6 The Temptation ofSamad Iqbal -2

There was a bit of a difficult pause, in which Samad saw clearly that he wanted her more than

any woman he had met in the past ten years. Just like that. Desire didn't even bother casing the joint,

checking whether the neighbours were in desire just kicked down the door and made himself at

home. He felt queasy. Then he became aware that his face was moving from arousal to horror in a

grotesque parody of the movements of his mind, as he weighed up Poppy Burt-Jones and all the

physical and metaphysical consequences she suggested. He must speak before it got any worse.

"Well.. . hmm, it is a good idea, re tabling the motion," he said against his will, for something

more bestial than his will was now doing the talking. "If you could spare the time."

"Well, we can talk about it. I'll give you a call about it in a few weeks. We could meet after

orchestra, maybe?"

"That would be ... fine

"Great! That's agreed, then. You know, your boys are really adorable they're very unusual. I was

saying it to the Chalfens, and Marcus put his finger on it: he said that Indian children, if you don't

mind me saying, are usually a lot more '

"More?"

"Quiet. Beautifully behaved but very, I don't know, subdued."

Samad winced inside, imagining Alsana listening to this.

"And Magid and Millat are just so ... loud."

Samad tried to smile.

"Magid is so impressiveintellectually for a nine-year-old everybody says so. I mean, he's really

remarkable. You must be so proud. He's like a little adult. Even his clothes ... I don't think I've ever

known a nine-year-old to dress so so severely."

Both twins had always been determined to choose their own clothes, but where Millat bullied

Alsana into purchases of red-stripe Nike, Osh-Kosh Begosh and strange jumpers that had patterns

on the inside and the out, Magid could be found, whatever the weather, in grey pullover, grey shirt

and black tie with his shiny black shoes and NHS specs perched upon his nose, like some dwarf

librarian. Alsana would say, "Little man, how about the blue one for Amma, hmm?" pushing him

into the primary colours section of Mothercare. "Just one blue one. Go so nice with your eyes. For

Amma, Magid. How can you not care for blue? It's the colour of the sky!"

"No, Amma. The sky isn't blue. There's just white light. White light has all of the colours of the

rainbow in it, and when it is scattered through the squill ions of molecules in the sky, the

short-wave colours blue, violet they are the ones you see. The sky isn't really blue. It just looks that

way. It's called Rayleigh scattering."

A strange child with a cold intellect.

"You must be so proud," Poppy repeated with a huge smile. "I would be."

"Sadly," said Samad sighing, distracted from his erection by the dismal thought of his second

son (by two minutes), "Millat is a good-for-nothing."

Poppy looked mortified at this. "Oh no! No, I didn't mean that at all... I mean, I think he's

probably a little intimidated by Magid in that way, but he's such a personality! He's just not so .

academic. But everybody just loves him such a beautiful boy, as well. Of course," she said, giving

him a wink and a knock on the shoulder, 'good genes."

Good genes? What did she mean, good genes'?

"Hullo!" said Archie, who had walked up behind them, giving Samad a strong thud on the back.

"Hullo!" he said again, shaking Poppy's hand, with the almost mock-aristocratic manner he used

when confronted with educated people. "Archie Jones. Father of Me, for my sins."

"Poppy Butt-Jones. I take Me for '

"Music, yes, I know. Talks about you constantly. Bit disappointed you passed her over for first

violin, though .. . maybe next year, eh? So!" said Archie, looking from Poppy to Samad, who was

standing slightly apart from the other two and had a queer look, Archie thought, a bloody queer

look on his face. "You've met the notorious Ick-Ball! You were a bit much in that meeting, Samad,

eh? Wasn't he, eh?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Poppy sweetly. "I thought Mr. Iqbal made some good points, actually. I

was really impressed by a lot of what he said. I'd like to be that knowledgeable on so many subjects.

Sadly, I'm a bit of a one-trick pony. Are you, I don't know, a professor of some kind, Mr. Iqbal?"

"No, no," said Samad, furious that he was unable to lie because of Archie, and finding the word

'waiter' stopping in his throat. "No, the fact is I work in a restaurant. I did some study in younger

days, but the war came and .. ." Samad shrugged as an end to the

sentence, and watched with sinking heart as Poppy Burt Jones freckled face contorted into one

large, red, perplexed question mark.

"War?" she said, as if he had said wireless or piano la or water-closet. "The Falklands?"

"No," said Samad flatly. "The Second World."

"Oh, Mr. Iqbal, you'd never guess. You must have been ever so young."

"There were tanks there older than us, love," said Archie with a grin.

"Well, Mr. Iqbal, that is a surprise! But they say dark skin wrinkles less, don't they?"

"Do they?" said Samad, forcing himself to imagine her taut, pink skin, folded over in layer after

layer of dead epidermis. "I thought it was children that kept a man young."

Poppy laughed. "That too, I'd imagine. Well!" she said, looking flushed, coy and sure of herself,

all at the same time. "You look very good on it. I'm sure the Omar Sharif comparison's been made

before, Mr. Iqbal."

"No, no, no, no," said Samad, glowing with pleasure. "The only comparison lies in our mutual

love of bridge. No, no, no ... And it's Samad," he added. "Call me Samad, please."

"You'll have to call him Samad some other time, Miss," said Archie, who always persisted in

calling teachers Miss. "Because we've got to go. Wives waiting in the driveway. Dinner,

apparently."

"Well, it was nice talking to you," said Poppy, reaching for the wrong hand again, and blushing

as he met her with the left.

"Yes. Goodbye."

"Come on, come on," said Archie, fielding Samad out of the door and down the sloping

driveway to the front gates. "Dear God, fit as a butcher's dog, that one! Phee-yooo. Nice, very nice.

Dear me, you were trying it on ... And what were you on about

mutual love of bridge. I've known you decades and I've never seen you play bridge. Five-card

poker's more your game."

"Shut up, Archibald."

"No, no, fair dues, you did very well. It's not like you, though, Samad having found God and all

that not like you to be distracted by the attractions of the flesh."

Samad shook Archie's hand from where it was resting on his shoulder. "Why are you so

irredeemably vulgar?"
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