East of Wimbledon Read online

  He finally caught up with her about thirty yards away from the pond. In order not to alarm her unduly, he moved into a space about ten yards ahead of her, and started to walk backwards and forwards on a ten-degree arc in her direct line of vision. Finally she stopped, and from deep within the black bag that enveloped her there was a kind of squeak. ‘Bobkins!’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I need to speak to you,’ said Robert.

  She started to make small, whimpering noises. She sounded, thought Robert, rather like Badger shortly before one opened a can of dog food.

  ‘It’s about Hasan . . .’ he said, glancing back towards Hasan and the rest of the school. Aziz the janitor was now headed for the trees from which Robert had just come. He seemed to be focusing his attention on the group that Mr Malik was teaching. ‘And what you said this morning . . . about that manuscript I gave you. With the photo of Hasan in the locket. And you said something about assassins!’

  ‘The Assassins,’ said Maisie, in a slightly superior way, ‘were a group from the fortress of Alamut. They were the servants of Hasan I Sabah, the Old Man of the Mountains. From this sect called the Nizari Ismailis. He sent them all over the Islamic world to kill his enemies.’

  ‘As far as . . . er . . . Wimbledon?’ said Robert tentatively.

  Maisie laughed scornfully. ‘All this happened about a thousand years ago,’ she said. ‘But there’s something even weirder in that manuscript you gave me. I showed it to Mr Malik, and he said it was very strange indeed.’

  ‘Why show it to Mr Malik? What’s going on between you and Mr Malik?’

  ‘Nothing, Bobkins,’ said Maisie. ‘He’s just converting me, that’s all. I thought you’d be pleased!’

  ‘Well I’m not,’ said Robert, ‘and I want to know what you’ve found out about that manuscript I gave you!’

  Feeling suddenly cold and miserable, Robert moved towards a bench at the edge of the pond. Ahead of him Cranborne School presented a Christian, redbrick face to the long sky above the Common.

  ‘Where are you?’ squawked Maisie.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re wearing that ridiculous outfit,’ said Robert, ‘and I don’t know why you’re telling all these things to Malik and telling him about things I gave you as a present.’

  Maisie snorted and, following the sound of his voice, traced him to the wooden bench. She sat next to him. A glum-looking man in wellingtons followed his dog round the circle of irongrey water. Above them, seagulls mewed and wheeled in the December wind.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you who I talk to,’ said Maisie. ‘Why shouldn’t I show it to him, anyway? He’s a Muslim. He knows about these things. You’re gay, anyway.’

  ‘I am not gay,’ said Robert. ‘I am a normal, healthy man with normal, healthy feelings!’

  This was not strictly true, but it was certainly more true than saying that he was gay. The fact was that, now that Maisie was about as closely concealed from daylight as a roll of undeveloped film, his desire for her had passed the point where it was possible to conceal it. It was somehow easier to say these things to something that looked like a top-secret weapon in transit.

  ‘I think about you all the time,’ he went on. ‘I think about your body. I want your body. I want to penetrate you.’

  There was a kind of squeak from deep within the black bag.

  ‘I lied about being gay,’ went on Robert. ‘I lie about everything. I’m incapable of the truth. But I want you. I dream about having you. I dream about your body and its—’

  ‘Bobkins,’ said Maisie, in tones that suggested that this was a not entirely unwelcome topic, ‘this isn’t getting us anywhere.’

  Robert rather disagreed with this. He had never before been able to be quite so frank with anyone about his innermost feelings. Was it that, at last, he was learning to face up to himself? Or was it simply that she looked like a large, mobile bag of laundry?

  ‘You’ve got an erection!’ she said, accusingly.

  This, thought Robert, was something of an optical achievement on her part. It had been touch and go whether she would get herself anywhere near, let alone actually on, the bench.

  ‘I love you,’ went on Robert, ‘and I want to have sex with you, and—’

  ‘Shut up, Bobkins!’ said Maisie. ‘I thought you wanted to know about Hasan. And about that manuscript you gave me.’

  Mr Malik and the rest of the school had now disappeared. Robert could just make out a thin line of boys struggling through the trees at the edge of the horizon. Aziz’s friend seemed to have gone too.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ said Maisie. ‘In an antique shop?’

  If he had told her the truth, she would not have believed him. Anyway, the truth was – as usual – inelegant, implausible and hurtful. He didn’t like to think he was the kind of person who took things from strangers in pubs and then passed them off as presents to girls he was supposed to love.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, trying to think of why Hasan’s photograph might have been inside the locket. ‘I think Hasan’s parents must have sold it. Apparently they went through a very hard time recently. His father had a lot of money in BCCI.’

  Maisie peered out at him suspiciously. ‘You’re lying, Bobkins, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You’re telling a fib. I don’t know why you tell fibs all the time. Mr Malik says he’s always catching you out in fibs. I don’t know why he likes you. I don’t know why I like you. If I like you.’

  There didn’t seem much point in commenting on any of this. Robert leaned his chin on his hands and looked glumly across the winter grass. ‘What’s in this manuscript, anyway?’ he said, finally.

  Maisie’s voice thrilled in his ear. Muffled by thick, black cloth, it had the quality of a woman speaking of a secret assignation. As she spoke, the drab, tussocky surface of the Common, the whirling grey clouds and the unstoppable north wind were replaced by walled gardens, the scent of flowers and a crescent moon in a dark sky.

  ‘It’s a prophecy, apparently,’ said Maisie. ‘It dates from hundreds of years ago. And it tells how a remarkable boy is going to come and save the world. And it describes him – in great detail!’ Her voice sank to a thrilling whisper. ‘And, Bobkins – he sounds just like Hasan. Exactly like him in every respect. Right down to the mark on his cheek and the fact that he’s blind. Hasan is the Twenty-fourth Imam!’

  10

  Robert was not sure whether this was good or bad news. It sounded important, anyway. He didn’t know much about Islam but he was aware that being an imam was a bit like being a Vice-President for Life. People tended to make way for you in bus queues when you were an imam. They quite often leaped about on national monuments screaming, ripping apart their black pyjamas, and generally behaving as if you were all of the Grateful Dead rolled into one.

  Perhaps they should have been using better cutlery, thought Robert, or calling Hasan ‘sir’ and making sure he had the best chair. They certainly should not have been letting him curl up on the floor next to Badger. They certainly should not have allowed Badger to lick his ear.

  ‘I suppose you know,’ went on Maisie, in the tones of someone who has recently become an expert on something, ‘that there is a split in the Muslim world.’

  Robert had not known this. But, then, his entire stock of knowledge about Islam was derived from Morals and Manners in Islam by Dr Marwan Ibrahim Al-Kaysi. He really must get back to the library and see if it had any more books on the subject. There was the Koran of course. But, so far, at any rate, he had not been able to get beyond page 12. And, in those pages anyway, the book had said nothing about a split. It had rather given the impression that splits were not the done thing.

  ‘Don’t you read newspapers, Bobkins?’ hissed Maisie.

  Robert did not read newspapers. He had looked at one, years ago, but it had taken him three days to read it, carefully, from cover to cover, by which time he realized that, if he was going to do the thing at all conscientiously, he would never b
e abreast of current developments. He learned about world events rather as a Trobriand Islander might – from chance remarks and accidental contacts – and, from the little he had heard, he had not much desire to know more.

  ‘There are Sonny and Cher Muslims, you see . . .’

  She could not possibly be right about this, thought Robert.

  ‘Sunni and Shiah – and they’re sort of . . . deadly enemies.’

  ‘How awful!’

  He had got the impression, from Marwan Ibrahim Al-Kaysi and from Mr Malik, that Muslims were supposed to be nice to each other. What could they find to disagree about, anyway? Weren’t they all supposed to stick together and clobber the opposition?

  ‘The Shiah, for example, or at least the ones in Iran, believe that the Twelfth Imam – who disappeared in mysterious circumstances over a thousand years ago – is going to come back with a huge army and take over the world.’

  This did not, to Robert, seem very likely. He could not, either, remember this fact being mentioned in the Koran. But, then, he had only read about twelve pages. He really must get on and finish it.

  ‘What’s all this got to do with Hasan?’

  ‘The manuscript,’ hissed Maisie, ‘is from Iran. It dates from the twelfth century.’

  Robert tried to marshal a few facts about twelfth-century Iran. They would not come.

  ‘Mr Shah, who put up the money for the school, is a Wimbledon Dharjee. The Dharjees went from Iran to Bombay in the seventeenth century and came to Wimbledon in 1926, mainly to get away from Bombay but also, apparently, for the tennis.’

  Why was she so well informed about Islamic history? Presumably Mr Malik had been giving her tutorials.

  ‘But the Dharjees were once members of the Nizari Ismailis, who are themselves a breakaway sect of the Shiite Muslims. Like the Bombay Khojas.’

  Robert wished people would not keep mentioning the Bombay Khojas. Just when you started to think you had finally got a grip on this thing they would throw in the Bombay Khojas and you were right back where you started. It was all very confusing. Just as he was beginning to adapt to the fact that there were Muslims – and that some of them were quite pleasant – it turned out that there were as many strains of Muslim as there were of the virus responsible for the common cold.

  ‘Why did the Dharjees leave the Ismailis?’ said Robert. ‘Because they go around murdering people?’

  ‘I think the Dharjees just sort of wandered off. It might have had something to do with tennis. The Ismailis are quite nice now. The Aga Khan is one of them,’ said Maisie, as if this dispelled any doubts on the subject. ‘He went to Harvard. He must be all right!’

  Robert was not entirely sure about this. He had vaguely heard of Hasan I Sabah, the Old Man of the Mountains. And it was curiously unnerving to realize that the little boy staying in his parents’ house should bear the same name. He looked over his shoulder towards where the school party had gone, but could see nothing but a flat field of windblown grass.

  ‘Some of the Wimbledon Dharjees,’ went on Maisie, ‘have been waiting for the Twenty-fourth Imam. For hundreds of years. He’s going to do something amazing, apparently. And this manuscript really makes it look like Hasan is the Twenty-fourth Imam! Its serious, Bobkins! It’s not like us nipping down for a pint with the vicar!’

  ‘I thought,’ said Robert, grimly, ‘that we were supposed to be Muslims.’

  Maisie seemed surprised to recall this fact. She rocked backwards and forwards on the bench. ‘Oh God,’ she said – ‘so we are.’

  Robert did not like to remind her about the nature of her costume. She put her hand up to her veil and started to chew it through the material. He felt a stab of desire for her once again, but, this time, did not try to put it into words.

  ‘It says, apparently,’ she went on, ‘that a blind boy with a mark on his face will “come out of the West”. That’s us, isn’t it? And he’ll do all sorts of terrible things. Hasan is a sort of . . . magic child!’

  She turned her head and looked Robert full in the face. Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Robert thought about Hasan: about the strange, powerful stillness he carried with him, about his high, precise voice and his exquisite fingers, laced together on the desk at the back of Class 1.

  It was not, Robert decided, very sporting of the headmaster to park the Twenty-fourth Imam of the Wimbledon Dharjees on him. He appreciated the headmaster’s affection for all things English, even including the Wilson family, but to spring the Islamic equivalent of the Messiah on them seemed a little unfair. No wonder men had been watching the house. When the time of Hasan’s Occultation came, they would, presumably, be swarming up the drainpipes waving scimitars and carrying on like a thwarted group of reporters from the Sun.

  ‘I think,’ said Robert, trying to stop his voice climbing any higher, ‘that we should find Hasan a properly Islamic home as soon as possible. And we should hand the manuscript in. To Lost Property or something. Or put it in a left-luggage compartment somewhere.’

  ‘Suppose it’s cursed!’ wailed Maisie. ‘Suppose it’s one of those things that follows you round – like Tutankhamun’s mummy.’

  He had never confided any of his suspicions about being followed to Mr Malik. He would go and see him as soon as they got back to school and tell him everything that had happened since he had come to the school. He had the irrational feeling that Mr Malik would make it all right.

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ said Robert, with a confidence he did not feel. ‘We’re Muslims.’

  ‘We are,’ wailed Maisie – ‘we are. And we should not oppress or surrender each other. We should all stick together for Christ’s sake!’

  Robert nodded vigorously. He must try and look on the positive side as far as Maisie’s conversion was concerned. At least now they had something in common. She was a Muslim and he was pretending to be one. That was a start, wasn’t it?

  ‘Does Mr Malik give . . . er . . . classes?’ he said.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Maisie, ‘we just talk. And he takes me to an Italian restaurant in Mitcham. La Paesana. He does my horoscope.’

  Robert did not like the idea of Maisie and Malik tête-à-tête. The head was not, he was fairly sure, her type. But . . .

  ‘I feel closer to you, Bobkins,’ said Maisie. ‘I feel we’re both struggling. Are you struggling? You seem to me to be struggling. I like that in you.’

  From under her cloak, Maisie took the scroll of paper that he had given her back in August. With it was the locket. She held both out, at arm’s length, to Robert. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I think you’d better have them back.’

  Robert touched the manuscript nervously. ‘Er . . .’

  He didn’t take it from her.

  ‘What exactly does the Twenty-fourth Imam do?’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Maisie, her eyes wide and shining with newly acquired faith, ‘apparently he hurls thunderbolts around and sort of dries up wells and does tremendous damage to buildings.’

  Robert resolved to be more respectful to Hasan. Only last week he had told him to get out of the bath and described him as ‘a little rat’. It was comforting to note, however, that, so far at any rate, the little blind boy had shown not much talent for destruction. The only thing he had so far managed to wreck was the Wilson family’s CD player.

  ‘It all happens,’ Maisie said, ‘after his Occultation. He’s fine until the Occultation, and then . . . you know . . . he’s dynamite! It’s all in the paper you gave me.’

  Resolving to pass them on to someone else as soon as possible, Robert took hold of both locket and manuscript and put them in his jacket pocket.

  ‘Do you think you could ever . . . you know . . .’

  ‘What?’

  But it was hopeless. It wasn’t simply that he seemed incapable of telling the truth: he couldn’t begin to express any thought without it sounding false or grotesque. He would go and see the headmaster as soon as they got back. He had the absurd conviction that his new
boss would look after him, somehow explain things and make them right. ‘A Muslim is the brother of every other Muslim. He must not oppress or surrender him.’ Except he wasn’t a Muslim, was he? Or was he?

  As if in answer to his doubts, from out of the birch trees came Mr Malik, at the head of a line of boys. He raised his right arm, pirouetted, and landed, like a ballet dancer, some yards ahead of himself, on his toes. He spun round with both arms extended, and started to shake his hands vigorously. After him, giggling furiously, came Sheikh and Mahmud. Behind them came the fat boy in glasses from Cranborne School. He too was waving his arms, then lifting a leg each in turn and shaking his feet at the leaden sky. Perhaps, thought Robert, he had been converted.

  As Maisie, too, turned to watch, the whole school emerged into the vacant space of the Common, each one lifting now one arm, now the other, leaping and landing, shaking and pirouetting, and all of them, apart from Dr Ali, laughing wildly. This, to the wonder of anyone who happened to be passing, was Islamic dancing.

  ‘Come, Wilson!’ called the headmaster. ‘Come! Dance! Dance!’

  Stiffly, Robert got to his feet.

  ‘My dear girl,’ Malik called to Maisie, ‘dance!’

  This was not a possible option for Maisie. Making small noises of distress, she started to do a three-point turn, reversed – hard – into the side of the bench, and squawked loudly.

  ‘Take off those ridiculous clothes,’ called the headmaster, ‘and dance!’

  Maisie, from deep inside her black linen bag, was muttering about how it was all right for some people. The line of boys and masters – Hasan and Rafiq bringing up the rear – made its way through pools of water and patches of sodden black earth, across the cinder track leading up towards the Windmill, and to the chestnut trees, now almost empty of leaves, that shadow the edge of Parkside. Hasan, holding tightly to Rafiq’s hand, was laughing and thrashing his body like a swimmer in difficulties.