White Teeth

th about beautiful women. They do not shimmer down staircases. They do not descend, as was o

o getting away from Ryan Topps. Just as a good historian need recognize Hitler's Napoleonic ambitions in the east in order to comprehend his reluctance to invade the British in the west, so Ryan Topps is essential to any understanding of why Clara did what she did. Ryan is

olo-necks. He wore Chelsea boots after everyone else had stopped wearing them. While the rest of the world discovered the joys of the electronic synthesizer, Ryan swore allegiance to the little men with big guitars: to the Kinks, the Small Faces, the Who. Ryan Topps rode a green Vespa

one might expect,

-toothed, a Jehovah's Witness,

olic, which made them two islands floating surrounded by the popish ocean of St. Jude's, enrolled in the school by the accident of their post codes reviled by teachers and pupils alike. She knew the name of his bike, she read the tops of his records as they popped up over the br

for a Mill

o Save My M

t for Wo

tions of the school's female changing rooms, Clara knew. She knew how the object of her affections was discussed, she kept an ear out,

Ryan Topps and a bunch of cockroaches.""On me life, I'd rather sleep with the cockroaches."Ryan's unpopularity at St. Jude's was equalled only by Clara's. On her first day at the school her mother had explained to her she was about to enter the devil's lair, filled her satchel with two hundred copies of the Watchtower and instructed her to go and do the Lord

e her tongue got anywhere near it. Not even the Catholics would forgive them for it (and Catholics give out forgiveness at about the same rate politicians give out promises and whores give

t had seen better days. But nothing affected her more deeply than gazing after the disappearing tailpipe of Ryan's scooter. Lacking any name for the furtive rumblings that appeared in her lower abdomen on these occasions, Clara called it the spirit of the Lord. She felt that somehow she was going to save the heathen Ryan Topps. Clara meant to gather this boy close to her breast, keep him safe from the temptation that besets us all around, prepare him for the day of his redemption. (And wasn't there somewhere, lower than her abdomen somewhere down in t

hat if w

gh money to enable Clara and Hortense to come over, join him and settle down. However, on arrival, a mysterious illness had debilitated Darcus Bowden. An illness that no doctor could find any physical symptoms of, but which manifested itself in the most incredible lethargy, creating in Darcus admittedly, never the most vibrant of men a lifelong affection for the dole, the armchair and British television. In 1972, enraged by a fourteen-year wait, Hortense decided finally to make the journey on her own steam. Steam was something Hortense had in abundance. She arrived on the doorstep with the seventeen-year-old Clara, broke down the door in a fury and so the legend went back in St.Elizabeth gave Darcus Bowden the tongue-whipping of his life. Some say thi

boddrin' yourself wid! How many times must I tell you you got no time for bwoys!"For Time was running out in the Bowden household. This was 1974, and Hortense was p

Rangeforth of the largest Kingdom Hall in the USA, Brooklyn, confirming the date. The end of the world had been officially confirmed with a gold-plated letterhead, and Hortense had risen to the occasion by setting it in an attractive mahogany frame. She ha

5. They had been promised the entrails of sinners wrapped around the trunks of trees, and this time the entrails of sinners wrapped around the trunks of trees wo

ed in the past were the result of some bad calculations: someone forgot to add, someone forgot

from their bones, shall melt the eyes in their sockets, and burn the babies that suckle at their mothers' breasts ... so many of your neighbours shall die that day that their bodies, if lined up side by side, will stretch three hundred times round the earth and on their charred remains shall the true Witnesses of the Lord walk to his side. The Clarion Bell, issue 245 How bitterly she had been disappointed! But the wounds of 1925 had healed, and Hortense was once aga

l, 'a time, and times, and half a time'? Hortense was convinced these were the sign of signs. These were the final days. There were eight months to the end of the world. Hardly enough time! There were banners to be made, articles to be written ("Will the Lord Forgive the Onanist?"), doorsteps to be trod, bells to be rung. There was D

ning, Montego Bay, 1955. Straight away she threw down the marlin, caught the trolley car home

ld in the middle of a ground shaker, as parts of Montego Bay slipped into the sea, and fires came down from the mountains, then nobody had no excuses about nothing no how. She liked to say: "Being' barn is de hardest part! Once ya done dat no problems." So now that Clara was here, old enough to help her with door st

s face to face. The youth group of the Lambeth Kingdom Hall had been sent door stepping on a Sunday morning, Separating the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:31-46), and Clara, detesting the yo

, scared they might catch religion like an infection. As she got into the poorer end of the

nit I'm knackered. I've spent all week creating the land and oceans. It's me day of rest."At No. 75 she spent an hour with a fourteen-year-old physics

is red-headed, black polo-necked

ing: a white shirt complete with throat-ruffle, plaid knee-le

e Lambet Kingdom Hall, where we, de Witnesses of Jehovah, are waitin' for de Lord to come and grace us wid his holy presence once more; as he did briefly hot sadly, invisibly in de year of ou

ah?""You wot?""In Jehovah in de tea chins of d'Lord. You see, it like a staircase." Clara's last resort was

' you: watch your

your legs."Ryan Topps leant against the door frame an

f, like a telescope. It was only moments,

of the suitcase, flipped the catch with her thumb but neglected to hold the ot

ant do nuttin

aid Ryan slowly. "You're from my school, ain't ya?""Yes, man," said Clara, so jubilant he remembered her name that she

flowerpot. "IRA. The lot of'em."Ryan surveyed the long figure of Clara once more, spending an inordinate amoun

t expect of a Christian girl) and the devil won another easy hand in God's poker game. Things were tweaked, and pushed and pulled; and by the time the bell rang for end of school Monday Ryan Topps and Clara Bowden (much

d out to consist of three major p

s convinced of the ageing fifties motto "Live fast, die young', and, though his scooter didn't do more than 22 mph. downhill, he liked to warn Clara in grim tones not to get 'too involved', for he wouldn't be here long; he was 'going out' early and with a 'bang'. She imagined herself holding the bleeding Ryan in her arms, hearing him finally declare his undying love; she saw herself as Mod Widow, wearing black polo-necks for a year and demanding "Waterloo Sunset' be played at his funeral. Clara's inexplicable dedication to Ryan Topps knew no bounds. It transcended his badloo

normal sense. No flowers or

dn't smoke, sat at his feet, admired him, and tried to keep up with the general conversation around her. She had no tales to tell like the others, not like Merlin, like Clive, like Leo, Petronia, Wan-Si and the others. No anecdotes of LSD trips, of police brutality or marching on Trafalgar Square. But Clara made friends. A resourceful girl, she used what she had to amu

, so much new in life! If it were possible, she felt like one of the Anointed right now, right here in Lambeth. The more blessed she felt on earth, the more rarely she turned her thoughts towards

lims; to the poor jungle men in the Amazon whom Clara had wept for as a child; so many unsaved. The Witnesses prided themselves on the absence of hell in their theology the punishment was torture, unimaginable torture on the fi

unable to contact the Lambeth Kingdom Hall and receive helpful reading material about the road to redemption. On the other side, Hortense, her hair all wrapped

ord, will be resurrected and dem will have an udder chance." But t

in the red cushions in the Kingdom Hall. She would not wear sashes, carry banners or give out leaflets. She w

Leenan Street. It was freezing cold and getting dark by the time she got out; she ran through piles of putrefying autumn leaves, searched the length and breadth of Leenan, but there was no sign. It was with dread that she approached her own front door, offe

ut on when she had company an over-compensation of all the

nd of terror through the living room, past the framed hologr

m," said Ryan, who was happily shovelling a plate of ackee and sa

m lip. "What are you doing here?""Ha!" cried Hortense, almost t

Mmm, yes, Mrs. Bowden.""Well, don' look so shock. You'd tink I was gwan eatim up or

And together, Ryan Topps and

became harder to pick Ryan out of the crowd who milled outside the school gates each day at three thirty, a dejected Clara would make the long walk home only to find her lover once more

then awkward, then Ryan would make his excuses and leave. There was also a look, she noticed, that they had begun to give her, a look of sympathy, of condescension; and not only that th

thing about Ryan before Ryan himself knew it she had been a Ryan expert. Now she was reduced to overhearing the Irish girls assert that

o her apron pocket Clara willed herself to forget it. Later that month, when Clara persuaded a doleful Ryan to go through the motions with her in the disabled toilet, she squinted so she couldn't see what she didn't want

ir logical extremes, their mutual predilection for the pain and death of others meeting like perspective points on some morbid

t of school into the dusk and it was Ryan, hi

," murmured Ryan. The right place, ope fully"No.""Please, Claz.""No.""Please. "Simportant. Life or death.""Man.. all right. But me nah wearin' dat ting' she passed back the helmet and got astride the scooter 'not mussin' up me hair."Ryan drove her across London and up to Hampstead Heath,

s, herself and my

're worried. "Bout you. There ain't that many wot will

The weed the weed is evil. And all that lot Wan-Si, Petronia.""Dey my friends!""They ain't nice girls, Clara. They should be with their families, n

Ryan, the word exploding from him l

ust separating the sheep from the goats, Claz, the sheep from the goats. That's Matthew. And I think you yourself are a sheep, in nit "Lemme tell you so meting said Clara, walking back over to the scooter and taking the back seat, "I'm a goat. I like being' a goat. I wanna be a goat. An' I'd rather be sizzling in de rains of sulphur wid my friends than sittin' in heaven, bored to tears, wid Darcus, my mudder and you!""Shouldn'ta said that, Claz," said Ryan solemnly, putting his helmet on. "I really wish you 'adn't said that. For yo

, the Vespa G S, cracked right into a 400-year-old oak tree. Nature triumphed over the presumpt

ity and Sod's Law (also known

the argument goes, because that's Sod's Law. In short, Sod's Law happens to you to prove to you that there is Sod's Law. Yet, unlike gravity, it is a law that does not exist whatever happens: when the toast lands on the right side, Sod's Law mysteriously disappears. Likewise, when Clara fell, knocking the teeth out of the top of her mouth, while Ryan stood up without a scratch, Ryan

e in the living room, sitting in the middle of a circle of candles with Hortense, ardently prayi

pair of yellow flares and a red h

st. Though her friends Merlin, Wan-Si, et al. clapped her on the back and congratulated her for exorcizing those fervid dreams of perdition and redemption, Clara quietly mourned the warmer touch she had waited for these nineteen years, the all-enveloping bear hug of the Saviour, the One who was Alpha and Omega, both the beginning and the end; the man who was meant to take her away from all this, from the listless reality of life in a ground-floor flat in Lambeth. What no

imply a rather short, rather chubby middle-aged white man in a badly tailored suit. Clara saw Archie through the grey-green eyes of loss; her world had ju