by Judy Croome
And there was Enoch. He, too, was real, and precious. The new Prior, young Ajani, slender but with a hint of the portliness that would plague him in his older years already showing around his waist, would chant the liturgy with off-key enthusiasm. And I, I would dream of Enoch and the solid safety of his arms around me as the world exploded into an anarchy of blood and dust and wildly neighing horses.
Beautiful Enoch, sitting next to Grace at the other end of the pitha. Always next to Grace, but never next to me.
• • •
A light touch on my wrist reminded me that I sat, not in the pithas of the Court of St Jerome, but keeping a solitary watch in the small private hospital room that was my Daddy’s home.
‘Visiting hours are over, Mrs Templeton,’ the young nurse said. She might have been attractive if freckles hadn’t covered her face and the white cap she wore had not scraped her hair back. ‘Was there any sign today?’
‘No movement.’
I rose and gathered my belongings. The small suitcase with the dirty pyjamas I had to wash and return; my handbag and my jersey, in case the weather turned while I was here, as it often did when the sea was angry at this old city. ‘Thank you,’ I added and smiled as she rushed to help me. I must have captured Grace’s graciousness correctly this time, for she blushed. Her mouth opened and closed until she couldn’t stop the words she wanted to speak.
‘You’re such a good person, Mrs Templeton,’ she blurted. Her freckles turned a deeper brown at her own temerity. ‘To visit so often.’
‘I know my duty,’ I said abruptly.
‘He’s lucky you love him so much. Too many of our patients never have any visitors, especially those who’ve been here as long as your uncle has.’
Her words disturbed me and Little Flower shifted uneasily when she heard the talk of love. She coveted it too much and, Enoch too, and so it tempted her ezomo. I clutched the suitcase harder, shifting closer to the door as I struggled to keep her tamed. To remind Little Flower of the truth, and to snub the nurse and her stupid talk of loving this empty man lying on the bed, I repeated, ‘It’s a duty. That’s all: duty. Love has nothing to do with it.’
I left the room in a rush, for the look in the young nurse’s eyes changed from admiration to an unbearable pity. What was there to pity about me? Zahra was strong; she would always be stronger than Little Flower. The curse called love, which consumed Little Flower’s life, would never touch me. Not ever. Not as long as Zahra kept love at bay and kept herself strong and safe, an island in a stormy sea.
• • •
I saw Enoch again when he brought Grace to clear out Elijah’s meagre possessions. Enoch rested his palm protectively in the small of her back and guided her away from me. They went to the back of the house where the servants’ quarters stood, tucked out of sight of those who didn’t care to look too closely at what didn’t concern them.
It ate away at me. Here was another who revered Grace, that mad old woman who saw the Spirit King in her dreams and talked to angels in my sitting room. I watched until they disappeared before returning to the mansion, which used to belong to Grace but was now mine, and I called for the servants.
When Enoch brought Grace back, I was ready.
‘Come inside for tea and crumpets,’ I said.
‘My favourites? Crumpets?’ Grace asked. ‘Not macaroons?’
I heard she was pleased, but I watched Enoch, not her. He blinked with a surprise that pleased me; a veil dropped off his eyes, those eyes that peered into me from the depths of an ocean that inexorably beckoned me into unchartered waters. I dropped my gaze, half-afraid he saw into my secrets and realised I made the crumpets, not to please Grace, but to please him.
I took Grace’s arm and helped her up the stairs. ‘Crumpets. Your favourites, Grace, made especially for you.’
I hoped Enoch believed me. I hoped he would look at me as he looked at Grace. For, since the day he put his arms around me, since I breathed him in, I have longed for him to touch me once more. To have him rest a hand on my back or a finger on my cheek with the same tenderness he reserved for Grace, Saint Grace, but never for me, not until that day the rebels had attacked us.
Little Flower’s clamour for his attention became louder each day, until her cries drove me wild and I turned to Barry each night. With a civility that hid my growing panic, I invited him across to my bed. It didn’t help. Little Flower cried and cried for Enoch; she longed for him, only him.
‘How are the arrangements for the Hunt Ball coming along, Zahra dear?’ Grace asked. Childlike in her enjoyment of the crumpets she scooped the last drop of warm honey with a dainty Victorian spoon Barry bought me from one of his trips to the Old Land.
‘We’ve had a good response this year,’ I said. ‘The best. We’ve had miraculous donations pour in from the most unexpected sources.’
They shared a glance, which annoyed me, so I added, ‘I’m the chairwoman this year.’ When Grace smiled at me—that irksome, affable smile that drew everyone to her—I was ashamed of my boast. That smile of hers bewitched even me, for, as she laid the tips of her fingers on my arm and bent towards me, I held my breath and longed for her praise, perhaps even her love. But I knew I should neither expect it nor want it, for love made me too brittle, too easily broken.
‘You’ve done well,’ she said and my body sighed as muscles, inadvertently tensed, relaxed. ‘But sometimes a small miracle helps too!’ She peeped across at Enoch in a way that said they shared a secret. One that belonged to them and them alone. I ached. I could never share what they had, for there was a force, an insurmountable barrier, binding them together and locking me out.
I stood, my cup clattering in the saucer. Grace started at the noise and it pleased me that her link with Enoch shattered. He did not move. He sat and watched me with those sea eyes of his, until Little Flower’s cries, which daily became as raucous as the gulls that circled above the distant ocean beyond the mansion gates, nearly defeated me.
I dug deep to silence her and ignore Enoch. From somewhere I found a smile to rival Grace’s dignity. ‘Will you be coming to the Hunt Ball this year, Grace? Barry and I have a few seats left at our table.’
‘Me, dear?’ Grace laughed. ‘I haven’t danced in years. Besides,’ she added as her smile drifted into a frown, ‘I don’t like the thought of hunting those poor animals.’
‘It’s a name, Grace, a name! One to remind us of the Old Land.’
‘But we’re not in the Old Land, are we, dear? Things should be different here.’
I sighed and agreed and, to divert her from another ramble, said ‘Barry will dance with you.’
‘My Barry?’ she asked. A light descended on her face and coloured it with love and memories.
‘Your Barry’s dead,’ I said harshly, upset by her glow, and vexed, because I never expected her to be this difficult to manage. If she did not come to the ball, neither would Enoch. ‘Barry junior will dance with you.’
‘I’ll also dance with you, Mrs T,’ Enoch said.
‘Will you, Enoch? Will you come and dance with me?’
He rose from the table, his body relaxed, but strong. His nod weakened me, even as Little Flower grew in strength and hunger. I shivered and wondered what would happen, if ever Little Flower’s ezomo broke free and Zahra lost The War.
• • •
I inspected my appearance in the long mirror in the bathroom.
As he had stroked my long, chestnut brown hair and dotted kisses all over my high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, my Daddy had called Little Flower beautiful. I preferred to call myself handsome. Zahra was a handsome woman, a strong woman. Tonight, I was pleased with my efforts. I was as Grace must have been at my age: elegant and refined, born to the position of a Templeton wife.
Barry came into the bathroom so I could fasten his bowtie. As I stood close to him, he absorbed my emerald green gown, with its tight satin bodice and flaring skirt, and his plump, ordinary face flattened and hardened with a h
ungry edge. He didn’t understand that Little Flower, not I, invited him across to my bed at night. My fingers, busy with the intricate knot, paused as I listened inward, to hear if Little Flower was awake.
There was no sign of her yet. No danger that she would rise and consume me with her desires. I allowed myself to enjoy the flick of excitement that heated my body as Barry swayed forward. He almost kissed me, until he realised it would smudge my make-up. As he brushed against my senses, there was a sharp, taut edge to my breathing. I wanted to call it love. But love was too dangerous a word and I let it fall from my thoughts.
‘Zahra,’ he said. He clasped my hands instead and lifted them to his lips, warm, and a little bit damp, even through the elbow-length black satin gloves I wore. ‘You’re more beautiful than ever tonight.’ He pressed my hands one last time and released them.
‘You’re handsome,’ I said. Tonight he was. His black dinner suit added stature to his placid frame and, with his thinning sandy hair neatly oiled into place, he looked suave, if a bit uncomfortable, in his finery.
The tenderness he evoked in me at night rose; too much, too quickly, for it called to Little Flower. I moved to break the spell of that small bathroom, cloudy with steam from my bath and redolent with the sharp, spring smell of the herbal oil I used to soften my skin.
‘We’d better hurry.’ I said and walked past him into the main bedroom where I picked up my fur coat. The nights were not yet cold enough, but it added a final veneer of wealth to my appearance that I enjoyed. It went well with my necklace, restrung after Enoch had collected each of the scattered pearls from around the body of the young rebel who had died for his greed. ‘I must be there early.’
‘They won’t start the ball without you,’ Barry said.
I ignored him. I wanted to stand at the head of the receiving line when Grace appeared. She would bring Enoch to the ball and I wanted him to see that I, too, was beautiful.
They arrived late. So late, I had begun to think Grace, to deny me this night with Enoch, had taken to her sickbed. The excitement that had quivered through me for days started to congeal into anger as deep as Zahra’s was, the day she went to find her Daddy’s gun. Before it could grow, before it consumed me as thoroughly as it had before, they were there.
Enoch was resplendent in his tuxedo, his over-long hair tied back with a thin string. His hands, except for the faint blue of his tattooed fingers, were white and pure as they emerged from the blackness of his sleeves. I remembered their warmth, and their slender strength, as they embraced both Grace and I in their safety, that day we lay face down in the dirt, with only Enoch and Elijah between a miserable lonely death and us.
‘You came,’ I said, looking at Grace, but speaking to him. ‘You didn’t change your mind.’
‘I came, dear,’ Grace said and turned to him. She gave a little upward peek at his face, sombre and sterner than I’d ever seen it. ‘Although Enoch said you wouldn’t be ready for us.’
‘I’m ready.’ I looked at him, confused by the inscrutable glance he threw me. ‘I’ve been ready for weeks.’
‘Yes, dear, and I told Enoch so. Didn’t I?’
‘You should be in bed, Mrs T.’ I sensed an undertone between them and Little Flower stirred, anxious and afraid, for she wanted what this man offered Grace. She wanted it badly, and I had begun to want it too.
Grace clicked her tongue at him. ‘Don’t fuss, Enoch, dear.’
‘The time is too close,’ he said. ‘You should be resting.’
‘I want to dance tonight,’ she said. She leaned her head back on his shoulders and her hair shone silver. Mischievous charm lent her the face of an angel as the dull light pouring out of the ballroom softened the highways of age that marked her.
‘You can dance as much as you want to,’ I said.
‘Wonderful. Will you dance too?’
‘When I can.’
‘Tonight is your night, dear,’ she said. ‘You must embrace it with your heart.’ Her fingers brushed my chest, there where my heart began to thud faster. ‘Dance with all the young men you can, but leave time for Enoch. He’s the one you must dance with tonight. You can be as carefree as a young girl, like a little flower, when it’s young and precious!’
Grace radiated a promise of redemption and, at her name—surely a strange coincidence, for where would Grace have learnt it?—Little Flower surged up from the depths. I was flooded with the same excitement that consumed her and could no longer hold back the waves of desire. They rose and rose as Little Flower did. She flexed her strength and sucked me into a whirlpool of great need, an irresistible need: I longed to plunge into Enoch’s arms. I wanted to beg him to love me, to love Little Flower as she longed to be loved. To love her as he loved Grace, so that I, too, could wear the mantle of Saint Grace’s peace, and Little Flower’s hunger could destroy me no longer.
• • •
Hours passed and I had yet to stand in his arms. Long hours of a loneliness I hadn’t felt since Little Flower cried for help in front of a heartless wooden nova.
Barry swept me out of a vigorous foxtrot. ‘I must rest,’ he puffed. His face, his amiable face, shone with perspiration and happiness as we sat back at the table. Roses cascaded down the edge of crystal vases and the heavy silver cutlery set on white damask tablecloths lent a suitable dignity to the occasion.
‘You’re both so happy,’ Grace beamed, in a gentle, childlike way, as she often did when pleased. ‘Are you enjoying yourselves?’
‘My wife is the most beautiful woman in the room tonight,’ Barry said. He was proud of me and eased an arm around the back of my chair so his fingers could play a tune of pleasure along my satin-covered shoulders.
I despised myself for the way I bloomed under his praise, for I had never needed Barry’s approval before. My need dislocated the power in our marriage back into his hands and I remembered the way Little Flower always sought her Daddy’s approval, an approval that only ever came in the night when Daddy called it love.
Barry needed longer than a few minutes rest to catch his breath. I shifted in my seat so my shoulders slipped free of his touch. ‘Let’s dance,’ I said.
‘Not me,’ he said. Exhaling, he pulled out his handkerchief to mop his forehead. ‘You dance if you want to.’
‘Enoch will dance with you,’ Grace chimed in, as I had wanted, as I had hoped she would. ‘You haven’t danced with Enoch yet.’ She looked at him expectantly, as did I, and Barry. Did I alone see sadness scurry across Enoch’s face?
The moment I stepped into his arms, the world and all its glitter receded. But he was uncomfortable with me in his arms and yet we were no closer than he had held Grace when they danced. He held me with one reluctant arm around my waist and the other clasping my hand at shoulder height as the opening bars of a waltz started. Something fierce and proud forced me to confront his resistance.
‘If the dance steps are unfamiliar,’ I said, ‘we can return to the table. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.’
Those eyes. Oh, those eyes! They flickered with layers and made me want to weep as I stared into them, haughty to hide my hurt. And there, in-between the layers, I imagined I saw a young girl. She ran free and happy and loved. Her dark hair flew out behind her as her Daddy’s strong, safe arms picked her up and swung her round and round, until she screamed with laughter, her face alive with joy and innocence.
‘I can waltz,’ Enoch said eventually. ‘But it’s too soon.’
‘For what?’
‘For us to dance.’
‘You’ve danced with everyone else at our table! I’ve waited hours tonight!’
‘It’s too soon for us,’ he said. ‘You won’t understand yet.’ His eyes flared with the shadow of a movement and I realised the carefree child who danced in there was me, as we twirled and twirled around the dance floor.
I did understand. I understood that he was wrong. It would never be too soon for him to hold me in his arms once more, so I let myself sink into his embrace.
I didn’t even try to fight Little Flower anymore. ‘Let’s go outside, onto the balcony,’ I said, and wedged myself along his length. In my imagination, fingers were already closing over my breast. Not my Daddy’s hateful grip or even Barry’s clumsy love. This time they were another man’s fingers, as light and as graceful as the breath of wind that resonated with the sweet, sweet music of the ocean.
He tried to move away, but I clung. I clung to him so tightly his shiver of resignation slid through me as well. I no longer cared. I could no longer resist Little Flower.
‘It’s too soon for you,’ he whispered. His breath rippled the strands of my hair that fell loose from the chignon with which I’d completed my careful toilette. ‘Patience, child, have patience.’
‘Now,’ I demanded. ‘Now.’
Perhaps because Zahra’s will was so strong; or perhaps because he heard Little Flower’s desperation, on the next beat of music, he swung us effortlessly in a new direction, out of the ballroom and into a dark, isolated corner of the balcony.
I didn’t wait for him to bend his head. I let Little Flower free. I let her loose. She reached and pulled his head down so she could savour his lips. This tide that rose in me was not the cunning deceit of an ezomo, but love. And so I showed him how I could love him in return and gave him Little Flower’s love. In the safety of his arms, I loved him as I loved my Daddy, as I’ve loved no man—no, not even Barry—since my Daddy last held me in his arms.
For a time beyond time I clung to him until, with slow regret, it penetrated my euphoria that he did not love me back. He stood there, dappled with the moonlight that crept into the corner where we stood, his arms loose at his sides and his body unresponsive and unloving.
All the warmth drained out of me. When my Daddy had held me, he had called me his love, his Little Flower, and he would say he didn’t mean to hurt me, but love hurt, sometimes love hurt. But my Daddy’s love never hurt as much as Enoch’s immobility did, as I offered him all the love I had and he did not call me beloved.