Dancing In The Shadows of Love (29 page)

‘You did it to yourself, Jamila.’ He begins to move in an ancient rhythm and she moans and reaches for what she’s yearned for in all the long years she resisted him. ‘Because I’m what you’ve always wanted.’ He laughs and croons, ‘I’m your temptation.’

‘You’re my
ezomo
!’ she cries. She closes her eyes, shutting out his
Levid’s
face, and closes her conscience against the thought of Dawud. Her beloved, somewhere in a desert war fighting to free people too far away to care about, while she is here, beneath another man.

She has learnt that—no matter how many times she’s petitioned, no matter how many times she’s tried to cleanse herself from this error by invoking the
Spirit King’s
name—her own desires, her own choices, are what betray her.

There is no fight left in Jamila. Finally, fully, she capitulates.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she says, and opens her arms and her body to Daren’s invasion. She welcomes him and surrenders to that other part that lives on within her. She has discovered two Jamilas: one saint, who smells as sweet as a white rose in winter, and one sinner, sour and bitter with the smell of a triumphant evil.

• • •

A long time later, how long she can never remember, she lies there naked as the day they dragged her from her mother’s womb, but not as innocent. Never as innocent, for she was born into Papa’s
Great Error
: unable to resist her
ezomo
, she instead embraces it.

Next to her, Daren stirs. He pushes himself upright to stare at her. ‘Do you think this,’ his hand sweeps an arc over the rumpled sheets, her nakedness, ‘is a
Great Error
, Jamila?’

The sound of her name on his lips enthrals her. It sanctions what they’ve shared in this bed: he recognises her essence, as she recognises his. She shakes her head and puts out a hand to annex his chest, flesh of her flesh. For a moment, as her palm collides with the solidness of him, she is shaken. He is cold, colder than ice, and she has a strange thought: what if there is no fire in hell, only ice?

She skitters her gaze upwards and a long ago shame tries to break into her consciousness. But she’s not the naïve and idealistic believer she once was. She has learnt, ironically from this man’s wife, that by her resistance of him, she’s conquered her
ezomo
. She has learnt, too, that she is both saint and sinner, entwined in a single restless body made nascent one long ago moonlit night.

She watches her hand trace the whorls of dark hair covering Daren’s chest and tells herself that her
ezomo
has never hurt Dawud, for she has never told him the truth of that night Samanya loved her. She alone suffered for it. She alone was the one who wasted so many years on a painful futile unhappiness. There is no cruelty to Dawud in this loving, or in those yet to come, and no really
Great Error
, for she will never tell him. His ignorance of her
ezomo
will keep him safe from it.

So, when Daren asks again, she answers, with cautious logic. ‘It’s not a
Great Error
,’ she says, ‘if no one is hurt.’

Her reasoning calms her. She is strong, and her vice is no vice but rather her frail humanity, tempered with the grace of her diligent kindness. Her kindness, she tells herself, keeps Lulu away from the wedding so she’ll not be hurt. And her kindness will keep this secret from Dawud: although she loves him, she wants Samanya in a way she has never wanted him. ‘So don’t talk of this to anyone. Dawud mustn’t be hurt when he comes back from
The War
.’

‘I won’t,’ Daren Samanya says and laughs. ‘You surprise me.’

‘I do?’

‘There’s no moral outrage this time,’ he grins. ‘No rattling of
novas
to keep you safe from your
ezomo
?’

It makes her angry, that grin, with its foxy, feral jubilation. ‘I’m not hurting anyone by being here,’ she says, as quiet and dignified as her nudity allows. ‘What reason is there for outrage?’

‘What reason?’ he asks and howls with laughter. ‘What a convenient integrity you have,’ he says. ‘And you’re not alone,’ he adds. ‘Thank the
Spirit King
! Or I’d spend eternity a lonely man.’

Jamila, before she finds herself in his arms once more, almost panics. For, deep in his face, in the blue eyes that pierce her very essence, she sees what she would become were it not for her allegiance. But for the strength of her devotion to the
Spirit King
, she would succumb to the power of her
ezomo
and become the
Levid’s
legacy.

• • •

She leaves the Samanya mansion late the next day. She does not see Chuki and, as she drives home, a slow drive via the long route along the coastline, she tries to shake off her unease. Away from Samanya’s essence, it uncurls deep within her, a throbbing that takes on a life of its own. Jamila flicks the indicator on as she turns into the driveway of the Templeton mansion and wonders if her discomfort is more to do with doubt than devotion.

But what is there to doubt? After all the years she has waited, her wedding is a scant two weeks away; Dawud will be home before the weekend is over. He’ll be happy, as she is happy. A woman made whole by
fealty
and friendship, she’ll make Dawud a good wife. Better than before Daren, before Chuki. Because now the unquenchable hunger Dawud never satisfies has a name and a face, and she no longer has to resist it. As long as Dawud is not hurt, Jamila contents herself with the assurance that her affair with Daren Samanya is not a
Great Error
. Rather, it shows the power of her fidelity: her absolute submission to the
Spirit King
and the certainty that he will love her despite her errors.

She’s smiling as she draws the car to a halt at the bottom of the stairway that sweeps up to the main entrance hall. As she climbs out of the car, she glances back over the driveway, past the huge iron gates and over the sea. A few dark clouds hover on the horizon, and the ocean is dull and grey and choppy, the kind of colour that makes her want to weep.

She’s halfway up the stairs before she sees the three figures that wait.
Prior
Ajani, small and rotund, with a worried frown. His arm is around Granny Zahra, dressed as she always is, in a severe navy suit, unadorned by any jewellery. Behind them, holding himself tall and stern, is a man in military uniform, his face unclear as a small, insubstantial cloud moves swiftly to cover the sun.

‘Dawud!’ she cries. ‘Dawud, you’re home!’

As she runs up the stairs to welcome him, she wonders if he’ll smell Daren on her. Even though her affair is merely a sign of her restless humanity, guilt pricks her. But, as she calls his name, the wisp of cloud uncovers the sun and she can see clearly. The man’s hair is not blonde, but silver. He’s not Dawud, but a stranger in a harsh brown uniform, and he stares at her with an uncomfortable pity.

She realises the day has gone wrong. None of this should have happened. But it has. Her allegiance, Jamila realises, is a fragile
fealty
, too easily led astray. And, as
Prior
Ajani steps forward and says her name, she discovers how easy it is to deceive oneself into believing what one wants to believe.

The last vestiges of her devotion crumble under the onslaught. Her heart’s voice cries out that her dream is over. Over, over, over. She has lost it all.

She flings her hands up to cover her ears, to block out the relentless cry, but it doesn’t stop the truth from ringing out: she is alone and she is lost.

Without faith; without hope; and without a beloved to keep her safe.

“Charity itself fulfils the law,
and who can sever love from charity?”

Jamila says she believes there is a
Spirit King
who answers the
petitions
of the living. I am at the mansion, ready to welcome Dawud home, when
Prior
Ajani arrives with another visitor. He is tall, as tall as Enoch was, and the blood in my veins thrums. But he is not the stranger I long for. Instead, a military officer, immaculate in his uniform and professionally sympathetic, tells me Dawud, my beloved grandson, has died a hero’s death.

‘He refused to leave the hospital, Ma’am,’ the officer says. ‘Even though his commander told him to leave the wounded behind because the insurgents were too close.’

‘Why did they fight?’

His lips thin with irritation. ‘We needed the place as a hospital, but the rebels wanted their holy ground back.’

I hear the faint echo of long ago hooves scrape along a dusty road. I remember the warmth of another stranger’s arms and the sweet smell of cedar wood. I lived through that war. Dawud did not live through this one. ‘Did they get what they wanted?’

‘We held them off, Ma’am,’ he says, proud of the victory. ‘But casualties were high. That’s why your grandson wouldn’t leave. He wouldn’t leave while the wounded needed help. He died a hero.’

‘He died.’

That’s all I can say. Dawud was my last chance at love. He, too, is gone and I find a part of me, long dead, had clung to a hope now irrevocably extinguished.

My old parlour chair is hard as I lean my head back to look around the room that once meant so much. Why it meant so much is lost. Jamila has placed my old mahogany cupboard in the same place I had it. I can’t look at it for long. It holds too many memories; memories of all I could have been if Enoch had loved me as he’d loved Grace.

The pain is too heavy to bear and my eyes drift shut. ‘Have you told Jamila?’

‘We wanted to tell you,’
Prior
Ajani says quietly. He grips my shoulders as he did the day that Grace slipped away.

‘We must tell her.’ I try to rise, but my legs are weak with age or sorrow, or with the death of a part of me I’ve lived with for aeons.
Prior
Ajani and the soldier rush to help me stand.

‘You stay here, Mrs T,’
Prior
Ajani says. ‘The Colonel and I will tell Jamila.’

I shake my head. ‘My grandson loved her. He’d want me to be the one to tell her.’

And, although I don’t tell them, there’s also that part of me I hate, perhaps the eternal imprint of Little Flower’s
ezomo
on my essence, that wants to hear how Jamila’s
Spirit King
will answer her now that her dreams are dead and gone.

• • •

The
Old Sea City
is angry. The wind howls off the ocean; the clouds are thick and grey overhead and release a steady drizzle that suits my mood. A perfect day for a funeral and for the day I must return to St Jerome’s court, the first time I have been back since Grace’s burial.

• • •

For both my Barrys’ funerals, I’d demanded a service in the grounds of the Templeton mansion.
Prior
Ajani hadn’t argued much. This time I’m too tired to exert my will, and the
Prior
is too insistent.

‘You must come to the court, Mrs T. The time has come to return,’ he says, over and over. ‘You need to be there for Jamila.’

‘Jamila will cope without me,’ I reply. ‘She’s been part of the court for years. People will want to give her support. She doesn’t need me.’

I almost don’t hear what his silence tells me, for the faint sound of a child’s laughter captures me. I lean out of the window facing the abandoned rose garden and search amongst the wilderness for the flash of chubby legs that gleefully evade the clutch of thorns. But it’s a memory, for young Barry was dead years ago. Dawud, too, is lost and the screech of loneliness has become a crescendo.

Prior
Ajani’s stasis brings me back from an abyss of self-pity I despise in myself. I release my grip on the windowsill and walk to the intercom.

‘Yes, Ma’am?’

‘Is that you, Beulah?’

‘Yes, Mrs T. Do you need me?’

‘Would you prepare a tray of tea for us, dear?’

‘With pleasure, Mrs T. I made your favourite biscuits this morning. I’ll put some of those on a plate, shall I?’

I smile faintly. My people, the ones who work in the mansion, have been fussing over me since we heard the news about Dawud. I let them; it gives them something to do. ‘That will be nice, dear,’ I say and switch off the intercom.

The table takes my weight as I rest my hip against it and face the anxious and silent
Prior
. ‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘Why must I go to the
Court
for Jamila?’

‘Jamila has some problems,’ he says. ‘I’ve heard some ugly rumours.’

‘About
Jamila
?’

‘She’s in debt. She owes some fashion designer in the city hundreds of thousands for new clothes.’

‘That’s not a problem.’ I wave a hand. ‘She’s my grandson’s fiancée.’

‘Your grandson’s dead, Mrs T,’ he says. ‘Jamila has no money of her own.’

His gentleness almost snaps my control and makes me surly. ‘It makes no difference,’ I reply. ‘It’s only money. What use do I have for it? Dawud doesn’t need it. He’s dead.’

‘There’s more.’

He doesn’t tell me until I prod him.

‘Must I live in ignorance,
Prior
, until the end of my days?’

A smile skims across the surface of his face. ‘Not you, Mrs T, not you.’ He rises from his chair and wanders to the window where I stand. ‘I’ve received a few Excommunication Requests.’

‘For Jamila?’ I’m stunned at the irony. Jamila, who dedicated her life to the
Spirit King
, who lived with a faith stern enough for a saint, ex-communicated?

Prior
Ajani remained silent, unwilling to repeat what he’d heard but, in the end, he has to tell me. ‘There’s been talk. About infidelity. About…orgies.’

The news surprises me. Jamila has always struck me as being too pious for passion. ‘With whom?’

‘Samanya. Daren Samanya. And his wife, Chuki.’

I’ve heard the name before. One of
Prior
Ajani’s strays whispered it in the dark. He’d brought the young girl to me soon after Jamila had moved into the mansion with Dawud and I’d moved into Grace’s cottage. She’d taken a long time to heal, that one. And, recognising her own
ezomo
overlaid in the haunted eyes, Little Flower had wept bitterly for the scars on the girl’s essence.