Zafar whacked the tennis ball. ‘Well, then, find another bar.’
Ali dipped his handkerchief in the alcohol, carefully avoiding glass, and pressed the wet cloth against Zafar’s gashed arm. Zafar yelled but didn’t move away.
Ali said, ‘I’m here to ask why you haven’t yet attempted to make your apologies and try to patch things up with her.’
‘After what I said? You want me to ask her to forgive that?’
‘Try.’
‘It’s no use.’ Zafar pushed Ali away. ‘Go away, Ali. I don’t want you here. Go back to Yasmin. You know, you’re a lucky bastard to have her.’
Ali saw himself and Zafar reflected in the mirror. Zaf movie-star gorgeous with eyes that revealed every emotion, and he, Ali, fastidious and remote. He turned away and closed his eyes. For how much longer do I have her, how much longer? How can I make her stay? How will I bear it if she leaves? Who would have thought, who would have thought…
…That Zafar could say such a thing. Yasmin sat on the arm of the sofa, and stroked Maheen’s hair as she slept. Tears still not dry on her cheeks. Who would have thought he could say it and then allow the days to slip away, no excuse, no explanation.
She heard someone push open the front door, and left the room to see who it was.
‘Hi.’ It was Ali. He was looking at her strangely. He’d been looking at her strangely since he’d first heard Maheen and Zafar’s engagement was off. ‘Is Maheen here?’ he asked.
There was a hollowness in her stomach, the sudden realization of what it meant, what it meant for Ali, that Maheen was no longer engaged.
‘Yes, she is,’ she replied, holding her head up. She wasn’t going to cry.
How coldly she looks at me.
‘Zafar’s at his house. I just came from there. He refused to discuss it with me, but maybe you…’
Can’t you be more subtle, Ali, about getting me out of the house so you can be here to comfort her? After a year-long engagement, can’t you care a little more?
‘No point denying the obvious, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Things are no longer as they were that night on the balcony when I said I’d marry you.’
No longer the same at all, Ali.
No, no longer the same in any way. My darling, my love.
She took off her engagement ring and handed it to him. ‘Well, thanks,’ she said. ‘You’ve been a thorough gentlemen.’
He bowed clumsily. What else to do?
When she closed the front door on her way out of her house, Maheen heard the sound and woke up.
‘What’s going on?’ Maheen asked, coming out into the hallway.
Ali’s fist closed around the ring.
‘Nothing,’ he said, and set the tone for all their years together.
‘To get him back must still be possible.’ Maheen furrowed her brow, trying to understand why Yasmin wasn’t engaged any longer.
If she knows the truth. If she suspects I let him go so he could go to her, she’ll push him hack to me with both hands. But I don’t want him that way. I couldn’t bear to have him that way.
‘I don’t want to get him back. He doesn’t want to get me back.’ She shrugged. ‘It was never this big love thing with us, you know. I thought we could be happy together, that’s all.’
‘You were right. What’s changed? Nothing’s changed.’
No, she’ll never even think of him that way. He’s been engaged to me, how could she think of him that way? Unless, unless…
‘Something has most certainly changed. There’s a new bachelor in town, and he’s not too shoddy.’
Maheen looked at Yasmin uncomprehendingly. Yasmin looked guiltily away. Maheen gasped.
‘Love and war,’ Yasmin shrugged.
‘Yasmin, don’t talk to me. I can’t talk to you about this, I can’t accept this. Not now, not ever.’
‘Everest. Climbing Everest would be easier than understanding you women. Why did you call it off, Yasmin? You think you’ll find anyone better than Ali?’
‘I’m just sitting here, trying to drink my cup of tea and read my magazine in peace. I don’t require polite conversation from the likes of you.’
Zafar’s face fell. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect you to forgive me what I said.’
Yasmin squinted up at him, standing between her and the Club pool in the bright sunlight. ‘Oh, please! I hardly for a second think you meant it. The unforgivable thing was your refusal to go running after her when she ran out of your house.’
He continued to stand in front of her, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.
‘Oh, sit down, Zaf. I can’t see you properly against that sun.’
He sat down. They looked at each other, nothing to say.
‘Can you see me properly now?’
‘Yes. But you’re not much to look at.’
His mouth curved into a smile. ‘Liar.’
She poked him in the ribs, and he laughed and grabbed her hand. Ali’s hand on hers had never had such an effect on her spine: warmth and chills radiated from it at the same time. She closed her eyes.
Maheen, I’m sorry.
‘There’s no call for apology, Zaf. I’m thrilled for both of you.’ What else can I say?
‘But what about you, Ali?’
‘Oh, someone else will come along.’ Yasmin. Yasmin. The sound of my heartbeat.
‘Have you seen Maheen lately?’
‘This is not a waltz, Zafar. We can’t just swap partners.’
‘All this partner swapping. It’s like a square dance.’ Maheen pointed to the book she’d been reading when Ali walked into her garden and found her sitting there. ‘I can hardly keep them all straight. Let’s see… Hermia loves Lysander and Lysander loves Hermia, but Demetrius also loves Hermia though he used to love Helena, who still loves him and so hates Hermia because Demetrius loves Hermia, not her. I mean Helena. Or do I mean Hermia?’
Ali opened his own copy of the same play. ‘Do you? No, you’ve got it right. Let me try the next series of steps. Strike up the band, enter Puck. He pours love-juice on Lysander’s eyes and Lysander finds he loves Helena and hates Hermia…’
‘And so it goes, on and on, the quartet’s affections changing every few minutes…’
‘…Until miraculously, at the end, everyone is paired off — and they all live happily for the next ten minutes, after which the play ends and no one knows anything further.’
Maheen leaned back in her chair, laughing. ‘So the reason you told me to read A Midsummer Night’s Dream and meet you for tea is…?’
Ali raised an eyebrow. ‘I didn’t. You dropped a note off at my place with those very instructions.’
‘Oh. Well, something here is strange.’ She handed him a typewritten note with his name signed at the bottom. ‘So you didn’t write this?’
Ali laughed. ‘We’ll call whoever wrote it “Puck”.’ He straightened his tie and remembered the night he had chiselled her initial into a tree. Whatever had brought that out, surely it could be revived again. Not to that extent, perhaps, not enough to make him pick up hammer and chisel, but some echo of it. He watched her run her fingers along her eyebrows, smoothing down the hairs in that familiar gesture of hers which signified uncertainty, and he thought perhaps he heard an echo.
‘How about it, Maheen? Are you in the mood for a wedding?’
‘Invitation? For me?’ Yasmin ran her fingers along the embossed surface of the card. ‘I half-thought I wouldn’t be invited. Zafar neither.’