East of Wimbledon (7 page)

A young man was wagging his finger at an elderly woman in a white headscarf. He looked as if he was telling her off about something. She cowered away from him as if he was about to strike her.

‘That’s the bloody woman!’ said Mr Malik. ‘Been filling the boy’s head with a lot of absolute rot!’

These were obviously Dharjees to be avoided. Assuming they were Dharjees and not Khojas or Ismailis. Whatever any of these things might be.

‘Do you know the parents?’ said Robert.

‘Very well,’ said Malik. ‘They are professional acquaintances. We play golf together when we can get the chance.’

The front door of the house opened and two men in dark-grey suits came out. One of them looked more like a well-tanned version of the Duke of Edinburgh than a man from the Indian subcontinent; in profile, Robert decided, he would look well on a postage stamp. He half expected him to call for polo ponies. His companion was a small, round, jolly-looking character. The taller of the two called, in aristocratic English tones, ‘My dear Malik! This is so kind!’

They walked towards him, in almost perfect step.

‘This is
frightfully
good of you, Malik,’ went on the tall man, ‘and I am so sorry to bother you with our troubles!’

‘There are lunatics, my dear Shah,’ said Malik darkly, ‘everywhere.’

‘My dear, there are,’ said the tall man. ‘And the sooner we can get the boy lodged away from our people the sooner it will die down.’

He beamed at Robert. ‘We are delighted to have an Oxford man on board,’ he said. ‘You must have been up at the same time as the Crown Prince of Dhaypur!’

‘I think I remember him,’ said Robert cautiously. He was aware that this must be Mr Shah, the school’s principal backer. It was important to make a good impression.

‘We always called him “Lunchtime Porker”!’ said Mr Shah.

Mr Malik laughed, and it seemed wise to do the same.

‘There were quite a lot of us Muslims up at Oxford,’ said Robert, ‘and we all used to hang out together. Go to the same clubs and . . . er . . . listen to the same sort of music.’

They were looking at him oddly. Why had he opened his mouth?

The tall man’s demeanour would not have been out of place at Greyfriars Public School. There was a peculiarly English reserve about it. But Mr Shah’s friend was obviously more in touch with his emotions. In the manner of a man who had been waiting to do this for some time, he suddenly seized the headmaster, lifted him clear of the ground, and rocked him backwards and forwards. Robert could see Malik’s neatly shod feet pedalling wildly as his new friend hoisted him up higher and higher. Perhaps he was going to put him over his shoulder and burp him.

‘Wilson,’ said the headmaster, ‘this is Mr Shah, our benefactor, and another member of the Wimbledon Dharjee community, Mr Khan. Mr Khan is here on business.’

The second man put the headmaster down and grinned. ‘I am a vastly inferior variety of Dharjee,’ he said, ‘and I am honoured to meet you, Wilson! Mr Shah, I fear, will have nothing to do with my proposals! You are welcome at my restaurant at any time of the day or night. Except on Wednesdays.’ Mr Shah was looking vaguely discomforted. Mr Khan, right arm forward, marched towards Robert.

To Robert’s relief, the man did not look as if he was about to give him anything less formal than a handshake.

‘Should I cover my head with something?’ hissed Maisie.

‘Why?’ said Robert. ‘I think you look very nice.’

Maisie looked impatient. ‘I’m a woman,’ she said, ‘and I’ve got bare arms and a bare head!’

She said this as if trying to excite him in some way. Before he had the chance to find out any more about this, she had backed away towards the car, opened the back door, and started to grovel around on the seat.

If she was looking for something to cover her head, she was out of luck. As far as Robert could remember, all there was on the back seat was a damp chamois leather. The thought of Maisie appearing with this perched on her head made him twitch uncontrollably.

Neither Malik nor Mr Shah nor Mr Khan seemed very bothered about this. Mr Khan, the restaurant owner, seemed to have decided that a handshake wasn’t enough. He was clearly anxous to get stuck into Robert in a more serious way.

‘Oh, Wilson, my dear chap!’ he was saying, in a tone of voice that made Robert feel like a jelly at a children’s tea party – ‘Oh, Wilson, Wilson, Wilson! You will be friends with a poor restaurateur, won’t you?’

He leaped into Robert’s arms and got to work on his hindquarters, watched with some embarrassment by the Duke of Edinburgh look-alike.

‘Are you . . . er . . . Dharjees?’ said Robert through a mouthful of Mr Khan’s jacket. Both men laughed uproariously at this. Robert made a mental note to find out more about this particular Islamic sect. It was hard to connect the two men in the pub with these two rather jolly creatures.

‘Where is my teacher?’ came a small voice down to Robert’s left.

Robert looked down and saw a boy of about ten years old. He had neatly brushed black hair, a dark-blue jersey and baggy grey shorts of the kind worn by boys at an English public school. He was standing very straight and very still.

There was something strikingly familiar about him. Robert felt sure he had seen him somewhere before. That, surely, wasn’t possible. He knew very few adults and hardly any children. Had he, perhaps, seen this boy on television? Perhaps he was a prince of some kind. What had Malik said: ‘fallen under harmful influences’?

‘Hello there!’ said Robert, in a jolly, yet formal, voice. He was trying to sound like a schoolmaster (on his application he had claimed four years’ service at a fictional prep school called The Grove) but he had not yet managed to acquire the manner. He sounded, he thought, like a paedophile. To make things worse, he discovered he had put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

‘Are we going to have all Dharjees, or will there be any normal Muslims?’ he asked, to fill the awkward silence.

Mr Malik and Mr Shah gave him tolerant, slightly weary, smiles.

‘Normal Muslims!’ said the school’s benefactor, in an amused tone. ‘I think we are
fairly
normal Muslims, don’t you, Malik? I think it is you that is the “weirdo”!’

‘Wilson,’ said his headmaster, ‘is a comparatively recent recruit.’

Mr Shah nodded in a kindly manner. ‘What made you convert to Islam?’ he said, in the studied, neutral tones of someone asking someone else about their children.

‘Er . . .’ Robert looked wildly about him. ‘I was desperate!’ he said eventually.

Mr Shah took his hand. ‘These are desperate times, Wilson,’ he said – ‘desperate, desperate times. A spirit walks the land, and it is an ugly, intolerant spirit, and many of us are frightened – frightened unto death!’

‘I am desperate,’ said Robert, looking over towards the Common. (Had he seen a glimpse of one of the men in the pub, there, among the birch trees about a hundred yards away from them?) ‘I am absolutely desperate. I am thinking of going to Mecca.’

All three men nodded slowly. They seemed sympathetic to the idea. Robert tried to remember where Mecca was. He was going to have to bone up on this kind of fact if he was going to be able to hold his own in this section of the Wimbledon beau monde.

‘We are talking fifty a week for the boy,’ said the restaurant owner. ‘He eats anything apart from cheese.’

Robert nodded and tried not to look confused. He had not thought that the school fees would be so reasonable. Perhaps there was a special offer on. Perhaps they were going to wait for the school to become fashionable and then treble the prices. Anything was possible at the Independent Islamic Wimbledon Boys’ Day School.

‘He is called Hasan,’ said Mr Shah, ‘after a great ruler of the Ismailis!’

He knelt to the little boy’s level and put his hands on the lad’s shoulders. He patted his face.

‘Hasan I Sabah,’ he said, ‘and Hasan the Second. On his name be peace!’

Then he embraced the child. ‘You are Hasan of our house!’ he said, in a low, gentle voice. ‘Go with Wilson.’

Robert looked down at the little boy. He was still standing absolutely still. His thin shoulders, his delicate wrists and his finely drawn neck gave him a lost air. Something about him made Robert’s heart lurch. The boy turned his head, and Robert caught sight of a huge strawberry mark on his right cheek. Now he remembered where he had seen him before. The hair, the features, even the slightly desperate, pleading stance of the shoulders, were those of the boy in the photograph in the locket that he had given to Maisie only that afternoon.

It wasn’t only this, though, that chilled him suddenly, made him feel, for reasons he could not have explained, unaccountably nervous. The little boy was oblivious to the sun, and the blue sky, and the terraces of thick, green leaves on the chestnuts that faced the house. He was not wearing glasses, as he had been doing in the photograph, and now Robert was able to see that his big, pale pupils were jammed uselessly in the porcelain of his eyes, staring endlessly at nothing.

Perhaps, thought Robert, as they climbed back into the car with Hasan, he had simply failed to notice an adjective in Malik’s prospectus. Perhaps he was going to work in the Wimbledon Independent
Blind
Islamic Boys’ Day School. Or – this seemed rather more likely – Malik was having to take what he could get. His manner to Mr Shah had been positively servile.

‘Don’t you want to wave goodbye to your dad?’ Robert asked his new pupil.

‘Mr Shah is not my “dad”,’ said the little boy, in a curiously precise voice. ‘I am an orphan. I am brought up among his servants. I think I speak for his servants. For all the poor of the earth!’

The headmaster cut across them. ‘My dear Hasan,’ he said, with more edge than Robert had seen him use before, ‘you have been listening to that nurse of yours!’

‘I can’t help listening to her, Mr Malik,’ said Hasan, ‘because she talks to me.’

The little boy sat, quite still, between Maisie and Robert. One frail hand rested on Maisie’s knee. She seemed confused by him. She had not found anything to cover her head or her arms, but Mr Malik seemed to find this situation quite satisfactory. In fact, as he studied her in the driving-mirror, Robert could have sworn the headmaster was licking his lips.

Robert patted Hasan on the knee. He felt the need to say something reassuring.

‘Well,’ he said, with slightly forced cheerfulness, ‘we are all in the hands of Allah!’

The little boy wrinkled up his face. Maybe the Dharjees were such a specialized variety of Muslim that they had not yet caught up with Allah. Someone would certainly need to tell him before he started at the Boys’ Wimbledon Day Independent Islamic School. Or possibly, once again, Robert had slipped up on pronunciation.

‘I presume,’ he said cautiously, as they started down the hill, ‘that the majority of the pupils will be . . . you know . . . your basic . . . Muslim.’

Mr Malik grinned. He seemed to find this line of approach immensely amusing. ‘Who knows?’ he said.

‘Well,’ said Robert, ‘there can’t be much demand for . . . er . . . Islamic games among non-Muslims!’

Malik grinned again. ‘Who knows?’ he said.

Here he winked at Maisie.

‘They’re very fatalistic,’ she hissed. ‘It may not be the will of Allah that you get any Muslim pupils. You may get coachloads of Unitarians or people who really wanted to get into the Royal College of Music. But you can’t do anything about it. It’s fate!’

Malik nodded vigorously. ‘Your wife is right,’ he said. ‘What is willed is willed. We simply have to do our best. In fact, some Islamic theorists think it makes bugger all difference anyway.’

The car leaped round a corner, scraped a lamp-post and bounced sideways down towards Robert’s house. There was, thought Robert, a lot to be said for a religion that relieved you of all responsibility for your destiny. Especially when you were being driven by Mr Malik.

‘I could eat a cake,’ said Hasan, in a small, thoughtful voice, ‘with jam on it.’

No one offered to respond to this remark.

Robert leaned forward across the passenger seat. ‘Tell me, Headmaster,’ he said. ‘Those men in dark glasses in the pub—’

Malik did not seem keen on this line of conversation. ‘My dear Wilson,’ he said, ‘don’t even think about them. If they come up to you in the street, cut them dead. They are NOSP, if you take my meaning. Not Our Sort of People!’

He caught Maisie’s eye in the driving-mirror and gave her a broad wink. ‘My dear girl,’ he said, before Robert could finish his sentence, ‘are you also of the Muslim faith?’

‘It seems,’ said Maisie breathlessly, ‘a very attractive option.’

Malik grinned. ‘It is,’ he said. ‘It is an attractive option. It is, I would say, very
user-friendly
!’

Maisie nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It has a rugged, masculine feel to it!’

Malik’s hand went up to his neatly combed hair. He patted it into place with a small smile. ‘It is not,’ he said, ‘a religion for softies!’

‘I’m amazed Bobkins sort of embraced it,’ said Maisie, ‘because you see he is a practising—’

‘Catholic!’ said Robert. ‘I mean I
was
a practising Catholic!’

‘Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims – you Wilsons have got the lot, I would say, my dear boy,’ said the headmaster as he jammed on the brakes and the Mercedes jerked to a halt outside Robert’s house.

Hasan jumped off the back seat like a puppet on a string. He made a small, whooping noise. As far as Robert could tell he had enjoyed the experience.

Malik leaned his arm across the passenger seat and looked into the back with intense frankness. ‘I want you to look after Hasan, Wilson,’ he said, ‘because Hasan is a very, very important little boy. I do not want you to let him out of your sight. Do you understand?’

Robert gulped. ‘He will be staying with . . . er . . . me?’ he heard himself say.

‘That is correct, Wilson,’ said the headmaster. ‘There are people who are trying to . . . get to him, if you take my meaning.’

Perhaps, thought Robert, other schools were trying to snaffle him. Scholarship boys were obviously a valuable commodity. The boy quietly sat between Robert and Maisie. He was not very large. They could put him in the back kitchen with the dog.