Dancing In The Shadows of Love (21 page)

For a millisecond, I hang between them, as the
Spirit King
hangs on his
nova
, a conduit for the union of their essence. The force of it makes me sway; dazzles me with a flash of golden light until
Prior
Ajani lets go and the earth settles beneath my feet.

‘You deserve some rest, child,’ he says. ‘You’ve worked too hard.’

I’m unsure if he talks of the few short weeks I’ve been at St Jerome’s, or if he talks of the rest of my life.

• • •

As Jamila promised, the ocean is a balm. Through the tempo of the waves, and the melodic cry of gulls careening overhead, I become aware of Enoch’s heat. His face is beyond beauty and I wonder: would a man’s lips taste as sweet as those of
Sub-Prioress
Dalia?

The thrum of his body is so close to mine. All that keeps us apart is a slice of air, thick with the promise that we can breach our separate selves. That, in an instant, we can be as complete as the sea. But, like each drop of water that makes the ocean whole, he is separate and silent, and so am I.

Yet, in that silence, my simmering anger at the
Spirit King’s
abandonment hears the ocean’s song and is soothed. It quiets, and settles back, as I squint at Enoch out of the corner of my eye. The gap between us is small, so small. Such a little movement to close the distance between us and find what I seek. I remember the
Spirit King
, enduring on his
nova
, and almost ask him to give me the courage to move.

But once before I believed the
Spirit King
had heard my plea. I was wrong then, and now I am too afraid to ask.

“The devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape.”

In the
Zero
breakfast bar, with the lack of prices on the menu and the subdued clink of cutlery tapping against fine white porcelain attesting to its exclusivity, Jamila sits across the table from Chuki Samanya and rejoices. Her
Spirit King
has returned. The same benevolent
Spirit King
who sent her Dawud, and
Prior
Ajani and Lulu—yes, even the strange transparent Lulu—has returned to show her how bright her hopes are.

She wonders if it’s a sign that her unhappiness is at an end. That, of all the women in a world more affluent even than Dawud’s, the wife of her
ezomo
, her downfall, is her redeemer.

‘Thanks for breakfast,’ she says and does not hear how her fervour filters through the bland platitude.

‘My dear,’ Chuki says, ‘I should thank you! One is so bored with the same faces, the same gossip!’ She reaches across the table and smoothes Jamila’s hand, and her uncertainties, with butter soft gentleness. ‘Don’t mind me,’ she smiles. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

The promise implicit in the words comforts Jamila and she relaxes under the steady, soft caress. ‘I like it when you speak so honestly,’ she says, and strokes back with a brave, clumsy gesture. ‘I can learn from you.’

‘There’s not much you need to learn,’ says Chuki, ‘but I’ll teach you what I can.’ She laughs, a chocolate-dark laugh, heavy and sweet, a contrast to her slender form, as elegant as ever, though it’s early.

A part of Jamila preens. What does this woman recognise in her that she cannot discern for herself? Can she see the real Jamila Johnson, buried beneath the years of penitential despair?

‘Daren misled me!’ Chuki says.

‘Daren?’ Jamila swallows a sip of juice too fast and chokes on the name. She doesn’t want his image here. She doesn’t want this new possibility spoiled if Chuki discovers what stains her spirit, the stain called Daren Samanya: this woman’s husband and her
ezomo
.

‘My husband.’ Chuki breaks off a chunk of honey-dripping croissant and bites into it with neat, sharp teeth. ‘Mmm. Delicious,’ she murmurs. She looks at Jamila, a heavy gaze redolent with unabashed sensual enjoyment. It reminds Jamila of that pristine white bed, the one she lay on as she wondered what Daren and Chuki Samanya did in the gloom of the clouded nights.

‘He admires you,’ Chuki says.

Jamila’s hands jerk and the juice spills out of the fragile crystal tumbler, over the white, white tablecloth and drips onto the cold marble floor. She gasps with embarrassment and a horrible, forbidden pleasure leaps and roars deep within her.

‘Me?’ she says.

‘You resisted him,’ Chuki says. With an imperious gesture, she summons a waiter to clear up the disorder. ‘In his bad old days, when women lay flat every time he asked, you resisted him.’

‘I resisted him?’ Jamila echoes, the slap, slap of heated flesh under a silver moon loud in her memory. Other memories rush in. She sees herself turn away from Samanya in the months that follow; she stays away from the parties he attends and she refuses to take his calls. All her resistance to him in the years between then and now flood her mind and transfigure the truth she’s lived with for so long. ‘I did!’ she says, a new revelation lightening the load she carries in her essence. ‘I did resist him!’

‘You did.’

‘I found it hard,’ Jamila discloses. She remembers the long nights afterwards when all the pleasure she’d found with Dawud dissolved into an expiation of awkward grunts and a sweaty, restless need never satisfied. ‘To resist him.’

‘Daren respects you for that,’ Samanya’s wife says and finishes the last of her croissant with a stylish, greedy snap. ‘That interests me.
You
interest me.’ She wipes her fingers clean on the white damask serviette, and slides a complex glance at Jamila, half a challenge, half an appeal, as she adds, ‘Do you think we can be friends? If you want to be friends with me.’

If
she wants to? To hide the heady rush that consumes her, Jamila toys with her pearls, the ones Granny Zahra had given her. One of the beautiful people, one of the perfect people—the daughter of one of the richest men in the
Old Sea City
, never mind that she’s also the wife of Jamila’s
ezomo
!—is sitting here asking Jamila to be her friend. She breathes her thanks to the
Spirit King
who wrought this miracle: even though Dawud has not yet married her, she is reborn. She is one of the golden ones; one of the privileged with their perfect lives and perfect dreams and she has overcome her painful, shameful past.

‘Jamila?’ Chuki Samanya calls her name with an eager, enquiring edge, one that fills Jamila with excitement.

‘Friends…you…
yes!
’

She shivers with a new rapture. Even though she lost The Battle of the Balcony, Jamila now believes she won
The War
. She defeated her
ezomo
. For years, she’d thought fear devoured her every time she turned away from Samanya. Thanks to her new friend Chuki, she understands that fear can transfigure into resistance, until an
ezomo
is no longer an
ezomo
, but only a shabby memory of a small error.

‘Chuki,’ she says, setting the past with all its pain and remorse free. ‘I’d love to be your friend!’ In her delight, she dismisses the shadow of triumph in the other woman’s ardent gaze.

• • •

Jamila arrives late at St Jerome’s. The
Pale One
is there, already hard at work.

‘Oh,’ Jamila says. She’d forgotten that they’ve fallen into the pattern of spending time together each morning. ‘I hope you didn’t come in early today.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lulu says, with a touch of her old reserve. A spurt of regret sours Jamila’s happiness.

‘It does. I should have called you to tell you I’d be late.’

‘Did you enjoy your breakfast with your friend?’ the
Pale One
asks.

‘Who told you where I was?’

‘
Prior
Ajani.’

‘Good,’ Jamila says. ‘You didn’t have to worry.’ She lets her elation gush out in a brilliant smile. ‘Lulu, you’ll never believe what happened!’

Lulu stands up and pours Jamila a cup of coffee. She brings it to Jamila’s desk and, her face softening, says, ‘Tell me.’

‘That dinner…the one that Dawud wanted me to go to…’

Lulu nods in encouragement and Jamila continues. ‘I never had time to tell you before, but it was awful to start with—’ She breaks off to sip her drink and her gaze glitters with dreams. The
Pale One
stays silent, as she always does, and lets Jamila set the pace of the conversation.

‘I behaved like a fool!’ She grimaces. ‘Like a scared little girl from the country.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Lulu says.

Jamila gives a low laugh. ‘If you could have seen me…I humiliated myself dreadfully!’ She puts her mug down and stretches half over her desk, craning her neck towards the door leading to the nave. There’s no sight of the others, so she clutches the girl’s arm, surprised the skin is so warm when it looks so different to her own. ‘But, Lulu,’ she says, with a passion she doesn’t often reveal. ‘I did it! I salvaged enough from that disaster to make it.’

‘Make what?’

‘Acceptance. To have those beautiful people accept me.’

Lulu doesn’t answer immediately. ‘That’s important to you?’ she asks.

‘For Dawud’s sake,’ Jamila is quick to say. ‘His business is so important to him. The pharmacy chain has belonged to the Templeton family for generations and he has a responsibility to keep it successful. We have to network.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Lulu says. ‘Networking.’ She nods as if she understands what Jamila means, when Jamila herself doesn’t really believe what she says, for her pleasure is not about Dawud, but about victory over her
ezomo
.

‘Was that guy there?’ Lulu adds.

‘Samanya?’

‘Yeah, if that’s his name. The one who bothered you before.’

Jamila leans back in her chair. She stretches her arms, hands clasped outwards. ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘He was there alright, but I handled him!’ She jerks her hands free and the release of her tension echoes in her contented smile. ‘He’s no threat any longer. He wasn’t ever a big threat. Maybe Dawud was right all along—I overreacted.’

Lulu frowns and tilts her head. There is no expression on her face as she asks, ‘Are you sure?’

The
Pale One
’s uncertainty does not discourage Jamila. Her hands flowing through the air, Jamila tells her of how she stared a
Levid
in the eye, and didn’t flinch. Of how she freed herself from the last vestiges of her
ezomo
and, at last, she tells her of Chuki Samanya, her new friend.

‘…and I was so thrilled when she ‘phoned last night and asked me to join her for breakfast.’ She jumps up, as excited as any young girl who has found a new idol, and hauls her handbag out of the cupboard where she’d stored it.

‘You’d like her, Lulu,’ she says, to be kind, for Lulu would never mix with people like Chuki Samanya. She shows her a photograph, cut out of a glossy magazine, of the woman, reed-like, and elegant as a mannequin.

‘She’s pretty,’ Lulu says and adds loyally, ‘but not as pretty as you.’

‘Oh, Lulu!’ Jamila dismisses her words. As the bustle in the corridor announces the court gardener arriving for work, she adds quickly, ‘Chuki asked me for breakfast tomorrow.’ She grimaces with disappointment. ‘But I’m supposed to take the proofs of my invitations to the printers!’

‘I…I’ll take them,’ Lulu offers and rubs her arm where the half-moon imprints of Jamila’s nails show. ‘If you like. If the breakfast is important to you.’

Jamila hesitates. What will the stationery salesman think when Lulu, with her outlandish appearance and her abrasive ways, walks through the door? But, she’ll never need the printers after the wedding, where Chuki Samanya…oh, she opens a completely new future. ‘That would be fabulous, my dear.’ When Lulu blinks in surprise at the endearment, Jamila realises she’s already fallen into Chuki Samanya’s habits. ‘Will you be able to come home with me to pick them up? We can have a cup of tea and I’ll tell you what changes the printer must make.’

A hint of vulnerability, of loss and longing deep in the
Pale One
’s eyes, surprises Jamila. It reminds her of when she came to the
Old Sea City
, and prods her into remembering her vow of kindness. ‘You can stay for dinner,’ she says.

‘I—’ Lulu clears her throat, ‘I don’t want to intrude on your time with Dawud.’

‘Oh, he won’t mind,’ Jamila dismisses, confident that Dawud, ever aware of the Templeton’s status as patrons to the needy, won’t object to her good deed. ‘It’ll be a simple pasta and sauce.’

‘My favourite.’ Lulu accepts with a grin.

New spirit spurts through Jamila’s veins. With each beat, her lifeblood pumps its power into her. The same power she felt when she rubbed her old wooden
Spirit King
-mask and the same power she felt when Dawud made love to her, long before she had kissed the face of her
ezomo
.

She hasn’t felt this surge, this power that is greater than she is, for a long time and, as she lifts the telephone to tell Chuki Samanya that she’ll join her for breakfast after all, she breathes in all the joy she can.

Her
Spirit King
has returned. He is back and she has overcome her
ezomo
.

• • •

When she finishes her call, Enoch is in the office. His jeans are dirty, as if he’s knelt in them. He washes his tattooed fingers in the small basin near the coffee percolator.

His soap-covered hands swirl under the running water and Jamila watches as L-O-V-E covers P-E-A-C-E, and P-E-A-C-E covers L-O-V-E. The blue letters dance into one another and she doesn’t know where one begins and where the other ends, until she clears her gaze by scolding him.

‘You shouldn’t wash your dirty hands there!’ she says, startling him. ‘Pour some disinfectant down the sink when you’re finished.’

She pushes the old clothes she was sorting back into the black plastic bag. Today, she’s full of the
Spirit King’s
love; she wants to rain her happiness down on everyone she meets, so she can’t understand why watching his hands under the flowing water irritates her. She’s sorry that she snapped and gives Enoch a sunny smile, noticing that he has extraordinary eyes, as cool and as dangerous as the sea that looks up at the mansion in which she lives. Her smile quivers and almost falls off her face, but she has the old power in her, even without her
Spirit King
-mask pendant, even without Dawud, she has it back and she’s not afraid when she stares back into the heart of a stranger’s call.