‘What?’
From the class there were the beginnings of whispering. Soon the whispering would become talking, and soon the talking would become shouting. After the shouting would come screaming, biting, dancing in circles, waving the arms and legs and many other things not recommended by Dr Marwan Ibrahim Al-Kaysi as truly Islamic behaviour.
‘I’ll tell you when I see you. But it’s rather worrying. It’s all to do with some people called the Assassins!’
With these words, Maisie snapped her mask up to her face and went up to the front door. Over on the other side of the High Street, Saddam Hussein had straightened up. In his right hand he was holding his slipper. He waved it, mockingly, at Robert. Somewhere inside the building the bell went for break.
Robert drew his head back inside the classroom and, taking a deep breath, climbed down from his desk.
8
Robert climbed the stairs to the staffroom. They had moved in from the garden during a cold spell in November. On the landing, looking out over the High Street, Aziz, wearing new brown overalls bought for him by the headmaster, seemed to be waving to his friend. When he heard Robert, he scuttled away down the corridor. His right foot, Robert noted, was half in and half out of his slipper. From below came the sound of small boys damaging furniture. Break, as always at the school, was unsupervised. ‘We all need a break,’ Mr Malik used to say – ‘including the staff!’
Two open wooden crates, piled high with computer keyboards, were stacked against the wall outside the headmaster’s study. They were labelled MALIK. BIRMINGHAM. THIS WAY UP. Robert knew their presence would not be explained. They would be taken away one day, like the seven hundred cans of dog food, or the fifty television sets, and never seen again. There were no signs of monitors or printers. Mr Malik seemed to specialize in bits of things. One week there had been fifty fridge doors outside his office, another week forty or fifty bicycle frames, although Robert had not so far caught sight of a single chain, tyre, wheel or handlebar.
Robert stopped and put his ear to the headmaster’s door. When he wasn’t teaching, Malik was usually on the phone, and you could hear him through the wall. Often he seemed to be selling things. This week it was cars.
‘Listen,’ Robert could hear him say, his voice booming in the barely furnished room, ‘I can let you have the Cortina for nothing. I am serious. It will cost you absolutely nothing at all. And it is a car with a great deal of character!’
Then the headmaster laughed. He was always laughing. It was, in Robert’s experience, a sign that things were not going well.
Robert then went up to the staffroom door and listened. There was, as usual, no sound from within. With a familiar feeling of dread, he pushed the door open.
Rafiq was over by the window, reading a technical magazine. He turned to Robert, gave him the thumbs-up sign, and returned to the study of a complicated diagram. The science and engineering master was always amiable. His sign language was, on the whole, positive. But Robert could have wished the man would get some false teeth.
Opposite him, sitting well down in his chair, staring hard at the carpet, was Dr Ali. Dr Ali had not spoken to anyone since he had got the job. There were times when Robert wondered whether he was capable of speech. Robert had once put his ear to the door during one of his colleague’s classes and had been able to hear nothing from Class 2 but an eery silence. In Dr Ali’s right hand was a book entitled Basic Mathematics for Schools. It was not one of the textbooks supplied by Mr Malik from the Lo-Price Bargain Bookstore, Clapham. It looked about thirty or forty years old. Perhaps the man had picked it up in West Cameroun.
‘When are the next prayers?’ said Robert in a cheerful, optimistic voice.
Both men looked at him closely. Neither attempted an answer to this question.
‘I lose count,’ went on Robert, ‘but I’ve got the feeling we’re due for another bout of banging the forehead on the carpet.’
He knew, as he said this, that it was not a good thing to say. But the more he repeated the simple daily rituals of Muslim belief, the more he felt the urge to adopt a brusque, English attitude to them. It was as if he was frightened they might lay a claim on him. As if he might actually be a Muslim, in spite of himself.
‘I can’t wait,’ he went on, aware that – as usual – he was making things much worse. ‘You’ve no idea how much it means to me to be part of all this.’
Still no one spoke.
Sometimes, during the ritual prayer, now he had got over the early stages of wondering when to get on the floor, when to rise, and exactly how to get the fingers up to the earlobes, he found himself begging to be excused any significance in his actions. This happened, for some reason, when he was close to Dr Ali.
‘A good Muslim,’ said Dr Ali, ‘should pray five times a day. I do not think we do this.’
Robert was so surprised to hear the mathematics master speak, he found his mouth was hanging open like a fish’s. What Dr Ali said was certainly true. Although they had started, at the beginning of term, to pray five times a day, it was already down to two sessions. And Mr Malik, who generally led the school, adopted such a histrionic attitude that it was often difficult to tell whether he was praising God or auditioning for him.
Next door, the headmaster was on another call. ‘I have had sight of the manuscript,’ Mr Malik was saying. ‘Wilson gave it to the girl. It is a sign that they are serious.’
It sounded as if whoever was on the line did not agree.
‘My dear Shah,’ said the headmaster, ‘this is stuff from the dawn of time. It won’t go away . . . any more than . . . Robin Hood or King Arthur will go away. They will try anything to get to Hasan!’
His voice dropped. Robert leaned back in his chair so that his ear was touching the wall.
‘We must hold our nerve,’ Malik was saying, ‘and have someone look at the damn manuscript. They won’t move until nearer the time, anyway. Now Wilson must—’
His voice dropped even lower. Robert gave up the attempt to eavesdrop. When he looked up, he realized that Dr Ali was looking at him.
‘Have we met before, Yusuf?’
‘Oh,’ said Robert, weakly, ‘I don’t think so.’
Dr Ali did not take his eyes off his face. ‘Were you ever,’ he went on, ‘at the University of West Cameroun?’
‘Oh no,’ said Robert, ‘I’ve never been out of Wimbledon!’
He was beginning to find Dr Ali’s conversation even more disconcerting than his silence. In order to escape the gaze of the doctor’s large, black eyes, he studied the rather grubby lapels of his suit. He concentrated upon the doctor’s neat, white shirt, his thin, anxious neck and his general air of having just surfaced from some particularly nasty branch of the Inland Revenue. Perhaps he wasn’t going to talk any more.
‘Things are going on at this school,’ went on Dr Ali, in a whisper, ‘of which it is difficult for a good Muslim to approve.’
‘Really?’ said Robert. His voice, he thought, sounded curiously squeaky.
Dr Ali kept his eyes on Robert’s face. He drew up his bony index finger, stood it to attention next to his aquiline nose, and wagged it furiously. ‘We shall assemble the sinners!’ he said. ‘Their eyes will become dim with terror and they shall murmur among themselves, “You have stayed away but ten days!” ’
‘Indeed!’ said Robert. He spotted at once the no-nonsense tones of the Koran, and, as always when The Book was being quoted, kept his eyes on his chest and tried to look like a man willing to leap off his chair on to all fours, ready for total prostration at any moment.
‘Hell lies before them,’ went on Dr Ali, in conversational tones. ‘They shall drink stinking water; they will sip, but scarcely swallow. Death will assail them from every side, yet they shall not die. A dreadful torment awaits them.’
He hadn’t yet said who ‘they’ were, but Robert had a fairly good idea that some of them might well be unemployed young men pretending to be Muslims in order to worm their way into job
s that should have been occupied by the Faithful.
Dr Ali looked over his shoulder. Rafiq seemed occupied with his magazine. The next remark was hissed directly into Robert’s ear, and Robert felt his neck lightly sprayed with saliva. ‘Trust nobody,’ Ali said. ‘Do not trust Malik. Malik is vile with the knowledge of his vileness. He crawls on the ground like a snake. He is loathsome, and spotted.’
This did not seem a helpful thing to say about one’s headmaster. Had Mr Malik known quite what he was taking on when he hired Dr Ali?
‘I am trying to get through to the Islamic Foundation,’ went on Ali, ‘to warn them of what is going on here. Of the laxness. Of the vileness. But since my revelation they do not listen to me.’
‘When did you have your revelation?’ said Robert.
‘I had one this morning,’ said Dr Ali. ‘But I have them all the time. I have never spoken of them before to anyone here.’
This would explain why the good doctor had got in here. Mr Malik had been at pains to exclude what he continued to call ‘the loonies’ – that is to say, anyone whose attitude to the practice of his faith was, in the headmaster’s opinion, excessively enthusiastic. ‘Islam,’ he was constantly telling Robert, ‘is not a faith that pries into a person’s soul. We have never really had an Inquisition, never really persecuted people for their beliefs. We have always recognized the danger of self-appointed visionaries.’ Somehow or other Dr Ali would seem to have slipped through the net. Robert decided to try and find out a little more about him.
‘When did you have your . . . first . . . er . . . revelation?’ he asked in a low voice.
‘At the Business Efficiency Exhibition at Olympia,’ said Dr Ali. ‘A vast pillar of fire rose up through the floor and decimated the display of the Nugahiro Corporation’s new range of laptop computers!’
‘Did anyone else see it,’ said Robert, ‘or was it just you?’ He leaned forward and spoke quietly. Rafiq was studying his magazine with the kind of intense concentration often assumed by those who are listening to other people’s conversations. ‘It could have been industrial espionage!’
Ali ignored this remark. ‘I have seen it subsequently,’ he went on. ‘I have seen it come down from the sky with a noise like thunder, and I have seen within it the bodies of those who were Too Late!’
‘At Olympia?’ said Robert weakly.
‘I have seen it in Wimbledon,’ said Dr Ali. ‘It has been lowered over my head many times, and then, as I have reached up to smite it, it has passed before me and consumed many people. I have also heard the sound of mocking laughter.’
‘Is that right?’ said Robert.
He wondered whether Dr Ali had confided this fact to Class 2. It could explain the terrified silence that reigned every time they were locked up alone with him. He had better get to the headmaster and warn him.
But, now that the mathematics master had decided to trust him, he seemed unwilling to let Robert go. He grasped his sleeve urgently. ‘I must talk to you during the nature walk,’ he went on, ‘and tell you what is going on here.’
He indicated Rafiq with a brief nod of the head. ‘What is his game?’ he whispered.
‘He teaches engineering and design,’ said Robert.
Next door, Mr Malik was back to talking about cars. ‘It has done forty thousand miles,’ he was saying. ‘It has forty thousand on the clock, and that is how many miles it has done. Take it or leave it. It has a new engine. It has rust protection. It is a beautiful car, I swear to you.’
Robert got up and, muttering something about marking, made as if to leave. To his consternation, Dr Ali started to follow him. When they got to the door Robert looked over his shoulder at Rafiq, but the engineering master was still deep in his magazine.
‘Tell me,’ said Ali, ‘why do they bring their filth before us and spread it on the ground like raiment?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Robert slowly. ‘I haven’t actually—’
Dr Ali smirked in triumph. ‘The Dharjees will be consumed in eternal hell-fire,’ he said, ‘and out of their loins will come many-headed creatures. They will be torn limb from limb and cast into a lake of serpents!’
There seemed little point in continuing this conversation. Robert was far more interested in finding out where they stood on footwear, but this was clearly not an area that interested Ali.
‘I must get on with Sheikh’s essay,’ said Robert – ‘it’s twenty pages long!’
Dr Ali gave a sniff of disapproval and, falling once again into his customary silence, slouched back to his chair. He did not, as usual, read or stare out of the window or make tea or do any of the things Robert assumed one usually caught teachers doing in off-duty moments. He sat, slumped back, chin on chest, staring down at the intricate patterns of the carpet, in a seemingly unbreakable silence.
Robert went next door to the headmaster’s study and tapped at it nervously. Inside he could hear Malik’s voice. The headmaster sounded tense. ‘You are welcome to come and inspect us any time you like,’ he was saying. ‘Come and have a look over the gymnasium. Have lunch in the canteen. Sit in on one of my lessons. I am an Oxford graduate. You may learn something.’
Robert opened the door. Mr Malik waved him in. As Robert closed the door behind him, the headmaster put his hand over the telephone. ‘Spies,’ he mouthed. ‘Government spies!’ This meant he was on the line to the local education authority.
Beckoning Robert to a seat, he continued to talk into the mouthpiece about the school, about its playing fields, its concert hall and several other items that, so far at any rate, existed only in his imagination. He seemed to be making some impression on the person at the other end of the phone.
Robert looked round the headmaster’s study. It was decorated with photographs of his relatives. Mr Malik had relatives everywhere. He had aunts in Bombay and brothers in Edinburgh, cousins in North Africa and sisters-in-law in Australia. The only place they did not appear to have penetrated was Wimbledon – which was perhaps as well, since it left Mr Malik as the sole source of information on the Malik family history. This left him an enormous amount of scope for demonstrating the kind of narrative energy that most English fiction writers would have given a great deal to acquire.
‘My mother,’ he would sometimes say, ‘was an Englishwoman called Perkins. She married my father for sex. Purely for sex. And he was never quite sure why he had married her at all.’
His mother wasn’t always called Perkins. She wasn’t always an Englishwoman either, although more often than not the headmaster gave one of his parents British nationality. Not that it mattered. Mr Malik, Robert reflected, as he sat watching the headmaster discuss the school’s proposal to take boarders, build an indoor tennis court and a hard playing area and organize a Community Service scheme, was a creature of his own imagination. He needed far more than the normal ration of two parents, each with only one identity apiece.
‘We’ll do that,’ Malik was saying. ‘We’ll have a pint! We will! Absolutely, my dear boy! We will!’
He put the phone down. He looked at Robert. He did not smile. When he spoke, his voice was trembling. ‘You have deceived me, Wilson!’ he said. ‘Why have you deceived me?’
Suddenly, to Robert’s consternation, the headmaster burst into tears. This was not what he had expected him to do. The headmaster of Cranborne School had made it his business, during Robert’s nine years in the place, to make sure that other people did the crying.
Unsure of what to do, Robert started round the desk. He had a strong urge to put his arms round the man, and indeed was about to do so, when Malik thrust him away, sobbing.
‘Don’t touch me! Ai’sha has told me about your proclivities!’
Robert backed away towards his chair, trying to work out whether this was the deception to which the headmaster was referring. Even if he had been a screaming queen, he thought, it wasn’t something he was bound to mention on the application form for a boy’s public school. What did the man expect?
&
nbsp; ‘What proclivities?’ said Robert, who was not entirely sure what the word meant.
Malik raised a tear-stained face towards him. ‘What you do in your spare time, Wilson,’ he said, ‘is absolutely your affair. There is, I am glad to say, no direct allusion to the activities in which you engage in the Koran or in the Hadith of the Prophet, although from what I know of the blessed Muhammad – may God rest him and grant him peace – it is not something of which he would approve. He was a man’s man, Wilson.’
Robert coughed. ‘I want to stress, Headmaster,’ he said, ‘that . . . er . . . the . . . proclivities referred to were . . . er . . . a phase!’
Why was he so incapable of truth that he wasn’t able to deny something that was patently false? Perhaps because denial seemed such a crude affair, and truth so lamentably one-dimensional.
‘I am through it, Headmaster,’ he said, ‘and out the other side.’
This, somehow, did not seem quite enough.
‘It is an unspeakable thing,’ went on Robert. ‘It is the loneliest thing in the world to wake up in the middle of the night and realize you are one of . . . them!’
Mr Malik seemed to find the lack of political correctness in this remark reassuring. He held out his hand to his junior master and composed his face into a solemn expression of trust. ‘Very well, Wilson,’ he said. ‘And now, I beg you, I beseech you, to reassure me that you are not also one of those unspeakables of which I think we both know the name only too well.’
Robert could not think what he meant by this. What else was he supposed to have been up to? Cross-dressing, perhaps? Where did Islam stand on that one? He tried to recall some of Marwan Ibrahim Al-Kaysi’s dos and donts. ‘It is indecent for a Muslim to look at his private parts and his excretion.’ Was that it? He was always looking at his private parts. Or had Maisie invented even more ghastly crimes for him. ‘Dogs are not allowed in the dwellings.’ Maybe she had accused him of doing appalling things with Badger.
‘What do you . . . think I . . . er . . . might be, Headmaster?’ said Robert.
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