East of Wimbledon

by Nigel Williams

  ‘He is called Hasan,’ said Mr Shah, ‘after a great ruler of the Ismailis!’

  He knelt to the little boy’s level and put his hands on the lad’s shoulders. He patted his face.

  ‘Hasan I Sabah,’ he said, ‘and Hasan the Second. On his name be peace!’

  Then he embraced the child. ‘You are Hasan of our house!’ he said, in a low, gentle voice. ‘Go with Wilson.’

  Robert looked down at the little boy. He was still standing absolutely still. His thin shoulders, his delicate wrists and his finely drawn neck gave him a lost air. Something about him made Robert’s heart lurch. The boy turned his head, and Robert caught sight of a huge strawberry mark on his right cheek. Now he remembered where he had seen him before. The hair, the features, even the slightly desperate, pleading stance of the shoulders, were those of the boy in the photograph in the locket that he had given to Maisie only that afternoon.

  It wasn’t only this, though, that chilled him suddenly, made him feel, for reasons he could not have explained, unaccountably nervous. The little boy was oblivious to the sun, and the blue sky, and the terraces of thick, green leaves on the chestnuts that faced the house. He was not wearing glasses, as he had been doing in the photograph, and now Robert was able to see that his big, pale pupils were jammed uselessly in the porcelain of his eyes, staring endlessly at nothing.

  6

  Perhaps, thought Robert, as they climbed back into the car with Hasan, he had simply failed to notice an adjective in Malik’s prospectus. Perhaps he was going to work in the Wimbledon Independent Blind Islamic Boys’ Day School. Or – this seemed rather more likely – Malik was having to take what he could get. His manner to Mr Shah had been positively servile.

  ‘Don’t you want to wave goodbye to your dad?’ Robert asked his new pupil.

  ‘Mr Shah is not my “dad”,’ said the little boy, in a curiously precise voice. ‘I am an orphan. I am brought up among his servants. I think I speak for his servants. For all the poor of the earth!’

  The headmaster cut across them. ‘My dear Hasan,’ he said, with more edge than Robert had seen him use before, ‘you have been listening to that nurse of yours!’

  ‘I can’t help listening to her, Mr Malik,’ said Hasan, ‘because she talks to me.’

  The little boy sat, quite still, between Maisie and Robert. One frail hand rested on Maisie’s knee. She seemed confused by him. She had not found anything to cover her head or her arms, but Mr Malik seemed to find this situation quite satisfactory. In fact, as he studied her in the driving-mirror, Robert could have sworn the headmaster was licking his lips.

  Robert patted Hasan on the knee. He felt the need to say something reassuring.

  ‘Well,’ he said, with slightly forced cheerfulness, ‘we are all in the hands of Allah!’

  The little boy wrinkled up his face. Maybe the Dharjees were such a specialized variety of Muslim that they had not yet caught up with Allah. Someone would certainly need to tell him before he started at the Boys’ Wimbledon Day Independent Islamic School. Or possibly, once again, Robert had slipped up on pronunciation.

  ‘I presume,’ he said cautiously, as they started down the hill, ‘that the majority of the pupils will be . . . you know . . . your basic . . . Muslim.’

  Mr Malik grinned. He seemed to find this line of approach immensely amusing. ‘Who knows?’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ said Robert, ‘there can’t be much demand for . . . er . . . Islamic games among non-Muslims!’

  Malik grinned again. ‘Who knows?’ he said.

  Here he winked at Maisie.

  ‘They’re very fatalistic,’ she hissed. ‘It may not be the will of Allah that you get any Muslim pupils. You may get coachloads of Unitarians or people who really wanted to get into the Royal College of Music. But you can’t do anything about it. It’s fate!’

  Malik nodded vigorously. ‘Your wife is right,’ he said. ‘What is willed is willed. We simply have to do our best. In fact, some Islamic theorists think it makes bugger all difference anyway.’

  The car leaped round a corner, scraped a lamp-post and bounced sideways down towards Robert’s house. There was, thought Robert, a lot to be said for a religion that relieved you of all responsibility for your destiny. Especially when you were being driven by Mr Malik.

  ‘I could eat a cake,’ said Hasan, in a small, thoughtful voice, ‘with jam on it.’

  No one offered to respond to this remark.

  Robert leaned forward across the passenger seat. ‘Tell me, Headmaster,’ he said. ‘Those men in dark glasses in the pub—’

  Malik did not seem keen on this line of conversation. ‘My dear Wilson,’ he said, ‘don’t even think about them. If they come up to you in the street, cut them dead. They are NOSP, if you take my meaning. Not Our Sort of People!’

  He caught Maisie’s eye in the driving-mirror and gave her a broad wink. ‘My dear girl,’ he said, before Robert could finish his sentence, ‘are you also of the Muslim faith?’

  ‘It seems,’ said Maisie breathlessly, ‘a very attractive option.’

  Malik grinned. ‘It is,’ he said. ‘It is an attractive option. It is, I would say, very user-friendly!’

  Maisie nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It has a rugged, masculine feel to it!’

  Malik’s hand went up to his neatly combed hair. He patted it into place with a small smile. ‘It is not,’ he said, ‘a religion for softies!’

  ‘I’m amazed Bobkins sort of embraced it,’ said Maisie, ‘because you see he is a practising—’

  ‘Catholic!’ said Robert. ‘I mean I was a practising Catholic!’

  ‘Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims – you Wilsons have got the lot, I would say, my dear boy,’ said the headmaster as he jammed on the brakes and the Mercedes jerked to a halt outside Robert’s house.

  Hasan jumped off the back seat like a puppet on a string. He made a small, whooping noise. As far as Robert could tell he had enjoyed the experience.

  Malik leaned his arm across the passenger seat and looked into the back with intense frankness. ‘I want you to look after Hasan, Wilson,’ he said, ‘because Hasan is a very, very important little boy. I do not want you to let him out of your sight. Do you understand?’

  Robert gulped. ‘He will be staying with . . . er . . . me?’ he heard himself say.

  ‘That is correct, Wilson,’ said the headmaster. ‘There are people who are trying to . . . get to him, if you take my meaning.’

  Perhaps, thought Robert, other schools were trying to snaffle him. Scholarship boys were obviously a valuable commodity. The boy quietly sat between Robert and Maisie. He was not very large. They could put him in the back kitchen with the dog.

  ‘Right, Headmaster,’ said Robert.

  ‘And,’ said Malik, ‘even when you are in the house, watch him carefully.’

  Robert looked apprehensively at Hasan. Was he, perhaps, liable to violent fits of temper? Could he have a serious incontinence problem?

  ‘Look,’ said the headmaster, ‘I am sure I am worrying about nothing. I’ve simply seen something I probably did not see. But, for the first few days anyway . . . keep him away from windows.’

  ‘On religious grounds?’ said Robert. Perhaps Dharjees were against windows.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Malik. ‘Absolutely. On religious grounds. And if anyone comes asking for him at the door, or comes up to you in the street and expresses an interest, you haven’t seen him. Right?’

  ‘Right!’ said Robert.

  ‘Especially,’ went on the headmaster, ‘those gentlemen in the pub.’

  ‘With the peculiar shoes,’ said Robert.

  Mr Malik wrinkled his brows and gave Robert one of those swift, shrewd glances that hinted at a complex, subtle person behind the actor’s manner. ‘You noticed that, did you?’ he said. ‘There is probably no significance in it. After all, my friend, we are the other side of August the eighth!’ And with this inexplicable remark Mr Malik leaped from the car, opened their door, an
d, like a chauffeur, bowed them out on to the street.

  Robert trudged up the steps to the front door, after Maisie and Hasan. Mr Malik got back into the car. Robert turned back towards him but, before he had a chance to say anything, the headmaster had driven off towards Southfields.

  There was quite a lot that Robert wanted to ask. Had they acquired this pupil by entirely legal means? Where were the other pupils going to come from? What was so dodgy about August the eighth? And what was the problem with windows as far as Muslims were concerned? Were they, perhaps, unclean?

  Robert added one more biggie to that list as he turned back to Maisie and the little boy. How was he going to explain away the arrival of a ten-year-old blind Muslim boy in his parents’ house? Not to mention the fact that Hasan seemed to be looking for house-guest status for an unspecified period of time. Mr and Mrs Wilson were almost irritatingly tolerant people. They had been kind when Robert had failed all of his GCEs apart from woodwork. They had not minded when he failed to pass his driving test or, indeed, when he failed to show any aptitude for anything apart from walking round Wimbledon Common with Badger. But on this occasion he might well have gone too far.

  ‘Isn’t he sweet?’ said Maisie.

  ‘Will you give me some tea?’ said the little boy. ‘And a cake with jam on it?’

  Robert looked down at his new charge and felt as if he was falling through space.

  The boy took his hand and pressed it to his face. ‘You are a kind man,’ said Hasan. ‘I can hear it in your voice. I can tell a great deal from people’s voices.’

  ‘What can you tell from mine?’ said Maisie.

  The little boy paused. ‘You are a very wise woman,’ he said. ‘You are very strong and clever and brave.’

  Clearly Hasan’s voice test was not an infallible guide to a stranger’s personality. Or maybe he just said this to all the girls. But there was something impressive about him. He could have been very clever, or very well born, or very, very lucky. Or, possibly, simply look as if he might have been any of these things. But there was something about him . . .

  As usual, Robert had forgotten his key, and, as usual in the Wilson house, no one was answering the door. Somewhere deep inside the family home, Robert heard his father shout, ‘I’m on the lavatory!’

  ‘I’m on the lavatory!’ came his mother’s voice, making its normal, easy transition from gentility to an almost bestial directness of approach. ‘They’ll have to wait!’

  ‘It might be someone interesting!’ yelled his father.

  Whatever he was doing in the lavatory didn’t sound very demanding.

  ‘Surely you’ve finished by now!’ yelled his mother. Over the years, the two men in the Wilson family had made so many inroads into her natural delicacy that now, at nearly fifty, she would sometimes seem to parody maleness, to flaunt it at its possessors, in an attempt at that last, desperate act of criticism – sarcasm.

  ‘Get your arse on down there,’ she yelled – ‘only make sure you wipe it first!’

  Robert heard his father guffaw. They still had the capacity to amuse each other, even if they left him stone cold.

  Before this conversation could become any more specific, Robert leaned on the bell, hard.

  ‘I’m coming!’ yelled his father. ‘Hold your horses!’

  Hasan, his head and shoulders still eerily still, was smiling in a benign manner at the letterbox. He continued to hold Robert’s hand tightly. Robert tried to look natural, and failed.

  ‘He’s coming!’ said Hasan, ‘I hear him!’

  There was a clumping sound from within the house. The door opened, and Robert found himself, once again, looking at his father. He took in the long, shaggy hair, the wire glasses, the beaky nose and the slightly anxious expression. Mr Wilson senior always looked as if he had just remembered that he had forgotten something. This was, indeed, quite often the case.

  It was possible, he thought to himself, that his father would never work again. In which case he, Robert, would be the only earner in the household. He would have to try to do this new job in a thorough and conscientious manner. He would be a good teacher. He would be the inspiration of a whole new generation of British Muslims. He saw himself, sitting cross-legged in a stone courtyard, surrounded by eager little children from the Third World, dressed, like him, in long, white robes. Did Muslims sit cross-legged? Or was that the followers of the Maharishi Yogi or whatever his name was?

  ‘Hello there!’ said Mr Wilson to Hasan. ‘And how are you?’

  He was talking as if to an old friend – a manner he quite often affected with complete strangers. Behind him, Mrs Wilson had appeared. She was bobbing up and down beside his left shoulder, jabbing her finger towards Hasan.

  ‘Who is he?’

  This question was voiced silently, with a great deal of lip and teeth work. She could have been presenting a programme for deaf people. Robert did not answer her.

  ‘Is he one of them?’

  Robert nodded.

  Mrs Wilson looked determinedly saucy. She clearly hoped that social life in Wimbledon Park was going to look up now that her only son had become a Muslim. Let them all come, her expression seemed to say. Baggy trousers, prayer-mats – wheel ’em in! She pranced out of the front door. ‘Welcome to our house,’ she said to Hasan, in the low, solemn voice she used in the Wimbledon Players. ‘Welcome! And peace be on you and on your house!’ She bowed low as she said this, and walked backwards into the hall.

  Behind the kitchen door, Badger was making small, high-pitched noises from the back of his throat.

  Robert took one last, despairing look back at the street as he followed his mother inside. There was a man standing in the shadow of one of the plane trees opposite. He was wearing a shabby looking leather jacket, jeans and a check shirt. Although he was of Middle Eastern appearance, at first Robert took him for a punk, because his jacket was ripped at the back. It looked as if it had been torn in the interests of fashion. And, although it was hard to judge at this distance, there was definitely something suspicious about the man’s shoes.

  Mrs Wilson did not seem unduly alarmed at the prospect of having acquired a paying guest. As they went into the front room, she announced her intention of giving Hasan her husband’s office upstairs. ‘You never do anything in it anyway,’ she said in a cheerful voice, ‘and at least he won’t notice the wallpaper. It’s amazing the way he gets about, isn’t it? For a blind person, he’s very quick on his feet!’

  She made no attempt to modify her voice. Perhaps she had decided that Hasan was deaf as well as blind.

  ‘Where’s he from?’ said Robert’s father, clearly feeling, like his wife, that the little boy was not up to responding to direct questions.

  ‘Bangladesh,’ said Robert, aware that his parents liked definite answers.

  Hasan walked into the sofa, fell on to it, and curled up like a cat. He smiled to himself. He seemed pleased to be in the Wilson house. ‘The time of my Occultation is not yet come!’ he said.

  Robert thought this was probably good news. He thought of asking the little boy when he thought his Occultation might be. They might need to get in special clothing, or warn the neighbours.

  Hasan, as if sensing Robert’s curiosity said, ‘I must not speak of these things. It is forbidden to speak of them!’

  Maisie, standing over by the bookcase, next to Mr Wilson senior’s collection of country and western records, wore a solemn, almost religious, expression. ‘They’re very strict are Muslims,’ she said, in the kind of voice that suggested she wouldn’t mind them being a bit strict with her. She cast her eyes down to the floor. ‘Especially towards women!’ she added.

  Robert looked at her and at Hasan. It was obvious that the Independent Boys’ Day Islamic School Wimbledon was going to change his life in more ways than he could anticipate.

  He went over to the window and looked out at the street. The man in the ripped jacket was still there, although he was no longer watching the house. Now he was
able to take a good long look at him, Robert could see that there was something strange about his shoes. One of them was a normal black leather boot. The other was a slipper-like creation of vaguely Eastern design. As he stood there, looking up the street, the man lifted it from the pavement and rubbed it against his leg, as if his foot was infected with some curious itch. Then he looked back at the Wilson house and stared, insolently, in at the blank suburban windows.

  PART TWO

  7

  There had been difficulties with local planning officials. There had been opposition from local residents. Herbert Henry, the taxi driver, had told customers in the Frog and Ferret that its effect on house prices would be catastrophic. ‘Would you like to live next door to a Muslim school,’ he said, ‘considering what they get up to?’ When asked what they got up to, he had muttered darkly that he knew a thing or two about Muslims and ordered drinks all round. His son Alf, the skinhead, had said that he would personally strangle any Muslim he found messing with his wife, adding that if Tehran was such a great place why didn’t the bastards go back there?

  Henry Farr, the solicitor from Maple Drive, who could be so funny when he chose, had said, in his comic colonel voice, that ‘Johnny Muslim can be quite a tricky customer!’

  But, somehow or other, Mr Malik’s school was in business. He opened, five weeks behind schedule, in mid October. It had been, as the headmaster pointed out to Robert, a desperate scramble to get any of the punters in at all. A mole working inside Cranborne School had supplied them with a mailing list of all Muslim parents whose children had been rejected by ‘This is a Christian Country’ Gyles, the Junior School headmaster, and Robert and Maisie had been through the telephone directory, picking out anyone with a Muslim-sounding name. Apart from a few Sikhs and a very irritable Hindu from East Sheen, most of the targeted persons seemed quite pleased to be asked.