Fourth Horseman (12 page)

There was a long pause, then Dad said quietly: ‘I am, as a matter of fact.’

‘Really?’ said Mum.

‘Yes, really.’ His voice was thin, as though he was speaking with a great effort. It was the old Dad, I’m sure, not the actor Dad, coming to the surface for a brief time. ‘I think about it every morning when I’m going to work and I think about it every evening when I come home. But the thing is, we haven’t got there yet. There’s a strong possibility that we never will; that the whole thing will have been a waste of time like the flatworm. But I need to know, you see? I need to pursue it as far as I can. For myself, not for anyone else. For the pure science of it.’

I think he got us both with that one. Mum and me. I said nothing, of course, because they didn’t know I was listening. Mum said: ‘So you don’t really have to decide on the ethics until the last minute? And then only if it works.’

‘Exactly,’ said Dad. ‘I can burn the lot at the end of the day if I decide to.’

That was his get-out clause, I realized later. That was how he justified what he was doing; what he surely must have known he was doing. He believed, deep down, that he wouldn’t have to go through with it. But I think he was wrong. I think the horsemen already had him completely in their power.

‘S
O WHO’S GOING TO
use the fourth ticket then?’ Alex asked. It was Friday afternoon and we were putting the final touches to the pitch. Alex had done the outfield with the ride-on mower and had left snazzy parallel lines. It looked brilliant. I had marked out the crease with white chalk powder and checked that the pitch didn’t have any particularly nasty bumps or cracks.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Why don’t you bring one of your mates?’ he said.

‘Because I don’t have that kind of mate,’ I said, and at that time it was true.

‘We’ll find someone for it,’ said Alex, to cover the awkward silence that threatened to follow my admission.

I nodded. We cast a final eye over the pitch and went back inside.

The first cricketers began to arrive an hour or so later. There were friends of Dad’s from school and friends of Mum’s from various teams she had played in through the years. Dad’s sister always came with our three cousins and it was usually the only time we met during the year. They stayed in the house, but everyone else brought tents which we all helped to put up on the lawn and in the orchard. The weekend of the Family Row was total pandemonium. The house was always heaving with people and if you wanted a shower you had to put your name down on a list on the blackboard outside the bathroom. When it was your turn the person before you would come and find you. But apart from that it was brilliant. We got to meet friends and relatives that we only saw once a year, and in the evenings, weather permitting, we had a mega barbecue in the yard.

Because we could never be sure how many would turn up, we invited everyone and worked out the teams when they had all arrived. There was no limit to the number of players on each side, but the fielding side was only allowed to have eleven players on the pitch at any given time. Whoever was off the pitch had to help make tea or soup or sandwiches. Players under ten were given a go with the bat but they weren’t allowed to field because it might inhibit some of the stronger batsmen from having a slog. The only cricketer who didn’t enjoy himself that weekend was poor Randall. For obvious reasons he wasn’t allowed to play, and because there was no way of keeping him in the house with all those people wandering in and out he had to be tied up outside the back door. He got plenty of attention and an enormous quantity of scraps, but the Family Row was not a happy occasion for him.

People who lived locally didn’t come until the Saturday morning. That year, for the first time, Javed’s family were among them. I had met his parents a few times when one or another of them had collected him from the house, but I had never really got to know either of them and I had never seen his two older sisters at all. They were both at university, one at York and the other at Cambridge, and they rarely came home. They were there under protest, I felt, and spent most of the time nattering in the kitchen. But Manir and Attiya Malik were a different kettle of fish. Attiya had never played cricket in her life and was a total waste of space on the pitch. She couldn’t bat or bowl or catch and she couldn’t even throw straight. But she was one of the funniest people I’ve ever encountered and her deadpan commentary on the game more than made up for her lack of ball skills.

She wasn’t by any means the only one who couldn’t play. The Family Row was, above all, a weekend of fun. If anyone was considered to be taking it too seriously they were punished by being sent to make tea, even if they were the captain. Especially if they were the captain. But there was room for a bit of good cricket as well, and when Javed’s father came in to bat for the first time it was immediately apparent to everyone where his son had got his passion for the game. Manir Malik was a fantastic amateur cricketer. He was a quiet, graceful batsman and his spin bowling was so good that he had to modify it for most of the time because he would have run through half the opposing team in a couple of overs. He saved his best bowling for the top players like Mum and her friends. They were up to it, but only just, and there were a couple of ding-dong battles on both days of play.

The tradition in the Family Row was that it should always end up with the scores level. If the teams were poorly balanced they would be reshuffled following the first innings to even them up. There was no limit to the number of innings each side could have. Provided it didn’t rain, the match ran until four in the afternoon on Sunday and the last session was always hilarious, with whichever side was winning doing its best to let the other side level the score. That particular weekend the weather was spectacular, and the ‘pavilion’—the shed where we kept all the gear—was knee-deep in floppy white hats and bottles of sun screen. The last ten minutes of play was a riot. The scores were level but Dad and Manir were still at the crease and had to stay there until four. They couldn’t score any more runs, but in the spirit of the game they had to pretend that they were trying to. I was captain, and it was my job to make sure they didn’t get out, so I had put Attiya on to bowl to her husband. Mostly she bowled way off target, but on occasion she sent one down that managed to dribble up towards the stumps. When that happened he would nudge it away, and then he and Dad would start off for a run, then pretend to change their minds and dash back again, even though their stumps were never in any danger. I bowled myself from the other end and teased Dad by sending him full tosses which he had to prevent himself from smashing to the boundary. But when four o’clock came the score was still unchanged and since both teams had achieved the required result we were all triumphant. I think it was the best Family Row we ever had.

Mum stayed on until Tuesday, and so did most of the aunts and uncles, and cousins and some of the friends as well. I didn’t get a moment on my own with Mum, and even if I had I’m not sure I would have told her about the riders. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to bother her. She was my mother, after all, and she had the right as well as the duty to know about anything that was troubling us. But the match had lifted my spirits and I was happy for the first time in weeks. I didn’t want to go back to that gloomy place in my mind where the riders were, even if I could find a way of telling it that sounded convincing. I just wanted to forget about it and enjoy the time with Mum.

The match had promoted Javed’s parents to the position of family friends, as opposed to merely parents of a family friend. They stayed for the barbecue on both nights and fitted seamlessly into the established gathering. Attiya was particularly popular, entertaining whoever she was talking to with her zany humour. She had a wonderful take on life: she could make anything seem funny, even if it was tragic. I spent a lot of time hovering nearby and wishing I could see things like that. Meanwhile Dad and Manir seemed to have hit it off spectacularly well. When the local players were leaving and we were standing together waving off each car-load, Dad asked me whether we had found a taker for the fourth test match ticket. I said that we hadn’t, and he said he knew someone who would love it.

So that was how Javed’s dad wound up coming with us to the Oval test, and how another piece of our curious fate fell into place.

J
AVED SAID HIS DAD
nearly fell off the floor when he offered him the ticket. Manir worked in criminal psychiatry and spent his time going around the country doing consultancy work for the courts. He was a bit like Dad in that he never stopped working. He did take holidays, though, once a year, but it was nearly always to go to Shasakstan with the family. He had never spent much time in London and had never attended a test match anywhere in England. He wouldn’t have thought of it himself, but when he was presented with the possibility of a ticket he was determined to go, and immediately set about rearranging his schedule. There was one day that he was unable to go because he had a court appearance that couldn’t be changed, but luckily it was on the first day of the match, so he wasn’t going to miss too much. Mum was insistent that he stay with the rest of us at her friends’ house in Kentish Town, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He booked himself into a swanky hotel near The Oval, but he let Javed stay with the rest of us. That way, he said, everybody would be happy.

The boys went up to London on the Wednesday evening before the match. I was to go with them, but we had the first hockey practice of the year that evening after school. I had missed the cricket season, but I was determined to get back into some kind of sport, and I didn’t want to miss the practice in case I changed my mind again and backed out. I could have taken a later train but it would have got me into London in the dark, and I preferred to get an early one in the morning and go straight to The Oval. I sent my bag with Alex so that I wouldn’t have to take it to the match and lug it around all day.

But I ended up taking a bag anyway. I was just getting dressed when the front doorbell rang. It was only 5.30 in the morning so it was pretty surprising. When I got downstairs Dad gestured towards a new black and purple backpack on the floor beside the door.

‘Attiya dropped that in,’ he said. ‘Javed forgot it yesterday and I said you’d take it for him.’

It weighed a ton. I couldn’t imagine what was in it. On the train to Paddington I heaved it on to the overhead ledge, making a mental note to myself not to forget it. These days everyone was ultra-conscious about security, and a left bag could cause endless disruption.

But it wasn’t until I got on to the tube that the first, horrendous moment of suspicion crept into my mind. I was sitting opposite a dark-skinned man. He had a rucksack on the floor between his knees, and despite the new security systems on London transport I couldn’t help thinking about the spate of suicide bombings that had caused them to be introduced. As though he had read my thoughts, the man leaned down and opened the rucksack and took out a bottle of water. He appeared to be making a point of revealing its contents—a laptop computer, a file of papers, a loose-leaf pad—and I wondered whether this had become a routine with him. He looked nice. It was unfair that he should feel the need to prove his innocence. After all, anyone could be a bomber. Nothing said you had to be dark-skinned or even male,
I
could be a bomber.

I looked at Javed’s backpack, and that was when the thought hit me. I had no idea what was in it. What a brilliant way to carry out an attack, to plant a bomb on a nice, middle-class white girl that no one would ever think of searching.

I’m ashamed of the thoughts I had then. It was the horsemen that laid the seed of them, I’m certain of that. I don’t believe that I would ever have begun to entertain them if it hadn’t been for that ongoing, unsolved mystery of why the riders had appeared that day, so soon before the Birmingham bombings. The trouble was, once they had started, there was nothing I could do to stop them. What was in that backpack? Why was it so heavy? Javed was one of the most organized people I knew. Had he really forgotten to take it with him? Or was there another reason he had asked his mother to give it to me?

It was absurd, I knew it. There was no way Javed would do a thing like that. He was a peaceful, gentle character who would never harm anyone. But I began to think about some of the things he had said. He had been critical of fundamentalism, but he had been very critical of western aggression against Muslim countries as well. He was angry about the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the recent invasion of Iran. So what? A lot of people were. But then, there were things about Javed that I didn’t really know. He didn’t eat bacon or sausages and he said it was because he didn’t like them. Maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe he was secretly a strict Muslim. Maybe that was why he insisted that people’s religious beliefs should be a private affair.

Was that why the horsemen had appeared to me? I looked at the bag, and a cold prickle of fear touched my heart. Even then I was ashamed of my thoughts, but I couldn’t change them. I wanted to open Javed’s bag and see what was in it, but I couldn’t do that either, because that would be to give way to the fears I was trying to deny. It would be to admit that I suspected him of something unthinkable, and I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. But I couldn’t get rid of the fear. What if Javed had nothing to do with it? What if Attiya or Manir had sent the bag? It wouldn’t work. There was a witness. Dad was a witness and they would be caught. And anyway, they were our friends, fine people. They just wouldn’t.

I looked around the carriage at the other people in there. Ordinary people making their way around the city, like those others, the victims of the other attacks over the last few years. Their journeys would have been like this. Normal days, just like any other.

The train pulled up at a station. I wanted to get off, leave the backpack behind me or ditch it on the platform—anything to end this dreadful conflict. I waited. It was only a matter of seconds while people got off and others got on, but it seemed to take an hour. At last the train pulled away again. I was still in a cold sweat, but by staying where I was I had faced down my demons. By the time we got to the next stop I had banished those crazy ideas from my mind. I knew there was no bomb in the bag and I had re-established my faith in Javed and his family. But there was no escaping the realization that I had, even for a short time, allowed myself to suspect my friends, and for no other reason than their nationality. No amount of self-recrimination could change the fact that it had happened, and no amount of rationalization could stop that brief and poisonous episode from returning, at a later stage, to sway my mind again.