3 Two Families -2

On the Tuesday after Archie's wedding, Samad had waited till everyone left, folded his white,

flared trousers (made from the same fabric as the tablecloths) into a perfect square, and then

climbed the stairs to Ardashir's office, for he had something to ask him.

"Cousin!" said Ardashir, with a friendly grimace at the sight of Samad's body curling cautiously

round the door. He knew that Samad had come to inquire about a pay increase, and he wanted

his cousin to feel that he had at least considered the case in all his friendly judiciousness before

he declined.

"Cousin, come in!"

"Good evening, Ardashir Mukhul," said Samad, stepping fully into the room.

"Sit down, sit down," said Ardashir warmly. "No point standing on ceremony now, is there?"

Samad was glad this was so. He said as much. He took a moment to look with the necessary

admiration around the room, with its relentless gold, with its triple-piled carpet, with its furnishings

in various shades of yellow and green. One had to admire Ardashir's business sense. He had taken

the simple idea of an Indian restaurant (small room, pink tablecloth, loud music, atrocious

wallpaper, meals that do not exist in India, sauce carousel) and just made it bigger. He hadn't

improved anything; everything was the same old crap, but it was all bigger in a bigger building in

the biggest tourist trap in London, Leicester Square. You had to admire it and admire the man, who

sat now like a benign locust, his slender in sectile body swamped in a black leather chair, leaning

over the desk, all smiles, a parasite disguised as a philanthropist.

"Cousin, what can I do for you?"

Samad took a breath. The matter was this .. .

Ardashir's eyes glazed over a little as Samad explained his situation. His skinny legs twitched

underneath the desk, and in his fingers he manipulated a paper clip until it looked reasonably like

an A. A for Ardashir. The matter was .. . what was the matter? The house was the matter. Samad

was moving out of East London (where one couldn't bring up children, indeed, one couldn't, not if

one didn't wish them to come to bodily harm, he agreed), from East London with its NF gangs, to

North London, north-west, where things were more .. . more .. . liberal.

Was it his turn to speak?

"Cousin .. ." said Ardashir, arranging his face, 'you must

understand ... I cannot make it my business to buy houses for all my employees, cousin or not

cousin ... I pay a wage, cousin . That is business in this country."

Ardashir shrugged as he spoke as if to suggest he deeply disapproved of "Business in this

country', but there it was. He was forced, his look said, forced by the English to make an awful lot

of money.

"You misunderstand me, Ardashir. I have the deposit for the house, it is our house now, we have

moved in '

How on earth has he afforded it, he must work his wife like a bloody slave, thought Ardashir,

pulling out another paper clip from the bottom drawer.

"I need only a small wage increase to help me finance the move. To make things a little easier

as we settle in. And Alsana, well, she is pregnant."

Pregnant. Difficult. The case called for extreme diplomacy.

"Don't mistake me, Samad, we are both intelligent, frank men and I think I can speak frankly ...

I know you're not a fucking waiter' he whispered the expletive and smiled indulgently after it, as if

it were a naughty, private thing that brought them closer together "I see your position ... of course I

do ... but you must understand mine ... If I made allowances for every relative I employ I'd be

walking around like bloody Mr. Gandhi. Without a pot to piss in. Spinning my thread by the light of

the moon. An example: at this very moment that wastrel Fat Elvis brother-in law of mine,

Hussein-Ishmael '

"The butcher?"

"The butcher, demands that I should raise the price I pay for his stinking meat! "But Ardashir,

we are brothers-in-law!" he is saying to me. And I am saying to him, but Mohammed, this is retail

It was Samad's turn to glaze over. He thought of his wife, Alsana, who was not as meek as he

had assumed when they married, to whom he must deliver the bad news; Alsana, who

was prone to moments, even fits yes, fits was not too strong a word of rage. Cousins, aunts,

brothers, thought it a bad sign, they worried if there wasn't some 'funny mental history' in Alsana's

family, they sympathized with him the way you sympathize with a man who has bought a stolen car

with more mileage on it than first thought. In his naivety Samad had simply assumed a woman so

young would be ... easy. But Alsana was not.. . no, she was not easy. It was, he supposed, the way

with these young women these days. Archie's bride .. . last Tuesday he had seen something in her

eyes that wasn't easy either. It was the new way with these women.

Ardashir came to the end of what he felt was his perfectly worded speech, sat back satisfied,

and laid the M for Mukhul he had moulded next to the A for Ardashir that sat on his lap.

"Thank you, sir," said Samad. "Thank you so very much."

That evening there was an awful row. Alsana slung the sewing machine, with the black studded

hot pants she was working on, to the floor.

"Useless! Tell me, Samad Miah, what is the point of moving here nice house, yes, very nice,

very nice but where is the food?"

"It is a nice area, we have friends here."

"Who are they?" She slammed her little fist on to the kitchen table, sending the salt and pepper

flying, to collide spectacularly with each other in the air. "I don't know them! You fight in an old,

forgotten war with some Englishman .. . married to a black! Whose friends are they? These are the

people my child will grow up around? Their children half blacky-white? But tell me," she shouted,

returning to her favoured topic, 'where is our food?" Theatrically, she threw open every cupboard in

the kitchen. "Where is it? Can we eat china?" Two plates smashed to the floor. She patted her

stomach to indicate her unborn child and pointed to the pieces. "Hungry?"

Samad, who had an equally melodramatic nature when prompted, yanked upon the freezer and

pulled out a mountain of meat which he piled in the middle of the room. His mother worked

through the night preparing meat for her family, he said. His mother did not, he said, spend the

household money, as Alsana did, on prepared meals, yoghurts and tinned spaghetti.

Alsana punched him full square in the stomach.

"Samad Iqbal the traditionalist! Why don't I just squat in the street over a bucket and wash

clothes? Eh? In fact, what about my clothes? Edible?"

As Samad clutched his winded belly, there in the kitchen she ripped to shreds every stitch she

had on and added them to the pile of frozen lamb, spare cuts from the restaurant. She stood naked

before him for a moment, the yet small mound of her pregnancy in full view, then put on a long,

brown coat and left the house.

But all the same, she reflected, slamming the door behind her, it was true: it was a nice area; she

couldn't deny it as she stormed towards the high road, avoiding trees where previously, in

Whitechapel, she avoided flung-out mattresses and the homeless. It would be good for the child,

she couldn't deny it. Alsana had a deep-seated belief that living near green spaces was morally

beneficial to the young, and there to her right was Gladstone Park, a sweeping horizon of green

named after the Liberal Prime Minister (Alsana was from a respected old Bengal family and had

read her English History; but look at her now; if they could see what depths ...!), and in the Liberal

tradition it was a park without fences, unlike the more affluent Queens Park (Victoria's), with its

pointed metal railings. Willesden was not as pretty as Queens Park, but it was a nice area. No

denying it. Not like Whitechapel, where that madman E-knock someoneoranother gave a speech

that forced them into the basement while kids broke the windows with their steel-capped boots.

Rivers of blood

silly-billy nonsense. Now she was pregnant she needed a little bit of peace and quiet. Though it

was the same here in a way: they all looked at her strangely, this tiny Indian woman stalking the

high road in a mackintosh, her plentiful hair flying every which way. Mali's Kebabs, Mr. Cheungs,

Raj's, Malkovich Bakeries she read the new, unfamiliar signs as she passed. She was shrewd. She

saw what this was. "Liberal? Hosh-kosh nonsense!" No one was more liberal than anyone else

anywhere anyway. It was only that here, in Willesden, there was just not enough of any one thing to

gang up against any other thing and send it running to the cellars while windows were smashed.

"Survival is what it is about!" she concluded out loud (she spoke to her baby; she liked to give

it one sensible thought a day), making the bell above Crazy Shoes tinkle as she opened the door.

Her niece Neena worked there. It was an old-fashioned cobblers. Neena fixed heels back on to

stilettos.

"Alsana, you look like dog shit," Neena called over in Bengali. "What is that horrible coat?"

"It's none of your business, is what it is," replied Alsana in English. "I came to collect my

husband's shoes, not to chitchat with Niece-of-Shame."

Neena was used to this, and now that Alsana had moved to Willesden there would only be more

of it. It used to come in longer sentences, i.e." You have brought nothing but shame ... or My niece,

the shameful.. . but now because Alsana no longer had the time or energy to summon up the

necessary shock each time, it had become abridged to Niece-of-Shame, an all-purpose tag that

summed up the general feeling.

"See these soles?" said Neena, moving one of her dyed blonde bangs from her eye, taking

Samad's shoes off a shelf and handing Alsana the little blue ticket. "They were so worn through,

Auntie Alsi, I had to reconstruct them from the very base. From the base! What does he do in them?

Run marathons?"

"He works," replied Alsana tersely. "And prays," she added, for

she liked to show people her respectability, and besides she was really very traditional, very

religious, lacking nothing except the faith. "And don't call me Auntie. I am two years older than

you." Alsana swept the shoes into a plastic carrier bag and turned to leave.

"I thought that praying was done on people's knees said Neena, laughing lightly.

"Both, both, asleep, waking, walking," snapped Alsana, as she passed under the tinkly bell once

more. "We are never out of sight of the Creator."

"How's the new house, then?" Neena called after her.

But she had gone; Neena shook her head and sighed as she watched her young aunt disappear

down the road like a little brown bullet. Alsana. She was young and old at the same time, Neena

reflected. She acted so sensible, so straight-down the-line in her long sensible coat, but you got the

feeling .. .

"Oil Miss! There's shoes back here that need your attention," came a voice from the store room.

"Keep your tits on," said Neena.

At the corner of the road Alsana popped behind the post office and removed her pinchy sandals

in favour of Samad's shoes. (It was an oddity about Alsana. She was small but her feet were

enormous. You felt instinctively when looking at her that she had yet more growing to do.) In

seconds she whipped her hair into an efficient bun, and wrapped her coat tighter around her to keep

out the wind. Then she set off up past the library and up a long green road she had never walked

along before. "Survival is all, little Iqbal," she said to her bump once more. "Survival."

Halfway up the road, she crossed the street, intending to turn left and circle round back to the

high road. But then, as she approached a large white van open at the back and looked enviously at

the furniture that was piled up in it, she recognized the black lady who was leaning over a garden

fence, looking

dreamily into the air towards the library (half dressed, though! A lurid purple vest, underwear

almost), as if her future lay in that direction. Before she could cross over once more to avoid her,

Alsana found herself spotted.

"Mrs. Iqbal!" said Clara, waving her over.

"Mrs. Jones."

Both women were momentarily embarrassed at what they were wearing, but, looking at the

other, gained confidence.

"Now, isn't that strange, Archie?" said Clara, filling in all her consonants. She was already some

way to losing her accent and she liked to work on it at every opportunity.

"What? What?" said Archie, who was in the hallway, becoming exasperated with a bookcase.

"It's just that we were just talking about you you're coming to dinner tonight, yes?"

Black people are often friendly, thought Alsana, smiling at Clara, and adding this fact

subconsciously to the short 'pro' side of the pro and con list she had on the black girl. From every

minority she disliked, Alsana liked to single out one specimen for spiritual forgiveness. From

Whitechapel, there had been many such redeemed characters. Mr. Van, the Chinese chiropodist, Mr.

Segal, a Jewish carpenter, Rosie, a Dominican woman who continuously popped round, much to

Alsana's grievance and delight, in an attempt to convert her into a Seventh-Day Adventist all these

lucky individuals were given Alsana's golden reprieve and magically extrapolated from their skins

like Indian tigers.

"Yes, Samad mentioned it," said Alsana, though Samad had not.

Clara beamed. "Good .. . good!"

There was a pause. Neither could think of what to say. They both looked downwards.

"Those shoes look truly comfortable," said Clara.

"Yes. Yes. I do a lot of walking, you see. And with this' She patted her stomach.

"You're pregnant?" said Clara surprised. "Pickney, you so small me ky ant even see it."

Clara blushed the moment after she had spoken; she always dropped into the vernacular when

she was excited or pleased about something. Alsana just smiled pleasantly, unsure what she had

said.

"I wouldn't have known," said Clara, more subdued.

"Dear me," said Alsana with a forced hilarity. "Don't our husbands tell each other anything?"

But as soon as she had said it, the weight of the other possibility rested on the brains of the two

girl-wives. That their husbands told each other everything. That it was they themselves who were

kept in the dark.
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