Dancing In The Shadows of Love (10 page)

‘Eighty-five years is a long time, Granny Zahra,’ she said. ‘You’ve had so much more time than most people.’

‘Time is never enough, never enough. The memories are too many.’

‘But it’s good to have memories.’ A smile as swift as a butterfly lifted the edges of her mouth. ‘I want to make memories with Dawud. Memories and friends and babies.’ Heat licked along her veins, making her talk of safer matters. ‘Dawud and I want to make memories of a happy family.’ A perfect family, she added to herself, as different to her imperfect childhood as possible. ‘Those will be the memories to hold onto.’

‘There’ll be other memories. The ones etched onto your mind with a blunt blade. The ones you’ll wish you never made.’

‘I don’t think so, Granny Zahra.’

She laughed a half-genuine laugh. These days, Jamila hardly ever regretted her choices because, every word, every action, she evaluated in her own mind as she checked her inner benchmark: the word of
Spirit King
. The world, she believed, would be a better place if more people did the same. Then, like buried treasures saved for the paucity of old age, one could haul the good memories out and forget the others.

‘Don’t be so sure, child. You can’t always control your memories.’

‘If not me, then who?’

‘Fate.’

‘Oh, Granny Zahra!’ Jamila gave a queer little laugh. ‘There is no Fate.’ She allowed for a mind trained in a time when humanity was far more naïve than today. ‘The
Spirit King
gave us free will. We can choose what we do.’

‘The
Spirit King
, Fate—there’s no difference in the lies people tell themselves.’ Petulance slurred the words, but the old woman’s eyes were bright with challenge. ‘What do you know of free will, child? Your life has hardly begun. You don’t have enough memories yet! How can you know what suffering is?’

The pain that always hovered came alive. It clenched inside Jamila as her
ezomos
scavenged in the damp fertile blackness of her unconscious. The echo of coins clattering into a tin mug; the forlorn faces of the young brothers she had abandoned; and the scent of sex under a moonlit night all threatened to bedevil her composure. She tamped the memories down, crushing them back into the cellars in her mind. Had Granny Zahra forgotten where she came from?

Granny Zahra’s words were a joke. To say Jamila, who had suffered so much, didn’t understand making a choice! To say that she, whose new life Daren Samanya had almost destroyed with his seduction of her innocence, had not suffered…! Jamila took a deep, calming breath. The old woman had lived too comfortable a life to be able to understand the buried afflictions of another’s less privileged life.

‘I’ve suffered.’ She could explain her pain in no other way. ‘When you’re different, people can be cruel.’

‘Jamila, child, you don’t suffer from what other people do to you. Real suffering comes from what you do to others.’

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.

“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.’