Dancing In The Shadows of Love (3 page)

I dismissed them both—servant and the memory of a child long gone—from my thoughts, and began to set the table with the fine china and heavy silver cutlery I took from the mahogany cupboard; polished to a glossy sheen, it stood solid and enduring in the nave between the dining room and the front parlour. I carried the key to it, for I filled it with my most precious possessions, such as the antique silver sugar shaker Grace had given me.

• • •

‘Our family has owned it for over two hundred and fifty years,’ Barry’s mother said, when she showed me the shaker. ‘Look, here’s the coat of arms from when we lived in the Old Land.’

Her family tree, reaching back through the centuries, intimidated me. Her ancestors came from the Old Land to settle on the southernmost shores of the
Dark Continent
. They even helped found the
Old Sea City
. I reminded myself that
The War
changed everything; even the old ways.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said. The weight in my hands, heavy and solid, the elegant urn shape free of dinting and the lid pierced in striking geometric shapes; all were the epitome of a life I had always wanted.

Without a hint of reluctance, she passed it to me. ‘You can have it,’ she said.

‘Have it?’

‘It’s yours.’

‘Mine?’

She nodded, smiling at my astonishment and laughing when I clutched it to my chest with both hands.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

It’s not hers any more
, I thought as my fingertips caressed the delicate engraving.

It’s mine.

Mine.

• • •

After I had filled the castor with sugar, I checked the “Woman’s Home” magazine I had bought the previous day. There was a black and white photograph of a superior table setting for an elegant afternoon tea. Except for the white roses, which the servant had yet to bring, my table was an exact replica.

Yet the crockery and cutlery lay uncomfortable in their settings; the table unbalanced and needing one more adjustment before I was satisfied: I moved the silver sugar shaker from Grace’s chair to the seat I always used.

With lingering reverence, I stroked the intricate engraving. The beauty of it, as always, drowned out the soft cry of Little Flower:
Zahra
, she mourned,
is it worth what you pay?

I remembered all the years I travelled with Daddy from one dull, dusty town to another and longed for such finery.

Yes
, I whispered back to the echo in my head,
yes
.

• • •

The clock struck two. Barry would be here soon, with his mother, and the servant had not returned with the white roses.

‘Girl!’ I called. When I received no answer, I moved with careful, practiced grace into the hall. The double entrance doors opened out onto a veranda covered by an intricate Dutch Gable roof. The servant was in the rose garden, at the bottom of the driveway that swept up from the road through the expanse of rich green lawn, and she stared at the ocean with no thoughts of completing the task I had set her.

Shouting was undignified, so I walked down the veranda staircase. ‘Elijah,’ I called.

The Ancient was washing the old black Rolls Barry’s grandfather had left us when he died. In response to my call, he stopped his vigorous work. He respectfully tilted his head, covered in once-black curls, and his chauffeur’s cap slipped low on his forehead, wrinkled with the wisdom of the ages. I loved the old Rolls. As I walked to give him my orders, I patted its bonnet, as though it were some adored pet.

‘Tell the girl to hurry.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said and threw the damp sponge into the pail of water. He was as old as the Rolls, almost another heirloom, and creaked his way down the driveway.

The wind from the bay, brushed with salt, tugged at his cap. Holding it fast with one thin hand, bending with the wind, he called to the maid, ‘Ma’am says hurry.’ He flapped his other hand, shooing her on. ‘Quick, quick! The
Master
is coming.’

The servant girl looked back and her arm jerked as she heard the gravel crunch under my patrolling feet. As she stumbled in her haste to bring me the roses, the ocean-monster called Little Flower rumbled ominously in my depths. My nemesis, my other me, twisted and turned inside me until I sighed to release its unease.

I took the flowers and finished the last arrangement as a car pulled up to the front porch. I forced myself to slow down. I didn’t want it to appear as if I’d gone to any special effort and I took my time, arriving in the hall as Barry helped his mother through the door.

She looked well, although she leaned heavily on her cane.

‘Hello, Zahra dear,’ she said and lifted her face. I bent and placed a dutiful kiss on her cheek.

‘You look fine today, Grace. Did you sleep well?’

My question made her crotchety. ‘I had the dreams,’ she replied and moved past me. She headed for the formal lounge, where the Templeton wives had always received their visitors. No surprise, that. She had lived in the mansion for forty-five years, until Barry senior died. It had taken me two years to move her into a small cottage, in one of the newer suburbs, almost as prestigious as this one and I—Barry and I, that was—moved into the lavish old mansion.

Behind her, Barry rolled his eyes. I understood his impatience. He had offered to make her a sleeping draught, but she was constant in her refusal. He moved forward to greet me with a peck on my mouth and I saw the Outlander.

‘One of Mother’s strays,’ Barry whispered in my ear.

Since Barry senior died, Grace gave free board and lodging to single women from the court. Young
Prior
Ajani, newly arrived from the seminary and full of youthful zeal, sent them to her. From the rural areas, the women were dowdy; often coarse and bluff as well.

‘Stay,’ Grace said to them, ‘until you can find your way around the city.’

They stayed, and she worked miracles. Some of the women were even attractive when they left her. Although she never said, I’m sure Grace bought their new clothes, with Templeton money. But, until this stranger came, she had never had young men to stay.

‘Let me introduce Enoch…I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your surname?’ Barry said.

‘You can call me Enoch,’ the nameless man answered. He moved and I saw him clearly.

Tall, and lean, so lean he was almost elongated. Fine boned and fine featured, he was not a parochial. Neither the strange accent, nor the simple black suit he wore with casual dignity, held a hint of the country. This stranger was an anomaly and one I didn’t like. I wasn’t even surprised to see the faint blue outline of faded tattoos on his fingers: another absurdity.

‘Why are
you
with Grace?’ I demanded. I sensed Barry’s surprise for it’s a long time since I had been that aggressive.

‘That’s between Enoch and I, dear,’ Grace said. She rested against the dining room door, unnoticed in my fascination for her latest boarder, but her quiet rebuke silenced me.

‘No problem, Mrs T.’ He stepped closer and held out a long, delicate hand. L-O-V-E, his fingers said, and those on his other hand spelt P-E-A-C-E. The blue letters danced into one another and, suddenly, I could not breathe. I could not look away. Not even when he said with a half-smile, ‘I’m here because I must be here.’

With those hands, perhaps he was a pianist, unable to find employment in a city that overflowed with artists who fed themselves lies as they dreamt of a fame that would never come.

‘On business?’ I pushed the boundaries of politeness with my urgency.

‘Of a sort,’ he said. ‘I’m a scribe.’

Afraid that he would read my mind if he could, I jerked my eyes away from the incongruous elegance of his tattooed hands. Embarrassed that he saw my stare, the faint heat in my cheeks got hotter. ‘Interesting,’ I said in my most bored tone. ‘What does a scribe do?’

‘I write.’

‘You write? About what?’

‘Deeds. I write about men and their deeds.’

‘Ah. A historian,’ I said. The solidness of the word made my world, knocked awry with this man’s presence, somehow safe again, but not for long.

‘Of a sort,’ he said, but with a hint of private amusement that stripped me bare. I wanted to think it also held malevolence, to explain my heart’s unease. But the goodness in that smile—too serene, too full of charity—called to Little Flower and I was afraid he could see her sleeping in the darkness.

‘You’re able to record
all
the deeds and errors of
all
the nations?’ I asked. I let my gaze drift over him with subtle disdain: a good trick to keep people away from that part of me I wanted to keep hidden.

‘Sometimes,’ he said. Tiny crinkles formed at the corners of his eyes as his smile thickened with sagacity. ‘Mostly, I record the secret errors in the hearts of people like you and me.’

All I could do was curve an eyebrow upward; my own heart pounded too loud and too fast for any coherence. Could he have conceived Little Flower’s existence?

I comforted myself. I kept her caged in my heart; no one could fathom my past and her
Great Error
. Afraid that he could see she lived on within me, I sneered, ‘Like what? What trivial deeds of ordinary people can be more important than the great tragedies and triumphs of our nation’s heroes?’

‘Ordinary people can be heroes too,’ he said, ‘if they want to be.’

And he looked and looked at me. Barry faded into the background, and Grace too. There was only him, the Outlander, and me, indivisible, joined by a gaze that made me light-headed. I began to see what he saw when he looked into his memories: a burden too great for any man to carry, all the pain of humankind’s iniquities weighing him down until he almost lost all hope.

Almost…for he remembered an ordinary woman well and—because for a moment we were one and I saw through his eyes into his memories—in the part of me that was drowning in his essence I, too, could remember the long-ago tale of the innkeeper’s good wife…

…she was a surprising woman. Sharp-tongued and sharp-faced, brave men feared her. And yet, she—an ordinary woman, no great hero—was the only one with the courage to hide the healer woman. She swept the old crone from beneath the noses of the torch-bearing mob as they screeched, ‘Burn the witch! Burn the witch!’

The innkeeper’s wife had stumbled across the poor terrified creature hiding behind the bladdernut tree by the cattle
kraal
as she went to empty the piss-pots of her guests. The old woman’s face was as white as the bell-shaped flowers adorning the gnarled tree in spring, their sweet scent drawing the honey-birds as the scent of her fear drew the rabble closer.

Without hesitation, the innkeeper’s wife acted on her heart’s voice. She pushed the healer woman amongst the cattle in her
kraal
, and rushed to join the mob. Her sharp tongue goaded them, led them away, to the other end of the village. Later, she gave them free mulled wine to console them in their loss of entertainment and to warm them as the fire from the burning tyre around the neck of the old crone would have chased away the winter chill.

She waited and, when the last of them staggered home, she took bread, and a little wine, and wrapped them in a warm coat to give to the hunted one. She made the
sign of the nova
, and appealed to the
Master
to keep the wretched woman safe. The
Master
heard, and the stranger saw.

And what he saw the scribe recorded…

…a promise of hope that Little Flower wanted too hard to believe in. I gasped with the shock of my near faint and realised I didn’t like this stranger who called himself a scribe and held such a strange power over me that, like Grace, I slipped into bizarre fantasies and almost lost control. I didn’t trust him. He was not one of us. I held that strange gaze with a stony regard, until he broke first and looked away. He bent his head to break our connection; I was victorious. I had put him in his proper place. But, as he patted his pockets, his long dark lashes swept up and he smiled.

Foiled, I turned my back on him and on Barry, and walked to join Grace, my heels clacking my annoyance on the marble floor. No one else had marble like it; when we renovated the house two years ago, we imported it from Italy.

Grace regretted the loss of the original wooden floors, but even she agreed that fashions changed. With
The War
over, the house needed renovating in a modern style. ‘Efficient,’ she said when she saw the expanse of white stone. ‘Perhaps a little hard.’ I suspected she referred to me. I took it as a compliment, for it meant she could not see behind my armour to where Little Flower lurked.

I reached the door where Grace stood, leaning on her cane, her lilac floral dress, with its neat pan-collar and tightly cinched belt, making her look small and frangible. Cupping her elbow, I left Barry to usher the man called Enoch through and said, ‘Come, Grace. I’ve made your favourite for tea today.’

‘Crumpets?’

‘No, coconut macaroons.’ I helped her into a chair and made sure she was comfortable. I put a cushion behind her back, the way she liked it, and left the ivory-topped cane within easy reach.

The sound of the men talking, one a deeper tone than the other and tinged with the lilt of a strange land, came closer. Straining to hear what was said, I shifted the cane again, patted the cushion once more and then, with a glance at the mahogany cupboard to ensure that my most precious possessions were safe, finally subdued my curiosity and forced an interest in Grace’s conversation.

‘I had the dream again last night,’ she reminded me, her faded blue eyes paler than normal under her slight frown.

‘Umm…’ Much as I tried to ignore him, the Outlander impinged on my consciousness. Grace’s words blurred and, while Barry spoke in little more than an undertone, I could hear every word
he
said. A common man, who spoke too loudly when he was in the company of his betters.

‘Are you listening, Zahra?’

I started, pulled out of my grudging fascination by Grace’s quaver. ‘Was it the same dream?’