10 The Root Canals of Mangal Pande

Finally, O’Connell’s. Inevitably, O’Connell’s. Simply because you could be without family in O’Connell’s, without possessions or status, without past glory or future hope – you could walk through that door with nothing and be exactly the same as everybody else in there. It could be 1989 outside, or 1999, or 2009, and you could still be sitting at the counter in the V-neck you wore to your wedding in 1975, 1945, 1935. Nothing changes here, things are only retold, remembered. That’s why old men love it.

It’s all about time. Not just its stillness but the pure, brazen amount of it. Quantity rather than Quality. This is hard to explain. If only there was some equation… something like:

Something to rationalize, to explain, why one would keep returning, like Freud’s grandson with his fort-da game, to the same miserable scenario. But time is what it comes down to. After you’ve spent a certain amount, invested so much of it in one place, your credit rating booms and you feel like breaking the chronological bank. You feel like staying in the place until it pays you back all the time you gave it – even if it never will.

And with the time spent, comes the knowledge, comes the history. It was at O’Connell’s that Samad had suggested Archie’s remarriage, 1974. Underneath table six in a pool of his own vomit, Archie celebrated the birth of Irie, 1975. There is a stain on the corner of the pinball machine where Samad first spilt civilian blood, with a hefty right hook to a racist drunk, 1980. Archie was downstairs the night he watched his fiftieth birthday float up through fathoms of whisky to meet him like an old shipwreck, 1977. And this is where they both came, New Year’s Eve, 1989 (neither the Iqbal nor Jones families having expressed a desire to enter the 90s in their company), happy to take advantage of Mickey’s special New Year fry-up: £2.85 for three eggs, beans, two rounds of toast, mushrooms and a generous slice of seasonal turkey.

The seasonal turkey was a bonus. For Archie and Samad, it was really all about being the witness, being the expert. They came here because they knew this place. They knew it inside and out. And if you can’t explain to your kid why glass will shatter at certain impacts but not others, if you can’t understand how a balance can be struck between democratic secularism and religious belief within the same state, or you can’t recall the circumstances in which Germany was divided, then it feels good – no, it feels great – to know at least one particular place, one particular period, from first-hand experience, eyewitness reports; to be the authority, to have time on your side, for once, for once. No better historians, no better experts in the world than Archie and Samad when it came to The Post-War Reconstruction and Growth of O’Connell’s Pool House.

1952 Ali (Mickey’s father), and his three brothers arrive at Dover with thirty old pounds and their father’s gold pocket-watch. All suffer from disfiguring skin condition.

1954- 1963 Marriages; odd-jobs of all varieties; births of Abdul-Mickey, the five other Abduls and their cousins.

1968 After working for three years as delivery boys in a Yugoslavian dry-cleaning outfit, Ali and his brothers have a small lump sum with which they set up a cab service called Ali’s Cab Service.

1971 Cab venture a great success. But Ali is dissatisfied. He decides what he really wants to do is ‘serve food, make people happy, have some face to face conversations once in a while’. He buys the disused Irish pool house next to the defunct railway station on the Finchley Road and sets about renovating it.

1972 In the Finchley Road only Irish establishments do any real business. So despite his Middle Eastern background and the fact that he is opening a café and not a pool house, Ali decides to keep the original Irish name. He paints all the fittings orange and green, hangs pictures of racehorses and registers his business name as ‘Andrew O’Connell Yusuf’. Out of respect, his brothers encourage him to hang fragments of the Qurān on the wall, so that the hybrid business will be ‘kindly looked upon’.

13 May 1973 O’Connell’s opens for business.

2 November 1974 Samad and Archie stumble upon O’Connell’s on their way home and pop in for a fry-up.

1975 Ali decides to carpet the walls to limit food stains.

May 1977 Samad wins fifteen bob on fruit machine.

1979 Ali has a fatal heart attack due to cholesterol build-up around the heart. Ali’s remaining family decide his death is a result of the unholy consumption of pork products. Pig is banned from the menu.

1980 Momentous year. Abdul-Mickey takes over O’Connell’s. Institutes underground gambling room to make up for the money lost on sausages. Two large pool tables are used: the ‘Death’ table and the ‘Life’ table. All those who want to play for money play on the ‘Death’ table. All those who object for religious reasons or because out of pocket play on the friendly ‘Life’ table. Scheme a great success. Samad and Archie play on the ‘Death’ table.

December 1980 Archie gets highest ever recorded score on pinball: 51,998 points.

1981 Archie finds unwanted cut-out of Viv Richards on Selfridges shop floor and brings it to O’Connell’s. Samad asks to have his great-grandfather Mangal Pande’s picture on the wall. Mickey refuses, claiming his ‘eyes are too close together’.

1982 Samad stops playing on the ‘Death’ table for religious reasons. Samad continues to petition for the picture’s installation.

31 October 1984 Archie wins £268.72 on the ‘Death’ table. Buys beautiful new set of Pirelli tyres for clapped-out car.

New Year’s Eve 1989, 10.30 p.m. Samad finally persuades Mickey to hang portrait. Mickey still thinks it ‘puts people off their food’.

‘I still think it puts people off their food. And on New Year’s Eve. I’m sorry, mate. No offence meant. ’Course my opinion’s not the fucking word of God, as it were, but it’s still my opinion.’

Mickey attached a wire round the back of the cheap frame, gave the dusty glass a quick wipe-down with his apron, and reluctantly placed the portrait on its hook above the oven.

‘I mean, he’s so bloody nasty-looking. That moustache. He looks like a right nasty piece of work. And what’s that earring about? He’s not a queer, is he?’

‘No, no, no. It wasn’t unusual, then, for men to wear jewellery.’

Mickey was dubious, giving Samad the look he gave to people who claimed to have got no game of pinball for their 50p and came seeking a refund. He got out from behind the counter and took a look at the picture from this new angle. ‘What d’you think, Arch?’

‘Good,’ said Archie solidly. ‘I think: good.’

‘Please. I would consider it a great personal favour if you would allow it to stay.’

Mickey tilted his head to one side and then the other. ‘As I said, I don’t mean no offence or nothing, I just think he looks a bit bloody shady. Haven’t you got another picture of him or sommink?’

‘That is the only one that survives. I would consider it a great personal favour, very great.’

‘Well…’ ruminated Mickey, flipping an egg over, ‘you being a regular, as it were, and you going on about it so bloody much, I suppose we’ll have to keep it. How about a public survey? What d’you think Denzel? Clarence?’

Denzel and Clarence were sitting in the corner as ever, their only concession to New Year’s Eve a few pieces of mangy tinsel hanging off Denzel’s trilby and a feathered kazoo sharing mouth space with Clarence’s cigar.