Samad had been surprised, yes surprised, that it was Harlesden she had whispered to him when he pressed her hand after the kiss – that kiss he could still taste – and demanded where it was he might find her, away from here, far from here (‘My children, my wife,’ he had mumbled, incoherent); expecting ‘Islington’ or maybe ‘West Hampstead’ or at least ‘Swiss Cottage’ and getting instead, ‘Harlesden. I live in Harlesden.’
‘Stonebridge Estate?’ Samad had asked, alarmed; wide-eyed at the creative ways Allah found to punish him, envisioning himself atop his new lover with a gangster’s four-inch knife in his back.
‘No – but not far from there. Do you want to meet up?’
Samad’s mouth had been the lone gunman on the grassy knoll that day, killing off his brain and swearing itself into power all at the same time.
‘Yes. Oh, dammit! Yes.’
And then he had kissed her again, turning something relatively chaste into something else, cupping her breast in his left hand and enjoying her sharp intake of breath as he did so.
Then they had the short, obligatory exchange that those who cheat have to make them feel less like those who cheat.
‘I really shouldn’t-’
‘I’m not at all sure how this-’
‘Well, we need to meet at least to discuss what has-’
‘Indeed, what has happened, it must be discu-’
‘Because something has happened here, but-’
‘My wife… my children…’
‘Let’s give it some time… two weeks Wednesday? 4.30? Harlesden Clock?’
He could at least, in this sordid mess, congratulate himself on his timing: 4.15 by the time he got off the bus, which left five minutes to nip into the McDonald’s toilets (that had black guards on the door, black guards to keep out the blacks) and squeeze out of the restaurant flares into a dark blue suit, with a wool V-neck and a grey shirt, the pocket of which contained a comb to work his thick hair into some obedient form. By which time it was 4.20, five minutes in which to visit cousin Hakim and his wife Zinat who ran the local £1 + 50p shop (a type of shop that trades under the false premise that it sells no items above this price but on closer inspection proves to be the minimum price of the stock) and whom he meant inadvertently to provide him with an alibi.
‘Samad Miah, oh! So smart-looking today – it cannot be without a reason.’
Zinat Mahaclass="underline" a mouth as large as the Blackwall Tunnel and Samad was relying upon it.
‘Thank you, Zinat,’ said Samad, looking deliberately disingenuous. ‘As for a reason… I am not sure that I should say.’
‘Samad! My mouth is like the grave! Whatever is told to me dies with me.’
Whatever was told to Zinat invariably lit up the telephone network, rebounded off aerials, radiowaves and satellites along the way, picked up finally by advanced alien civilizations as it bounced through the atmosphere of planets far removed from this one.
‘Well, the truth is…’
‘By Allah, get on with it!’ cried Zinat, who was now almost on the other side of the counter, such was her delight in gossip. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘Well… I am off to see a man in Park Royal about life insurance. I want my Alsana well provided for after my death – but!’ he said, waggling a finger at his sparkling, jewel-covered interrogator who wore too much eyeshadow, ‘I don’t want her to know! Thoughts of death are abhorrent to her, Zinat.’
‘Do you hear that, Hakim? Some men worry about the future of their wives! Go on – get out of here, don’t let me keep you, cousin. And don’t worry,’ she called after him, simultaneously reaching for the phone with her long curling fingernails, ‘I won’t say one word to Alsi.’
Alibi done, three minutes were left for Samad to consider what an old man brings a young girl; something an old brown man brings a young white girl at the crossroads of four black streets; something suitable…
‘A coconut?’
Poppy Burt-Jones took the hairy object into her hands and looked up at Samad with a perplexed smile.
‘It is a mixed-up thing,’ began Samad nervously. ‘With juice like a fruit but hard like a nut. Brown and old on the outside, white and fresh on the inside. But the mix is not, I think, bad. We use it sometimes,’ he added, not knowing what else to say, ‘in curry.’
Poppy smiled; a terrific smile which accentuated every natural beauty of that face and had in it, Samad thought, something better than this, something with no shame in it, something better and purer than what they were doing.
‘It’s lovely,’ she said.
Out in the street and five minutes from the address on their school sheets, Irie still felt the irritable hot sting of shame and wanted a rematch.
‘Tax that,’ she said, pointing to a rather beat-up motorbike leaning by Kensal Rise tube. ‘Tax that, and that,’ indicating two BMXs beside it.
Millat and Magid jumped into action. The practice of ‘taxing’ something, whereby one lays claims, like a newly arrived colonizer, to items in a street that do not belong to you, was well known and beloved to both of them.
‘Cha, man! Believe, I don’t want to tax dat crap,’ said Millat with the Jamaican accent that all kids, whatever their nationality, used to express scorn. ‘I tax dat,’ he said, pointing out an admittedly impressive small, shiny, red MG about to turn the corner. ‘And dat!’ he cried, getting there just before Magid as a BMW whizzed past. ‘Man, you know I tax that,’ he said to Magid, who offered no dispute. ‘Blatantly.’
Irie, a little dejected by this turn of events, turned her eyes from the road to the floor, where she was suddenly struck by a flash of inspiration.
‘I tax those!’
Magid and Millat stopped and looked in awe at the perfectly white Nikes that were now in Irie’s possession (with one red tick, one blue; so beautiful, as Millat later remarked, it made you want to kill yourself), though to the naked eye they appeared to be walking towards Queens Park attached to a tall natty-dread black kid.
Millat nodded grudgingly. ‘Respect to that. I wish I’d seed dem.’
‘Tax!’ said Magid suddenly, pushing his grubby finger up against some shop glass in the direction of a four-foot-long chemistry set with an ageing TV personality’s face on the front.
He thumped the window. ‘Wow! I tax that!’
A brief silence ensued.
‘You tax that?’ asked Millat, incredulous. ‘That? You tax a chemistry set?’
Before poor Magid knew where he was, two palms had made a ferocious slap on his forehead, and were doing much rubbing for good measure. Magid gave Irie an et tu Brute type of pleading look, in the full knowledge that it was useless. There is no honesty amongst almost-ten-year-olds.
‘Shame! Shame! Know your name!’
‘But Mr J. P. Hamilton,’ moaned Magid from under the heat of shame. ‘We’re here now. His house is just there. It’s a quiet street, you can’t make all this noise. He’s old.’
‘But if he’s old, he’ll be deaf,’ reasoned Millat. ‘And if you’re deaf you can’t hear.’
‘It doesn’t work like that. It’s hard for old people. You don’t understand.’
‘He’s probably too old to take the stuff out of the bags,’ said Irie. ‘We should take them out and carry them in our hands.’
This was agreed upon, and some time was taken arranging all the foodstuffs in the hands and crevices of the body, so that they might ‘surprise’ Mr J. P. Hamilton with the extent of their charity when he answered the door. Mr J. P. Hamilton, confronted on his doorstep by three dark-skinned children clutching a myriad of projectiles, was duly surprised. As old as they had imagined but far taller and cleaner, he opened the door only slightly, keeping his hand, with its mountain range of blue veins, upon the knob, while his head curled around the frame. To Irie he was reminiscent of some genteel elderly eagle: tufts of feather-like hair protruded from ear drums, shirt cuffs and the neck, with one white spray falling over his forehead, his fingers lay in a permanent tight spasm like talons, and he was well dressed, as one might expect of an elderly English bird in Wonderland – a suede waistcoat and a tweed jacket, and a watch on a gold chain.