the little weather throstle gleamed silver. Beneath it was Josh’s flat. Through roughly drawn curtains, Tommy could see Tresa’s bottom rising and falling much more energetically than it ever did on the gallops. Poor little Trixie, so mad about Josh, thought Tommy, but she was so stunning she’d soon find someone better.
Where was Rafiq? She was amazed by the silence. Tiptoeing across the cobbles, trying not to wake the horses, she passed a snoring Furious wrapped round Dilys, his sheep, then from the isolation box she heard music. Creeping up, trying not to rustle the leaves, she found Rafiq singing some beautiful Pakistani lullaby in Mrs Wilkinson’s furry grey ear. Arms round her neck, he was stroking her continually. Her head was hooked over his shoulder, her eye drooping. She was nearly asleep.
Tommy melted. Lucky, lucky Mrs Wilkinson. As she crept across the yard, she heard a dull knucker. A bored History Painting was in need of conversation and a Polo. Glancing across the valley, through the thinning willows Tommy could see a light in Etta’s bungalow.
On the tack-room landline, she punched out Etta’s number.
‘Yes? Who’s that?’ Etta’s voice was breathy with panic.
‘Sorry to bother you. It’s Tommy, I thought you’d like to know, Mrs Wilkinson’s fine. Rafiq’s taking a particular interest in her and he’s in her box, singing her to sleep.’
47
Rafiq Khan was a twenty-five-year-old Muslim of great beauty, with thick black curls, palest tawny skin the colour of milk chocolate and lightish grey eyes, which set him apart from his countrymen. A few of his family had settled near Birmingham. The majority lived in Pakistan, on the Afghan border.
Rafiq had always been a firebrand, and hero-worshipped his charismatic and militant cousin Ibrahim. Endowed with an exquisite voice, Rafiq had dreamed of becoming a pop star, but his family had steered him firmly into reading science at a higher education college in the Midlands. Here he was recruited to the militant cause and got caught up in terrorist activities. His fervour had been fanned to fanaticism by an American bomb attack on a wedding in Afghanistan which killed several cousins and a girl he loved.
He had, however, chickened out of a plan to blow up a football match – a plan that was actually foiled – because he didn’t want to die or kill people and, just before, had heard his potential victims chattering away in familiar accents.
When subversive literature, videos of other American bomb attacks on Muslim people and a poster saying ‘Allah loves those who fight for him’ were found in his college room, Rafiq was arrested. He refused to reveal any sources and was given three years, several months of which he spent in gaol before being transferred to an open prison near Larkminster.
Here he met Hengist Brett-Taylor, Miss Painswick’s adored exboss. The former headmaster of Bagley Hall, Hengist had been gaoled for three months for cheating on behalf of Dora’s boyfriend Paris Alvaston, by rewriting his GCSE history paper.
Rafiq, with his arrogance, beauty, colour and terrorist sympathies, was targeted by many of the rougher Islamophobic prisoners, who mocked him for expecting to be rewarded with scores of virgins in paradise, and who either wanted to beat him up or bugger him insensible.
At first Rafiq detested Hengist Brett-Taylor, who was just the sort of authoritarian, empire-building bastard who had raped and split up India. Rafiq could imagine Hengist, having occupied some Raj palace, sitting with his booted feet up on a jewelled marble table and yelling instructions in a booming voice.
Hengist, however, an ex-England rugger international, had protected Rafiq from predatory inmates and they had become friends. Hengist, who taught history, entirely agreed with Rafiq about the atrocities inflicted on the Muslims throughout the ages.
For hours they discussed the Crusades.
Richard Coeur de Lion in the first Crusade, pointed out Hengist, was exactly like Tony Blair in his deplorable squandering of resources that were desperately needed at home. Hengist also quoted Steven Runciman that the Crusades were ‘nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God’.
He then insisted that Saladin, far from being the fiend portrayed in history lessons, was an absolute sweetheart, who treated prisoners with infinite mercy and forgave his enemies, until Rafiq wanted to hug him.
Hengist, like most great headmasters, had the ability of the morning sun to find a chink in the tree canopy and beam down on a wild garlic leaf or a first bluebell. Rafiq blossomed in his attention.