East of Wimbledon by Nigel Williams Page B

him.
    ‘Wilson,’ said the headmaster, ‘this is Mr Shah, our benefactor, and another member of the Wimbledon Dharjee community, Mr Khan. Mr Khan is here on business.’
    The second man put the headmaster down and grinned. ‘I am a vastly inferior variety of Dharjee,’ he said, ‘and I am honoured to meet you, Wilson! Mr Shah, I fear, will have nothing to do with my proposals! You are welcome at my restaurant at any time of the day or night. Except on Wednesdays.’ Mr Shah was looking vaguely discomforted. Mr Khan, right arm forward, marched towards Robert.
    To Robert’s relief, the man did not look as if he was about to give him anything less formal than a handshake.
    ‘Should I cover my head with something?’ hissed Maisie.
    ‘Why?’ said Robert. ‘I think you look very nice.’
    Maisie looked impatient. ‘I’m a woman,’ she said, ‘and I’ve got bare arms and a bare head!’
    She said this as if trying to excite him in some way. Before he had the chance to find out any more about this, she had backed away towards the car, opened the back door, and started to grovel around on the seat.
    If she was looking for something to cover her head, she was out of luck. As far as Robert could remember, all there was on the back seat was a damp chamois leather. The thought of Maisie appearing with this perched on her head made him twitch uncontrollably.
    Neither Malik nor Mr Shah nor Mr Khan seemed very bothered about this. Mr Khan, the restaurant owner, seemed to have decided that a handshake wasn’t enough. He was clearly anxous to get stuck into Robert in a more serious way.
    ‘Oh, Wilson, my dear chap!’ he was saying, in a tone of voice that made Robert feel like a jelly at a children’s tea party – ‘Oh, Wilson, Wilson, Wilson! You will be friends with a poor restaurateur, won’t you?’
    He leaped into Robert’s arms and got to work on his hindquarters, watched with some embarrassment by the Duke of Edinburgh look-alike.
    ‘Are you . . . er . . . Dharjees?’ said Robert through a mouthful of Mr Khan’s jacket. Both men laughed uproariously at this. Robert made a mental note to find out more about this particular Islamic sect. It was hard to connect the two men in the pub with these two rather jolly creatures.
    ‘Where is my teacher?’ came a small voice down to Robert’s left.
    Robert looked down and saw a boy of about ten years old. He had neatly brushed black hair, a dark-blue jersey and baggy grey shorts of the kind worn by boys at an English public school. He was standing very straight and very still.
    There was something strikingly familiar about him. Robert felt sure he had seen him somewhere before. That, surely, wasn’t possible. He knew very few adults and hardly any children. Had he, perhaps, seen this boy on television? Perhaps he was a prince of some kind. What had Malik said: ‘fallen under harmful influences’?
    ‘Hello there!’ said Robert, in a jolly, yet formal, voice. He was trying to sound like a schoolmaster (on his application he had claimed four years’ service at a fictional prep school called The Grove) but he had not yet managed to acquire the manner. He sounded, he thought, like a paedophile. To make things worse, he discovered he had put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
    ‘Are we going to have all Dharjees, or will there be any normal Muslims?’ he asked, to fill the awkward silence.
    Mr Malik and Mr Shah gave him tolerant, slightly weary, smiles.
    ‘Normal Muslims!’ said the school’s benefactor, in an amused tone. ‘I think we are
fairly
normal Muslims, don’t you, Malik? I think it is you that is the “weirdo”!’
    ‘Wilson,’ said his headmaster, ‘is a comparatively recent recruit.’
    Mr Shah nodded in a kindly manner. ‘What made you convert to Islam?’ he said, in the studied, neutral tones of someone asking someone else about their children.
    ‘Er . . .’ Robert looked wildly about him. ‘I was desperate!’ he said eventually.
    Mr Shah