paper in piles on the floor, on the shelves, in circles around the chairs. The smell of a

rich, sweet Germanic tobacco sat in a cloud just above head level, staining the leaves of the highest

books yellow, and there was an elaborate smoking set on a side table spare mouthpieces, pipes

ranging from the standard U-bend to ever more curious shapes, snuffboxes, a selection of gauzes all

laid out in a velvet-lined leather case like a doctor's instruments. Scattered about the walls and

lining the fireplace were photos of the Chalfen clan, including comelyportraits of Joyce in her pert-breasted hippy youth, a retrousse nose sneaking out between two great sheaths of hair. And

then a few larger framed centre pieces A map of the Chalfen family tree. A head shot of Mendel

looking pleased with himself. A big poster of Einstein in his American icon stage Nutty Professor

hair, 'surprised' look and huge pipe subtitled with the quote God does not play dice with the world.

Finally, Marcus's large oaken armchair backed on to a portrait of Crick and Watson looking tired

but elated in front of their model of deoxyribonucleic acid, a spiralstaircase of metal clamps,

reaching from the floor of their Cambridge lab to beyond the scope of the photographer's lens.

"But where's Wilkins?" inquired Marcus, bending where the ceiling got low and tapping the