East of Wimbledon

by Nigel Williams

  It was fairly obvious, to Robert anyway, who had done this evil thing to the little boy, but that didn’t deprive the headmaster’s rhetorical question of any of its power.

  ‘Who has filled your head with lies?’ went on Malik. ‘Who is the real seducer here? Who are the real seducers?’

  The audience were now thoroughly enjoying this. They had not been sure about the song; the flags of many nations had left them decidedly cold; but this, their faces seemed to say, was worth leaving the shop to see.

  ‘I will tell you,’ went on Malik. ‘This man Rafiq, who has claimed to be my friend, has sought to get his hands on a profitable enterprise. As has this fat swine Khan – a man who has the business ethics of a stoat!’

  Hasan knew when he was outclassed. Anyway, in the rehearsal process to which he had been undoubtedly subjected by Rafiq and his friends, presumably no allowance had been made for an Oscar award-winning interruption from the headmaster.

  Malik was now waving something above his head, and the Twenty-fourthers were looking at it with some interest. Robert recognized it as the manuscript that had been given him, along with the locket, last summer.

  ‘This,’ Malik shrieked, ‘is the “document” that tells the story of the Twenty-fourth Imam. This is the “document” that gave substance to what, in previous times, were only whispers and rumours – a secret as closely guarded as the Golden Calf of the Druze. This is the “prophecy” with which my so-called friend has deceived you and deceived this child!’

  Here he rounded on Rafiq, who, Robert now saw, was busy stuffing what looked like an oiled rag into a milk bottle.

  ‘It is a forgery!’ shouted Malik. ‘I can prove it is a forgery! This gentleman here – this Khan – is the manager of The Taste of Empire restaurant, Balham, and owes our benefactor a considerable sum of money. He has exploited the credulity of a section of the Wimbledon Dharjees in an attempt to wreck a business rival!’

  Rafiq, the bottle in one hand, was now snarling at his employer. But his one-shoed companions, like the rest of the audience, were giving signs of enjoying the show.

  Robert was more confused than ever. What was this religion, where what looked like theology turned out to be politics? Where loyalties and friendships seemed to acquire the force of a mystical belief? Where God was not a remote, almost human presence but a chord struck in the communal mind, echoing into every corner of life, facing you when you argued or made love or fought for money or power? He had no place here. He did not – could not – belong.

  ‘The Twenty-third Imam—’ began Rafiq.

  ‘There is no hidden imam among the Nizari Ismailis,’ said Mr Malik. ‘The Twenty-third Imam was, as you quite rightly say, stabbed by Hasan b. Namawar, but there is no record of the assassin having issue. You have taken a piece of true history and doctored it, gentlemen!’

  The parents and staff gave this a round of well-deserved applause. Mr Akhtar was heard to say that the opening part of the pageant had been a total let-down, but this was ‘world class’ and gave evidence of ‘money well spent’. People could be heard muttering that Malik was a man to watch.

  And then the headmaster reached down, pulled off one of his expensive brown brogues, and waved it above his head. ‘See!’ he yelled. ‘See! I go with one shoe!’

  Everyone leaned forward in their seats. Robert, wondering whether he was about to witness a spectacular conversion, held his breath.

  ‘I go with one shoe, my people,’ went on Mr Malik, ‘as my so-called “friend” asks you to do! And do you know what will happen if I go with one shoe?’

  ‘What will happen?’ asked a Twenty-fourther, who was clearly expert at this kind of dialogue. ‘Tell us – what will happen?’

  22

  By way of reply, Mr Malik ran around the stage gobbling like a chicken for some seconds. He not only gobbled, he brandished the shoe and twitched, and did a fair impression of a man who has taken complete leave of his senses. Then he stopped and rounded on Rafiq. ‘I will get my feet wet!’ he yelled. ‘I will carry on like a lunatic and be of no use to anyone!’

  Then he turned to face the audience. He drew himself up to his full height and said, ‘We must learn to fight for what is rightfully ours and also to live in peace with our neighbours. Do we wish our sons to go to war?’

  There were shouts of ‘No No!’ and ‘We do not wish this!’ Robert was not aware of any immediate plans for conscription in the Wimbledon area, but the assembled crowd, who were showing as much volatility as the Roman plebeians after the death of Caesar, pressed in on the stage, shouting, crying, and waving their hands in the air.

  ‘I put on my shoe!’ screamed the headmaster. ‘And I advise you to do the same!’

  All over the darkened hall, men started to struggle back into their footwear – those, that is, who had not hurled it on to the stage. Those who had done so were openly weeping and grabbing hold of their neighbours’ laces. Even Aziz the janitor was, in a highly emotional manner, trying to get his right toe into a canvas boot, although where he had got this from was unclear.

  ‘Put on your shoes,’ yelled the headmaster, ‘and keep them on your feet always!’

  Several people were trying to persuade Rafiq to put on his shoe, though whether this was for religious or hygienic reasons was not obvious. He did not seem keen to do so. Mr Mafouz had got hold of him and was beating his head against the back wall.

  ‘Put on your shoes,’ cried Malik again, ‘I beg you! I beseech you! I implore you to do so! In the words of the Prophet to Abu Hurayra, “Don’t walk with only one shoe. Either go barefoot or wear shoes on both feet!” ’

  This seemed to decide matters once and for all. Quite a few people took off both shoes, and those who didn’t borrowed other people’s until almost everyone in the room, apart from the engineering master, was equipped with a pair of properly Islamic feet. This generated a welcome and often jolly spirit of conviviality about the place. People were laughing and joking, clapping each other on the back and helping each other find some way of getting properly attired below the ankles.

  Truth, Robert’s old history master was fond of saying, is whatever is confidently asserted and plausibly maintained. The world of Islam seemed more purely about society than he had ever supposed possible. Islam, he saw clearly as if for the first time, was a nation, a nation on the march. It was only now that he finally understood a favourite phrase of the headmaster’s: Belief, my dear Wilson, is for us an intimate part of the social contract. It was Ayatollah Khomeini who pointed out that ‘Islam is politics!’

  And Mr Malik was no ordinary politician. No one even seemed bothered about testing his claim that the document was a forgery. He was a strong man, and his word – like the Prophet’s – was law.

  Robert thought, bitterly, about Malik. Why should the man find everything so easy when Robert found it so hard? Why could he sway a room with a few well-chosen sentences, when on one of the few occasions when Robert had opened his mouth to express his real feelings he had been sentenced to death by a deranged mathematics master? Why was life so unfair? Was the reason the man was so complacent to do with the fact that his religion was right? That fate, destiny, whatever you liked to call it, was now on his side and the world was slowly turning his way, so that soon the power and the glory would all come from a long way east of Wimbledon?

  Whatever the reason, something in Robert Wilson snapped. ‘Who gives a toss how many shoes you wear?’ he heard himself shout into a sudden silence. ‘Who gives a toss? And who gives a monkeys how many blows it takes you to polish off a wall gecko, frankly? I mean, why is it that all you people construct your lives around the not very reliably reported table talk of a man whose chief claim to fame would seem to be his talent for carving up his immediate neighbours in some God-forsaken chunk of desert?’

  The silence that had preceded his remarks seemed to lengthen miraculously.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ said Robert, ‘is that when I joined this school I knew absolutely not
hing about the Muslim faith, and that, after teaching here for a year, I really feel that ignorance is bliss, frankly!’

  Up on the stage the colour was draining from the headmaster’s face. He moved towards Robert, and his voice had the throaty intensity of a cello in the slow movement of the Elgar concerto. ‘Wilson,’ he said, reaching out towards his first recruit. ‘Wilson! Do you know what you are saying? You are a Muslim, Wilson, are you not?’

  ‘No,’ said Robert, with some satisfaction – ‘I am not. I have never been a Muslim. I do not wish to be a Muslim. I have no plans to be a Muslim. I would, frankly, rather swim the Hellespont in November than be a Muslim.’

  This did not go down well with the punters. Many of them looked as if they might well be breaking into tears in the near future.

  Mr Malik held out his arms to Robert. ‘Wilson—’ he began.

  ‘Oh, stop calling me “Wilson”, can’t you?’ said Robert – ‘as if we were both at some non-existent public school. You live in a fantasy world. And you don’t know anything about me. You don’t know who I am, or what I think, or what I feel about anything.’

  Mr Malik looked utterly devastated. ‘Wilson,’ he began, in a trembling voice. ‘You are a Muslim. And, as a Muslim—’

  ‘I am not a Muslim,’ said Robert. ‘I only said I was because I needed a job. I am not – repeat, not – Muslim. Do I look like a Muslim?’

  The crowd fastened on this new act with enthusiasm. Mr Akhtar could be heard to say that Robert did not look like a Muslim. Indeed, he had always thought there was something funny about Wilson. Mr Mafouz, his thick, black eyebrows well down in his face, was fighting his way through the crowd towards his son’s form master.

  Robert started to walk up to the stage, and, like the Red Sea, parents, staff and pupils parted to let him pass.

  Mr Malik had recovered well. He was managing some kind of transition, from deeply wounded to sad but hopeful. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘someone who lies out of fear of or respect for the truth is to be helped and not scorned. I liked you, Wilson, because I saw your weakness. Like you, I feel, I am not a very good Muslim!’

  The house was divided on this. Some people thought the headmaster was an absolutely first-class Muslim, while Dr Ali declared him to be a blasphemer, a hypocrite and no better than the vomit of a dog.

  ‘It’s not a question of not being a good Muslim,’ yelled Robert, as he climbed up on to the stage – ‘I just am not a Muslim at all. I am an imitation Muslim, ladies and gentlemen. How many times do I have to say this to get it into your head?’

  Fatimah Bankhead told her immediate neighbour that she viewed this as an encouraging sign. Imitation, she said, was the sincerest form of flattery.

  Up on the stage, Mr Malik spread his hands in a gesture of endless tolerance. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you will come to understand that—’

  ‘I will never come to understand,’ said Robert, ‘because your religion is, to me, completely and utterly incomprehensible. I believe—’

  Malik brightened a little at this remark. ‘What do you believe, Wilson?’

  Robert looked down from the stage at the faces of the crowd. He saw Mahmud, his eyes wide with horror at what was happening. He saw Dr Ali, his nose quivering with excitement, tensing himself like a man about to burst into song. And he saw Maisie. She was by the door to the front garden. Her big, black eyes looked reproachfully up at him from the white oval of her face. What did he believe? The question she was always asking him.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I believe in something really sensible. Of course. I believe that Jesus Christ came down from heaven and was born of a Virgin, turned water into wine, walked on the water, and then was crucified and whizzed back up to heaven!’

  Mr Malik stretched out his arms to him. ‘There is no need to caricature your beliefs, Wilson,’ he said. ‘If you have lied to us, you have lied for a reason. The great religions of the world have more in common than you might think. And if we worship one God—’

  ‘Oh, then that’s fine, isn’t it?’ said Robert. ‘I’ll swap you the Garden of Gethsemane for the Night of Power, you know? You’ll let us believe something clearly insane, and we can allow you to do the same.’

  Mr Malik’s brow wrinkled. He seemed upset again. ‘What are you saying, Wilson? I do not understand. You are a Christian? You are a Muslim? What are you?’

  Robert strode across the sand towards his headmaster. Between them lay the cardboard chain-mail and the plastic sword that had belonged to the Bosnian refugee, who was now being given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by Mr Husayn. Robert picked up the imitation Crusader armour and held it aloft, facing out to the audience. ‘I’m nothing,’ he said. ‘Don’t you understand? England is full of people who are nothing. You’re living in a country that doesn’t exist. A country where people go to church, and try and help their neighbours, and bicycle to work down country lanes, and believe in . . .’ Here he brandished the armour and its painted cross in the faces of the crowd. ‘. . . all this!’

  The Bosnian refugee, coming round in the arms of Mr Husayn, was heard to order his men to slay the Saracen dogs.

  Robert rounded on Mr Malik. He had always thought, somehow, that Malik had seen through him. That the headmaster was keeping him on for his own private amusement. And it was this knowledge that allowed him to suspect that, at last, someone had really understood quite how empty he was inside. What finally broke him was the realization that here was yet another person who, like his parents, thought him a stronger, nobler person than he actually was. Why did the world assume that you must be interested in any kind of truth, let alone the fundamental variety? Why did people always want you to have aspirations?

  ‘England,’ went on Robert, ‘is no longer anything to do with the country that carved up India or shipped out whole generations of Africans as slaves. It’s a squalid little place, full of people who don’t believe in anything. Am I making that clear? I don’t believe in anything. I think it’s all a load of toss really. That is my considered opinion.’

  Mr Malik looked at his first member of staff. There was infinite sadness in his eyes. ‘You believe in something, Wilson,’ he said. ‘You must believe in something. Everyone must believe in something.’

  Robert looked across at Maisie. He felt suddenly tired. As if all these people were a dream. As if he had been asleep for a whole year. He would say what he had to say, and then he would leave. He would get out – not only of the school, but of the suburb. He would find somewhere a long way away from Mr Malik, from his parents, and from everyone else who wished him well.

  ‘Maybe I do,’ he said eventually. ‘Maybe I do.’

  Then, with the cardboard armour in one hand and the plastic sword in the other, he stepped slowly down from the stage and walked through the assembly to where Maisie was waiting.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you’re the only person who understands. We’re . . . well, we’re . . . Wimbledon, aren’t we? What are you doing here? You know you don’t belong here, don’t you?’

  Maisie looked back at him steadily.

  ‘I’m going!’ he said. ‘Will you come with me?’

  Maisie looked at him. She sighed. Then she looked up at the headmaster, standing on the shabby stage in his crumpled green suit. Malik mopped his forehead, glowing under the lights.

  ‘No,’ she said – ‘I won’t!’

  23

  Robert had not expected her to say this.

  ‘Why not?’ he said.

  She looked impatient. ‘Because, Bobkins,’ she said, ‘I love him.’

  ‘Love who?’ said Robert.

  ‘Mr Malik!’ said Maisie.

  This created a sensation in the audience. If they had ever had doubts about their headmaster, they were dispelled instantly. The general feeling seemed to be that not only was Mr Malik a good public speaker and a man of learning and conviction, he had also performed well in the Islamic virility stakes.

  Up on the platform, Mr Malik was positively preening h
imself. He smoothed his hair back over his ears and gave a little smile at a mother in the front row.

  ‘You love him?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do, Bobkins!’ said Maisie, with a sigh. ‘I’m afraid he means more to me than anything else.’ She shook her head, and her thick, black hair trembled under her scarf. One of the spotlights caught her face.

  ‘Why?’ said Robert.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Maisie. ‘Maybe it’s Muslim men. They have something you just don’t have!’

  Robert did not like the way this conversation was going, but there seemed no easy way to get control either over it or over its alarmingly public nature.

  ‘What,’ said Robert with heavy irony, ‘do Muslim men have that I don’t?’

  He recalled, with some bitterness, that it was only after he had publicly announced his conversion that she had become interested in him. Was she just kinky for Muslims, the way some people were kinky for football players or trombonists? Perhaps he should reconsider his position.

  ‘They’re virile,’ said Maisie. ‘They’re strong! They’re decisive! They’re proud and certain and noble!’

  This went down incredibly well with the male members of the audience. Even Rafiq could be heard to say that this was fair comment. Mr Mafouz, who had been looking deeply depressed during Robert’s altercation with the headmaster, straightened himself up and threw out his chest. Mr Akhtar was seen to stroke his moustache.

  ‘They’re gentle, too,’ went on Maisie, ‘and loyal and straightforward and kind and clever and respectful and good with children and God-fearing!’

  This brought a smattering of applause. Robert looked up at the headmaster, who was stretching out his hands to Maisie. ‘Come to me, my daughter!’ said Malik, in deep, resonant tones. Maisie squared her shoulders and, with a toss of her head, prepared to come to him. She looked, thought Robert grimly, as if she was prepared to get on the floor and kiss his feet should this prove necessary.