“Don’t waste your time,” called his sister. “They’ll have nailed up the other side as well.”
“Dad came down the back way from the railway viaduct the other day,” said Alec.
“That’s risky,” said Eulalia. “That means going over the wall by the Railway Club.”
“There’s only one thing for it, then,” said Ginger.
“What’s that?”
“Over the top.”
“But it must be twelve feet at least,” said Alec, “and there’s nothing to hold on to on this side.”
“There’s a ladder with some scaffolding at the top of the slope,” said a voice behind them.
All three jumped. Granddad stood there. “If you’re dead set on getting over there to find your friend, I’ll keep watch for you.”
Ginger looked suspiciously at Granddad.
“What friend?”
Granddad made a face.
“You can fool Councillor Blaggett, but you can’t fool me. Hetty Morris told me there was a big black man going through the fence into the Tank. Now I know she sees funny things at night, but she misses nothing that goes on in daylight.”
“You won’t tell, will you?” pleaded Eulalia.
Granddad sniffed.
“If I wanted to tell, I’d have split on you before now. Don’t be daft.”
Eulalia grinned at him.
“You’re smashing.”
He grinned back, showing the gaps in his teeth.
“You’re all right yourself.”
“Come on,” said Ginger. “Let’s get that ladder.”
It took no more than a couple of minutes to carry the ladder down to the fence and set it up. On the other side there were cross planks which made the job of climbing down easier.
The bridge, repaired during the siege of the crane house, was intact, and they crossed it quickly and headed for the main Tank building. Their footsteps sounded very loud in the still evening. It was getting late now and, though it was summer, the sun was moving down the sky and the buildings cast long, weird shadows.
“This is a spooky place,” said Eulalia. “I can’t see why Abu wanted to come back here.”
“Well, he’s a spirit himself,” said Ginger.
“No, he’s not,” said Alec indignantly, “He’s a genie, Third Class, one of the original slaves of the lamp.”
“Much good it’s done him,” retorted Ginger. He stopped as they reached the foot of the crane room stairs.
“Hey, think of that. A slave for nine hundred years. Doing what you’re told for nine centuries. Catch me doing that for nine hundred seconds,” said Ginger.
“You wait till our Ma hears what you said,” laughed Eulalia. “She’ll wave her hand, and you’ll say, ‘What is thy will, O master?’”
“Huh,” replied her brother and led the way up the stairs. They entered the crane room in a rush, calling for Abu. Their voices echoed round the old building, but the room was quite empty.
“He must be somewhere else in the Tank,” said Eulalia.
Alec shook his head.
“No, this is the only place with a proper roof on it. If he’s not in the crane room, he must be away somewhere.”
He looked unhappily round the room, now half lost in the dusk. The old table, upset during the struggle over the crane brake lever, had been set upright again. The paper bag, which held Abu’s sandwiches, still lay on the floor. But there was no sign of his old friend.
“Hey, what’s that over in the corner, there?” said Ginger.
“Where?”
“Over by the far wall.”
Alec and Eulalia looked, but could see nothing. Then a last ray from the setting sun, slanting through the broken windows, caught the corner and drew a quick glint of metal from it. Alec dived towards it.
“It’s my can. I thought I’d lost it.” He picked it up and wiped it on his jumper sleeve. It had become grimy again from lying in the corner. He must have put it down the other day, when they were messing about with the crane, and forgotten about it. He polished it lovingly.
“Hey, you really love that old bit of tin,” said Eulalia.
“Sentimental reasons,” replied Alec, “This was Abu’s home, remember? Now he’s got none.”
He put the can down and the three of them stood round it.
Eulalia put one arm on Alec’s shoulder and the other on Ginger’s.
Ginger said, “It doesn’t seem real any more. Did you really rub on that tin and he came out, just like that?”
“Oh, he didn’t come out in that way. He just spoke and that’s how I knew he was there. That is, until that day when I tried my super spell and because it was too much for him, he appeared.”
“How did you do it? Show us,” said Eulalia.
Alec cleared his throat. He rubbed his finger round the top of the can and said, “Salaam Aleikum, O Abu Salem.” His voice sounded funny and Eulalia looked at him with a smile.
“Well, he’s not there any more, in spirit or in flesh,” said Ginger.
Suddenly Alec had an idea.
“Say it with me.”
“Say what?” They stared at him.
“Say, with me, ‘Salaam’.”
They shrugged, “OK.”
Ginger put his arm on Alec’s shoulder. All three of them bent over the can and together they said solemnly and loudly:
“Salaam Aleikum, O Abu Salem.”
“Again,” said Alec.
“Salaam Aleikum, O Abu Salem.”
“And a last time, but louder,” he urged.
“Salaam Aleikum, O Abu Salem,” they called.
From the can on the table came a tinny sound, like a transistor with a sore throat.
“Salaam Aleikum, O Alec.”
“Listen, Abu,” said Alec. “Ginger’s here and Eulalia. We’ve been worried stiff about you. We thought you were lost somewhere.”
“Not lost, but found, O friends of mine.”
“How did it happen?”
“Today as I ate the fried chicken, given me by the good Mrs Wallace, I felt my old power begin to return, though at first only feebly. So, remembering what is written in the Book of Magic, I lay down to sleep. In my sleep the power came back to me and I returned to my resting place… until I was awoken.”
“No need to be sarky, Abu,” said Alec. “But now that you’re safe in there, what happens?”
“Nothing, O Alec. I must sleep for another hundred years, I think, to recover strength.”
“Oh, no,” they shouted, “not a hundred years.”
“A long, long time.”
“But can’t you come back and see us?” pleaded Alec.
“Maybe, some day,” came the reply, now growing fainter. “I fear that the laws of your land have no room for me. Perhaps, some day. Now, may Allah protect you, good friends. Ma’asalaama…” and the voice faded right away. The crane room was silent. At the same time the light began to fade and it grew colder.
Alec shivered. Eulalia said:
“That was sad, but no good staying here. Let’s go home.”
Ginger nodded. Alec picked up the can and put it into his pocket. They went down the stairs together and walked across to the canal and the plank bridge.
Climbing the fence in near darkness was tricky, but the ladder was still in position on the other side. They climbed over and carried it back to where the council men had left their scaffolding planks and poles. Then they walked up the slope to the top near Alec’s home, and stood together for a while.
It was all over now, thought Alec.
Abu had gone. That was a disaster. Despite all the trouble, he was going to miss Abu a lot. Then he looked at Eulalia and Ginger. He’d lost a genie, but found two new friends. That was a triumph. You could call it a draw, disasters one, triumphs one. Without being aware of it, he thought aloud.
“If we had extra time, we might win.”
Eulalia and Ginger stared at him, then both burst out laughing.
“Skinn
y, you’re crazy,” they said. Then they waved at him and set off into the gathering darkness.
As they went, Ginger’s voice came back to Alec.
“See you in school tomorrow.”
“OK,” shouted Alec. He turned towards the side entry of his house. He could see his mother talking to Granddad by the light from the door of the caravan.
“You’re late, our Alec. So straight upstairs now.”
Alec didn’t argue. He didn’t feel like saying anything. He walked through the kitchen and climbed the stairs to his room. Once inside, he sat down on his bed and looked around him. His own room.
Perhaps, now that Dad was stirring things up, there might be a chance that Tom and Elaine could find a place nearer home, and maybe he wouldn’t have to move up into the boxroom after all. If he had any luck, that is…
He started to get undressed. The can in his jeans pocket knocked against his leg.
He took it out and was just about to put it away in his cupboard, when he lifted it up to his ear.
He thought, he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard a faint sound. Not like surf on a distant shore, but snoring on a nearby bed.
Alec grinned happily.
“Ma’asalaama, Abu, wherever you are.”
Postscript
I once wrote a book in a day – idea after breakfast, a typescript before tea. A short book, of course, but audiences are remarkably impressed when I tell them the story of this story.
It isn’t quite true, I have to say, because the imagination always begins work on an idea a long time before it presents itself in usable form. Often, though, this process is hidden, even from the writer, and one cannot say precisely when that first, original, starting point for a given story may have been.
In the case of The Third-Class Genie, however, I know when the idea really first appeared, even if it disappeared again fairly soon afterwards.
I was ten years old, on a solitary walk along the canal, a favourite haunt of mine. With large scenes of industrial ruin, buildings from the old salt mines, derelict warehouses and tumbledown wharves, it was certainly a good place for fantasy. Lying on the ground on one of the bridges was an old tin can. I reacted to this as any kid would. I gave it a tremendous kick and it rolled away down the slope. At that moment someone shouted (in the drumyard at the foot of the hill, I think). Assuming, as ten-year-olds will, that they were shouting at me, I took to my heels down the towpath. After fifty yards, I decided I was safe – they weren’t after me – and I slowed down.
Then the thought came into my head. Suppose the Invisible Man had been having a kip in that can and it was him shouting at me? Cheered by this absurd fantasy I went on my way and soon forgot it. But the idea, unbeknown, was hoarded somewhere in the depths of my mind.
Often, in my teens, I thought of writing stories. I loved reading, so why not make up adventures to my own specifications, with a hero (somewhat like me) to order? Alas, my rather derivative Viking, Western, Crusader sagas rarely got past the first chapters. Later, in the Army, with reading tastes maturing in long periods of boredom, I began to try and write a novel with a capital N. But somehow that never got finished either.
But something else did happen. Serving in Egypt I became aware of Arabic culture and language and a way of seeing history (the Crusades for example) from other people’s point of view. The Arabian Nights, which I discovered was a hundred times more vast that the children’s version, fascinated me with its mixture of magic and everyday reality. Why did the genie always emerge from a household object – lamp, ring or bottle?
Later still, married and with our son and daughter learning to read, I started, simultaneously, to make up stories for them and to view critically some of the conventional children’s literature.
And so I began to write children’s books. At first historical novels, since in the late 1960s / early 1970s, they were flavour of the era. But I also wanted to write modern stories about ordinary children. Yet I wanted extraordinary adventures for them, perhaps a mixture of fantasy and reality.
One story seemed tailor-made – Aladdin brought into the twentieth century, a schoolboy having a genie at his command, a schoolboy for whom life often seemed an unequal contest between triumphs and disasters. But, where would the genie be found? The answer came (back) to me one day as I leapt on (or off) a bus, nearly missing my step disastrously: a tin can in the gutter.
And so it was that Alec found Abu Salem the Genie in an old beer can. Abu was “The Third-Class Genie” because a totally omnipotent genie could not possibly offer the jokes, scrapes, or alarming episodes that a sometimes unsuccessful genie might. But Abu could also become a friend and could teach Alec that in the history of battles there are two sides and two points of view.
My mind had one more trick to play on me. The tensions of our own children’s London comprehensive school urged me to bring black kids into the story – Ginger and Eulalia Wallace. While writing the book I suddenly remembered that, of course, genies are black too. And thus, Abu the Genie, whose magic fails in a heroic attempt to transform Alec’s beat-up council estate, materializes into twentieth-century Britain as an illegal immigrant. Now the genie wants “magic” help, and Alec, with his new friends, supplies it.
This story has made its way through twenty-five years and many editions, bringing me countless letters from readers. The response eventually drew me back to the theme with Genie on the Loose (Abu’s tearaway son Abdul marooned anarchically in Alec’s home town). Then, at last, I took Alec on a journey through time and space to rescue Abu in The Last Genie. He meets genies, evil spirits, wicked wenches, the whole population of The Arabian Nights, even Sinbad and AH Baba.
I suppose that for me, these books are themselves a journey through time, back to that long-ago ten-year-old, kicking the can along the canal.
ROBERT LEESON
February 2000
About the Author
THE THIRD-CLASS GENIE
Born in Cheshire in 1928, Robert Leeson worked as a journalist, at home and abroad, for forty years, with an interval of Army service in the Middle East.
He began to write for children in the 1960s, and has published altogether nearly seventy tides, including The Third-Class Genie, It’s My Life, The Demon Bike Rider and Red, White and Blue, as well as five novels linked to the Grange Hill and Tucker’s Luck TV series.
In 1985 he received the Eleanor Farjeon Award for services to children and literature.
Married with a son and daughter, he now lives in Hertfordshire.
Also by the Author
It’s My Life
Red, White and Blue
Copyright
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1975
First published as a Collins Modern Classic 2000
This edition is an updated version of the original,
with modern school-year numbering.
Collins Modern Classics is an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
The HarperCollins website address is
www.HarperCollins.co.uk
Copyright © Robert Leeson 1975
Postscript copyright © Robert Leeson 2000
Illustrations copyright © Jason Ford 2000
The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work.
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