Dancing In The Shadows of Love (15 page)

‘Dawud’s a good man,’ she says. ‘I’m the lucky one.’ She remembers all that’s happened since she came to the city, how changed her life is because of Dawud’s love. ‘I should go with him,’ she says aloud. A car door slams; the gate squeaks; men murmur ‘Good morrow.’ These distant sounds warn Jamila that
Prior
Ajani and Enoch have arrived, and she takes a final comfort in Lulu’s words.

‘After all,’ she adds with a rueful smile, ‘how bad can one dinner party be?’

“This is the night
That either makes me or fordoes me quite.”

We lay there in the dirt, Grace and Enoch and I, wrapped in each other’s arms and surrounded by the silence of death and the indestructible old mountains. It was safe, then, to remember my Daddy did not die the day Zahra was born; the day she rose out of Little Flower’s sorrow and pointed his own gun at him.

‘Come now, Daddy’s Little Flower,’ he said. ‘Put that away. Good girls like you don’t play with guns.’ He smiled confidently and held out his one hand as he walked towards me, the other already undoing the buttons in his trousers.

‘I’m not Little Flower,’ I said, as I watched him sit on the edge of her bed. ‘I am Zahra.’

‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘It’s your birthday today! You’re fifteen, a young lady. I’ll buy you a pretty dress at the store tomorrow. A lady’s dress. You’ll like that, won’t you?’ He ignored the gun Zahra held and leaned over to rub my breasts, his breathing heavier as he stroked his manpart through the gap in his trousers. ‘Be Daddy’s good girl. Let Daddy love you.’

He did not comprehend Zahra’s steel: nor did I, until that moment.

‘Take your hand off my bosom,’ I said, calm and in control. The hand holding the gun did not shake in the slightest as I added, ‘Or I’ll shoot.’

He didn’t believe me and squeezed tighter. So I squeezed the trigger. There was blood everywhere as Daddy slumped against my chest. Dead, I hoped, and watched, dry-eyed, as his brains bled all over Little Flower’s crumpled nightgown.

The door flew open. It swung back on its hinges and the landlady and her skinny young lover ran into the room. I opened my fingers and let the gun fall. Removing my Daddy’s hand from my bosom, I let it slide to the floor with a dreary clunk. I looked at them, as they clung to each other, the woman’s mouth open as she wailed and wailed now she was too late to make a difference.

‘Be quiet,’ Zahra said, as Little Flower sank and sank, deep into the sediment of her soul, to lie there, poised and waiting. ‘There’s no reason to cry.’

The landlady’s din gargled to a stop, and she asked, ‘Is he…dead?’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘I hope so.’

Her shrieks started again. I said not another word. Not until the police and the medics came and, between them, moved my Daddy’s body away from where it lay across my chest, trapping me to the bed for the last time.

‘He’s alive,’ the one said, as another wrapped the gun in a plastic bag. For evidence, he said.

I did not cry, not until the day Enoch held me close and Elijah was transfigured by his belief in a
Spirit King
I could not know and did not believe in.

• • •

On my next visit to the clinic, I sat and listened to my Daddy cough, as old Elijah had coughed before he died that dusty morning, another casualty of a war that should never have drifted so far south.

This silent, moribund old man, as pitiful as he was, was not my Daddy. Yet he was. No one had wanted me to go near him after what he had done. My husband thought he was a senile old uncle of mine and admired my regular visits to the red brick clinic, with its ivy-covered walls and wide expanse of lawn. From the day we married, Barry paid the bills without questions, although he never joined me. I didn’t care about that; all that mattered was that I had moved him from the state hospital he’d been in since he lost his mind.

As he had for all those years, my Daddy lay there, wrapped in the innocence he had plundered from Little Flower. The scar from the bullet marked his forehead and my heart. The judge, the people who became my foster parents, all acquitted me. They said I was too young; that ten years of my Daddy’s type of loving had broken me.

They were wrong. It made me. It made Zahra. For it was Little Flower who was weak and, yes, broken by her
ezomo
.

How often had she appealed to a
Spirit King
who did not exist? She had talked to a
Prior
, but his answer was always the same: ‘Don’t tell such lies, Zahra. Lying is a vice; it’s your
ezomo
. You must resist it!’ He’d cup the top of my head and bless me, appealing to the
Spirit King
to remove the errors from my nature, and add, ‘Your Daddy’s a good man. He does all that charity work for underprivileged children!’ He would send me away with the admonition to, ‘Say three Hail
Spirit King’s
, child, and make three
petitions
every day. The
Spirit King
will forgive your
Great Errors
because he loves you; he’ll always love you.’

As she knelt in front of the
nova
, Little Flower would weep and make supplication to the
Spirit King
to help her, but her
ezomo
was too insidious. My Daddy still went to her. Every night he went to Little Flower, until I drowned her foolish cries with the sound of the bullet that turned my Daddy senile and, out of her depths, Zahra had arisen.

Since that glorious transfiguration, I never appealed to the
Spirit King
again. Never. Why should I petition a
Spirit King
who allowed such wickedness to exist? Instead, when I sat between Barry and Grace, Saint Grace, in the
pithas
at the
Court
of St Jerome’s, I moved my lips in time to the songs of praise, but my mind flew free. I believed in what mattered in this world. My silver sugar shaker; my solid mahogany cupboard; whatever I could squeeze with my fingers the way I squeezed the solid, real trigger on the gun that banished Little Flower’s
ezomo
forever.

And there was Enoch. He, too, was real, and precious. The new
Prior
, young Ajani, slender but with a hint of the portliness that would plague him in his older years already showing around his waist, would chant the liturgy with off-key enthusiasm. And I, I would dream of Enoch and the solid safety of his arms around me as the world exploded into an anarchy of blood and dust and wildly neighing horses.

Beautiful Enoch, sitting next to Grace at the other end of the
pitha
. Always next to Grace, but never next to me.

• • •

A light touch on my wrist reminded me that I sat, not in the
pithas
of the
Court
of St Jerome, but keeping a solitary watch in the small private hospital room that was my Daddy’s home.

‘Visiting hours are over, Mrs Templeton,’ the young nurse said. She might have been attractive if freckles hadn’t covered her face and the white cap she wore had not scraped her hair back. ‘Was there any sign today?’

‘No movement.’

I rose and gathered my belongings. The small suitcase with the dirty pyjamas I had to wash and return; my handbag and my jersey, in case the weather turned while I was here, as it often did when the sea was angry at this old city. ‘Thank you,’ I added and smiled as she rushed to help me. I must have captured Grace’s graciousness correctly this time, for she blushed. Her mouth opened and closed until she couldn’t stop the words she wanted to speak.

‘You’re such a good person, Mrs Templeton,’ she blurted. Her freckles turned a deeper brown at her own temerity. ‘To visit so often.’

‘I know my duty,’ I said abruptly.

‘He’s lucky you love him so much. Too many of our patients never have any visitors, especially those who’ve been here as long as your uncle has.’

Her words disturbed me and Little Flower shifted uneasily when she heard the talk of love. She coveted it too much and, Enoch too, and so it tempted her
ezomo
. I clutched the suitcase harder, shifting closer to the door as I struggled to keep her tamed. To remind Little Flower of the truth, and to snub the nurse and her stupid talk of loving this empty man lying on the bed, I repeated, ‘It’s a duty. That’s all: duty. Love has nothing to do with it.’

I left the room in a rush, for the look in the young nurse’s eyes changed from admiration to an unbearable pity. What was there to pity about me? Zahra was strong; she would always be stronger than Little Flower. The curse called love, which consumed Little Flower’s life, would never touch me. Not ever. Not as long as Zahra kept love at bay and kept herself strong and safe, an island in a stormy sea.

• • •

I saw Enoch again when he brought Grace to clear out Elijah’s meagre possessions. Enoch rested his palm protectively in the small of her back and guided her away from me. They went to the back of the house where the servants’ quarters stood, tucked out of sight of those who didn’t care to look too closely at what didn’t concern them.

It ate away at me. Here was another who revered Grace, that mad old woman who saw the
Spirit King
in her dreams and talked to angels in my sitting room. I watched until they disappeared before returning to the mansion, which used to belong to Grace but was now mine, and I called for the servants.

When Enoch brought Grace back, I was ready.

‘Come inside for tea and crumpets,’ I said.

‘My favourites? Crumpets?’ Grace asked. ‘Not macaroons?’

I heard she was pleased, but I watched Enoch, not her. He blinked with a surprise that pleased me; a veil dropped off his eyes, those eyes that peered into me from the depths of an ocean that inexorably beckoned me into unchartered waters. I dropped my gaze, half-afraid he saw into my secrets and realised I made the crumpets, not to please Grace, but to please him.

I took Grace’s arm and helped her up the stairs. ‘Crumpets. Your favourites, Grace, made especially for you.’

I hoped Enoch believed me. I hoped he would look at me as he looked at Grace. For, since the day he put his arms around me, since I breathed him in, I have longed for him to touch me once more. To have him rest a hand on my back or a finger on my cheek with the same tenderness he reserved for Grace, Saint Grace, but never for me, not until that day the rebels had attacked us.

Little Flower’s clamour for his attention became louder each day, until her cries drove me wild and I turned to Barry each night. With a civility that hid my growing panic, I invited him across to my bed. It didn’t help. Little Flower cried and cried for Enoch; she longed for him, only him.

‘How are the arrangements for the Hunt Ball coming along, Zahra dear?’ Grace asked. Childlike in her enjoyment of the crumpets she scooped the last drop of warm honey with a dainty Victorian spoon Barry bought me from one of his trips to the Old Land.

‘We’ve had a good response this year,’ I said. ‘The best. We’ve had miraculous donations pour in from the most unexpected sources.’

They shared a glance, which annoyed me, so I added, ‘I’m the chairwoman this year.’ When Grace smiled at me—that irksome, affable smile that drew everyone to her—I was ashamed of my boast. That smile of hers bewitched even me, for, as she laid the tips of her fingers on my arm and bent towards me, I held my breath and longed for her praise, perhaps even her love. But I knew I should neither expect it nor want it, for love made me too brittle, too easily broken.

‘You’ve done well,’ she said and my body sighed as muscles, inadvertently tensed, relaxed. ‘But sometimes a small miracle helps too!’ She peeped across at Enoch in a way that said they shared a secret. One that belonged to them and them alone. I ached. I could never share what they had, for there was a force, an insurmountable barrier, binding them together and locking me out.

I stood, my cup clattering in the saucer. Grace started at the noise and it pleased me that her link with Enoch shattered. He did not move. He sat and watched me with those sea eyes of his, until Little Flower’s cries, which daily became as raucous as the gulls that circled above the distant ocean beyond the mansion gates, nearly defeated me.

I dug deep to silence her and ignore Enoch. From somewhere I found a smile to rival Grace’s dignity. ‘Will you be coming to the Hunt Ball this year, Grace? Barry and I have a few seats left at our table.’

‘Me, dear?’ Grace laughed. ‘I haven’t danced in years. Besides,’ she added as her smile drifted into a frown, ‘I don’t like the thought of hunting those poor animals.’

‘It’s a name, Grace, a name! One to remind us of the Old Land.’

‘But we’re not in the Old Land, are we, dear? Things should be different here.’

I sighed and agreed and, to divert her from another ramble, said ‘Barry will dance with you.’

‘My Barry?’ she asked. A light descended on her face and coloured it with love and memories.

‘Your Barry’s dead,’ I said harshly, upset by her glow, and vexed, because I never expected her to be this difficult to manage. If she did not come to the ball, neither would Enoch. ‘Barry junior will dance with you.’

‘I’ll also dance with you, Mrs T,’ Enoch said.

‘Will you, Enoch? Will you come and dance with me?’

He rose from the table, his body relaxed, but strong. His nod weakened me, even as Little Flower grew in strength and hunger. I shivered and wondered what would happen, if ever Little Flower’s
ezomo
broke free and Zahra lost
The War
.

• • •

I inspected my appearance in the long mirror in the bathroom.

As he had stroked my long, chestnut brown hair and dotted kisses all over my high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, my Daddy had called Little Flower beautiful. I preferred to call myself handsome. Zahra was a handsome woman, a strong woman. Tonight, I was pleased with my efforts. I was as Grace must have been at my age: elegant and refined, born to the position of a Templeton wife.

Barry came into the bathroom so I could fasten his bowtie. As I stood close to him, he absorbed my emerald green gown, with its tight satin bodice and flaring skirt, and his plump, ordinary face flattened and hardened with a hungry edge. He didn’t understand that Little Flower, not I, invited him across to my bed at night. My fingers, busy with the intricate knot, paused as I listened inward, to hear if Little Flower was awake.