White Teeth

he root of the problem: not the excretions but the pigeon itself. The shit is not the shit (this was Mo's mantra), the pigeon is the shit. So the morning of Archie's almost-death bega

It was cricket, basically the Englishman's game adapted by the i

wn to the street, holding the

the school round the corner, looking up like a big dejected blob underneath Mo's question mark. It was Varin's job to struggle up a ladder and

o's kitchen staff, poking Varin up the arse

emporiums, the greasy spoons and the mini cabs all covered in shit. One day, so Mo believed, Cricklewood and its residents would have cause to thank him for his daily massacre; one day no man, woman or child in the broadway would ever again have to mix one part detergent to four par

bar moustache, dressed in four different shades of b

in the direction of the car. "My boy, I'm going to ask you ju

bore the legend no parkings of any vehicle on any days. "Well?""I don't know, Abba.""You're my son, Arshad. I don't employ you not to know. I employ him not to know' he reached out of the window and slapped Varin, who was negotiating the perilous gutter like a tightrope-walker, giving him a thorough cosh to the back of his head and almost knocking the boy off his perch

eave me alone." Like that.""No one gasses himself on my property," Mo snapped as he marched downstairs. "We are not licensed."Once in the street, Mo adva

e round here, my friend, I'm afraid you've got to be thoroughly bled first."Archie dragged his head off the steering wheel. And in th

fe had said Yes to Archie Jones. Not simply an "OK' or "You-might

ealously grabbed him from the j

specimens, Life wanted Archie and Archie

m the very depths of his lungs. In between gulps he thanked Mo profusel

move along now. I've got meat coming. I'm in the business of bleeding. Not counselling. You want Lonely Street.

f a vacuum cleaner because he loved her. It was rather because he had lived with her for so long and had not loved her. Archie's marriage felt like buying a pair of shoes, taking them home and

rty y

ed into it blinkered as horses. She was not to know that women never stayed as daylight in Archie's life; that somewhere in him he didn't like them, he didn't trust them, and he was able to love them only if they wore haloes. No one told Archie that lurking in the Diagilo family tree were two hysteric aunts, an uncle who talked to aubergines and a cousin

he attic in so many days, ferrying out the odds and ends of a marriage to his new flat, and the Hoover was amongst the very last items he reclaimed one of the most broken things, most ug

haven for people who hated him. Apart from the home-help, he had to contend with Ophelia's extended Italian family, her mental-health nurse, the woman from the council, and of course Ophelia herself, who was to be found in the kernel of this nuthouse, curled up in a foetal ball on the sofa,

eaning fluid: "It's broken. You don't need this. See? See?" She plugged it into a socket and demonstrated the dead switch. Archie took the plug out and silently wound the cord round the Hoov

, and this is all you can do!"Archie hugged the Hoover to his chest and took it into the crowded livin

he take-a the old stereo he take-a everything except the floorboards. It make-a you sick .. ."The woman from the council, who even on dry days resembled a long-haired cat soaked to the skin

s buggered off, poor woman .. . she needs a proper home, she needs I'm here, Archie f

heavy that, even though it meant losing everything, it was infinitely easier to leave all baggage here on the roadside and walk on into the blackness. You don't need the blender, Archie boy, you don't need the Hoover. This stuff's all dead weight. Just l

than poor whisky, novelty crackers and a paltry box of Quality Street al

ost difficult corners. Solemnly he flipped a coin (heads, life, tails, death) and felt nothing in particular when he found hims

ick. It is the decision not to do, to un-do; a kiss blown at oblivion. No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It's for heroes and martyrs, tr

ble:

drop:

le: Ha

be tiny and rootless. He thought about the dent he might make on the world if he disappeared, and it seemed negligible, too small to calculate. He squandered spare minutes wondering whether "Hoover' had become a generic term for vacuum cleaners or whether

he had a Bengali Muslim he had fought alongside back when the fighting had to be done, who reminded him of that war; that war that reminded

ve."They were sitting in their new haunt, O'ConnelTs Pool House, playing poker with only three hands, two of Archie's and one of Samad's - Samad's right hand being a broken thing, grey-skinned and unmoving, dead in eve

for me the new possibilities. She's so young, so vital like a breath of fresh air. You come to me

spring of 1973 Samad had come to England, a middle-aged man seeking a new life with his twenty-year-old new bride, the diminutive, moon-faced Alsana Begum with her shrewd eyes. In a fit of nostalgia, and be

eens back to back. He flicked them with the thumb of his left hand

You have not even met the right one yet. This Ophelia, Archie, she is not the right one. From what you leave me to understand she is not even for this time ' He

at woman completely unawares and up the arse. Her mind is gone. Buggered. And you? You have picked up the wrong life in the cloakr

e, I know. You," he continued, raking in the lop's with the side of his bad hand, '

o cling to Samad's advice. He had decided instead to mortify his own flesh, to take his own life, to free himself from a life path that had taken h

e Queen's Speech. A dull childhood, a bad marriage, a dead-end job that classic triumvirate they all flicked by quickly, silently, with little dialogue, feeling pretty much the same as they did the first time round. He was no

Archie even had a bit of shrapnel in the leg for anyone who cared to see it but nobody did. No one wanted to talk about that any more. It was like a club-foot, or a disfiguring mole. It was like nose hair. People looked away. If som

s a war correspondent. Poncey-looking bloke with a thin moustache and a thin voice had said, Any

ted, and said, We would require something other than merely havin

ere was no relevance in the war

skills you learnt were, in the modern

anything els

twenty years and counting in a printing firm in the Euston Road, designing the way all kinds of things should be folded envelopes, direct mail, brochures, leaflets not much of an achievement, maybe, but you'll find things need folds, they need to overlap, otherwise life

st. What Archie liked about track cycling was the way you went round and round. Round and round.

ot precisely 62.8 seconds on every single lap. The other cyclists used to take breaks to watch him do it. Lean their bikes against the incline and time him with

ogist called Horst Ibelgaufts. Unfortunately this fact had been omitted from the Olympic records by a sloppy secretary who returned one morning after a coffee break with something else on her mind and missed his name as she transcribed one list to ano

a crude velodrome nothing like the one you and I raced in, but sufficient for my needs. It will be on afar smaller scale, but you see, it is for the children we are yet to have. I see them pedalling ar

n the dashboard this very day

ion! But then, cycling was only ever understood by old boys like you, Archie, and of course the author of this little note, your old contender, Horst IbelgauftsHe had not met Horst since the race, but he remembered him affectionately as an enormous man with strawberry-blond hair, orange freckles and misaligned nostrils, who dressed like an international playboy and seemed too large for his bike. After the race Horst

t Dana and Melanie get home fine and well Daria was his one. Terribly skinny, ribs like lobster cages and no chest to speak of, but she wasa lovely sort: kind; soft with her kisses and with double-jointed wrists she liked to show off in a pair of long silk gloves set you back four clothing coupons at least. "I like you," Archie remembered saying helplessly, as she replaced the gloves and put on her

de him cover Mo's apron with tears of joy as the butcher saved his life. He had seen her in his mind: a beautiful woman in a doorway with a come hither look; and realized he regretted not coming hithe

e you've just been handed a great big wad of Time. He drove straight past his flat, straight past the street signs (Hendon 3%), laughing like a loon. At the traffic lights he flipped ten pence and smiled when the result seemed to agree that Fate was pulling him towards another life. Like a dog o

ed road, he slows down, checks his undistinguished face in the wing-mirror, and quite indiscriminately chooses a route he's never taken before, a residenti

ocean of supine bodies, and opened the door to arrive face-to-face with a middle-aged man dressed head-to-toe in grey corduroy, holding a ten pence coin in his o

h a mass of it, at nine in the a.m." on the first day of a New Yea

sunshine. "Encyclopedias or God?"Archie noted the kid had an unnerving way of emphasizing certain words by moving his head in

s God, you've got the wrong house. We're in a mellow place, here. Know what I

head, smiled and re

he doorknob. "Is there something I can do for you? Are

head to follow Archie's gaze. The white bedsheet hanging down from an u

'end of the wor

I was just driving along looking for somewhere, you know, somewhere to have another drink, New Year's Day, hair of the dog and all that and I've had a bit of a rough morning all in all and it just sort of struck me. I flipped a coin and thought: why not?"Merlin looked perplexed at the turn the conversation was taking. "Er .. . party's pretty much over, man. Besides, I think you're a little advanced in years .. . if you know what I mean .. ." Here Merlin turned gauche; underneath the dakshiki he was at heart a good middle-cl

d the floor; a great mass of bedding, under which people lay sleeping, stretched from one end of the hallway to the other, a red sea which grudgingly separated each time Archie took a step forward. Inside the rooms, in certain corners, could be witnessed the passing of bodily fluids: kissing, breast-feeding, fucking, throwing up all the things Archie's Sunday Supplement had informed him could be found in a commune. He toyed for a moment with the idea of entering the fray, losing himself between the bodies (h

ere sitting around on wooden kitchen chairs, playing rummy. Just as Archie reached for the

ome perfectly acceptable whisky. There's Babycham and some other inexorable

red himself a big glass

and a piece of charcoal, he could have rendered every puckered goose pimple around Wan-Si's nipples, every stray hair that fell in Petronia's face as she spoke.

ulating in and around Archie, the kind of thing strong enough to

xual presence to satisfy some of the more adventurous women. "Great," said Archie. "Fantastic. That'll be me, then." He felt so close to them that he was confused wh

's corduroy slung round her petite shoulders. "Let's not get into this. I'd rather go to bed than get into this.""We are into it, we

remark three quarters of an hour ago about military service building up a young man's character) and then immediately regretted when it required him to defe

like his new life was going to be fabulous, and from now on he was always going to say the right thing at the right time, and everywhere he went people would love him. Nobody's fault, thought Archie, mulling over the balls-up, nobody's fault but my own, but he wondered whether there wasn't some higher pattern to it. Maybe there willal

ransformation of Archie Jones in every particular that a man can be transformed; and not due to any particular effort on his part, but by me

l. Clara Bowden was magnificently tall, black as ebony and crushed sable, with hair plaited in a horseshoe which pointed

button (beautifully) and underneath that some very tight yellow jeans. At the end of it all were some strappy heels of a light brown suede, and she

t only was she the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, she was also the most comforting woman he had ever met. Her beauty was not a sharp, cold commodity. She smelt musty, womanly, like a bundle of your favourite clothes. Though she was disorganized physically legs and arms speaking a slightly different dialect

ink it already has."Archie, who had just dropped a fag from his mouth which had been burning itself to death anyway, saw Clara quickly tr

nock out," she lisped

of de world, d'Lord won't mind if I

aid Archie, offeri

in the smoke. "Archie Jones, you look just about exackly how I

l but disappeared with the effects of the wine and continued where he left off, accu

t of'. I seen older.""I'm old enough," said Archie, and then, just because he felt like telling her, "You won't believe me, but I almost died today."Clara raised an eyebrow. "You don't say. Well, come and join de club. Dere are a lot of us about dis marnin'. What a s

r went anywhere with

e. Man ... dis life no easy!"What home? thought Archie. He had

less he was really going nuts, Archie saw that come hither look; identical to Daria's; tinged with a kind of sadness, disappointment;