Dancing In The Shadows of Love (19 page)

I stooped and clutched my son to my chest. I ran through the garden as his wails of pain ebbed into whimpers as he realised he was safe in my arms. Grace waited at the top of the stairs, serene and a bit frail, attended by that stranger I no longer spoke to.

‘Take him,’ I said and pushed the child at her, even though he clung and cried. ‘Take him!’

‘But…he wants you, dear,’ she said. She cradled a protective hand around his head. They were flesh of one flesh: the blue veins of old age showed through the wrinkles on her hand, reflecting the blue veins of youth that shone beneath the pale fluff of my son’s hair. I was not part of that magic circle that was of the same bone and blood and spirit.

‘I can’t help him,’ I snarled and hoped neither of them heard the despair that plagued me and dragged me deeper into the mayhem. ‘I can never help him.’

Her eyes, somehow defenceless, flooded with pain and the wrinkles etched deeper into her skin.

‘Oh, Zahra, dear,’ she said. But she looked at him, not me, at
him
and, although I refused to acknowledge his presence in any way, I squinted in his direction.

He watched me and I hated the expression on his face. What woeful being did he see when he looked at me? But
he
had deprived me of all hope. I had offered him my love, and all of Little Flower’s love, and he had turned his back on us and given all that he had to Grace.

‘What?’ I ignored
him
.

‘Barry’s too heavy these days,’ she said. ‘You must carry him. Take him back, dear, take him back.’

‘No,’ I said. As Enoch had, I turned away. Away from more than my son. I turned from Grace and her beloved. And I turned from the false promise of paradise he had offered me, when he held me in his arms that gritty day I should have died at the hands of the rebel soldiers.

‘It was too soon,’ he said to Grace, ‘for her to understand our love.’

‘Poor Zahra,’ she replied softly. I almost missed her words as I walked into the coolness of the mansion, no longer Grace’s, but
mine
. ‘Poor Little Flower.’

At her compassion, all the anger and all the strength I had, arose and converged on that old woman who was all I could never be, because once I was Little Flower before I became Zahra, who was both unloved and unable to love.

• • •

My son was asleep in bed, his wounds patched but far from healed, when his father came home that night.

‘Reubens sold today!’ Barry said. He put a hand on my shoulder and rubbed a finger along the hollow exposed by the crew neck of my cashmere jersey. ‘That’s the last of them, Zahra dear. The last! All the pharmacies in town are Templeton pharmacies, love, like you said they’d be!’ He pressed deeper; he wanted my praise but could not ask for it.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Good.’

This was all that counted. Hard ambition and hard wealth. Love and hope brought pain. Wealth—ambition—power. I could count on them, in the same way that I could count on the hard steel trigger on a hard cold gun.

Barry hesitated, then with one last rub, removed his fingers from my neck as he added, ‘I was a bit…uh, when the old man brought the papers, he cried. He kept on crying.’ Uncertain of my mood he tried to gauge my reaction, although he didn’t want to jeopardise the bedroom feasts he was enjoying after all the years of famine. ‘We own all the others in the Sea City. Maybe we should have let him keep one pharmacy.’ He sighed and rubbed a forefinger over his closed eyes. ‘So it wasn’t such a loss in his life.’

‘He’ll survive,’ I said. ‘We all do.’

This time I was wrong. Three weeks later, the old man shot himself. He died in an instant. Barry, after he heard, never visited Little Flower again. Through the long restless nights that followed, I told myself I was glad he no longer called to Little Flower, for then I could be Zahra.

Only Zahra: strong and safe and angry.

• • •

With the new pharmacies to manage, Barry spent less and less time at home. Sometimes he even worked through the night. So he said. I never questioned him. All that mattered was that the pharmacies prospered. I reaped the rewards. My beautiful mahogany cupboard and, later, the whole mansion soon overflowed with what I could see and touch. I told myself I was happy.

Between his father working at the pharmacies he would inherit one day, and me busy with my charities and decorating my home, little Barry spent more and more time with his grandmother. Somehow, those wide grey eyes of his retained their innocence. I could no longer bring myself to hug him when he crawled out to greet me as I arrived to fetch him, his small face crinkled with determination as he struggled down the small steps that led off Grace’s porch. What was the use of teaching him love? Let him find out early, while he was young enough to grow defences, that love, no matter what the source, was a lie. But the child just smiled and smiled, offering kisses to friends and strangers alike.

‘He’s a little angel,’ Grace said and bent to whisper some words of praise in his ear as her hand hovered above his head. Polishing his halo, I jeered to myself, for Grace had always been one to see halos and angels, even the
Spirit King
, in her dreams.

I sighed. She hadn’t had those delusions for a while. ‘Have you confused your digitalis dose again, Grace?’ I asked.

‘Oh, no, dear,’ she smiled at someone behind her. ‘These days Enoch worries about that.’

I had not seen him come out of the cottage to stand behind Grace. But since that horrible episode on the balcony at the Hunt Ball, I did my best not to notice him.

‘One task I can do for you, Mrs T.’ He speaks with nuances as rich as his damned eyes. Those damned eyes, which could make Little Flower weep if I looked too closely at them. He added, ‘While we’re together.’

‘Is it already time for you to go?’ she asked, a little wistful.

‘Soon,’ he said and touched her cheek so gently her eyes drifted closed with the pleasure of it. ‘I must go soon.’

Ingrained politeness, and the control I had over Little Flower, helped me to ignore his words and what they meant. ‘I must take little Barry home to the babysitter,’ I said harshly.

‘Don’t go,’ Grace pleaded. ‘You hardly visit any more.’ I never visited much before the stranger came, so I wasn’t sure why she complained. ‘Stay, so we can talk a while.’

Talk? I must sit and listen to her rambles about angels when I didn’t even believe in a
Spirit King
? Talk? When
he
sits there, next to her, with his black hair and black heart and beautiful eyes that could steal my soul if he wanted it? But he didn’t want it, did he? He wanted Grace.

‘I must visit the clinic.’ I picked up my son in one arm and, with the other, gathered his bundles of bags, crammed with clean nappies and milk bottles and all the other trivia a baby needs.

‘You’re going to visit your uncle?’

I nod. Balanced so I didn’t drop my load, I place the obligatory kiss on her cheek.

‘What a good daughter you are,’ she said. I scowled at her, startled into momentary stillness and she turned to the man at her side. ‘Don’t I have a good daughter, Enoch?’

‘You do, Mrs T,’ he agreed, but he spoke to me. Those eyes looked at me and through me and in me and, in a murmur as sweet as the wind that whispered over a wide deep ocean, he added, ‘She’s a very good daughter. A loving daughter, and loyal.’

I couldn’t bear it. I simply could not bear his praise, for in it I heard a love so deep it almost made me believe. Believe that love is possible, even for one such as I, and for one such as Little Flower. Certainly, his words touched Little Flower. She shifted and groaned within me and, with a deep-seated instinct I denied her, denied
him
. My child yelped in surprise as my arm tightened about his warm body and my denial of Enoch’s seductive praise seeped out as a strangled gargle.

‘Bless you, dear,’ Grace said. ‘I hope you’re not catching the influenza.’ She brushed my forehead, testing it for the clamminess of illness as if I were no older than the child I held in my arms, and as if I were as dearly beloved.

I had to flee. I had to get away.

‘I’m going to be late,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’ I almost ran to reach the new car. Barry bought it with the profits from the new pharmacies. A Silver Wraith, as it glided along the road, it glinted like the ocean on an overcast day or like the eyes of a stranger when he burrowed into your core.

We had hired a new man to replace old Elijah. As I hurried along the path, away from Grace and her beloved, the chauffeur held the door open and tipped his cap as he reached for the baby bags. I gave them to him and scrambled inelegantly into the car. I held little Barry tightly and did not look back. I buried my face in his baby soft hair and he chortled with delight as he curiously touched the wetness on my cheeks with his chubby baby fingers.

An echo reverberated inside my head. A loving daughter…a loving daughter… and all I could think of was how much love hurt. It hurt so much my heart no longer knew how to love, or even whether it wanted to know what love was.

• • •

‘How did the visit to the clinic go?’ Grace asked next time I visited her.

She lay, propped up in bed, looking pale and tired with violet smudges dusted under her eyes. Leaning back into the softness of the pillows banked behind her head, she scrabbled on the bedside table, disturbing the items scattered across its surface—a few mints; a book; a pen; some blank paper; all that kept an invalid busy. Her movements, stiff with fatigue, knocked over a small bottle of pills and it clattered noisily to the floor as she clicked her tongue in annoyance.

I sighed. ‘What do you need?’

‘Some water.’

I rose from my chair to fill an empty glass with water from the jug, half pushed behind the bedside lamp. ‘Here,’ I said and held the glass to her dry and slightly cracked lips. ‘You’re dehydrating. You need to drink more.’ I lifted her hand from where it lay on the coverlet, limp and exhausted, and pressed the glass into it.

‘Dear Zahra,’ she said as she gulped some liquid down, before sinking into a quiet rest with the glass loosely clasped on her chest. She breathed shallowly for a while, before rousing. ‘How did the visit to the clinic go?’ she persisted.

‘Satisfactory,’ I replied.

‘Is your father in good health?’ she asked.

‘My uncle,’ I snapped. ‘I go to visit my uncle.’

She lifted her eyelids, thin and papery with age and illness, and gazed at me dreamily. ‘Sorry, dear,’ she said. ‘I’m confused these days. I meant your uncle. Is he well?’

The blood did not pause in its headlong tumble through my body. Did she suspect the truth? The small wise curve of her lips said she did and I wondered when I had revealed my secret to her.

‘My
uncle
,’ I placed a subtle stress on the word, ‘hasn’t spoken a word in over twenty years, Grace.’ I shrugged. ‘He’s as well as expected.’

‘He must be so sad,’ she said and her eyes drifted closed. ‘Sad.’

As fast as the fear that she knew more than I had ever told her drove my blood delirious, the anger congealed it. It ran thick and heavy through my heart. What about
my
sadness? I wanted to rage. What about Little Flower?

The attics of the mind hold onto their dusty secrets and free them at inappropriate moments. I heard my Daddy, so full of sorrow, saying, as he sometimes had, ‘You’re so beautiful, Little Flower. So beautiful. A poor, weak man like me can’t resist you.’ He’d cry, as much as Little Flower did, all through his loving. Both of us sad for Little Flower’s hurt. And, like Grace, I became sad too, for what mere mortal could resist the lure of Little Flower’s
ezomo
?

‘Where’s Enoch?’ I asked. He was one man who could, and had, resisted Little Flower.

‘He’s busy preparing for his journey home, dear,’ Grace answered.

Little Flower lurched upwards as she heard what Grace said. The stranger would leave soon. Enoch, the beautiful stranger was leaving. In that lonely epiphany I finally admitted that, no matter how much I ignored him, no matter how much I denied his existence, Little Flower longed to have the stranger love her.

As did I.

‘When?’ I blurted. ‘When does he leave?’

‘Soon,’ she sighed. There was no hint on her face of the pain she faced at the incipient loss of her beloved, only deep and abiding love. ‘It’ll begin soon.’ Her smile swelled into one of serene innocence. It reminded me of the smile on my Daddy’s face as he lay in his bed at the clinic, with a scar on his temple the reminder of what he once was: lover to Little Flower, demiurge of Zahra and father to both.

‘So Enoch will be gone soon. Good,’ I said. I gritted my teeth to muzzle Little Flower’s lament as she saw the end to her hopes for love. The veils around her began to disintegrate. She crept out and the skeletal fingers of her
ezomo
clutched my fragmenting control. It pulled and dragged, ripping my veneer of humanity enough for Little Flower to bleed into the room. Her presence hovered over us and startled Grace so that she frowned with urgent, worried eyes.

‘What is it, Zahra dear?’ she asked. ‘Oh, what is it that makes you look so—’

I interrupted her. ‘He must leave. Good riddance! He’s a liar. A philandering liar. He must go and never come back.’ The sobs were loud in the room, quiet with the scent of approaching death.

‘Zahra! Not Enoch!’ Grace said. ‘Oh, no, dear, never Enoch. You don’t understand!’

My chair crashed backwards as I jumped to my feet. ‘
You
don’t understand!’ I strode forward so I could lean over her. ‘He promised me. He promised me love. But he hurt me, he hurt me.’ I was not sure if I spoke of my Daddy or of Enoch, the tall stranger whose eyes promised hope and delivered despair. I shouted, ‘Love is a filthy lie!’

The tears ran down Grace’s cheeks. She struggled to sit half-upright and reached out a trembling hand. ‘Oh Little Flower, dear child, you don’t understand!’ she cried. ‘Before he can love you, you must find love in yourself!’

‘I understand
this
,’ I said and gripped her hand. ‘
You
have left nothing.’ I shook her until she coughed a bit. ‘You took all their love,’ I cried and thought of the people who clustered around her, calling her Mrs T in such a way that the unloved, like Zahra, and like me, came to know what they had lost. I jostled her again, harder. ‘You had all of them to love you! Why couldn’t you let him love
me
? Why did he have to love you and not me?’