Fourth Horseman (13 page)

When I got off the train at The Oval I found Alex and Javed waiting for me outside the station. Javed took the bag and shouldered it. He seemed surprised by the weight of it, and took it off and opened it. Inside was a box of chocolates, a bottle of expensive whisky and a huge, lethal weapon of a coffee-table book full of spectacular aerial photographs of Shasakstan.

‘Presents,’ he said. ‘For your friends. For putting me up in London.’

It wasn’t the best match of the summer, but it was pretty good. The fourth match had been another draw, which meant that there was everything still to play for. Australia needed to win it to take the Ashes. All England needed to keep them was a draw, but we were all hoping that we’d win and take the series cleanly. There were a few breaks in play because of rain, and after the third day it became clear that the most likely outcome was going to be a draw. It became clear, that is, to everyone except the Australians. They played like lions, determined to win the series against all the odds, and it made for fantastic cricket. From the first ball the match engaged me entirely, and for a few wonderful days I forgot about everything except the cricket. I forgot about emperors and rebels and viruses, and about my shameful suspicions about Javed and his family. People who have only seen cricket on the TV sometimes think you wouldn’t be able to see much from the edge of the ground because you don’t have the benefit of close-in cameras. It’s not true. You can see way, way more if you have a good seat. You can see the ball swing in the air or move off the seam. You can see exactly where the batsman hits it and whether or not a chasing fielder is going to stop it before the boundary. And you can see the diving catches as they happen, and not just in action replay.

From the second day onwards, Manir Malik was with us. He was bursting with enthusiasm. He couldn’t stop talking about the Family Row and how much he had enjoyed it, and about how he would never again go for a year without coming to see at least one test match. Although he said he was supporting Australia, I think it was just to wind us up. In a more serious moment he said that the only matches where he really cared who won were between Shasakstan and India. Otherwise it was the game that mattered; the strategies and the quality of the players. He applauded good play whenever he saw it, which set a good example to the rest of us, and he filled up the hours when rain stopped play with stories of great matches he had seen, or gossip about some of the great Shasakstani players of the past.

The Australians put up a tremendous fight, and for a while it looked as though they might break through and snatch the series. But England’s tail-enders refused to give up their wickets and in the end we held out and kept the match to a draw. The crowd was delighted and, if you didn’t know, you might have been forgiven for thinking we had won the series. It was brilliant to be there and a part of that delight. On the train on the way back to Worcester Manir told Alex and me that he owed our family a huge debt of gratitude for bringing cricket back into his life. He told us that he wouldn’t forget it and that he’d find a way of showing us his appreciation. We said the best way he could do that was by coming and playing a few overs with us on the odd weekend and he said he certainly would. But we didn’t realize that he had something else up his sleeve. Something far more exciting.

It was a couple of weeks later that I heard about it. We had settled back into school. I was in Year 11 and heading into GCSEs so I was having to knuckle down to some hard work. I was in training with the hockey team and beginning to feel less socially isolated. Two days a week I had practice after school and on two other days I worked in the lab with the squirrels. I did a half day there on Saturday as well, so my days were pretty well occupied and I didn’t have much time to worry about the horsemen. In any event, time blunts the sharpest edge and, no matter how momentous the visions had been at the time, they were fading in importance with each day that passed. Like an unsolved case file: still open but slowly making its way to the bottom of the pile.

Mum had been home for a couple of weeks after the end of the Ashes series, but she had gone back to work with some of the injured and recovering players in the hope of getting them fit for the winter season. We had caught up with each other properly this time and got used to being a family again. It had given Alex and me strength for the next stretch of time without her, and Dad too, I think. But when Alex and Javed broke their news to me the Sunday after she left, the bottom fell out of my world again.

‘We’re going to Shasakstan,’ Alex said. ‘Javed’s dad is taking us!’

I was stopped in my tracks, inundated by a torrent of conflicting emotions. ‘Who’s we?’ I said at last, half hoping that the plan didn’t involve me. It did, though.

All of us,’ said Alex. ‘You, me, Javed. Dad’s fixed it with the school already. We’ll be away for two weeks altogether. Just before Christmas. We’re going to see the one-day international series.’

‘Neat,’ I said, trying to sound as though I meant it.

‘And you know the best thing? We’re not going to tell Mum. Promise you won’t tell her?’

‘I promise.’

‘And we’re going to surprise her. We’ll just walk in one day. Can you see her face?’

I could imagine it and the thought cheered me up a bit. The boys began discussing where we were going to stay and what else we would do when we were there, but I didn’t stay to listen. I slipped off quietly to my room and lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling.

I didn’t want to go. I was afraid. Since the bombs in Birmingham and the association I had made between them and the red horseman, I had been interested in Shaskastan, and had read everything I could get my hands on. But nothing I had learned had made the place seem remotely attractive. I knew from what Javed and Manir had told me that there was plenty more to the country than the fundamentalist faction, but the thought of going there just filled me with dread.

‘Do you know where your passport is?’ said Dad as he was driving me back from the lab after school the next day.

‘It’s in my desk.’

‘Is it up to date?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Because we have to send it off to the Shasakstani embassy. To get your visa.’

I said nothing for a while, and Dad kept glancing at me, questioningly.

‘Are you OK?’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘Do I have to go?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course you don’t. But you’ll regret it if you don’t. It’s a fantastic opportunity.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know it is.’

We arrived at the house and got out of the car. Dad usually left me to take my bike off the carrier but this time he came round to help.

‘It’s perfectly safe, Laurie,’ he said, pulling the quick-release strap in the wrong direction and tightening it instead of loosening it. ‘I’ve had a long talk with Manir and he says there’s no way he would take Javed, let alone you two, if he thought there was any danger at all. And I wouldn’t let you go if I didn’t believe him.’ When I said nothing he went on: ‘Do you think they’d send the cricket team there if it wasn’t safe?’

I took the end of the strap from him and released it. ‘I suppose not,’ I said. ‘But what about …?’

‘What about what?’

‘The horsemen,’ I said, broaching a subject that had been taboo since the day we saw them.

Dad huffed noisily. ‘You’re not still thinking about that nonsense, are you?’ He dragged the bike roughly off the carrier and plonked it on the ground. ‘Look, you really don’t have to go if you don’t want to. But Manir had to pull all kinds of strings to get hold of those match tickets. It would be a bit of a let-down for him if you changed your mind.’

I wanted to say that I hadn’t changed my mind because I had never been asked whether I wanted to go in the first place, but there seemed no point.

‘Imagine your mother’s face,’ Dad went on, ‘when you walk in and surprise her.’

That almost swung it, but not quite. Hot on its heels came the memory of that day on the tube in London and the terror I had felt. Rationalizing it didn’t help. Whether it made sense or not, the associations between the horsemen and Shasakstan were too strong. I took the handlebars from Dad and began wheeling the bike towards the shed. ‘I don’t want to disappoint Manir,’ I said, ‘but I’m not going.’

A couple of days after that I got a surprise visit from, of all people, Attiya. She asked Dad if we could use the Internet, and we went off together into the study. She showed me a website devoted to Shasakstani tourism. I had to admit it looked wonderful.

‘I’m going to come clean,’ said Attiya, ‘and admit that I’ve been sent here. On behalf of Manir and Javed. They want you to go to Shasakstan and they want me to persuade you to go.’

I wasn’t surprised. Alex and Javed had been on at me constantly.

‘I can perfectly well understand why you wouldn’t want to go there,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit of a mixed-up place. It’s governed by a military dictatorship and it has a growing fundamentalist problem. I can’t deny any of that. It’s one of the reasons Manir and I wanted to settle here in England.’

She hit a link and showed me a picture of the president, in military uniform, and then another of a woman in a black veil, which hid her face.

‘And then the Americans came along and made it all worse,’ she said. ‘They started this radical Islamism as a way of getting the Russians out of Afghanistan. Now they can’t stop it. They have a huge military base in Shasakstan trying to get it back in its box, but the trouble is it won’t lie down again. The extremism just keeps growing.’

‘So why should I want to go there?’ I said.

‘Because you will love it.’ She hit a new link on the website and showed me pictures of a modern shopping mall, with young men and women looking pretty much like young men and women in any modern city. No uniforms. No veils. There were links to restaurants and cinemas, computer and mobile phone shops, gifts and crafts and antiques. Worcester might try and advertise itself in just the same way.

‘But this is Shasakstan too. They want tourists and they take care of them. You won’t be going anywhere near the troubled areas. Do you think I’d let Javed go if I thought there was any chance of danger?’

She changed the page again, and I saw pictures of stunning mountain landscapes, of wonderful old forts and palaces and museums. I couldn’t deny that it looked fantastic, but my heart was unmoved.

I shook my head. ‘I know you wouldn’t. It’s not that. It’s just …’ Attiya waited until I was ready to continue. ‘It’s just that I had a … a premonition or something. I just have a bad feeling about the place. It scares me.’

Attiya laid her hand on mine. ‘Sometimes we have to face the things that frighten us,’ she said gravely. Then, in that characteristic way of hers, she erupted into laughter. ‘And sometimes we have to run away from them as fast as we can. If you feel that it’s not right then you definitely shouldn’t go.’

A
FTER THE CONVERSATION WITH
Attiya I felt better about my decision to stay at home. I just wished that Alex wouldn’t go either.

Dad helped him fill in the visa form and sent it off with his passport to the embassy in London. I held on to a pathetic hope that it would be rejected, or that it might fall down behind a desk in some dark corner of the Shasakstani embassy and not be returned until after the next spring cleaning. But the passport, duly stamped with a visa, turned up in the post only a week or so after we had sent it away. Manir bought the tickets for the flights and Dad, after a long battle of wits, finally succeeded in getting him to take the money for Alex’s. The next step was a visit to the doctor to get jabs and prescriptions for malaria tablets. To Alex the trip was a huge adventure on a distant horizon and he just couldn’t get there quickly enough. But for me, December seemed much too close for comfort.

Mum had a few weeks at home before the Shasakstan tour. The boys’ trip was kept strictly secret from her, because of their determination to surprise her at the first match in Chandralore. She spent loads of time with us, but we didn’t do much as a family, all four of us together, because Dad seemed to take Mum’s presence as an excuse to spend most of his time at the lab. And when he did come home, that absent quality that I had seen in him since the appearance of the first horsemen seemed more evident to me than ever. I was going to mention it to Mum when the right opportunity came along, and use it as a way to bring up the subject of the horsemen, so when she suggested we go for a cycle together, just the two of us, I agreed willingly.

It was a beautiful day and we were dawdling along, enjoying the autumn colours and stopping now and then to pick blackberries. There was all the time in the world, and I was going over the subject in my mind, thinking of the best way to approach it, when Mum said:

‘Do you mind me being away so much, Laurie?’

I was taken by surprise. ‘No,’ I said, without thinking. ‘Why?’

‘I just want you to know that you can always talk to me about things. You can send me an email and I can ring you, if you’re worried about anything.’

‘OK,’ I said. The door was open. I was about to mention Dad’s behaviour, but she wasn’t finished.

‘It’s just that your dad said he’s been a bit worried about you.’

‘Did he?’ I suddenly saw it coming. He had got to Mum first.

‘He said … well … he said you’d been seeing things.’

I should have confirmed it with her there and then, but I was on the back foot. It was like the time I’d tried to send her an email. It looked crazy then. It would sound even crazier now to try and explain that Dad had seen things too, but wouldn’t admit it. His tactics were brilliant. If I hadn’t been so angry I might even have admired them. Instead I tried to think on my feet and turn it around.

‘I’m fine, Mum. It’s Dad I’m worried about. Don’t you think he’s acting weird these days?’

‘Weirder than usual?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think he’s kind of distant or something? Not quite with us?’

Mum burst out laughing. ‘What’s new?’ she said. ‘The story of my marriage, in a nutshell.’