Dancing In The Shadows of Love (25 page)

All that exists for Jamila is the path Chuki burns across her flesh. Anticipation—or terror, she can’t tell—suspends her breath. She wants to pull away for it reminds her of another, more masculine, touch. When Chuki lifts her hand away and taps her pursed lips, Jamila begins to breathe again.

‘Dawud will be hungry for you when he comes back,’ Chuki says. ‘Except…’

That pause reminds Jamila how she failed to seduce Dawud, the night he told her he was deserting her for
The War
. ‘Except what?’ she asks.

‘You need a better bra. French. Lace, with a tiny satin bow. Here.’ She presses a fingertip between Jamila’s breasts.

Jamila’s flush deepens. There had been nothing but measuring in Chuki’s earlier touch. Her callowness has made her misunderstand a casual physical contact between sophisticated women such as Chuki Samanya and her friends.

‘Do I?’ Thank the
Spirit King
she hadn’t reacted to the novelty of another woman’s touch on her body! There’s so much to learn, she cautions herself, before she’ll really be Chuki’s friend and at ease in her world.

Her
Spirit King
, in his goodness, in his compassion, has given her a second chance. This time, she’ll make sure her life is perfect in every way. And Chuki Samanya is the one who can show her how to be that perfect and proper person.

• • •

With Chuki’s friendship to keep her busy, the days Dawud is away at war pass quickly, until it’s the Friday before he’s due home and not even a month until their wedding day. Jamila paces back to the window of the court office and peers out. Where is Chuki? She expects Chuki to arrive soon; she’s to pick Jamila up on her way home for what’s become a ritual dinner at the Samanya mansion. Jamila is wearing one of her new dresses, the pink linen one she didn’t like until Chuki endorsed it.

She also wears one of those French bras today. Skimpy and uncomfortable, it plumps her breasts up so the neckline is less demure than it looked on the hanger. She can hardly wait to hear what Chuki says when she arrives.

‘You don’t like pink,’ Lulu says, when she arrives at the court office.

‘I didn’t,’ she replies, ‘but I do now. Chuki says it’s a good colour on me.’ A sudden uncertainty grips her. ‘Why? Don’t you think it suits me?’

There’s a moment’s hesitation. ‘You look good,’ Lulu says, adding in her forthright way, ‘but you were fine before. More real, without all the makeup.’

Jamila wants to take offence. But some undertone in Lulu’s manner, some tension around her mouth, tells her this: Lulu is jealous of the friendship she has with Chuki. She can’t help it. Her lips tip up in a small, satisfied smile; she’s sorry for Lulu’s unhappiness, she really is. What must life be for someone as afflicted as the
Pale One
? She, who has suffered too, regrets that Lulu has no other friends except her, Jamila. Rapture overtakes her; there is no space for regrets. How can there be regrets, when she has become so strong in her allegiance to the
Spirit King
that she holds the light of hope to such sad creatures as Lulu?

But because she’ll never forget what unhappiness is, and she doesn’t forget her promise to be kind to others, she kills her smile and walks to stand next to Lulu.

Lulu, hunched over the old, lumpy computer, has turned away from Jamila’s silence. With diligent attention to each name, she is typing the guest list. As Jamila touches her on the shoulder, Lulu jostles her knee on the edge of her desk and whispers a curse not quite soft enough for Jamila to ignore.

‘Don’t curse,’ she says. ‘The
Eden Book
forbids it.’ She doesn’t want anyone—not even the
Pale One
—to be as alone and friendless as she once was, before she found Chuki and Dawud and the
Spirit King
. She licks her lips, adding, ‘I have more friends than Chuki.
You’re
my friend too,’ and gives what she hopes is a reassuring smile.

Lulu swivels in her chair and looks up at her. She must have found what she needed in Jamila’s expression for, with hardly any hesitation, she covers Jamila’s hand with her own and squeezes it tightly.

‘Thanks,’ she mumbles and turns back to her typing, but not before Jamila has time to see, and pity, the sheen of the tears Lulu can’t hide.

Before she can say more, Enoch, dirty from his garden, ushers in an immaculate Chuki Samanya. Her chic ennui, as she peers round the comfortable court office, Jamila’s haven for so many years, lights a flicker of the old shame.

‘So this is where you work,’ Chuki drawls, her indolent surveillance of the room broken when her gaze falls on Lulu who, sensing her appraisal, pauses in the middle of her work to send a belligerent stare in Chuki’s direction.

A caustic smell tickles Jamila’s nostrils and reminds her of the time Dawud took her to the warm water springs; there in the plains beyond the mountains surrounding the
Old Sea City
where the brackish water bubbled, hot and harsh and bitter. The smell must come from Enoch, she decides, some poisonous sulphuric insecticide he uses in the court garden.

‘You can go, Enoch,’ she says. ‘You’re not needed here.’

‘Are you sure?’ he asks. Before his eyes confuse her, she looks away from him, towards a bored Chuki who watches Enoch with a slight challenge colouring her face less attractive than Jamila has always thought it.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You can go.’

He inclines his head and holds Lulu’s gaze until she sighs, hits the save button with an angry tap and pushes herself up from her desk to walk towards him. Polite as ever, he holds the door open, but she stops in the doorway and turns towards Chuki.

‘Jamila’s my friend,’ she snarls, her dancing eye, which Jamila tries so hard to ignore, hopping wildly. ‘Don’t hurt her.’ Before she can say more, Enoch spreads his long, elegant hands across her back and pushes her through the door. He slams it behind them and all that remains is the fading echo of an argument.

‘What was
that
about?’ Chuki says, her lips pinched inwards in silent affront.

‘She works here.’ Jamila, although touched by Lulu’s concern, is upset by Chuki’s annoyance. ‘Lulu’s a bit rough,’ she apologises, ‘but she means well.’ Jamila hesitates. ‘She’s been in prison.’ She relaxes with a shrill giggle as Chuki starts to laugh.

‘Oh, my
Spirit King
!’ she says to Jamila. ‘For a moment there I thought I’d come to a mad house!’ and her face is again that of the Chuki who is Jamila’s good friend.

With a relieved smile, Jamila says, ‘She’s not so bad once you’re used to her.’

‘Well,’ Chuki says, ‘I hope she won’t be at your wedding.’ She shudders dramatically. ‘That ugly pale skin! That crazy evil eye! I swear by the
Spirit King
, if you invite a
Pale One
, your guests will run from the court before Dawud can say, “I do!”’

‘Oh,’ Jamila says. The guest list Lulu herself is busy typing has Lulu’s name right next to
Prior
Ajani’s name. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’ Before Chuki can frame any more awkward questions, she asks, ‘Dawud comes home Saturday. What shall we do?’

‘We’ll go to my house,’ Chuki says. ‘I want to spend some time alone with you. Some girl time,’ she adds. ‘Before you become a married woman and Dawud demands all of your spare time.’

After the tension with Lulu, Chuki’s smile is so relaxed Jamila returns it with a dizzy grin. ‘Shall we go?’ she says and doesn’t even try to contain her anticipation: for, when she’s with Chuki, she’s as perfect, and as unimpeachable, as the beautiful people she admired for so many years. No longer separated by her shabby past she is, at last, one of them.

“We know what we are, but we know not what we may be.”

My time is close.

My hair is grey and I smell of the wintergreen ointment I rub on my varicose veins when they ache, which, these days, is most of the time. My breasts, those silken sacs that my Daddy, and then my husband, had so loved to fondle, have long since succumbed to the cancer. When I undress, I stare at their flat, scarred remains on my chest. They got what they deserved, those pieces of flesh. Once the weapons of temptation that were Little Flower’s
ezomo
, now they are where they belong: ashes in a hospital’s hellish incinerator.

I have been lonely. Lonelier than I could’ve imagined since I lost my husband Barry. He died twenty-five years ago but, except for the memories he left behind, he was gone from me long before then.

And my son. My little Barry. Grace used to call him an angel and he never lost that smile in his eyes. It only gleamed with a different brightness when he brought a young woman home, nineteen to his twenty, and laden with his child in her belly.

‘You’re too young to marry,’ I said.

‘We’re in love, Ma. We want to marry.’

I often think he must have been smiling, when they died, the two of them, in a distant land as they fought to save the lives of those wounded in a war that should never have begun and has yet to end.

‘People aren’t collateral damage, Ma,’ he said the day they left for South America, his face wrinkled with the same determination he used to climb up and down stairs that were bigger by far than he. ‘We want to help. It’ll be an adventure.’

‘Foolish boy,’ I snapped and buried my tears in the warm baby smell of my grandson Dawud. ‘Kiss your son goodbye.’

His answer was a laugh, as reckless as always, and I never saw either of them again. But I had my grandson, as placid and malleable as his grandfather Barry.

Until Dawud, too, decided he wanted to go to war.

• • •

Jamila is a fool. Since Dawud has gone, she presumes to save an essence as empty as mine. I laugh at her, so zealous in her calculated piety, and so blind. She’s a woman who knows what she wants, but she doesn’t realise how bleak her task is. Once, I had a chance of redemption. It died, more years ago than I care to remember, one moonlit night when a stranger turned his back on me.

Even
Prior
Ajani, no longer young and new to the court, yet as eager as he ever was, accepts the loss of this essence of mine.

He came to call soon after Grace had died and hasn’t stopped. I thought he’d come crusading as well, but he’s never asked why I haven’t returned to the court since the day of Grace’s memorial service.

• • •

‘Hello, Mrs Templeton,’ he greeted when he saw me at work on the roses, when he called at the mansion after Grace died. ‘I’m glad I caught you at home.’

The rose garden was Grace’s joy, when she lived in the mansion. I’d let it decay when I’d moped around Enoch and yearned for what never could be. After he had abandoned me, there was emptiness in me; beyond redemption, I filled the yawning abyss with small, meaningless tasks. I also tried to save a little of Grace’s light by tending the roses she loved so much.

‘I’m busy,’ I said. I turned my back on him and concentrated on the new shoots I pruned.

‘Grace would like seeing her roses so loved,’ he said.

I ignored him, willing him to leave. I wanted him to leave, but the murmurs behind me stayed and took shape. His: jovial, it comforted and encouraged. An answer: brittle-edged and resistant. Curiosity made me turn.

He helped a young girl climb out of the court car. She held herself stiffly and looked at the world from a wary face marred by bruises.

When he saw I watched them, he introduced the girl. ‘I spoke to Grace about her,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. I knew what he wanted and I was terrified. ‘Never.’

‘She needs help. Grace wanted to help.’

I turned to the safety of my roses and snipped away some unwanted dead wood, which stopped them flowering as prolifically as they should.

‘Where’s Enoch?’ I asked.

‘He left,’
Prior
Ajani said.

‘Where’s he gone?’

I thought he wasn’t going to answer. ‘No place special,’ the
Prior
said. ‘There wasn’t much more he could do here at this time.’

Little Flower let loose a solitary howl of pain. I smothered it with a particularly vicious snip of the secateurs and made no sound as I cut away the rotten branch. I couldn’t see the
Prior
, my back was towards him, but in the silence that followed, I sensed him weigh what he must say next.

‘Perhaps Enoch will be back.’ He hesitated. ‘One day.’

I swung around to glare at him. ‘Don’t lie!’

I bumped him out the way with a forceful stride and the young creature next to him flinched as I passed her. Little Flower, silent except for the weight of her unshed tears, saw her too. I stopped and examined the girl more closely. She stared back with Little Flower’s eyes, the same eyes that looked out of my mirror every day before Zahra was born, and every day since Grace has died.

We stared at each other, we three: the young girl, Little Flower and me.

‘What’s your name, girl?’ I hadn’t listened to
Prior
Ajani’s introduction. If I had heard her name, she would’ve had more substance than the pale wraith that cowered behind the
Prior
.

‘Hope,’ she whispered.

Such an incongruous name for such an abject creature. I wanted to laugh. Instead, I frowned and, with a finger under her chin, lifted her face to mine. The marks of her Daddy’s love were clear.

‘You’ll be safe here,’ Little Flower said to the child before I could stop her.

I turned my frown on
Prior
Ajani and dared him to gloat. And, as I drew her away from his side, somehow I was not surprised to hear him say, although this time with certainty, ‘Enoch
will
come back, Little Flower. One day he’ll be back.’

• • •

In all the long, lonely years, Enoch never returned, although Little Flower waited and waited. The girl Hope left for a new life, long before
The War
killed my son Barry and his wife.

Although
Prior
Ajani never came, as Jamila does, to read from the
Eden Book
in an attempt to save my essence, he often visited. He said he came to see how the girl Hope was. Later, when I’d moved from the mansion into the small cottage that had belonged to Grace, he still came.