Unmarriageable(71)

Later that evening, Alys was the first guest ready and waiting to leave for Beena dey Bagh’s estate, which was a good forty minutes away. Sherry was dressed in a brand-name silk shalwar kameez, and she was wearing new gold earrings that Bobia and Mareea were swooning over. Mareea had to borrow a silk outfit from Sherry’s closet. Sherry told her younger sister that they’d go shopping the very next morning to update her meagre wardrobe. Mansoor and Manzoor were dressed in ill-fitting suits with clip-on ties; they reminded their elder sister that they too required an upgrading, and Sherry promised them a shopping spree as well.

Kaleen entered in brown trousers and a purple shirt. He glanced at Alys’s zari embroidered khusse, white capris paired with a green-and-red ajrak kurta and matching dupatta, and the grey pearls dangling from her ears. He assured his guests that they were all looking decent and that none of them should worry anyway, because everyone’s taste and style fell short compared to Begum Beena dey Bagh’s and that – such a kind soul she was – she readily imparted her sartorial advice, as Sherry could attest.

‘True,’ Sherry said with a glimmer in her eyes. ‘Begum Beena is enormously generous with her opinion to better people as she thinks best.’

‘Yes, she is.’ Kaleen beamed at Sherry as they all squeezed into his car, for the Loocluses’ rented minivan was a rather tacky vehicle and not one Begum Beena dey Bagh deserved in her driveway. ‘You’re so perceptive, Sherry; you’re able to see things exactly as I would like you to see them.’

Sherry twitched a smile at Alys in the back seat. Alys nodded. If such a marriage was working for Sherry, then so be it. As they drove out of Islamabad, the city fell away to increasingly rural surroundings until they were passing acres of land between grand houses nestled behind walls. Kaleen stopped at imposing gates with gold lettering, VERSAILLES OF PAKISTAN, and he honked politely until a guard opened the gate. They drove down a long driveway with peepal trees on either side until they arrived at a massive house with a huge fountain, water gushing out of the beaks of black and white swans.

The butler led the guests over black marble floors strewn with hand-woven Kashmiri and Afghani rugs and into the main drawing room. An Amazonian woman in a blue ajrak shalwar kameez and matching dupatta, though in a different pattern from the one Alys had on, looked up from the candles she was lighting on the mantel over the fireplace.

So this was the aunt, Alys thought, who was instrumental, along with Darsee, in robbing Wickaam of his inheritance. Beena dey Bagh’s thick salt-and-pepper hair fell to her broad shoulders in a blunt cut. She wore diamond studs, a diamond Allah pendant, and several obese diamonds on her large French-manicured fingers. Her coral lipstick bled into the creases around her mouth. Above the fireplace was a blown-up Warhol-style photograph of a very striking girl. Kaleen had told Sherry, who had told Alys, that Annie was engaged to Darsee, and if it was Annie, Alys thought, then Darsee was in luck, looks-wise at least.

‘You are on time, good,’ Beena dey Bagh said as she handed the candle lighter to the butler. Kaleen introduced everyone. Bobia and Haji Looclus nearly fell over themselves as they thanked Beena dey Bagh for her gracious invitation. Mareea, Mansoor and Manzoor were tongue-tied as they looked from glass ashtrays to porcelain vases to the myriad sculptures and figurines that adorned the coffee tables, side tables, and consoles of the four separate seating areas in the drawing room. Alys had grown up in a similar setting before Uncle Goga and Aunty Tinkle had kicked them out of their ancestral house, and she was not intimidated by expensive decor no doubt chosen by a costly interior designer.

Beena dey Bagh motioned to the sitting area with a minimalist arrangement, its angularity softened with plush cushions and a Zen tabletop waterfall with budding bamboos standing in black pebbles. She settled her imposing frame into a curved chair with spindly legs and invited them to seat themselves.

‘My favourite corner,’ she said, peering at them one by one. ‘So peaceful. No, Mr Looclus? Wouldn’t you say, Mrs Looclus?’

Bobia, who’d been wishing she could free her inflamed feet from the confines of her good shoes, managed a fawning, ‘Jee, jee, fuss class, fuss class.’

‘It is A-one setting,’ Haji Looclus said. ‘We are very sorry to be missing Lolly Sahib.’

‘Yes,’ Beena dey Bagh said. ‘My husband is in Frankfurt, attending a pen show, and then he heads to Switzerland for some skiing. Such an adventurer.’

‘Such an adventurer,’ Kaleen echoed.

‘I remind him that, Lolly, you are too old to be going skiing, bungee-jumping, zip-lining but he informs me age is just a number and he’s not going to allow his knees, or me, to hold him back.’

Haji Looclus threw in his trump card, for either you were rich or you elevated your status by claiming direct descent from the Prophet, which he did.

‘We are Syeds, you know,’ he said with a magnanimous smile, ‘so we did not let age stop us from performing Hajj. Have you been for Hajj?’

‘Hajj?’ Beena dey Bagh said. ‘Seven, actually, and we’re planning to go next year in order to give thanks for the miracle Kaleen here has managed with Annie.’

Haji Looclus shrank into his chair. His single Hajj had left them all but bankrupt, and suddenly to have insisted on the title ‘Haji’ on the basis of a lone pilgrimage seemed empty. Haji Looclus swallowed. To be a seven-time Hajjan! And still want more! Beena dey Bagh was a truly pious woman, and no wonder Almighty God had blessed her with so much.