A Suitable Boy(164)

‘I can think of one thing at least that’s fun in the first five minutes,’ said Maan with a slightly idiotic grin, heaving the stick around and losing his balance slightly.

Firoz surveyed Maan’s posture coolly. ‘I’m talking about anything requiring skill and practice,’ he said.

‘That requires a lot of skill and practice,’ said Maan.

‘Don’t be flippant,’ said Firoz, who took his polo seriously. ‘Now just stay exactly as you are, and look at me. Notice that the line between my shoulders runs parallel to the spine of the horse. Aim for that position.’

Maan tried, but found it even more uncomfortable. ‘Do you really think that everything that requires skill is painful at the beginning?’ he asked. ‘My Urdu teacher appears to take exactly the same view.’ He rested the polo stick between his legs and wiped his (forehead with the back of his right hand.

‘Come now, Maan,’ said Firoz, ‘you can’t say you’re tired after just five minutes of this. I’m going to try you out with the ball now.’

‘I am rather tired, actually,’ said Maan. ‘My wrist’s hurting a little. And my elbow, and my shoulder.’

Firoz flashed him an encouraging smile and placed the ball on the ground. Maan swung his stick towards it and missed it entirely. He tried again and missed again.

‘You know,’ said Maan, ‘I’m not at all in the mood for this. I’d rather be somewhere else.’

Firoz, ignoring him, said: ‘Don’t look at anything, just at the ball – just at the ball – nothing else – not at me – not at where the ball is going to go – not even at a distant image of Saeeda Bai.’

This last comment, instead of making Maan lose his swing entirely, actually resulted in a small impact as the mallet skimmed the top of the ball.

‘Things aren’t going all that well with Saeeda Bai, you know, Firoz,’ said Maan. ‘She got very annoyed with me yesterday, and I don’t know what it was I did.’

‘What brought it on?’ said Firoz, not very sympathetically.

‘Well, her sister came in while we were talking and said something about the parrot looking as if he was exhausted. Well, it’s a parakeet actually, but that’s a sort of parrot, isn’t it? So I smiled at her and mentioned our Urdu teacher and said that the two of us had something in common. Meaning, of course, that Tasneem and I did. And Saeeda Bai just flared up. She just flared up. It was half an hour before she would talk to me affectionately again.’ Maan looked as abstracted as it was possible for him to look.

‘Hmm,’ said Firoz, thinking of how sharp Saeeda Bai had been with Tasneem when he had visited the house to deliver the envelope.

‘It almost seemed as if she was jealous,’ Maan went on after a pause and a few more shots. ‘But why would someone as amazingly beautiful as her need to be jealous of anyone else? Especially her sister.’

Firoz reflected that he would never have used the words ‘amazingly beautiful’ of Saeeda Bai. It was her sister who had amazed him with her beauty. He could well imagine that Saeeda Bai might envy her freshness and youth.

‘Well,’ he said to Maan, a smile playing on his own fresh and handsome features, ‘I wouldn’t take it as a bad sign at all. I don’t see why you’re depressed about it. You should know by now that women are like that.’

‘So you think jealousy is a healthy sign?’ demanded Maan, who was quite prone to jealousy himself. ‘But there must be something to feel jealous about, don’t you think? Have you ever seen the younger sister? How could she even compare with Saeeda Bai?’

Firoz said nothing for a while, then made the brief comment: ‘Yes, I’ve seen her. She’s a pretty girl.’ He didn’t volunteer anything else.

But Maan, while hitting the ball ineffectually across the top, had his mind on Saeeda Bai again. ‘I sometimes think she cares more for that parakeet than for me,’ he said, frowning. ‘She’s never angry with him. I can’t go on like this – I’m exhausted.’

The last sentence referred not to his heart but to his arm. Maan was expending a great deal of energy playing his shots, and Firoz appeared to enjoy seeing him huff and puff a little.

‘How did your arm feel when you made that last shot?’ he asked.

‘It got quite a jolt,’ said Maan. ‘How long do you want me to go on?’

‘Oh, till I feel you’ve had enough,’ said Firoz. ‘It’s quite encouraging – you are making all the standard beginner’s mistakes. What you just did was to top the ball. Don’t do that – aim at a point at the bottom of the ball, and it’ll rise very nicely. If you aim at the top, all the strength of the impact will be absorbed by the ground. The ball won’t go far and, besides, you’ll find as you did just now that your arm gets a sharp little shock.’