The Third-Class Genie

by Robert Leeson

  “For weeks the soldiers of the camp enjoyed the life of idleness, but soon news of the strange happenings in the regiment reached London. A high-ranking officer was sent to put matters right, or wrong, if you look at it through the eyes of my master.

  “But he outwitted them. He rubbed on the plate, called me to his aid and made himself a general. Then he ordered the regiment home to England, much to the joy of the soldiers. But he had been too clever. Unless he could find someone of higher rank to order him home, he had to remain a soldier. His one hope was to find an accomplice. The only man left was the former colonel whom my master had confined to camp for his rude and impudent behaviour. My master offered him his freedom and also to make him field marshal, if he would give the order that would send my master home. Alas for human wickedness and folly! No sooner was his prisoner made field marshal, than my master was once again made a private and confined to camp, where he was ordered to stand guard at night, make food in the cookhouse and polish the great brass cannon at the camp gate. For all I know, they may still be there in that lonely desert camp.”

  “But what about you?” demanded Alec.

  “Did I not speak of human wickedness? Another soldier, having seen the plate and admired it, took it with him when the regiment sailed for England. He gave it to his wife but she believed that eating from metal plates was bad for the digestion and gave the plate to the passing rag and bone man in exchange for two goldfish, a balloon for her baby and a pair of silk stockings for herself.”

  “But how did you come to be in the beer can?” insisted Alec.

  “Alas, I know not, neither care I. I know that my pleasant sleep is at an end and I have a new master whom I must serve according to the rules of the Order of Genies, Third Class.”

  “Well, don’t look at it like that,” said Alec. “I won’t ask you to do daft things like the others did.”

  “Speak not too soon, O Alec. But as you will, so must I do. What is thy will, O Alec?”

  “First of all, I want to see who I’m talking to.”

  “Your wish cannot, alas, be granted. As a genie of the Third Rank, I have not the power to appear and disappear as well as perform tasks. Ask me another.”

  “How about something smashing to eat? Like a Super Atomic Blast Sherbet Bag?”

  “Sherbet,” replied Abu, “is not food.”

  “Food, ah, food…” Alec could almost imagine Abu rubbing his stomach. “Food!” The voice rose to a roar.

  “Go easy,” said Alec, “you’ll have half of Bugletown round here in a minute.”

  Abu laughed. “None can hear me but you, O Alec. But food, ah food…”

  “Get on with it,” said Alec in desperation.

  “Food.”

  Out of the air came a white sheet that spread itself over the dusty crane room table. Abu began to chant…

  “Nazin Tofa, eggs in wine sauce; Toyla Shorbasi, soup from Paradise; Uskumru Pilaksi, baked mackerel; Kirasili Sulun, pheasant with cherries,” he went on as the dishes, steaming and bubbling, began to crowd the cloth.

  “Hold on,” said Alec, “what about the pud?”

  “Ah, Sutlach Sharapli; rice pudding with wine.”

  Oh, no, not rice pudding! Just like school dinner, thought Alec. But he didn’t wish to offend Abu and so he simply invited him to join the meal. Abu readily agreed; several centuries in a jug or a beer can make anyone peckish. Alec stared as the various dishes rose in the air, emptied themselves and then floated down to the table again. But he was busy enjoying the feast himself. So this is what it was like in the days of the Arabian Nights. Oh, clever stuff, Bowden.

  Soon the meal was over, and Alec noticed that it was growing dark outside.

  “Time we were getting home, Abu.”

  He had barely time to pick up the can, when the table cloth, table, crane room and all had vanished with a rush and he was back in his bedroom again, sitting on the bed, still in his school uniform.

  Had he been sitting there all the time? He looked out of the bedroom window. The sky was clear and down in the yard he could hear Granddad pottering about in the caravan. But the can was in his pocket and it was open.

  Chapter Four

  KEEPER OF THE KAN

  BAFFLED AND BEWILDERED, Alec held the can in his hands. Was he dreaming? Was Alec Bowden truly the master of Abu Salem, Genie Third Class, approximately 975 years old? Or was Alec Bowden off his trolley? Had the strain of the day been too much? There were his trainers with a big hole burnt in them by helpful old Granddad. There was his project on the Crusades, all soaked in eau de Canal. The disasters were real enough. But what about the triumph?

  He held up the can to the light; it gleamed. He held it to his nose; it smelt beery. He held it to his ears and heard a distinct snoring sound. That could mean only one thing. Abu was sleeping off that enormous meal. Was it mackerel and rice pudding, or pheasants and sherbet? Still the memory was clear. His mouth watered.

  He rubbed the can briskly and held it up again. The snoring had stopped. He rubbed it again. No sign. Inspiration struck him. Bending his mouth close to the can opening, he said firmly, “Salaam Aleikum, O Abu Salem.”

  The familiar voice repeated sleepily, “Peace to you, Keef Haalak, How are you?”

  “I am well, apart from about two thousand problems,” said Alec.

  “Aieee, I feared as much. No peace for the genie. Speak, O Alec. What is thy will?”

  “My first will is a new pair of trainers.”

  “Trainers? What are trainers?”

  “Slippers.”

  In a flash the scorched trainers had vanished from Alec’s feet, and were instantly replaced by the most elegant pair of pink and gold, plush, satin slippers with curled toes.

  “You Great Arabian Plonker,” said Alec, “you’ll have me drummed out of Year Nine!”

  “Are the slippers not to your liking?” Abu sounded a little offended.

  “They’re lovely, they’re gorgeous, but they’re not me,” said Alec. “I want rubber-soled PE shoes.”

  “What is rubber?”

  “Good grief,” said Alec. Then he thought. What is rubber? How do you make it? How do you explain it to a 975-year-old genie, who hasn’t had the benefits of Western civilization? All he could remember was a description of plantation life in his geography book. He told Abu. Immediately in front of him there was a tall, smooth-trunked tree, standing in the middle of the room, with white liquid seeping from a cut in the bark and flowing down on to the bedroom floor. Alec bent down and poked the liquor which seemed to be setting like a jelly. Now, what to do? For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the next stage in rubber-making.

  Did you fry it, or hang it out of the window, or beat it? He wished he’d listened properly in geography or chemistry.

  “Ah well, Abu,” he said, “let’s have my old trainers back. I’ll have to buy a new pair.”

  “Thy will is my command,” said Abu, as though he’d worked miracles.

  “Now, you see my project book over there on the bed. I want it cleaned up.”

  For a second the project book vanished, or seemed to. Then it reappeared. But what had that raving genie done now? The front of the book and the first ten pages, which had been stained with canal mud, had been cleaned up. They’d been wiped clean, completely. There was nothing on them.

  “Put it back, Abu, put it back,” he yelled.

  There was silence for a second.

  “Come on, genie-us,” demanded Alec, “make with the project.”

  From the front room Alec’s mother knocked on the ceiling.

  “A bit less noise up there, our Alec.”

  Alec groaned. Then Abu said hesitantly, “I fear I cannot put back what you wrote. For I cannot know what it might have been.”

  Alec stared. That hadn’t occurred to him. It wasn’t Abu who was daft; it was he. He’d just have to be more careful what he asked. Abu had warned him about all the disasters that had happened to his previous masters.

/>   “It was a story of the Crusades,” he said.

  “Crusades?”

  “When King Richard and the other knights went out to the Holy Land to drive out the Saracens and fought Saladin.”

  “Aha, Sultan Salah ad-Din Yusuf, Lord of Ishshaan, might hammer of the faithless. Who does not know that great story?”

  “Do you? It took me an awful time to look it up in the school library. If I have to do all that again…”

  “Fear not, Alec. Take up thy pen. I shall tell, you shall write and the empty pages shall be full once more with great truth. Let us begin with the mighty victory for the true faith at the battle of Hattin…”

  Alec rushed to his desk, got out his fountain pen, and began to write, while Abu tirelessly told of sieges, battles, storms of arrows, flash of scimitar and sword, thunder of hooves, and burning sand and sun. There was still much to tell when Alec had filled up the blank space in his project book. But his mother knocked on the ceiling again which was the signal for him to get ready for bed. Outside it was dark now and Alec was tired, but he felt happy again. His project was rescued. True, his trainers were still in a disastrous state, but surely with Abu’s aid he could put that right.

  Now that he had Abu Salem, genie of the fight brown ale on his side, nothing was too much. From now on, triumphs would hammer disasters ten nil every day Thanks to Abu. Good old Abu.

  “Well, Abu, I’m off to bed, if you’d like to climb back into your can. I’ll leave the lid up slightly to give you some fresh air. It must smell like a brewery in there. Cheerio for now.”

  “Ma’asalaama,” murmured Abu.

  Alec undressed, wandered out to the bathroom to brush his teeth, but at the top of the stairs he stopped. He could hear his mother and father talking in the kitchen where they were having a cup of cocoa.

  “I don’t know, Connie love. It doesn’t matter how you switch around those bedrooms, we haven’t really got room.”

  “Well, I’m fed up with it, Harold. For one reason or another we’ve never had enough room.”

  “We could get a four-bedroomed house if we moved out to Moorside.”

  “The only way you’ll get me to Moorside is to carry me in a coffin. Miles from anywhere, freezing cold in winter…”

  “All right, all right, Connie. Anyway, let’s get to bed. Is our Kim in yet?”

  “Not her, still, she’s got the back door key.”

  Alec heard them move their chairs down in the kitchen and shot quickly back into his own bedroom. He switched off the light and looked out of the window. The railway arch loomed up against the skyline; the Tank, hidden in the dark shadows of the arch, could not be seen. But Alec knew it was there. He had his hideout, and his new friend Abu. Ginger Wallace, Mr Cartwright and all infidels would bite the dust from now on. Flash Bowden, Scourge of the Cosmos, Defender of the Faith, Keeper of the Kan, was on the warpath.

  He tucked the can carefully under his pillow and went to sleep.

  Chapter Five

  BOWDEN THE BEAST

  ALEC DREAMT THAT he sat at a huge table in the stateroom of his elegant 20,000-ton yacht, as it floated at anchor in the Bugletown Canal. Through the porthole he could see the mate, Monty Cartwright, urging on his trusty crew. The state-room door opened and Ginger Wallace, in steward’s uniform, entered bowing and scraping.

  “Alec,” he said.

  “Admiral Bowden to you,” replied Alec and dismissed Ginger with a wave of his hand.

  But Ginger would not go. He shouted, “Alec!”

  Alec waved his hand irritably, but Ginger only went on shouting, louder and louder. Then Alec was awake and his mother was banging on the bedroom door.

  “Alec, it’s half past eight!”

  “HALF PAST EIGHT?”

  At times like this, Alec wished he were an octopus. He’d put on his shoes with one hand (or tentacle), his trousers on with another, wash his face with a third, eat his breakfast with a fourth, pack his school bag with the fifth, tie his tie with the sixth, while the other two were busy walking down to Station Road. Mr Jameson, the biology teacher, once said that an octopus brain was just as good as a human brain. If they’d come to live on land there’d be no doubt about who would be boss.

  Alec tumbled down the stairs, dressing as he went. He grabbed his breakfast and shot out of the back door and up the road with his shirt-tail flapping, shoelaces flying and school bag swinging. He was down the hill, turning right into Station Road, and almost under the railway bridge, when a ghastly thought stopped him in his tracks. He’d forgotten his can. Forgotten your can? Bowden, you can’t have? I have, you know. Well, go back for it. Don’t be daft, it’s nearly nine o’clock.

  It was no good. He had to go on. Disasters were leading triumphs one nil and the referee’s coin was still in the air. Abu Salem, who ought by rights to be straining at the leash with the latest instamatic miracle, was probably lying snoring away with his tin blanket wrapped round him and dreaming of happy days in old Baghdad. “What a life.”

  Alec must have spoken out loud, because the newspaper seller by the station entrance called out, “The first eighty years are the worst, lad.”

  He caught the tail end of line-up in the school yard. He saw the broad shoulders of Ginger Wallace going in through the main door a little way ahead of him. Luckily, although they were in the same year (which was a laugh since Ginger was twice Alec’s size), they weren’t in the same class.

  Alec had time to nip along to the History Department and hand in his project to Mr Bakewell, who greeted him with, “Ah, here comes Bowden, at the last minute like the US Cavalry. This ought to be good.”

  Then on into Assembly, with a mind-bending lecture from the Head about Pride in Appearance and School Reputation. Alec looked down at himself and wondered if he should volunteer to go on display as an example of “How to get the school a bad name”. Without thinking he bent down to fasten up his shoelaces. Someone gently pushed him forward and he toppled through the row in front into the middle of the Year Nine girls. There were squeals and chuckles, whispers of “Here comes the Midnight Prowler” and “Bowden the Beast in Human Form”, cut short as Miss Bentley came zooming in from the sidelines.

  “Get back to your place!”

  Alec slunk back. The Head, unaware of the drama beneath him, droned on while Alec tried to make himself smaller. He was in the middle of planning to sneak out of school, go home, wake up Abu, and arrange a quick transfer to a desert island, when he was given a good-humoured shove by the boy next to him and realized that everyone was peeling off for lessons. Double English. Alec did a quick check. What had he forgotten? He couldn’t remember.

  He was in luck. The English teacher, Miss Welch, Raquel as the boys of 9F called her, looked as though she had been on the tiles the night before. She was clearly in no better shape for the morning than Alec was. That was a thought. Supposing teachers’ days were full of disasters as well. Was there no escape, even when you left school and grew up? Maybe Miss Welch would like to be on a desert island right now. Alec’s eyes shone with sympathy, but she was quite unaware of it. In fact, she didn’t even seem to see him as she drifted round the room, handing out tatty-backed books.

  “Read the story starting on page 41 to yourselves and then write it up in your own words.”

  “Miss,” shouted a boy at the back of the class.

  “Yes, I know. Yours hasn’t got a page 41. Well, try the next story. I don’t suppose in your version it will make much difference.”

  She turned on the class like a swivel gun and added, “And anyone else who hasn’t got a page 41 or a page 85 or page 2001 can do likewise. I don’t want a peep out of you for the next three days.”

  That raised a slight laugh and things settled down. The morning got going and Alec was grateful to go along with it. He looked at the story on page 41, but didn’t take to it and read on. Next came a chapter from Treasure Island. He enjoyed it so much that he read on and on and on. The pips went as he dreamed his way through t
o page 120.

  People were on their feet all round him, handing in their books. Alec hadn’t written a word. He fiddled with his books, trying to sort out his mind and bring it back to earth, while the others piled out of the room. Miss Welch stood over him.

  “If I did my duty, I’d make you write out your own version of every story you’ve read this morning, but I’m too soft-hearted. Write up the one on page 41 tonight and hand it to me tomorrow. Now get off to science before I get blamed for hanging on to you.”

  Alec skidded out. The rest of the morning lumbered along. The lunch break lurked ahead. Alec looked out of the window and vaguely hoped for rain. Not a chance. Outside the sun shone and the yard was filling up with its usual swarm of boys. Alec sidled off to the library and asked the librarian if she wanted any stock-taking done, but his offer was politely declined. Slowly, like a worm watching for early blackbirds, Alec made his way out.

  But luck hadn’t died on him. A game of backers was going on among the Year Nine boys by the school field railings and Ginger Wallace and his mates were busy with that. Fascinated, Alec drew nearer and watched as his beefy foe charged and leapt with full weight on his groaning opponents. As Ginger landed, the other team gave up the ghost and collapsed on the ground in howls of pain, while Ginger, straddling an opponent’s back, made whooping noises like a demented cowboy. In a moment a new game was lined up and the running, jumping, straining and heaving began again.

  Alec quickly stole away, found a corner within a discreet distance of the duty master and joined a civilized game of cobs with a couple of boys he knew slightly.

  Whistles blew for line-up and he realized with relief that the lunch hour had passed and Ginger Wallace had forgotten him. Luck was still holding. Maybe he was going to be permanently lucky now that he had the can. If that were so, then why had he forgotten the can? Still, so far so good, he thought as he joined the line-up. Inside the school in the corridor a group of girls shoved past him. One cried out, “There he is. Bowden the brute. No girl’s safe from him.”