East of Wimbledon (14 page)

Maybe the day was coming. And sooner than he thought. With Maisie still keeping the regulation distance between the two of them, he almost ran after the headmaster, swinging his arms crazily and taking strides so long that a casual observer might have been forgiven for assuming that he, too, was practising the art of Islamic dancing.

Robert always had a free period after lunch. He was allowed this in return for taking detention, which usually involved sitting in an empty classroom with Mafouz and the Husayn twins. As Maisie and Mr Malik’s relative were clearing away the destruction (the Huysan twins had been having a mashedpotato fight with school spoons), he made his way up to the headmaster’s study.

Mr Malik usually had an hour off after lunch. No one knew quite what he did; sometimes the sounds of country and western music drifted out from his study, sometimes he emerged smelling strongly of alcohol, but mostly, judging from the titanic snores that shook the wall of the staffroom, he slept.

It was impossible to tell what he was doing this afternoon. No sound whatsoever came from behind the door. Robert knelt by the keyhole and fixed his eye to it. From Class 2, down below, came the noise of Dr Ali’s mathematics class, twenty-five children chanting in unison:

Eight eights are sixty-four,

Nine eights are seventy-two,

Ten eights are eighty,

Eleven eights are eighty-eight,

Twelve eights are—

There was an awful, horror-struck pause, followed by several conflicting opinions of what twelve eights might be, and, eventually, a wild scream from Dr Ali. ‘
Twelve eights are ninetysix! You hear me? Ninety-six!
’ The mathematics master obviously intended to make up for his long silence during the earlier part of the term.

All Robert could see through the keyhole was the blur of Mr Malik’s grey jacket, passing and repassing; he seemed to be running, now in one direction, now in another. After a while he went to the desk. Robert had a clear view of him there.

The headmaster pulled back the top right-hand drawer and took out a large, new-looking cricket bat. He gripped it hard with both hands and beat the air with it. Then he crouched over it and squared up to an imaginary ball. As he waited for delivery, he started to mutter to himself in what sounded like a Gloucestershire accent. ‘Locke delivers it,’ he said, in a slow drawl, ‘Malik waiting his moment. Calm and steady as a rock, the Pakistan captain just waiting here for the ball to come . . .’

Suddenly his voice rose. ‘And he plays it – smashes it through the covers straight for four! Oh, this is remarkable!’

At the same moment he made stabbing movements, at shoulder height, with the bat. They resembled no cricket stroke that Robert could remember. The headmaster looked as if he was fighting off a large insect that was homing in on his neck.

‘Malik has done it again! It’s four runs! Oh, this is remarkable! Remarkable play by the Pakistan captain!’

He gave one last poke with the bat and, throwing it to the ground, clasped both hands and raised them above his head.

Robert knocked, quite hard, at the woodwork. The headmaster started in guilty surprise. He straighted up and, in a deep, serious voice, called, ‘A moment please!’ Then he scooped up the bat, swept it back into the drawer, and composed himself at his chair. From his jacket pocket he took a small vanity mirror and adjusted his hair. When he was ready, he presented a three-quarter profile towards the door and said, ‘Come!’

Robert came.

Mr Malik’s mood of earlier in the day seemed to have evaporated. He appeared genuinely pleased to see his reception class teacher. He rose from his chair and held out his hand, as if this was the first time the two of them had met.

‘Wilson!’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me! You want more money!’

This, as it happened, was perfectly true. But Robert did not feel able to say so. Instead he gave a weak smile and fingered the locket, through the cloth of his lapels.

Malik clasped his hands behind his back. He moved over to the window and looked out across rain-driven Wimbledon. In the distance, a police car wailed its way towards them up Wimbledon Hill.

‘It must be difficult for you,’ he said, ‘surrounded by all these wogs. I imagine you are deeply confused. Bowing to the East and carrying on like lunatics. I expect you say to yourself, “
Send the bastards back to where they came from!
” ’

‘You mean – Cheltenham?’ said Robert, unable to repress a smile.

The headmaster looked suddenly serious. ‘I am not a very good Muslim,’ he said, ‘but I do my best.’

Something in his childhood had obviously prompted this remark. Indeed, Mr Malik took on the same, sad, soulful air whenever Cheltenham was mentioned. It can’t have been easy to have been a good Muslim in Cheltenham, thought Robert. There was probably not a good supply of mosques available.

‘You know about my mother, of course,’ went on the headmaster, ‘but what can you do if your father is called Malik and your mother is called Frobisher? There is no meeting of minds.’

‘I thought,’ said Robert boldly, ‘she was called Perkins.’

Malik shrugged with infinite resignation. ‘Frobisher . . . Perkins,’ he said – ‘what’s the difference?’

Robert decided to come to the point. He took the locket and the manuscript out of his pocket and laid them on the desk in front of the headmaster.

Mr Malik did not seem pleased to see it again. He backed away. His hand went up to his collar and started to loosen his tie. He looked from the manuscript to Robert and back again. ‘I knew you had obtained this and gave it to . . . er . . . Ai’sha, Wilson,’ he said. ‘How did you come by it?’

‘Two men gave it to me,’ said Robert, ‘in the pub. The day I came for the job. Do you remember?’

Malik looked at him. He looked like a man trying to do a complicated piece of mental arithmetic. ‘Aziz our janitor . . . and . . . another man . . .’

‘The ones with one shoe,’ said Robert brightly. ‘The Twentyfourthers! You didn’t seem very keen to meet them.’

The headmaster threw back his head and gave out the kind of laugh dished out by medieval jailers to boastful prisoners. ‘Keen to meet them, Wilson! Keen to meet them! I hardly dare to think that such people exist! I flee from such people – and I advise you to do the same! They are dangerous lunatics! They are madmen! They are fanatics!’

‘They told me to give it to you, Headmaster,’ said Robert. ‘But I didn’t, I’m afraid.’

Malik did some more of the laugh. This time it was more the kind of mirth displayed by, say, Rommel, shortly after the battle of El Alamein. To say it was effortfully hollow would have been an understatement.

‘Please don’t apologize, my dear Wilson. If this should prove genuine, it is about as welcome as a High Court summons – another document I expect hourly unless the Bradford branch of the Inland Revenue adopts a more compassionate attitude to its clients.’

He looked down at the manuscript and locket and gave a little shudder. Below them, Dr Ali’s boys were getting started on the ten times table. They didn’t sound very convinced about it.

‘Run from it, Wilson. You run as fast as you can away from it. Cower in the bowels of the earth from it, and pull the bedclothes over your head. You change your name and address and never tell a soul you saw it. You flee it, my dear boy.’

Robert looked down at the manuscript. ‘And what does it do?’ he said. ‘Turn into a snake and slither after you?’

Malik practically ran at him and grabbed him by the lapels. ‘Ha ha ha!’ he said. ‘Ha ha ha ha! Frightfully funny! What a laugh! Ho ho ho ho! How amusing!’

Robert did not know what to say to this. The headmaster went back to his chair and sank into it, with a groan. He put his head in his hands and rocked backwards and forward for some minutes.

‘They can’t be all that bad,’ said Robert. ‘I mean, Aziz seems OK . . . You obviously thought he was all right.’

‘I wanted him where I could keep an eye on him,’ said Mr Malik through his hands. ‘I wanted to find out how many of these damned Twenty-fourthers there are about the place.’

Robert coughed. ‘I keep thinking I’m seeing them,’ he said. ‘I can’t take my eyes off people’s footwear. They’re everywhere. I’m surprised you haven’t seen them. They’re all over Wimbledon.’

Malik gave a shriek. ‘Twenty-fourthers!’ he yelled. ‘All over Wimbledon! Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t know they were Twenty-fourthers,’ said Robert. ‘I just thought they were people wearing one shoe. I didn’t know they were after Hasan. I haven’t a clue what’s going on really.’

Malik sat back in his chair and sighed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘there is no reason why you should have a clue. We really haven’t discussed these things, have we?’

He looked down at the manuscript. He picked it up with all the enthusiasm of a man finding a mail-order death warrant on his mat.

‘The Twenty-fourth Imam,’ he said, ‘has often been spoken of among the Wimbledon Dharjees. But there have never been writings about him. And this . . .’ he tapped the manuscript and shuddered – ‘points clearly to the little boy in your house. You have a great responsibility, Wilson. You must protect him. You must stand guard over him at all times.’

The headmaster did not make it clear whether this was because Hasan might, at any moment, start chucking thunderbolts around the place. Robert still felt some confusion about what Aziz and his friends might be expected to do around the time of the little boy’s Occultation. Was it, he wondered, like a bar mitzvah? He had been to Martin Finkelstein’s bar mitzvah and had been given a small white hat, which was still on his mantelpiece at home.

‘Twenty-fourthers,’ he said, ‘are—’

‘Are animals!’ said Mr Malik. ‘They are wild beasts! They are brutal, misguided thugs! And, I am afraid that, like the Mounties, they always get their man!’

Robert wondered, but did not ask aloud, who their man might be. He might have to do something more radical than simply leave this job. He might have to get some dark glasses and retire to a small island off the coast of north-west Scotland.

‘This manuscript,’ said the headmaster, ‘must be examined carefully. We must put it in the hands of trained Islamic scholars and get them to run tests on it. They must carbon date it and put it under the microscope, and we must examine Aziz carefully and get him to say where he found it. I assume he did not pick it up on Southfields Station!’

He looked up at Robert. ‘You have indeed a grave responsibility, Wilson. I feel I do not know you. I feel I do not know all the secrets of your heart. I must look deep, deep into your soul and grow to trust you as a brother!’

Robert gulped. He tried, without much success, to look like a man who had a soul into which you could look.

The headmaster looked up from his desk and peered, searchingly, into Robert’s eyes. ‘Why did you become a Muslim?’ he said.

This was the one question Robert had been hoping the headmaster would not ask him. He gulped again, but found he was unable to answer.

‘We will fight them together,’ said Malik, rising from his chair. ‘You and I will fight them together. We are Muslim brothers, you and I. We have never talked of these things, Wilson. We must talk of them. The Muslim is the brother of every other Muslim. He must not oppress or surrender him.’

So saying, the headmaster flung his arms round Robert and squeezed him warmly. Robert, feeling rather like a tube of toothpaste, stood, quite passive, in Mr Malik’s fierce embrace.

‘I have not listened to
you
, Wilson,’ went on the older man, still not slackening his embrace. ‘I have talked only of my own concerns. It must have been hell for you. You are lost in a strange country, among a lot of incomprehensible wogs going on about Twenty-fourthers and God knows what, and you are probably scared stiff!’

Robert, his voice muffled by Mr Malik’s right arm, said, ‘I am. I’m terrified!’

Malik straightened up and broke away. ‘I shall put Hasan in your trust,’ he said, ‘and I will inform Mr Shah that a first-class man is “on the job”. We must get first-class information about what these damned Twenty-fourthers have planned. And as we approach the Occultation we must take extra care.’

Not, thought Robert, that there would be much anyone could do should the Twenty-fourth Imam decide to loon around SW19 behaving like a negative version of Superman.

‘And I must hear your side of the story, Wilson. It is a basic principle of man management. You must share your feelings with us!’

At this moment the door opened and Rafiq came in. Robert could not have said why, but he had the strong impression that the engineering master, too, had been listening at the door. Rafiq did not speak but stood looking at his two colleagues, an enigmatic smile on his face.

Malik turned to him. ‘Assemble the school,’ said the headmaster. ‘A special assembly. I think it is time we listened to our new brother. We have closed our ears to his cries and left him in the shadows while we walked in the light.’

Rafiq said nothing. Down below, Dr Ali and his class had relapsed into silence. All Robert could hear was the wind, shouldering vainly against the windows of the headmaster’s study.

‘Wilson is going to talk to the whole school,’ said Mr Malik. ‘He is going to share his feelings with us.’

Unable to resist any longer, he flung himself back at Robert. He dug his fingers into his ribs, massaged his cheeks, and patted the back of his thighs as if they were unproved bread.

Robert, gasping for breath in his arms, wondered whether Mr Malik’s request for him to give an account of himself was entirely motivated by concern for his staff.
He suspects
, he found himself thinking.
He’s on to me!

‘He is going to tell us,’ Malik went on, ‘how he became one of us. He is going to confide the secrets of his heart to us. He is going to tell us how he came to be a Muslim.’

Mr Malik looked round at the assembled school. They were sitting cross-legged in what he liked to call the Great Hall. There were only ninety of them, but it was a tight squeeze. Boys were jammed together like rush hour travellers on the Underground. Saddawi, known as ‘The Boy with the Pointed Head’, was only just in the room. He was peering in on the proceedings from the kitchen, while his best friend, Mafouz, had retreated to the stairs and was looking down, intently, on Mr Malik’s elegantly coiffeured hair. Robert was standing a little behind him. As the headmaster gave the Husayn twins what he called ‘the corkscrew’ – an intense stare combined with a slow quiver of the nostrils – they slackened their hold on the new recruit to Class 1 – a Bosnian refugee whose name no one could pronounce.