The Third-Class Genie (5 page)

“Well, Abu, I’m off to bed, if you’d like to climb back into your can. I’ll leave the lid up slightly to give you some fresh air. It must smell like a brewery in there. Cheerio for now.”

“Ma’asalaama,” murmured Abu.

Alec undressed, wandered out to the bathroom to brush his teeth, but at the top of the stairs he stopped. He could hear his mother and father talking in the kitchen where they were having a cup of cocoa.

“I don’t know, Connie love. It doesn’t matter how you switch around those bedrooms, we haven’t really got room.”

“Well, I’m fed up with it, Harold. For one reason or another we’ve never had enough room.”

“We could get a four-bedroomed house if we moved out to Moorside.”

“The only way you’ll get me to Moorside is to carry me in a coffin. Miles from anywhere, freezing cold in winter…”

“All right, all right, Connie. Anyway, let’s get to bed. Is our Kim in yet?”

“Not her, still, she’s got the back door key.”

Alec heard them move their chairs down in the kitchen and shot quickly back into his own bedroom. He switched off the light and looked out of the window. The railway arch loomed up against the skyline; the Tank, hidden in the dark shadows of the arch, could not be seen. But Alec knew it was there. He had his hideout, and his new friend Abu. Ginger Wallace, Mr Cartwright and all infidels would bite the dust from now on. Flash Bowden, Scourge of the Cosmos, Defender of the Faith, Keeper of the Kan, was on the warpath.

He tucked the can carefully under his pillow and went to sleep.

A
LEC DREAMT THAT
he sat at a huge table in the stateroom of his elegant 20,000-ton yacht, as it floated at anchor in the Bugletown Canal. Through the porthole he could see the mate, Monty Cartwright, urging on his trusty crew. The state-room door opened and Ginger Wallace, in steward’s uniform, entered bowing and scraping.

“Alec,” he said.

“Admiral Bowden to you,” replied Alec and dismissed Ginger with a wave of his hand.

But Ginger would not go. He shouted, “Alec!”

Alec waved his hand irritably, but Ginger only went on shouting, louder and louder. Then Alec was awake and his mother was banging on the bedroom door.

“Alec, it’s half past eight!”

“HALF PAST EIGHT?”

At times like this, Alec wished he were an octopus. He’d put on his shoes with one hand (or tentacle), his trousers on with another, wash his face with a third, eat his breakfast with a fourth, pack his school bag with the fifth, tie his tie with the sixth, while the other two were busy walking down to Station Road. Mr Jameson, the biology teacher, once said that an octopus brain was just as good as a human brain. If they’d come to live on land there’d be no doubt about who would be boss.

Alec tumbled down the stairs, dressing as he went. He grabbed his breakfast and shot out of the back door and up the road with his shirt-tail flapping, shoelaces flying and school bag swinging. He was down the hill, turning right into Station Road, and almost under the railway bridge, when a ghastly thought stopped him in his tracks. He’d forgotten his can. Forgotten your can? Bowden, you can’t have? I have, you know. Well, go back for it. Don’t be daft, it’s nearly nine o’clock.

It was no good. He had to go on. Disasters were leading triumphs one nil and the referee’s coin was still in the air. Abu Salem, who ought by rights to be straining at the leash with the latest instamatic miracle, was probably lying snoring away with his tin blanket wrapped round him and dreaming of happy days in old Baghdad. “What a life.”

Alec must have spoken out loud, because the newspaper seller by the station entrance called out, “The first eighty years are the worst, lad.”

He caught the tail end of line-up in the school yard. He saw the broad shoulders of Ginger Wallace going in through the main door a little way ahead of him. Luckily, although they were in the same year (which was a laugh since Ginger was twice Alec’s size), they weren’t in the same class.

Alec had time to nip along to the History Department and hand in his project to Mr Bakewell, who greeted him with, “Ah, here comes Bowden, at the last minute like the US Cavalry. This ought to be good.”

Then on into Assembly, with a mind-bending lecture from the Head about Pride in Appearance and School Reputation. Alec looked down at himself and wondered if he should volunteer to go on display as an example of “How to get the school a bad name”. Without thinking he bent down to fasten up his shoelaces. Someone gently pushed him forward and he toppled through the row in front into the middle of the Year Nine girls. There were squeals and chuckles, whispers of “Here comes the Midnight Prowler” and “Bowden the Beast in Human Form”, cut short as Miss Bentley came zooming in from the sidelines.

“Get back to your place!”

Alec slunk back. The Head, unaware of the drama beneath him, droned on while Alec tried to make himself smaller. He was in the middle of planning to sneak out of school, go home, wake up Abu, and arrange a quick transfer to a desert island, when he was given a good-humoured shove by the boy next to him and realized that everyone was peeling off for lessons. Double English. Alec did a quick check. What had he forgotten? He couldn’t remember.

He was in luck. The English teacher, Miss Welch, Raquel as the boys of 9F called her, looked as though she had been on the tiles the night before. She was clearly in no better shape for the morning than Alec was. That was a thought. Supposing teachers’ days were full of disasters as well. Was there no escape, even when you left school and grew up? Maybe Miss Welch would like to be on a desert island right now. Alec’s eyes shone with sympathy, but she was quite unaware of it. In fact, she didn’t even seem to see him as she drifted round the room, handing out tatty-backed books.

“Read the story starting on page 41 to yourselves and then write it up in your own words.”

“Miss,” shouted a boy at the back of the class.

“Yes, I know. Yours hasn’t got a page 41. Well, try the next story. I don’t suppose in your version it will make much difference.”

She turned on the class like a swivel gun and added, “And anyone else who hasn’t got a page 41 or a page 85 or page 2001 can do likewise. I don’t want a peep out of you for the next three days.”

That raised a slight laugh and things settled down. The morning got going and Alec was grateful to go along with it. He looked at the story on page 41, but didn’t take to it and read on. Next came a chapter from
Treasure Island
. He enjoyed it so much that he read on and on and on. The pips went as he dreamed his way through to page 120.

People were on their feet all round him, handing in their books. Alec hadn’t written a word. He fiddled with his books, trying to sort out his mind and bring it back to earth, while the others piled out of the room. Miss Welch stood over him.

“If I did my duty, I’d make you write out your own version of every story you’ve read this morning, but I’m too soft-hearted. Write up the one on page 41 tonight and hand it to me tomorrow. Now get off to science before I get blamed for hanging on to you.”

Alec skidded out. The rest of the morning lumbered along. The lunch break lurked ahead. Alec looked out of the window and vaguely hoped for rain. Not a chance. Outside the sun shone and the yard was filling up with its usual swarm of boys. Alec sidled off to the library and asked the librarian if she wanted any stock-taking done, but his offer was politely declined. Slowly, like a worm watching for early blackbirds, Alec made his way out.

But luck hadn’t died on him. A game of backers was going on among the Year Nine boys by the school field railings and Ginger Wallace and his mates were busy with that. Fascinated, Alec drew nearer and watched as his beefy foe charged and leapt with full weight on his groaning opponents. As Ginger landed, the other team gave up the ghost and collapsed on the ground in howls of pain, while Ginger, straddling an opponent’s back, made whooping noises like a demented cowboy. In a moment a new game was lined up and the running, jumping, straining and heaving began again.

Alec quickly stole away, found a corner within a discreet distance of the duty master and joined a civilized game of cobs with a couple of boys he knew slightly.

Whistles blew for line-up and he realized with relief that the lunch hour had passed and Ginger Wallace had forgotten him. Luck was still holding. Maybe he was going to be permanently lucky now that he had the can. If that were so, then why had he forgotten the can? Still, so far so good, he thought as he joined the line-up. Inside the school in the corridor a group of girls shoved past him. One cried out, “There he is. Bowden the brute. No girl’s safe from him.”

He looked up and caught the flash of white teeth, as Ginger Wallace’s sister went by, laughing with her friends. He blushed and pretended to make a close study of the wall, but he felt cheered up as he went in for history.

HISTORY.

That’s it. His run of luck was about to fade away. He knew this as soon as he saw, in the classroom, not Mr Bakewell, but Tweedy Harris. It was whispered that as a baby Harris’s mother had used powdered chalk on his nappies instead of talcum powder and this had soured him for life. For some reason today he was smiling, though to Alec it looked like the grin on the face of a well-fed boa constrictor.

“History projects – aah – yes,” rasped Mr Harris. “Throughout the year I try to tell you a little of the history of this green and pleasant land of ours. And towards the end of the year, you generously agree to set down on paper what you have understood of it. One of the exciting things about my work,” Tweedy paused as his audience waited for the catch-line, “is to see the difference between what I try to tell you and what you tell me.”

Nervous laughter.

“Occasionally a project comes my way which shows a touch of genius in its flights of fancy. One such is in our hands at this moment, from Mr Bowden, of all people.”

The twenty-four other people in the class suddenly realized the heat was off them, and now it was funny.

“I must say that here and there Bowden has weakened so far as to include one or two items of information that might possibly be traced to me, but generally we can say that danger is far away. Mostly we have Bowden, fair and fancy-free. Now you may know (or you may not) that a notable part of the Third Crusade was the siege of Acre by the Crusaders, after the Saracens captured it in 1187.”

Tweedy held up Alec’s folder and carefully opened it.

“There is a strange aroma about this document. Perhaps the author buried it to give it an historical flavour.”

Tweedy was doing well. Alec sank further back in his seat. If he could sink through the floor he would have been happier.

“Ha, hm,” said Tweedy and began to read.

“
When the galleys of the barbarians had broken through our ships, our Lord Sultan Salah ad-Din Yusuf, hammer of the infidel, called to him the amirs, and took counsel with them
.

“His nephew, the bold warrior Taki, declared that the armies of the faithful should charge down upon the besiegers and sweep them into the sea. But his brother, the wise and wily Al-Adil, counselled caution. Only wait, said he, and the Frankish bandits would fall to quarrelling among themselves like the robbers they were.”

Tweedy stopped reading and turned to the class. Some had started to laugh; others waited to see which way the cat would jump.

“And who, Mr Bowden,” asked Tweedy, “was the chief of these Frankish bandits who quarrelled among themselves over the loot?”

Without thinking, Alec said, “King Richard.”

“Not the same one we all used to know of as ‘The Lion Hearted’,” said Tweedy. “Aha, a completely new version of history. Fascinating.” He bent over the desk. “And might I know from what source you obtained this picture?”

A sinking feeling gripped Alec’s stomach. He couldn’t very well say that a genie in a beer can told him.

“I – I can’t remember, sir.”

“I wish you would try, just to satisfy my curiosity. But now that you have started on your career of rewriting history, what next may we expect? My brilliant success at blowing up the House of Commons, by Guy Fawkes; my victory over Wellington at Waterloo, by Napoleon. Ah, the mind boggles, Bowden, it boggles.”

But at last Tweedy decided that he had got all the meat he could off that bone and called for silence. He began to write on the board and the rest of the lesson was spent in copying. Alec concentrated on this, but inwardly he was fuming, he was smoking, he was ready to burst into flame.