East of Wimbledon (2 page)

‘Yes,’ said Mr Malik, looking off into the distance. ‘Yes, it will be. I can see it. It will be! It will be . . .’ He paused and allowed himself a smile ‘. . . mustard!’ Then he was off.

They walked, at some speed, towards the other end of the corridor. From there, a more impressive staircase – square, wooden, vaguely Jacobean in appearance – led down to a hall decorated with hanging carpets and peculiar bronze objects that looked a bit like cooking-utensils. It reminded Robert of an Afghan restaurant he had once visited.

Mr Malik did have something of the
maître d
’ about him. As they clattered down the stairs, he waved his hand at the far wall. ‘Praying area!’ he said.

Robert had read something about this. Wasn’t the general idea to line up against the wall and bang your head against it? Or was that Jews?

Why was he so appallingly ill-informed about the religion to which he was supposed to belong? How long would it be before Mr Malik rumbled him? Why had he even bothered to read the damned advertisement? He should have gone back to the video shop in Raynes Park. Maybe not. He thought of Mrs Jackson’s face as she returned one of the staff’s bootleg copies of
Let’s Get Laid in LA.
He had given it to her in good faith. It had said
Fantasia
on the box. And by all accounts the children at Barney Jackson’s eighth birthday party had enjoyed it a lot. He could go back to the Putney Leisure Centre for God’s sake! Some people had spoken highly of his skills as a lifeguard. No one had actually
died
in the accident. Or the Wimbledon Odeon!

He shuddered as he thought of the Wimbledon Odeon.

Malik walked along the hall, opening doors and flinging them back against the wall of hanging carpets. He barked back over his shoulder at Robert. ‘Large airy classrooms for the senior boys,’ he said. ‘Slightly smaller rooms for the slightly smaller boys. And here –‘ He came to the last door in the hall – ‘a very,
very
small area that will be used to accommodate the very, very small boys during their early weeks at the Islamic Boys’ Day Independent School, Wimbledon.’

He didn’t seem entirely clear about the title. Was it the Islamic Boys’ Day Independent School Wimbledon, or was it the Islamic Day Boys’ Independent School Wimbledon? They would need to have made their minds up by the time they got the notepaper.

So far, Robert had seen no sign of notepaper.

He peered in at the last room. It was the size of a generously proportioned cupboard, with a narrow skylight in the top left-hand corner of the far wall.

‘This,’ said Malik in the tones of a man who was about to lock him in and leave him there, ‘will be your room.’

‘It’s lovely,’ said Robert.

‘That which Allah has in store is far better than any merchandise or muniment. Allah is the most Munificent Giver!’

This was obviously a quotation of some kind. Whatever Allah was dishing out, he clearly wasn’t sending a fortune in the direction of the Islamic Day Boys’ Independent Wimbledon School.

Even so, the place was clearly not without funds. The school occupied a fairly large eighteenth-century house which, although its walls bulged crazily and its ceilings were pregnant with age, had a grandeur about it that suggested some old-established colonial concern. How many pupils would there be?

Robert bowed his head and tried to look like a Muslim. Mr Malik looked at him with concerned curiosity. ‘Do you wish to use the facilities?’ he said.

‘I’m fine, thank you, Headmaster,’ said Robert. Should he, he wondered, have worn a hat? A turban of some kind?

‘Over there,’ said Malik, gesturing towards a door on the other side of the hall, ‘are the kitchens.’ All Robert could see was a large porcelain sink, lying upside down in the corner of the room. It did not seem to be connected to anything.

Mr Malik waved airily at the front door. ‘Language laboratories,’ he said. ‘Information technology – or “IT” as it is known. This is the 1990s for God’s sake, Wilson!’

He said this in tones that suggested that Robert had just proposed some alternative date.
Am I looking too combative?
thought Robert as he followed the headmaster out into the rear gardens of the Wimbledon Islamic Day Boys’ . . . He really must try and remember the correct word order. Did he want this job or not? The Boys’ Islamic Day . . .

‘Playing-fields!’ boomed Mr Malik. He threw both his arms wide and closed his eyes. He was obviously seeing playing-fields. Robert saw a large, shabby lawn, bounded by a high wall. There was an apple tree in the far left-hand corner, and, next to it, a dilapidated climbing-frame.

‘We have put the gymnasium in the orchard,’ said Malik, ‘and hope our boys will acquire healthy bodies in healthy minds. Tell the truth, Wilson, and shame the Devil!’

Robert tried to stop himself from twitching. He did not succeed.

‘As for you sinners who deny the truth,’ said the headmaster, peering closely at his prospective employee, ‘you shall eat the fruit of the Zaqqum tree and fill your bellies with it. You shall drink boiling water; yet you shall drink it as the thirsty camel drinks!’

‘Indeed,’ said Robert.

It was time, he felt, to ask a few keen and thrusting questions.
Interview them, old lad
, he heard his father’s voice say.
Make the terms yourself. Be tough, Bobbo. You’re too soft on people!

‘Where,’ he heard himself saying in slightly querulous tones, ‘is the staffroom?’

Malik gestured to a battered wooden shed about halfway down the garden. ‘The staffroom,’ he said smoothly, ‘is located in the Additional Science Block Complex. Science and technology are vital, Wilson. Crucial!’

The door to the Additional Science Block Complex opened, and a small, wizened man in dungarees appeared. Robert recognized him as the man who had been taping the map of the world to the wall earlier. He addressed Malik in a language that could have been Arabic, Punjabi or, indeed, Swahili. He sounded annoyed about something. Malik shrugged, grinned, and, as they turned to go back into the house, said, ‘Talk English, for God’s sake! We are in bloody England. Don’t come on like an illiterate wog! Please!’

The man in the dungarees narrowed his eyes. He did not look as if he knew any English. What, Robert wondered, was his role in the Wimbledon Islamic Boys’ Day School? Groundsman? Janitor?

‘Rafiq will be giving classes in macro-economics,’ said Malik, ‘and he will also be dealing with engineering. He can make
anything.
He is one of my oldest friends. Even though he is from the University of Birmingham. You are an Oxford man, of course.’

‘Indeed,’ said Robert.

Robert had been to Oxford. He had been there for the day in 1987. It had seemed a nice place.

‘I read classics,’ he said, trying to remember whether that was what he had said in the application, ‘and I was lucky enough to get a first-class degree.’

This seemed to go down quite well.

Robert had noticed quite early in life that people tended to believe what you told them. Even people who were professionally suspicious – lawyers, policemen and certain kinds of teacher – were never suspicious about the right things. The only difficulty was remembering what you had said about yourself, and to whom. Only the other day a neighbour had asked him how the viola recitals were going, and there was an elderly man in the village who still insisted in talking to him in Polish.

‘Oh God, yes,’ said Mr Malik with some enthusiasm, ‘the classics! Virgil. Homer. Horace. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Longfellow.’

He was heading back towards the school. Just to the right of the back door Robert noticed four or five battered wooden desks, piled crazily on top of one another. Malik waved at them. He seemed to feel that they spoke for themselves. As they went back into the hall, he said, ‘Do you have a blue?’

A blue what?
thought Robert.

Malik’s eyes narrowed.

Robert considered a moment, then said swiftly, ‘Cricket. Rugby football.’

‘Well, Wilson,’ said Mr Malik, ‘we will take up references, of course. But I think we may well find ourselves working together at the beginning of the first term. I like the cut of your jib!’

‘Well, Mr Malik,’ said Robert, ‘I like the cut of
your
jib!’

‘Yes indeed,’ said the headmaster – ‘it is not a bad jib!’

He went, with some solemnity, to a cupboard next to the door leading to the smallest of the classrooms. ‘You will work here,’ he said – ‘with the very small boys.’ From one of the shelves he took a small, leatherbound volume. With some ceremony he handed it to Robert. ‘You will have a copy of this, of course,’ he said, ‘but I offer it as a gift. I will be in touch as regards our terms of employment.’

He stared deep into Robert’s eyes.

‘Payment is on a cash basis,’ he said. ‘I like you, Wilson. I want to work with you!’

He put his hand on Robert’s arm and pushed his face so close that their noses were almost touching. ‘I think you have a good attitude!’ he said throatily.

Then he went to the door, flung it open and sent Robert out into the glare of the August afternoon.

It was not until he was at the door of the Frog and Ferret that Robert looked at his present. It was an edition of the Koran, translated by N. J. Dawood. Slipping it under his jacket, he walked up to the bar and ordered a large whisky.

He had got it out and was looking at it furtively when Mr Malik walked in and glared fiercely around. Robert shrank behind a pillar, and, to his relief, the headmaster did not appear to have seen him. He watched, as the headmaster strode up to the bar, tapped it imperiously with the edge of a fifty-pence piece, and said, in a loud, clear voice, ‘A pint of Perrier water, if you please!’

The barman unwound himself from his stool and walked over to his customer. He muttered something, and Malik, addressing his reply to the whole pub, said, ‘A pint. A bottle. Whatever. I am parched!’

Robert drained his whisky and shrank down into his chair. As soon as Malik turned back to the bar, he would make a run for it. Did he have a peppermint about his person?

No.

Malik gave no sign of turning back to the bar. He had the same, grand proprietorial attitude to the Frog and Ferret as he did to the Wimbledon Islamic Day Boys’ Independent School. ‘My mouth,’ he said fruitily to the assembled company, ‘is as dry as a camel’s arse!’

No one seemed very interested in this. Robert recognized Vera ‘Got All the Things There’ Loomis over in the corner, smacking her lips over a glass of Guinness. Over by the window was Norbert Coveney, the brother of the man who had died in the Rush poisoning case three years ago. He did not seem pleased to see Mr Malik. The barman poured two bottles of Perrier into a pint glass, with almost offensive slowness.

Malik eyed him hungrily and then, with a theatrical flourish, turned back to the almost deserted pub. ‘Give a poor wog a drink, for Christ’s sake!’

The inmates of the Frog and Ferret did not respond to this. Although, thought Robert, from the look of them they would not have been much impressed had Malik yanked out his chopper and laid it on the bar as a testament of his good faith. Standing by the door with a pint of porter in his hand was Lewis Wansell, the downwardly mobile dentist, popularly known as ‘Die Screaming in Southfields’. ‘They work all hours,’ he was saying, to no one in particular. ‘They come here and they work all hours. What chance do we have?’

The headmaster turned his back on the company, applied his lips to the edge of the glass, and sucked up his mineral water.

Robert rose and started to tiptoe towards the door. ‘Hey,’ said a voice behind him, ‘you forgot your book!’

Mr Malik turned round just as Robert got to his table. Robert, wondering whether it was a punishable offence to bring the Koran on to licensed premises – let alone leave it there – scooped up the volume and walked towards his new headmaster. He ducked his head as he did this, widened his eyes, and flung open his arms. This was intended to convey surprise, delight and a dash of Muslim fellow-feeling. As it was, he felt, he gave the impression of having designs on Mr Malik.

‘We meet again,’ he said.

Mr Malik did not smile. He nodded briefly. ‘Indeed.’

Robert held the Koran up to his face when he got within breathing distance. The sweet, heavy smell of the whisky climbed back up his nostrils.

‘I’m always leaving this in pubs,’ he said, waving the sacred book, rather feebly.

This was not what he had meant to say at all.

‘I mean,’ he went on desperately, ‘quite often, in the past . . . I . . . er . . . have left it in pubs. In the hope that people will . . . er . . . pick it up and . . . read it. Rather like the Bible.’

‘Do people leave the Bible in pubs?’ said Mr Malik, in tones of some surprise.

‘They leave it in hotels,’ said Robert – ‘the Gideons leave it in hotel bedrooms. And I shouldn’t be surprised if they left it in pubs. Or even carried it round and sold it. Like the Salvation Army magazine.’

The headmaster was looking at him oddly. Why, having made a mistake, was he busy elaborating on it? Then Mr Malik said, ‘Have a drink, Wilson, for God’s sake. We are friends, for God’s sake. Have a pint, my dear man! Have a pint of beer!’

This offer surprised Robert considerably. As far as he was aware, this was not the kind of thing devout Muslims were supposed to say to each other. Perhaps it was a trap.

‘Just a Perrier for me,’ he said, rather primly.

Malik winked broadly at him. ‘Righteousness,’ he said, ‘does not consist in whether you face towards the East or the West. I myself am having a bottle of Special Brew.’

Robert coughed. If this was a trap, it was a carefully prepared one. Once you had said you were a Muslim, could they do what they liked with you? Was it a case of one sip of Young’s Special and there you were – being stoned to death in the High Street?

‘Just the water please, Headmaster,’ he said. Mr Malik gave a broad and unexpected smile. It gave him the appearance, briefly, of a baby who has just completed a successful belch. ‘
Headmaster!
’ he said. ‘That is what I am!’

He snapped his fingers. The barman gave him a contemptuous look and ambled off in the other direction. A small, leathery-faced man was waving a five-pound note at him from the other end of the bar.