by Judy Croome
…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?’
She nodded. ‘The one about the angel.’
‘That’s a good dream,’ I said, to calm her. Since Barry senior died, she had become eccentric. She witnessed spirits and angels every time she closed her eyes. Barry blamed the digitalis; at her age, he said, she confused the dosage sometimes and hallucinated. What harm can it do to indulge her fantasies?
So I asked, ‘Was it the same angel as your other dreams?’
‘The same beautiful angel.’ A smile fluttered around the wrinkles that framed her neatly made-up mouth. ‘Golden light shone from his head, and from his hands, and feet. Like the Spirit King.’
I bit back a sigh, and hoped she was not getting religious. In reality, I’m an unbeliever—when had the Spirit King ever been there?—but in those days I went to the courtyard with Barry every Holy Day without fail. We would fetch his mother and make our way to the little stone sanctuary where Grace and Barry senior had married.
We had also married there. I was fond of it, too. After a nomadic childhood, I enjoyed people greeting me by name.
‘Good morrow, Mrs Templeton,’ they would say. ‘Mr Templeton.’ They would nod their heads with polite deference as we walked to the front pitha, that long bench with its upright back and hard seat, used by Barry’s family for so many generations. Affection would soften the lines on their faces as they added, smiling the smile everyone used when they met Grace, ‘Good morrow, Mrs T, lovely day today.’ She would nod back and murmur a few words, asking after this one’s sister, or that one’s grandchild, as if she were truly interested in their ordinary lives.
But visions of Spirit King? I heaved another inward sigh.
‘It’s your heart medication, Grace.’
‘He was real!’
The presence of the stranger sapped my patience—I was too aware of him, there in the room with us—but I found the strength to agree. ‘If you say so.’
‘Well, I do!’ She was petulant, so unlike her usual self that I glanced at Barry to see if he had noticed. He was busy showing Enoch the family portraits. As they walked past the oils of stern-faced men, dressed in flared-skirted coats and powdered wigs, and stiff-backed boys in knee-breeches and fine lace collars; past the sepia-toned family photographs of more modern generations of Templetons, he did not notice me, not even when he showed the Outlander the beautiful colour photograph of our wedding. Not many people could afford colour photographs at that time. Usually, I loved showing it to people but, taken aback at his openness for he was not one to talk easily to strangers, I didn’t like Barry showing our memories to Enoch.
I let Grace ramble on as I surreptitiously watched them. Enoch’s hair was long and as coal-black as the Levid’s wings. This man used no pomade to keep his hair slicked into place, and it fell with careless abandon onto his forehead.
Uncontrolled and irresponsible. Typical of his sort. But, as he peered up and caught me staring, my heart gave a surplus little beat.
Sea eyes. He had eyes as ambiguous as the sea that looked up at me when I stood in my rose garden, the bay stretched out below. Grey, or perhaps blue, it didn’t matter. I was unable to drop my gaze, not even when his lips moved in chilling slow motion, like a nightmare, when one is calling for help, calling and calling, but no sound comes out and one cannot tell the difference between the nightmare and the reality.
‘Little Flower,’ he said, and his lips curved in a smile that promised me all the love in the world. I blinked, once, twice, and heard him murmur again. ‘Little Flower…’
‘What?’ The harsh question sprang from deep within me, with no pretence of politeness.
Who had told him what my Daddy used to call me? Not even Barry knew Daddy’s special girlhood name for me was “Little Flower.” It was a secret, our secret. No one had called me that for years, not since Daddy went senile. I visited him weekly in the home; at times I hoped he’d recognise me and see what I’d become. Sometimes I even longed for him to call me Little Flower again, in that low, loving way. He never did; all that was past, gone when that childish self plunged deep into the oc
ean of memories still crowding my heart.
‘What did you call me?’ I demanded. Barry’s eyebrows rose, stretching his mouth into a little round “o” of surprise.
‘Zahra!’ His eyes, as pale a blue as Grace’s, slid towards Enoch’s face, worried what the stranger would think. ‘Don’t be rude.’
‘He called me…he called me…’ I faltered, scowling at Enoch who, tranquil and watchful, stood next to my husband.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Enoch didn’t say a word!’ Barry smiled at the stranger, a quick smile that disappeared into uncertainty. ‘The heat makes my wife anxious.’ He looked at me, then back at the stranger. ‘You didn’t say anything. Did you?’
I surged upright, as clumsy and graceless with nerves as I was before I copied Grace’s society manners and they became an integral part of Mrs Zahra Templeton. ‘I don’t need you speaking on my behalf, Bakari.’ I coldly called him by his birth name, so he would know my displeasure. ‘He called me Little Flower. He did. I heard him!’
‘Your flowers.’ Enoch’s calm was soporific; like two puppets under the control of a master puppeteer, Barry and I stopped glaring at each other and turned to him. ‘Your flowers are beautiful.’ He pointed at the white roses, vivid with the scent of the garden. ‘That’s all I said.’
‘My flowers?’
‘Do you grow them yourself?’
‘Yes,’ I said, dazed and uncertain. Could I have been wrong? But his face…his face told me I wasn’t and, eager to answer his call, Little Flower woke from her oblivion in the ocean that was my heart.
Too afraid to say more, I moved across the room, slower even than Grace’s shuffle with her cane, until I stood by the bell pull. I clasped it; the golden tapestry roses spiralling down a woven daisy chain were rough in the palm of my hand. ‘I’ll order tea,’ I said, all emotion leached from my words. I was Mrs Zahra Templeton again and spoke with a dignified, sharp-edged clarity. Tightening my grip on the bell pull, I gave a hard, confident tug.
A servant would soon scuttle in, laden with the heavy silver tray and matching tea set but, before she arrived, Grace, in a thin thread of eerie sound floating across the room, said, ‘He’s here.’ Stillness fell, brushing the nape of my neck with arcane mysteries: a moment in life with no rational explanation, only the potential to change me forever.
I couldn’t even pretend to have patience with the crazy old woman. ‘Deal with your mother, Barry.’
As I was in control again, more like my usual self, he was vague and uncertain, unsure what had happened. ‘Who is in the room, Mother?’ Barry left Enoch’s side and hurried to the Victorian parlour chair she sat in, the one with the wide ruby damask seat and ornate gilt decorations along the arms and back making it appear too heavy for its thin cabriole legs.
‘The angel.’ Her face was beatific, her eyes glazed with a light I was unable to comprehend. ‘Can you feel him? Barry—Zahra—he’s here!’ She pointed past us, and the silent stranger. ‘Look!’ she gasped, holding out her bony arm and there, among the wrinkles and the liver spots marking the inexorable decay of her body, gooseflesh raised the thin, grey hair scattered on her forearm. ‘He’s here,’ she whispered, and fell back into the chair, her face raised in bliss.
Barry’s eyes sought mine. Too aware of the outsider among us, witnessing another of Grace’s embarrassing visions, I moved next to my husband while he, Enoch, stayed across the room. He watched us, assessed us, as Barry crouched next to his mother, his hand on her arm and I stood over them, protecting them from his searing gaze.
‘You’re dreaming, Grace,’ I said. Ignoring the stranger as best I could, I shook her shoulder vigorously, the soft silk of her dress cool as my palm pressed into the fragile bone and flesh. ‘I’ll pour you some tea.’ I was pleased when the chimerical look in her eyes faded, replaced with the ordinary confusion of the elderly. ‘And some cake to eat,’ I added. ‘You’ll enjoy that.’
‘Crumpets.’
‘No, dear. Macaroons, your favourites.’
‘Oh.’ She sounded dazed. Her eyes skittered around the room, arrested by the tall man who stood so quietly and dissected us with his piercing gaze. Why did he judge every action I made? He had no right to judge his betters.
‘Enoch,’ Grace said. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Oh, there you are!’ Delighted as a child who had discovered a lost toy, she nodded once or twice and rested her chin on her chest. A contented smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. ‘I like you, Enoch, you’re a sensible man.’
‘I like you too, Mrs T.’ He spoke with such gentleness I wanted to weep. How did a man learn to be so tender? The best Barry could offer was a gruff comfort, which mortified him, and thus discomforted me.
‘You have so much to do, Enoch,’ Grace said. Ignoring Barry’s offered arm, she held out a trembling hand to the other man and, with child-like innocence, pleaded with him. ‘Please don’t go yet.’
I placed two delicate macaroons, joined with a filling of almond-scented cream, on a plate, taking care to arrange them just so next to the small silver cake fork. Returning to Grace’s side, I handed the plate to her, wondering why waiting for his answer was like having the breath squeezed from my body.
‘I won’t leave yet,’ he said. ‘Not until I’ve finished all that you want me to do.’
Wanting to ask what she had employed him for, and inexplicably relieved by a promise that wasn’t mine to ask for, I accidentally let the plate slip from my hand with a crash loud enough to make all of us jump. I mumbled an apology and bent to scrape up the pieces of china and crumbs, glad to hide my face, and the turmoil a stranger’s promise to an old woman had provoked, behind a servant’s work.
• • •
They left about an hour later, Enoch on one side of Grace and Barry on the other. The three of them made a quaint sight. The beginnings of Barry’s middle-aged spread made him appear shorter than he was. Grace, affable as ever, but frail, clung to the arms of her son and Enoch.
Enoch, the stranger, but a stranger no longer. Tall and lean, his immense height dwarfed both Grace and Barry. But more than his height drew me to him. There was, in the way he moved, a rhythm, a flow that tempted me.
‘Enoch!’ I cried. Why did I call? I didn’t want him here, but couldn’t conquer the urge to have him stay, even if for a little while longer. ‘Wait!’
They stopped, and stared back. Barry was puzzled and a little bit irritated. Grace smiled and sent a vague, approving nod in my direction.
Enoch…Enoch stood reposed and watchful. Why had I called him?
‘I have a gift for you,’ I blurted. Another flush of heat swamped my cheeks. When last had I acted on impulse? I couldn’t remember. As fickle as the child Little Flower once was, I ran back into the mansion and scooped the bunch of white roses out of their bowl.
He met me at the top of the stairs and I stopped, uncertain now that he was so close and the full force of his presence faced me.
‘Are those for me?’ he asked. the warm glow in his eyes gave me the courage to answer.
‘For your room. Grace will have a vase in the kitchen cupboard under the stove.’
He buried his nose in their sweet fragrance. ‘Thank you, little one.’
I laughed to cover the perplexing moisture in my eyes. ‘You’re so tall; everyone must be little to you.’
Enoch smiled over the blooms, but said no more. He turned and, pausing to chat with the obsequious Elijah, who stopped polishing the Rolls to doff his cap and nod eagerly at whatever the Outlander was saying, walked back to where the others waited, clutching my wet and drooping offering in his hands.
I watched them go. I heard the motor groan, then kick into life. The garden sparrows fluttered to the safety of the air and the smell of diesel burnt my nostrils. None of it touched me, until the car that carried him away disappeared with a spurt of energy around the corner and out the elaborate wrought-iron gates protecting the entrance to my mansion.
<
br /> ‘Don’t be sad, ma’am,’ Elijah said. ‘The Master will return.’
Finished with the car’s wash, he was dressed in his chauffeur’s uniform. He kept it as clean and shiny as the old Rolls, not that he often drove us anywhere. He thought the speed limit was under thirty and, besides, Barry preferred to drive himself in his new Ford motor car, so mostly Elijah drove Grace where she wanted to go.
‘I’m not sad, Elijah,’ I lied, for melancholy shrouded me as the early morning fog often blurred the view of the sea from the rose garden. How did I explain my absurd reaction to the stranger? ‘Barry will be back.’
Elijah pushed himself away from where he leaned on the Rolls. He staggered with old age but steadied himself. ‘Not Master Barry, ma’am. The other Master.’
Did I fear never seeing Enoch again? The comfort I took in the old servant’s words surprised me. I breathed out, then in, slow and easy until the smell of the sea, salty and sharp, rustled through the rose garden and swirled around my nostrils.
When I was calm, I walked back inside. I crossed the threshold of the mansion that, in the years since I met Barry junior, had become the only real home I ever had. I stopped and gazed at the table, bare now, except for droplets of water pooling on its shiny surface around the base of a crystal vase, half filled with murky water, a few forlorn leaves left floating on its surface.
Why was I so stupid? Why had I given Enoch the flowers? I found no answer in the empty bowl and unbidden tears returned to overwhelm me. For once, I forgot my dignity. I ran helter-skelter up the stairs to lock myself in my bedroom.
I was still there when Barry returned. And I did not come out, not even when the redemptive darkness of another night descended; silencing everything but the slow, heavy thump of my heart and the memory of Little Flower’s incessant weeping.
