East of Wimbledon Read Free Page B

he had chosen not to wear a tea towel on his head, he bore a sensationally close resemblance to Yasser Arafat. Behind him, in a slightly less shabby blue suit, was a man who looked like a more or less exact replica of Saddam Hussein. Both men had two or three days’ growth of stubble on them, and both were wearing dark glasses. This could explain why they seemed to be having trouble making out what was going on in the interior of the Frog and Ferret.
    Both men seemed to be hobbling slightly. Perhaps, thought Robert, as they pressed their noses to the glass, they had been involved in some industrial accident. They looked as if they had been working together, for years, on the same, grim production line.
    Their effect on Mr Malik was profound. He looked like a man who has just opened a packet of cornflakes and been greeted by a Gaboon viper. Ignoring the barman, he reached out for Robert and squeezed his forearm. Without turning his head, he said, grimly, ‘Well, the Wimbledon Dharjees are upon us.’ He carefully knitted a crease into his forehead. ‘And not, I fear, the best type of Dharjee!’
    Robert wondered whether the two men were brothers and this was their surname. Wasn’t a dharjee something you ate, like a bhajji or a samosa?
    Mr Malik started to move away along the bar, keeping his face, as far as possible, away from the visitors.
    ‘Hey!’ called the barman.
    ‘Gentlemen’s lavatory,’ hissed Malik. And before anyone had time to question him further he was gone, moving with surprising speed for a man of his size.
    Just as he left, the two men opened the door and started to hobble their way towards the centre of the room. It was only now that Robert was able to see what was making them limp: both were wearing odd shoes. Robert’s first thought was that this might reflect some kind of financial crisis in the immigrant community in Wimbledon. But then he noticed that each of them, on his right foot, was wearing what looked like a slipper. Not only that. As they moved into the pub they both stopped from time to time and wriggled their right feet anxiously. Did they suffer from some form of verruca, some ghastly mange that affected only the toes of the right feet?
    When they reached the bar, the man without the tea towel on his head pushed up his glasses and peered round. He had small watery eyes. With his glasses on his forehead you got to see more of his nose. Yasser Arafat, Robert decided, was better looking.
    ‘Can I get you anything, gents?’
    Yasser Arafat sneered. The barman sneered back. Then both men came over to where Robert was standing.
    ‘A beer? A glass of wine?’
    Both men ignored the offer of service. This was more or less the reverse of the usual situation in the pub. The barman screwed up his face into a tight ball. With a shock, Robert realized he was trying to smile.
    ‘A soft drink of some kind?’
    Saddam Hussein leaned his elbows on the bar and, looking sideways at Robert, said, ‘I see you know the man called Malik. The big man. We know his business. He teaches here in Wimbledon.’
    His appearance and delivery gave the impression that he had got this information from some oasis a few hundred miles south of Agadir. It suggested, too, that he was not looking for the headmaster of the Wimbledon Islamic Boys’ Day Independent School in order to offer him a low interest mortgage or a new kind of double glazing.
    Robert decided to reply cautiously. ‘Is he,’ he said, ‘a friend of yours?’
    This seemed to amuse Yasser Arafat. ‘Malik,’ he said crisply, ‘is a slug and a blasphemer!’
    His friend leaned his head over his shoulder and cleared his throat loudly. The barman’s mouth dropped a notch and he started to ask, in hostile tones, whether both men breezed into their own living-rooms without buying a drink.
    ‘He is,’ said his companion, ‘excrement.’
    This seemed a little harsh to Robert. There was, he had to admit, something not entirely trustworthy about the