Dancing In The Shadows of Love (11 page)

He lied. His love hurt, it always hurt, until Zahra was born. Then, when she grew strong enough, she ended the hurt forever.

‘Zahra, dear…’ Barry was hesitant. He sensed I was not myself, but he was too used to me in control to believe it. He could never take advantage of my vulnerabilities, because I showed him so few.

He cleared his throat. ‘Why, Zahra dear, that’s a wonderful idea. Mother will like that.’

I tore my gaze away from the mess I had made. Jerking the bell cord to summon the maid to clear the spilt tea, I wished it had been as easy to clean the mess my Daddy had made.

‘Enoch will be there as well.’ Vigilant, I watched Barry, for I anticipated another subtle attempt to wrest power from me by using the menace of the stranger. When he showed no reaction, I relaxed.

Until that look, until I saw the love Grace drew from the tall stranger, I would’ve found excuses—as many as necessary—to stay away from Grace. But Zahra’s longing, Little Flower’s joy, was too strong and I dreamt of a time when I, too, could draw from Enoch the same passion, the same love, that sparked between them.

‘Enoch is a good man,’ Barry said. ‘He’ll help you with Mother.’ There was nothing left but polite interest in his face as he disappeared behind his paper.

I was almost disappointed. Where was the challenge? The counter-attack? Why didn’t he try to exploit my vulnerability to Enoch? Did he not care about the struggle for power in our marriage? I began to wonder if, by inviting Barry into my bed, by showing some small kindness to Grace, I had won
The War
that had raged between Zahra and men from the day she found her strength as her Daddy quailed before her.

The maid hustled in and, as I gave her instructions on cleaning the mess I made, I fretted over Barry’s meekness. Always a dove, never a hawk, Barry yet fought for his supremacy within our marriage. He liked to be the boss in our marriage; Barry’s blueprint for morality, the
Spirit King’s
Eden Book
, the record of his holy words, decreed it so. Wives submit yourselves unto your husband…honour thy father and mother…thou shalt not kill…thou shalt not kill. Was I supposed to believe the words of a
Spirit King
who had never answered a single appeal of mine? I wanted to laugh aloud at the notion.

I was an unbeliever because Zahra will never be a Little Flower. Zahra did not obey, she ruled. She would never submit to a man’s power, or to the power of a
Spirit King
who, in transfiguring Little Flower into an
ezomo
, yet called her doomed nature into obedient submission.

There lay the root of my dilemma with Barry that morning. Was my submission last night, my surrender in one small battle, arising from my curiosity over the warmth of Barry’s hand on my breast, all that it took to win the greater war? Did the struggle for power—born out of the pain of victimhood—end when one sought love instead?

I feared that a feather brush of Little Flower’s essence had wrapped itself around the core of Zahra’s steel. As sturdy as I had always thought my strength, the curl of a new uncertainty crumbled the edges of the Zahra I understood, until I didn’t know where she began and I ended.

The stranger was to blame. Enoch. He taught me dubiety. What else would I learn from him; from those long slender fingers I imagined drifting over piano keys, kissing the ivory with the soft delicate touch of a lover? Swift eagerness filled me and I was impatient as a debutante, her future bright and fresh before her, on the way to a ball.

I must, I would, see Enoch. I gave the servant one last instruction. ‘Tell Elijah to have the car ready in half-an-hour,’ I said. ‘I’ve lots to do today, and he mustn’t be late.’

• • •

The old man wasn’t there when I walked out the front door. I waited, dressed in new clothes. The little pillbox hat on my head matched my lavender shoes and purse. I would not normally buy such a colour but, teaming it with charcoal, I turned it into a striking combination, deeper and richer than the insipid lilac Grace always wore.

Edgy with impatience, I strode around to the garage searching for Elijah. The old Rolls stood gleaming. The sun’s intensity gave it a sparkle that came from hours of labour. Elijah wasn’t there. When I found him, alone in his small room, tucked away at the back of the old stables, my shoes were dusty and my pert hat drooping.

I’d never bothered with the servant’s quarters before. Elijah’s tardiness brought me here, but the solitude of the tiny room snared me and strangled my anger. Through the small doorway, I saw him. With slow dignified ceremony, he donned his chauffeur’s uniform.

He lifted a clean white shirt over his scrawny, singlet-covered chest. Then, he slowly ringed his neck with his navy tie, starred with gold and, with a short sharp tug, centred it.

Next, he shrugged into the jacket. Braid streamed round the cuffs and bold brass buttons danced down the centre. Elijah paused to make a solemn inspection of his appearance in the mirror. With a satisfied nod, he pinned a small piece of green felt, decked with a silver star engraved with the letters COS to his lapel.

He turned and lifted his chauffeur’s cap. He held it high and worshiped a
Spirit King
only he could imagine. ‘Ei, ei, ei, Elijah. It is time,’ he said aloud with a stoic shake of his head. ‘It is time.’ He plopped the cap on his head and tilted it at a jaunty angle.

Like an ancient charioteer, he was ready for any battle of the highways. He snared the keys to the Rolls from the glass ashtray next to his steel cot, with its thin foam mattress, and tossed them in his hand as he whistled a vigorous march. He stopped dead when he saw me.

‘Ma’am Zahra, you did not need to come,’ he smiled. ‘There is no hurry. The
Master
will wait. Elijah comes.’

‘
Master
Barry doesn’t need the car today.
I
want it,’ I snap. ‘I’m already late!’

He shuffled towards me, no sign of remorse on his grizzled black face. The keys jangled in his palm and across my nerves as he gestured for me to move away from the doorway. ‘Shhh, Ma’am Zahra,’ he said. ‘Be still. Be quiet. There is yet time for all that is to come.’

His startling dignity and his rambles made me uncomfortable. ‘I run this household, Elijah. Not
Master
Barry. Not Ma’am Grace. Me! Ma’am Zahra! You must obey
me
! If I say we’re late, we
are
late!’ I shouted at him. All the old man did was look serenely back. ‘I can fire you, Elijah,’ I added. ‘Remember that.’

‘Ei, ei, ei,’ he crooned, ‘so much anger; so much hurt.’ He dared to touch my cheek, much as Grace had done once before. ‘Be brave, little one,’ he murmured, before I could object to his touch. ‘Choose well and there will be no more sorrow.’

His singsong words drew from me an ache, prophetic in its depth, for pardon and for liberation. And Little Flower, awakened by Enoch, crushed by Zahra, heard his sweet melody too. She stirred on the ocean floor, stirred in her silence, and the sound of her tears as they began to fall made me blink, and swallow down hard on my own tears. Before he saw my weakness, I swung away from him, unable to chastise him for making me late and for making me feel what I did not want to feel.

I waited at the car. Every sense stretched behind me to listen to the huff of his breathing, his old man’s shuffle, as he came alongside me and opened the door. I slid, with blessed relief, into the gloomy interior of the car. He took his time starting it, this ancient chariot he loved as much as Barry did.

‘Where to?’ he asked.

‘Take me to Ma’am Grace,’ I said. ‘Hurry.’ I heard his meek ‘Yes, Ma’am’ as I slammed shut the window that kept us separate. He steered the car at a stately pace down the driveway and not even the scenic view of the ocean held my attention.

I hauled out my compact and stared at myself in the mirror. I no longer recognised the face reflected back. Blurred lips, puffy cheeks and an unfamiliar glint turned my eyes from steel-grey to soft silver.

What was happening? I couldn’t answer my own question and spent the rest of the trip repairing the ravages of an inner disintegration, unexpected and unwanted.

I had subdued the restlessness, the havoc of Little Flower’s siren song, by the time we arrived at Grace’s cottage. A small place, certainly, after the spacious Templeton mansion, but more than adequate for an old woman’s needs.

As I climbed out the car and saw Enoch there, at the bottom of Grace’s porch, one long, elegant foot on the lowest step as he cleaned his shoes with a rag, I heard Little Flower’s faint whispering of the stranger’s name. ‘Enoch,’ I said and ignored the swift surge of pleasure as he straightened to his full height at my approach. I was little again, smaller, and more innocent, than I was before even Little Flower existed ‘Are you well?’

I waited for his answer and soothed my nerves with promises to explore whatever his ambiguous gaze meant. A tin of polish stuck out of the top of a small wooden box next to him, alongside a brush, stained brown with his labours. The faint blue tattoos flashed and L-O-V-E disappeared into P-E-A-C-E and P-E-A-C-E into L-O-V-E as he folded the shoeshine rag into a neat square and dropped it back into the box, before nudging the lid shut with his toe. ‘I am well,’ he said. ‘And you?’

‘Also well,’ I said and ran out of words. All my years of practice, all my hours of etiquette lessons, deserted me when I needed them most. I searched for something to say, but with Enoch so near, all thought was erased until my mind was a blank tablet that only he could write on.

‘Are you here to see Grace, Mrs Templeton?’ he asked and looked at me.

Such a look, his unspoken promise pitched me over a precipice I hadn’t expected and, touched with such downy eagerness I could scarcely believe what I offered, I said, ‘Call me Little Flower.’

‘I will,’ he replied. He smiled and dazzled me. I blinked. I was sure there was another face there. One I didn’t recognise, and yet familiar, because I sensed it had been with me, and in me, long ago. I had seen it at the court of St Jerome, carved into the
nova
that hung above the altar.

Startled, I heard the echo of my invitation and fell towards him, but stopped myself in time. ‘Zahra,’ I said, too loudly. ‘I said call me Zahra.’

‘I will,’ he said.

My thoughts stuttered into life as he took my elbow and guided me up the stairs to a chair on the porch. ‘Let me fetch Mrs T. She’ll be pleased you’ve come to visit.’

‘And you,’ I burst out. My expensive lipstick was new on the market and was supposed to keep my lips plump and moist, but they were dry. I licked them, adding, ‘I’ve also come to you.’

‘Yes.’ Another smile sighed over his lips. I was lost; lost to Little Flower’s clamour and lost to Zahra’s desire, for that smile blistered my heart and promised me a world I could not comprehend: the Eden he shared with Grace.

‘I’ll be here,’ he said, ‘when you’re ready,’ and disappeared into the house. I blinked, for I foolishly imagined that I saw him seep through the walls before I noticed the door he must have used.

‘I
am
ready,’ I whispered to no one, except the spirit of Elijah, patiently waiting by the old Rolls.

But for what was I ready? Deep inside myself, there was that which lived below Zahra, below even Little Flower. For a moment I dreamt that whatever Enoch brought me would calm the roiling, impenetrable ocean consuming the better part of me; the part of me no one had ever touched before; the part of me that was there before time began: call it my essence, if you will, or call it love.

The front door, panelled and painted white with the top panel made of exquisitely leaded glass, opened and they came out of the cottage. Grace’s head did not reach his breast and her face—oh, the
Spirit King
! Her face!—roused in me such discontent it rivalled the
Great Errors
of Little Flower.

Grace shimmered with joy. Her grey hair shone, touched by a silver halo, and there was that love again, that all-encompassing, all-embracing oneness between them, which made it difficult to see where she ended and where Enoch,
my
Enoch, began.

She clapped her hands with delight. ‘Zahra, dear. You came!’ Grace turned and searched for Enoch. He glided across to her and, almost like a lover, pushed back a grey curl that had fallen loose from under her pale green hat, merrily tilted behind her ear.

‘I told you she would, Mrs T,’ Enoch said. They shared a glance of such love, such devotion; I did not even try to contain my envy.

I was so horribly, horribly jealous. The edges of my view melted with it, until I saw them twice. Not in duplicate, but twice: for they were there, and not there. What was there was a tall man bending solicitously over an old woman. What was not there was a glowing golden silhouette. It leaked into Grace, so that they consumed each other, and become one, before it faded and they slipped apart into two. As the haze in my eyes cleared, Enoch stepped back to close the door behind them. He clasped her elbow and led her out onto the porch where I waited.

I crushed my bright lavender bag. The metal clasp absorbed the heat of my fury and burned my palms. I gasped with pain and tossed the bag to the ground, where it spilled its secrets, even as Zahra and Little Flower rivalled each other with their cries of woe and I could not move for the cacophony they raised inside my head.

‘Ei, ei, ei. What’s this, Ma’am Zahra?’ Elijah was there; he had come in from the shadows. He stood over me, between me and the other two. His old man’s bones creaked as he sunk to his haunches and scooped up the bag and its contents. I stared at him numbly. As he handed them back, his brown eyes were solemn under the cheerful peak of his cap. ‘Be still,’ he murmured. ‘Be still. There is yet time.’

His rambles coalesced into a great and unexpected insight. Yes, I hissed to myself, there was time. I was young and Grace was old, and there was time for Zahra to take all that Grace was born to and all that Little Flower was denied.

‘Thank you, Elijah,’ I said. His kindness made me regret my earlier threat to fire him. I wanted to reassure him, and said, ‘
Master
Barry is right when he says you’re the best driver for the Rolls. He says no one else will ever drive it.’