Dancing in the Shadows of Love

by Judy Croome

  She would not argue with the irrationality of senility. So all Jamila said was, ‘Of course, Granny Zahra,’ even though she didn’t agree.

  No one chose to experience her pain. No normal person, that is, and Jamila was, almost, the same as everyone else. Soon, very soon, Jamila Johnson, daughter of beggar Sam, would cease to exist. She would become Mrs Jamila Templeton, wife of Bakari Dawud Templeton IV, and an impeccable person with a normal life.

  After years of hard work, she blended in with the people she’d so envied. The trendsetters like her school nemesis Angela Rocco with her perfect, safe life and the beautiful people inhabiting Dawud’s world, who knew that Daren Samanya would devour her and still let him lead her out onto a moonlight balcony.

  ‘You don’t believe me.’ Granny Zahra cackled. ‘You’ll see, Jamila, you’ll see. Memories…the memories will make you find the truth. Take the cupboard,’ she added with a sigh. ‘Go home. I’m tired.’

  Much to Jamila’s relief, the old woman was asleep when she returned with the removal men. They grumbled quietly, trying not to wake Zahra, but as they reached the truck and loaded the heavy piece of furniture, their curses became louder, doors slammed harshly and the revs of the straining truck ground on Jamila’s nerves.

  The soft buzz of Granny Zahra’s snores filled the room. The air changed, settling oddly around them. Jamila shuddered. She wanted to leave—free, at last, to leave—for she had her cupboard and the old woman no longer had any interest in her. But the backwash of Granny Zahra’s last words trapped her.

  Memories will make you find the truth.

  The words held her fast with the truth: her memories stained her with a shame that should have been Papa’s alone. His ezomo was her inheritance, a memory that lived on in the shadows of her love. Love is an illusion, she sometimes thought, when the burdens of her past became too much and she almost sank beneath the sea of her memories, as waves of remorse and endless desire eroded her belief in the promises of her beloved.

  • • •

  But, unlike Papa and his weak surrender to that lesser part of himself, she fought her ezomo. With every breath she drew, with her every act of charity, she fought it.

  Like the Pale One today. She’ll make friends with her, Jamila decides and, whatever happens, she’ll always treat the poor woman with kindness.

  Granny Zahra’s bizarre rambles ricochet in her mind. They rattle around like a raven, black as her dreams at night. A harbinger of a message that remains beyond her grasp. So full of depravity, so full of death, it freezes her with a fear that throbs in a dull headache behind her eyes, as if the raven is pick, pick, picking them out.

  The day has frayed her edges. The Pale One, so white she is almost transparent; the visit to Granny Zahra’s; and Dawud—more interested in his newspaper and The War than he is in her—all scratch at her old scars. All these daily irritations, and more, grind away at the carapace she built over them and leave her restless, and somehow unclean.

  She touches a white rose from the arrangement in the centre of the dinner table and murmurs brief words to the Spirit King as she allows the glorious riot of fragrance to soothe her. And, when the storm has quietened beneath the weight of her worship, she clips a smile to her face and calls Dawud to join her.

  Chapter 9

  Zahra (The Past)

  “What private griefs they have, alas, I know not.”

  It cost me; oh, how it cost me, to turn away from Enoch’s hypnotic, watchful gaze again. But this time I did not fail. As I broke the contact, I let out a heady laugh and led them to where I’d laid out tea.

  Later, when they had gone home and we readied ourselves for bed, I cornered Barry.

  ‘Did you see that look he gave her?’

  He struggled with a button that threatened to pop loose from his spotted pyjamas. A strip of flabby pink flesh peeped through the gap. Out of nowhere, I realised I had never seen my husband naked. I preferred it that way. The darkness was safe for, whenever he politely asked if he could love me, it was easier to say no if I could not see his pleading face.

  Why did I care what he was like under the concealing flannel? No matter what mask they wore, men were the same: easily enticed, and too weak to resist Little Flower’s temptation. I kept her buried, and Barry at a distance, in another bed, all nakedness covered.

  ‘Who?’ Barry asked. ‘What look?’

  I sighed. If he married me for my strength, I married him because he was malleable and too innocuous to discover that Little Flower existed, molten into the core of Zahra’s steel. ‘Enoch.’ I spell out what he should have seen. ‘He stared at your mother all day.’

  I had his attention. Although he liked Enoch, he loved his mother and she was a wealthy woman. She had brought her own hefty trust fund into the Templeton family when she had married Barry senior.

  ‘How?’ he asked. ‘How did he look at her?’

  I hesitated. How did one describe it? ‘As a beloved does,’ was the best I could do.

  ‘He’s years younger than she is! He looks even younger than the new Prior does, what’s-his-name, Ajani, that’s it. Prior Ajani and he can’t be older than his mid-twenties!’ His mouth pinched with distaste. ‘Do you mean—’ He broke off. I didn’t allow any improper talk in my house, but his concern for his mother overcame his usual obedience to my rules. ‘You do mean…sexually?’

  I shook my head. Enoch’s effect disturbed me enough that I didn’t shudder when Barry used that word. ‘With affection.’

  ‘Oh.’ Barry’s mind worked through the information I’d given him. ‘Don’t worry, my dear.’ He patted me on the shoulder, awkward and uncertain what to make of my remark. ‘He’s obviously grateful to Mother for the help she’s giving him.’

  I didn’t agree with him. There was more between Enoch and Grace then mere gratitude. Less than sex, but more than affection. Love, almost, although I couldn’t really tell, for what did I know of love?

  Barry kept his hand on my shoulder and my interest in his mother and her guest retreated as my awareness focused on his tentative touch. When I didn’t shake him off, the pats turned into strokes. His breath got shorter, although he tried hard to keep it even, for it displeased me when he lost control.

  I’d put him off sex since we’d conceived Barry the Third, on that same bed. Sometimes I wondered if he had a mistress, some low woman who enjoyed his attentions in exchange for a few trinkets he bought her. I should have disliked the thought of him being physically intimate with another woman. Instead, every night he didn’t touch me, I was euphoric.

  For then Zahra rested easy and, after he’d returned to his own bed, Little Flower did not weep silently in the oppressive gloom.

  Why should I question what suited me? After all, I was Mrs Templeton, and divorce was unheard of in the family. Barry had no complaints, none that he spoke of anyway, and I filled the role of Wife as if born to it, as Grace was born to it. But, although Enoch had given Grace a new lease on life, she was old and fading and soon, soon, everyone would flock to me and, with the same soft sighs of love, call me Mrs T.

  Barry’s hand, warm that night, even through the thick cotton of my nightgown, eased over my breast. We’d made a baby; we’d shared a room for sixteen years and yet my naked body was as much a mystery to him as his was to me.

  ‘Please, Zahra. Please, darling.’ He was thick with that indecent desire Little Flower incited in men. But Little Flower did not draw this heavy desire from him, for he had no idea she existed. His concupiscence was all for Zahra, and the recognition seared deep that Zahra and Little Flower were, in the end, one ezomo.

  The yearning that gnawed my will since Enoch arrived gathered strength as Barry became a supplicant. ‘Let me love you tonight, darling, I’ll be gentle,’ he promised.

  ‘Switch out the light,’ was all I said. He inhaled sharply and fumbled with the switch as he scrambled beneath the covers of my bed.

  ‘Thank you, Zahra, thank you,’ he whispered.

 
; And Barry, dear sweet Barry, who understood how much I hated this part of being a Templeton wife, was ever considerate. He moved my nightgown aside enough for his weakness, his manpart, to tear inside my body as it searched and sought for Daddy’s Little Flower.

  What Barry never uncovered, though, when he climbed on top of me as Zahra lay rigid, was the fear she refused to submit to. She fought the nausea, fought the helplessness as she closed her eyes, so she couldn’t see my Daddy’s face loom above me as he answered the call of that bitch, that whore, Little Flower. Little Flower, who enticed strong men into a shameful, stifled ecstasy.

  My Daddy first came to me when my Mommy went to live in the Sky Palace. ‘Our love must be secret,’ he said, his head thrown back and his hands kneading my titless body, as me, Zahra and Little Flower all sank into the oblivion of a sorrow too great for a little child to bear.

  Barry grunted his pleasure and rolled off me with a small kiss on my cheek. He returned to his own bed, where his contented snores fell into a rhythm that consoled me. My clenched fingers unhooked from the coverlet and I slipped away into another restless, shallow sleep.

  As always, after I’d let him touch me, Barry was jovial the next day, while I was sullen and depressed.

  ‘What are you doing today?’ he asked. He piled his plate high with bacon and eggs, sausages and toast. If I let him, Barry would voraciously satisfy his baser appetites.

  ‘You don’t need all of that,’ I said. Dutifully, he replaced a strip of bacon back in the dish.

  ‘Whatever you say, dear.’

  His silly grin chased my gaze away because, seeing it, Little Flower dared to whisper that the modest love shining in those pale blue eyes was worth the sticky groping of his shaded desires. What terrified—and excited—me was that since Enoch came, since he and Grace smiled at each other, Zahra listened. She listened to the cries of Little Flower and wondered, always wondered, about love and the promises love made when shrouded with hope rather than fear.

  Barry, placid as always, chewed on his sausage. ‘What will you do today?’ he asked. He did understand me, this uncomplicated, and good, husband of mine. He was aware that I could hardly bear to speak to him after he had visited my bed and didn’t wait for my reply, but flipped open his newspaper. ‘Talk of Peace Premature: War Escalates into Further Violence’ blared the headline.

  ‘We have a Hunt Ball committee meeting this afternoon,’ I said over the crackle of crisp newsprint. ‘I’ll visit your mother.’ And Enoch, Little Flower whispered, we’ll visit Enoch too. I ignored her to add, ‘Grace may need some groceries. Elijah can drive us in the Rolls. You take the new car today.’

  He lowered the paper and his face, loose from satiation, was stunned and blank. Much like the expression on my Daddy’s face, the last time he recognised me. As if he was thinking, ‘What’s come over you?’

  It irritated me, that look. I jumped up and crossed to the server under the window where I took one of the neatly laid out bone china tea cups, with its delicate roses and daisies blooming along the outside, creeping up to cascade over its scalloped rim glinting with gold. The matching teapot, filled with aromatic Redbush tea, trembled in my hand, slopping a ragged stain over the pure white sheen of the tablecloth. It reminded me too much of when Daddy visited Little Flower. Afterwards, as he bundled up the white sheet with its bloody evidence, he comforted me, and said, ‘Don’t cry, Little Flower, Daddy’s Little Flower, it won’t hurt again. I love you, darling. I won’t hurt you again.’

  He lied. His love hurt, it always hurt, until Zahra was born. Then, when she grew strong enough, she ended the hurt forever.

  ‘Zahra, dear…’ Barry was hesitant. He sensed I was not myself, but he was too used to me in control to believe it. He could never take advantage of my vulnerabilities, because I showed him so few.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Why, Zahra dear, that’s a wonderful idea. Mother will like that.’

  I tore my gaze away from the mess I had made. Jerking the bell cord to summon the maid to clear the spilt tea, I wished it had been as easy to clean the mess my Daddy had made.

  ‘Enoch will be there as well.’ Vigilant, I watched Barry, for I anticipated another subtle attempt to wrest power from me by using the menace of the stranger. When he showed no reaction, I relaxed.

  Until that look, until I saw the love Grace drew from the tall stranger, I would’ve found excuses—as many as necessary—to stay away from Grace. But Zahra’s longing, Little Flower’s joy, was too strong and I dreamt of a time when I, too, could draw from Enoch the same passion, the same love, that sparked between them.

  ‘Enoch is a good man,’ Barry said. ‘He’ll help you with Mother.’ There was nothing left but polite interest in his face as he disappeared behind his paper.

  I was almost disappointed. Where was the challenge? The counter-attack? Why didn’t he try to exploit my vulnerability to Enoch? Did he not care about the struggle for power in our marriage? I began to wonder if, by inviting Barry into my bed, by showing some small kindness to Grace, I had won The War that had raged between Zahra and men from the day she found her strength as her Daddy quailed before her.

  The maid hustled in and, as I gave her instructions on cleaning the mess I made, I fretted over Barry’s meekness. Always a dove, never a hawk, Barry yet fought for his supremacy within our marriage. He liked to be the boss in our marriage; Barry’s blueprint for morality, the Spirit King’s Eden Book, the record of his holy words, decreed it so. Wives submit yourselves unto your husband…honour thy father and mother…thou shalt not kill…thou shalt not kill. Was I supposed to believe the words of a Spirit King who had never answered a single appeal of mine? I wanted to laugh aloud at the notion.

  I was an unbeliever because Zahra will never be a Little Flower. Zahra did not obey, she ruled. She would never submit to a man’s power, or to the power of a Spirit King who, in transfiguring Little Flower into an ezomo, yet called her doomed nature into obedient submission.

  There lay the root of my dilemma with Barry that morning. Was my submission last night, my surrender in one small battle, arising from my curiosity over the warmth of Barry’s hand on my breast, all that it took to win the greater war? Did the struggle for power—born out of the pain of victimhood—end when one sought love instead?

  I feared that a feather brush of Little Flower’s essence had wrapped itself around the core of Zahra’s steel. As sturdy as I had always thought my strength, the curl of a new uncertainty crumbled the edges of the Zahra I understood, until I didn’t know where she began and I ended.

  The stranger was to blame. Enoch. He taught me dubiety. What else would I learn from him; from those long slender fingers I imagined drifting over piano keys, kissing the ivory with the soft delicate touch of a lover? Swift eagerness filled me and I was impatient as a debutante, her future bright and fresh before her, on the way to a ball.

  I must, I would, see Enoch. I gave the servant one last instruction. ‘Tell Elijah to have the car ready in half-an-hour,’ I said. ‘I’ve lots to do today, and he mustn’t be late.’

  • • •

  The old man wasn’t there when I walked out the front door. I waited, dressed in new clothes. The little pillbox hat on my head matched my lavender shoes and purse. I would not normally buy such a colour but, teaming it with charcoal, I turned it into a striking combination, deeper and richer than the insipid lilac Grace always wore.

  Edgy with impatience, I strode around to the garage searching for Elijah. The old Rolls stood gleaming. The sun’s intensity gave it a sparkle that came from hours of labour. Elijah wasn’t there. When I found him, alone in his small room, tucked away at the back of the old stables, my shoes were dusty and my pert hat drooping.

  I’d never bothered with the servant’s quarters before. Elijah’s tardiness brought me here, but the solitude of the tiny room snared me and strangled my anger. Through the small doorway, I saw him. With slow dignified ceremony, he donned his chauffeur’s uniform.

&nbs
p; He lifted a clean white shirt over his scrawny, singlet-covered chest. Then, he slowly ringed his neck with his navy tie, starred with gold and, with a short sharp tug, centred it.

  Next, he shrugged into the jacket. Braid streamed round the cuffs and bold brass buttons danced down the centre. Elijah paused to make a solemn inspection of his appearance in the mirror. With a satisfied nod, he pinned a small piece of green felt, decked with a silver star engraved with the letters COS to his lapel.

  He turned and lifted his chauffeur’s cap. He held it high and worshiped a Spirit King only he could imagine. ‘Ei, ei, ei, Elijah. It is time,’ he said aloud with a stoic shake of his head. ‘It is time.’ He plopped the cap on his head and tilted it at a jaunty angle.

  Like an ancient charioteer, he was ready for any battle of the highways. He snared the keys to the Rolls from the glass ashtray next to his steel cot, with its thin foam mattress, and tossed them in his hand as he whistled a vigorous march. He stopped dead when he saw me.

  ‘Ma’am Zahra, you did not need to come,’ he smiled. ‘There is no hurry. The Master will wait. Elijah comes.’

  ‘Master Barry doesn’t need the car today. I want it,’ I snap. ‘I’m already late!’

  He shuffled towards me, no sign of remorse on his grizzled black face. The keys jangled in his palm and across my nerves as he gestured for me to move away from the doorway. ‘Shhh, Ma’am Zahra,’ he said. ‘Be still. Be quiet. There is yet time for all that is to come.’

  His startling dignity and his rambles made me uncomfortable. ‘I run this household, Elijah. Not Master Barry. Not Ma’am Grace. Me! Ma’am Zahra! You must obey me! If I say we’re late, we are late!’ I shouted at him. All the old man did was look serenely back. ‘I can fire you, Elijah,’ I added. ‘Remember that.’

  ‘Ei, ei, ei,’ he crooned, ‘so much anger; so much hurt.’ He dared to touch my cheek, much as Grace had done once before. ‘Be brave, little one,’ he murmured, before I could object to his touch. ‘Choose well and there will be no more sorrow.’