East of Wimbledon

by Nigel Williams

  ‘How is Anwar’s schoolwork?’ said Mr Mafouz.

  ‘He is a genius,’ said Robert swiftly.

  Mr Mafouz grinned. He put his right hand in his jacket pocket and produced a bulky envelope. Robert did not have to ask what it contained. Over the last months Mr Mafouz had given him two free tickets to Paris, a pineapple, six copies of the Illutrated Tourist Guide to London and a pair of bright green trousers. Recently, as the summer exams grew closer, he had started to offer money.

  ‘I really couldn’t, Mr Mafouz,’ said Robert.

  ‘Listen,’ said Mr Mafouz, clapping Robert on the back, hard, ‘there’s more where that came from. If he passes his GCSEs, who knows what I might come up with?’

  He leaned his face into Robert’s. ‘How does a week in Luxor grab you?’ he said.

  ‘Sounds fun!’ said Robert.

  Last week the ever amiable travel agent had asked him ‘how much’ the Oxford entrance exam was ‘compared with what they’re asking in Sussex or Cambridge’.

  The two men came level with the school gates. From the bakery, Maisie emerged with Hasan, carrying a pile of loaves, and walked into the road, narrowly avoiding an oncoming lorry.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Mr Mafouz, ‘about “A” levels. Are those people reachable?’

  It was impossible to refuse Mr Mafouz’s gifts. Robert had done the decent thing and given Anwar alpha double plus for an essay entitled ‘My Cat’. He shuddered now, as he recalled the essay: ‘I have a cat. It was hit on the head with a spade by my brother. It was in agony . . .

  From the Common came more parents. Mr Sheikh and Mr Akhtar walked slowly and seriously towards the gates. Mr Mafouz’s face darkened. ‘The Sheikh boy,’ he said, ‘is not up to much, I think.’

  Robert thought of Sheikh’s seventy-page project on ‘Irrigation in the Third World’, his groundbreaking work in chemistry and physics, and the long short story, in French, he had recently submitted, successfully, to an avant-garde magazine. ‘He is thin on the ground,’ said Robert. ‘There is something . . . shifty about the boy!’

  Mr Mafouz grinned.

  Mr and Mrs Mahmud joined the rest of the crowd at the gates. An elegant BMW drew up over the road and Fatimah Bankhead, the chain-smoking Islamic feminist, stepped out. She gave the assembled group of men a contemptuous sweep of her fine, grey eyes, and marched up the path. Another expensive car pulled in behind her, and Robert recognized Mr Shah, the man from whom they had collected Hasan last summer. He was still wearing the elegantly tailored suit he had worn on that occasion. His name was now inscribed above the door in the Great Hall, with the words OUR BENEFACTOR next to it.

  ‘We’d better go through to the sports field,’ said Robert.

  He could hear the whoops of small boys from the garden. Up at the first-floor window, the curtains parted and Mr Malik peered out. Robert looked back at Maisie and Hasan. As they came up to the gates, Aziz sidled up to the little boy with his mop, an ingratiating smile on his face.

  ‘Well, well, Hasan!’ he began.

  But before he could get any further, Mr Malik thrust his head out of the window. ‘Clean!’ he barked. ‘This is Sports Day! I want everything sparkling clean!’

  With a resentful grunt, Aziz shambled off into the school.

  Mr Malik was wearing cricket whites and a large floppy hat; a dirty white jersey was folded about his neck. If what Robert had seen, to date, of the school’s cricket was anything to go by, today was going to be an exhausting experience.

  There was an Islamic doctrine, of which the headmaster had often spoken to Robert, known as ijma. It meant, as far as Robert could tell, a kind of consensus. It was rather like that strange spirit that hovered over the Wilson family when they were contemplating an evening out and told them where they ought to eat, and it had something in common with whatever it was that told the entire Liverpool football stadium to sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ at the same moment. It was absent, however, during inter-house matches at the Islamic Boys’ School (Day Independent Wimbledon). Every man was his own umpire. During the last match, the Husayn twins had nearly beaten the Bosnian refugee to death with the stumps after he had refused to accept a boundary decision. (In the absence of white lines, boundaries were hotly disputed.) As Robert rounded the school building, with Mr Mafouz by his side, he could hear Anwar Mafouz war-whooping his way round the lawn.

  In the narrow passage that led through to the garden, they came upon Rafiq. He was standing with Dr Ali. When he saw Robert, he made what looked like a little, stunted bow and moved back towards the boys on the lawn. There was something decidedly odd about the engineering master; his manner was always friendly, but, in the six months he had been at the school, Robert had not exchanged more than a few words with the man.

  Dr Ali smirked at Robert as Mr Mafouz went through to join the other parents. ‘Well, Wilson,’ said the maths master, ‘I see you are still with us.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Robert. ‘I’m still about the place.’

  Robert looked at Dr Ali. There was nothing the matter with his features. The nose was roughly in the right place. The moustache was well groomed. The shape of the cheeks – if slightly too reminiscent of a cadaver – had a certain elegance. His eyes – full, black and watchful – were almost attractive. His hair was oiled, and arranged with obsessive neatness across his scalp, and his ears, the colour of raw tuna fish, were big, intricate and well balanced. And yet about him there hung the indefinable air of ugliness.

  The doctor smirked again. ‘I wonder for how long!’ he said, in a somewhat arch tone.

  ‘It is,’ said Robert, ‘in the hands of Allah.’

  The trouble was, of course, it might by now be in the hands of some high-spirited Islamic youth movement.

  His earlier good spirits fading, Robert followed Dr Ali through to the back lawn, as, from a side entrance to the school, the headmaster emerged carrying a large white box. He held it aloft. ‘New balls!’ he said, and, swinging his arms like a sergeant-major, led his masters out towards the field of battle, in the bright April sunlight.

  15

  Robert took up a position on the boundary, fairly near to the maths master. As usual, he attempted to strike the correct tone with the man. You couldn’t simply ignore the fact that he had sentenced you to death, but it was important to let him know that you weren’t rattled. Except, of course, you were rattled. It was dangerous, too, to appear too over-confident, or to do anything that might provoke him into making his unofficial fatwa slightly more public than it was already. Ali was so mean that he was unlikely to buy advertising space, even for a religious edict, and, anyway, he had clearly found Robert’s words so offensive that he had, so far, been incapable of repeating them to anyone. But you never knew . . .

  Robert clasped his hands behind his back and tried for a light, bantering tone. ‘Should I take out life insurance, Dr Ali?’

  Ali looked at him. His expression did not alter. ‘I do not think,’ he said with some conviction, ‘that you will find a company prepared to take the risk.’

  Presumably the man expected him to add, in the section of the proposal form where you were supposed to talk about your passion for hang-gliding or free-fall parachute jumping, a brief paragraph along the lines of I HAVE ALSO BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH BY AN ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALIST.

  ‘What I mean to say,’ replied Robert, ‘is that I feel I need to know where I stand.’

  Mr Malik was fixing in the stumps. Rafiq was choosing the two teams. The Husayn twins wanted to be together. Nobody wanted the Bosnian refugee. Mafouz wanted to be captain. While all this went on, the parents sat around on the school’s battered garden furniture, the mothers watching each other warily, the fathers armoured in a remote mildness that Robert recognized from his own parent. We’re the same really, he thought. What’s the big difference? Then he looked down at Dr Ali.

  ‘You know where you stand, Yusuf,’ said the doctor – ‘you stand on slippery ground. There are some who declare “We belie
ve in Allah and the last day” yet they are not true believers. They seek to deceive Allah and those who believe in him. There is a sickness in their hearts which Allah has increased, and they shall be sternly punished for their hypocrisy.’

  Robert gulped. The man was on to him.

  ‘That’s the Koran, isn’t it?’ he guessed.

  Dr Ali did not respond. Robert tried to compose his face into an expression of humble trust.

  ‘It’s an extraordinary book,’ he went on. ‘I’m going to take it away on holiday.’

  ‘Are you a fool or are you pretending to be a fool?’ said the maths master.

  ‘A bit of both,’ said Robert, trying to keep the tone light.

  Dr Ali moved a few paces away from him. This approach was clearly not working. Perhaps, thought Robert, I should sentence him to death. Perhaps the gently gently approach only served to bolster Ali’s confidence. He wandered over to the far wall.

  As he did so, he saw Hasan walk out from the back kitchen. The little boy was wearing the same neat grey flannels that he had worn on the first day Robert had seen him, and, when the sun struck his face, he smiled up at it as if in gratitude. In his right hand was a large cake with jam on it. Robert wanted to go over to him, but judged it best to stay where he was.

  Mafouz was bowling, urged on by his father. ‘Smash them, Anwar!’ Mr Mafouz yelled. ‘Go for the bastards!’

  Fatimah Bankhead gave him a mean look. Mafouz shuffled up to the bowling crease and started to wind his right arm backwards at high speed. ‘I am good at cricket!’ he yelled.

  Sheikh, who was batting, stood crouched over his bat, patiently waiting for the moment when Mafouz would decide to let go of the ball. It was hard to tell, at the moment, whether it would be moving at or away from him, but Sheikh, a patient and methodical child, looked ready to run after it and beat it to death on the boundary should this prove necessary.

  ‘Quiet, please!’ called Mr Malik, crouching low over the stumps at the bowler’s end. ‘Please continue to bowl, Mafouz!’

  Mafouz responded by altering the direction of his arm movement to a forward thrust. He also increased the speed. His face, red with the effort, wore a glazed, far-away expression. He started to bite his lip. ‘Watch out, Sheikh!’ he called – ‘this is going to be a fast one!’

  Mahmud, unable to restrain himself any longer, moved from his position in the slips to face Sheikh directly. ‘Yeah, Sheikh,’ he called – ‘this will be punishment!’

  Mr Malik lowered his nose until it almost touched the bails. ‘You are directly in the flight path, Mahmud,’ he said. ‘Return to base!’

  Mahmud stayed where he was. Eventually his father moved on to the pitch and, seizing his son by the right ear, dragged him back into a fielding position.

  Still young Mafouz showed no sign of letting go of the ball. ‘This is going to be an amazing one!’ he yelled.

  ‘Go, Anwar, go!’ yelled his father.

  Mr Malik did not seem anxious that Mafouz should let go of the ball until he was absolutely ready to do so. Perhaps, thought Robert, Mr Mafouz had bought his son into an unassailable position on the cricket team.

  Anwar’s arm revolved faster and faster, until it was no more than a blur above his shoulders. It looked very probable that the ball was not going to be the only thing to rise in the air – Mafouz himself, Robert felt, was about to climb up like a helicopter, clear of the grass, and hover over Wimbledon.

  ‘You are dead meat, Sheikh!’ Mafouz yelled.

  Sheikh did not flinch. Holding his bat with the precision of a monk wielding a quill pen, he waited patiently for whatever Mafouz should deliver.

  Finally the travel agent’s son let go of the ball. It went neither forwards nor backwards but straight up in the air. Everyone, parents and boys, craned their necks back and stared into the cerulean blue above the Village. For what seemed an age, the dark speck hung above them, a piece of grit in the sky, and then, with languid slowness, started its descent.

  ‘It’s coming for you, Sheikh!’ shouted Mafouz. ‘It’s on it’s way, boy! Run and hide!’

  For a moment, Robert thought that this was what Sheikh was going to do. He let the bat dangle from his fingers as he searched the horizon for the ball, like a fighter pilot seeking out his enemy above the clouds. The ball was headed for a spot almost equidistant between the two wickets. Suddenly Sheikh shouldered his bat and, letting out a kind of howl, set out for the middle of the pitch, elbowing a fielder out of the way. He looked like a man prepared to do battle.

  When the ball finally reached him, the normally placid boy bared his teeth and, whirling the bat round his head, whacked the offending object back up to where it had just come from. It climbed vertically above the field, retracing its earlier journey, until it seemed to hang suspended at the precise point where it had rested a moment ago.

  No one ran to catch it. It was more or less understood that this was something between Mafouz and Sheikh. Mafouz was flexing his hands and making crouching movements as the ball started its slow descent.

  ‘It will destroy you utterly, Mafouz,’ yelled Sheikh, brandishing his bat at him. ‘You have minutes left to live.’

  ‘Kill him,’ yelled Mr Mafouz. ‘Get it straight back at him!’

  Indeed, Mafouz looked as if he was about to do something far more dramatic than simply catch the thing. He had made his right hand into a fist and was jabbing it up at the sky, feinting in the direction of the falling missile. Perhaps he was going to punch it straight back at the batsman.

  The ball seemed to have acquired a life of its own. As Mafouz tacked one way, it would move in the other, and when he swerved round to get it once more in his sights it would sidle left or right until it was sure it was once again in his blind spot. It seemed to show a complete disregard for the laws of Galileo, Newton and Einstein, moving through the atmosphere like an otter in pursuit of a fish. When it got within spitting distance of Mafouz, who was now standing, arms loosely apart, mouth open, as if hypnotized by the thing’s movements, it did a sharp turn to the left, bounced along horizontally for a few yards, and then snarled up and down to land on the unfortunate boy’s head.

  Mafouz fell heavily to earth amidst sudden, devastating silence.

  Robert was the only one among staff, parents and boys who was not looking at Mafouz. His eyes were on Hasan. The little boy was standing in the passage that led out towards the front garden. He was talking to Aziz the janitor. Aziz had lost his brown overalls. He was wearing the crumpled suit he had been wearing on the day Robert first saw him in the pub. He had his arms round Hasan. Robert started to make his way across the garden towards the two of them. Aziz, who had his back to the garden, did not see him.

  Mr Malik was in the middle of a group crowded round Mafouz. Among them, Robert noticed, was Mr Shah. Mafouz’s father was cradling the boy in his arms and saying, in a deep voice, ‘Speak to me, Anwar! Speak to me!’

  Robert kept his eyes on Hasan and Aziz from about ten yards away. It was only when Maisie emerged from the back kitchen, wearing her third headscarf of the morning (this one was in Liberty print and made her look as if she was about to go out to watch titled men shooting grouse), that he felt emboldened to get close enough to hear what they were saying.

  ‘It is time!’ Aziz was whispering.

  ‘This morning,’ said Hasan in conversational tones, ‘a dog turned into a hedgehog!’

  Aziz did not seem surprised by this information. He nodded gravely. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘It is time!’

  Time for what?

  ‘After my Occultation,’ said Hasan, ‘will I be able to see?’

  ‘You will see with the inner eye!’ said Aziz.

  Mafouz was coming round in his father’s arms. ‘It is coming for you, Sheikh,’ he murmured. ‘You are dead meat!’

  Mr Mafouz kissed his boy, first on the lips, then on the forehead, then on the whole of the upper body. ‘We cannot afford to lose such a boy,’ Robert heard Mr Malik say. ‘He is a
genius!’ The travel agent was almost definitely slipping him something, thought Robert. Mind you, Mr Malik needed all the finance he could get. ‘Spend generously and do not keep an account,’ ran his favourite hadith of the Prophet. ‘God will keep an account for you. Put nothing to one side – God will put to one side for you!’ This was not a principle calculated to endear him to the Inland Revenue or the men from Customs & Excise. But, as he was fond of reminding Robert, one of the many good things about life in the Medina area in the seventh century after Christ was the complete absence of Customs & Excise men.

  Maisie approached Robert. She too seemed uncomfortably aware of Hasan and Aziz. ‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered.

  ‘I think,’ said Robert, ‘it’s Hasan’s Occultation!’

  Maisie put her hand to her mouth. ‘My God!’ she said. ‘His Occultation!’

  ‘What do you suppose he’ll do?’ said Robert.

  Maisie seemed peeved by this question. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘what they do at the actual ceremony.’

  Robert could not answer this question. Whatever it was, he felt it must be pretty nasty. It was not going to be a few bridge rolls and the odd glass of lemonade. These Twenty-fourthers were serious people. They wore weird slippers, they quoted the heavier bits of the Koran at you. What more did you want?

  ‘I think Hasan sort of turns into the Twenty-fourth Imam,’ said Robert. ‘It’s a bit like a presidential inauguration. But I imagine more basic. They probably sacrifice something. And, after it, he gets special powers.’

  Hasan giggled. Aziz started to stroke his hair.

  ‘He’s probably a reincarnation of someone,’ Robert went on – ‘some Islamic character from the twelfth century. Didn’t you say there was a Hasan in the Middle Ages?’

  ‘Maybe they want his autograph,’ said Maisie, with heavy sarcasm. She was watching the couple very carefully, and, when they started out together down the passage towards the High Street, she followed them.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ hissed Robert.