Dancing in the Shadows of Love

by Judy Croome

  His singsong words drew from me an ache, prophetic in its depth, for pardon and for liberation. And Little Flower, awakened by Enoch, crushed by Zahra, heard his sweet melody too. She stirred on the ocean floor, stirred in her silence, and the sound of her tears as they began to fall made me blink, and swallow down hard on my own tears. Before he saw my weakness, I swung away from him, unable to chastise him for making me late and for making me feel what I did not want to feel.

  I waited at the car. Every sense stretched behind me to listen to the huff of his breathing, his old man’s shuffle, as he came alongside me and opened the door. I slid, with blessed relief, into the gloomy interior of the car. He took his time starting it, this ancient chariot he loved as much as Barry did.

  ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  ‘Take me to Ma’am Grace,’ I said. ‘Hurry.’ I heard his meek ‘Yes, Ma’am’ as I slammed shut the window that kept us separate. He steered the car at a stately pace down the driveway and not even the scenic view of the ocean held my attention.

  I hauled out my compact and stared at myself in the mirror. I no longer recognised the face reflected back. Blurred lips, puffy cheeks and an unfamiliar glint turned my eyes from steel-grey to soft silver.

  What was happening? I couldn’t answer my own question and spent the rest of the trip repairing the ravages of an inner disintegration, unexpected and unwanted.

  I had subdued the restlessness, the havoc of Little Flower’s siren song, by the time we arrived at Grace’s cottage. A small place, certainly, after the spacious Templeton mansion, but more than adequate for an old woman’s needs.

  As I climbed out the car and saw Enoch there, at the bottom of Grace’s porch, one long, elegant foot on the lowest step as he cleaned his shoes with a rag, I heard Little Flower’s faint whispering of the stranger’s name. ‘Enoch,’ I said and ignored the swift surge of pleasure as he straightened to his full height at my approach. I was little again, smaller, and more innocent, than I was before even Little Flower existed ‘Are you well?’

  I waited for his answer and soothed my nerves with promises to explore whatever his ambiguous gaze meant. A tin of polish stuck out of the top of a small wooden box next to him, alongside a brush, stained brown with his labours. The faint blue tattoos flashed and L-O-V-E disappeared into P-E-A-C-E and P-E-A-C-E into L-O-V-E as he folded the shoeshine rag into a neat square and dropped it back into the box, before nudging the lid shut with his toe. ‘I am well,’ he said. ‘And you?’

  ‘Also well,’ I said and ran out of words. All my years of practice, all my hours of etiquette lessons, deserted me when I needed them most. I searched for something to say, but with Enoch so near, all thought was erased until my mind was a blank tablet that only he could write on.

  ‘Are you here to see Grace, Mrs Templeton?’ he asked and looked at me.

  Such a look, his unspoken promise pitched me over a precipice I hadn’t expected and, touched with such downy eagerness I could scarcely believe what I offered, I said, ‘Call me Little Flower.’

  ‘I will,’ he replied. He smiled and dazzled me. I blinked. I was sure there was another face there. One I didn’t recognise, and yet familiar, because I sensed it had been with me, and in me, long ago. I had seen it at the court of St Jerome, carved into the nova that hung above the altar.

  Startled, I heard the echo of my invitation and fell towards him, but stopped myself in time. ‘Zahra,’ I said, too loudly. ‘I said call me Zahra.’

  ‘I will,’ he said.

  My thoughts stuttered into life as he took my elbow and guided me up the stairs to a chair on the porch. ‘Let me fetch Mrs T. She’ll be pleased you’ve come to visit.’

  ‘And you,’ I burst out. My expensive lipstick was new on the market and was supposed to keep my lips plump and moist, but they were dry. I licked them, adding, ‘I’ve also come to you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Another smile sighed over his lips. I was lost; lost to Little Flower’s clamour and lost to Zahra’s desire, for that smile blistered my heart and promised me a world I could not comprehend: the Eden he shared with Grace.

  ‘I’ll be here,’ he said, ‘when you’re ready,’ and disappeared into the house. I blinked, for I foolishly imagined that I saw him seep through the walls before I noticed the door he must have used.

  ‘I am ready,’ I whispered to no one, except the spirit of Elijah, patiently waiting by the old Rolls.

  But for what was I ready? Deep inside myself, there was that which lived below Zahra, below even Little Flower. For a moment I dreamt that whatever Enoch brought me would calm the roiling, impenetrable ocean consuming the better part of me; the part of me no one had ever touched before; the part of me that was there before time began: call it my essence, if you will, or call it love.

  The front door, panelled and painted white with the top panel made of exquisitely leaded glass, opened and they came out of the cottage. Grace’s head did not reach his breast and her face—oh, the Spirit King! Her face!—roused in me such discontent it rivalled the Great Errors of Little Flower.

  Grace shimmered with joy. Her grey hair shone, touched by a silver halo, and there was that love again, that all-encompassing, all-embracing oneness between them, which made it difficult to see where she ended and where Enoch, my Enoch, began.

  She clapped her hands with delight. ‘Zahra, dear. You came!’ Grace turned and searched for Enoch. He glided across to her and, almost like a lover, pushed back a grey curl that had fallen loose from under her pale green hat, merrily tilted behind her ear.

  ‘I told you she would, Mrs T,’ Enoch said. They shared a glance of such love, such devotion; I did not even try to contain my envy.

  I was so horribly, horribly jealous. The edges of my view melted with it, until I saw them twice. Not in duplicate, but twice: for they were there, and not there. What was there was a tall man bending solicitously over an old woman. What was not there was a glowing golden silhouette. It leaked into Grace, so that they consumed each other, and become one, before it faded and they slipped apart into two. As the haze in my eyes cleared, Enoch stepped back to close the door behind them. He clasped her elbow and led her out onto the porch where I waited.

  I crushed my bright lavender bag. The metal clasp absorbed the heat of my fury and burned my palms. I gasped with pain and tossed the bag to the ground, where it spilled its secrets, even as Zahra and Little Flower rivalled each other with their cries of woe and I could not move for the cacophony they raised inside my head.

  ‘Ei, ei, ei. What’s this, Ma’am Zahra?’ Elijah was there; he had come in from the shadows. He stood over me, between me and the other two. His old man’s bones creaked as he sunk to his haunches and scooped up the bag and its contents. I stared at him numbly. As he handed them back, his brown eyes were solemn under the cheerful peak of his cap. ‘Be still,’ he murmured. ‘Be still. There is yet time.’

  His rambles coalesced into a great and unexpected insight. Yes, I hissed to myself, there was time. I was young and Grace was old, and there was time for Zahra to take all that Grace was born to and all that Little Flower was denied.

  ‘Thank you, Elijah,’ I said. His kindness made me regret my earlier threat to fire him. I wanted to reassure him, and said, ‘Master Barry is right when he says you’re the best driver for the Rolls. He says no one else will ever drive it.’

  Elijah bobbed his head so vigorously his cap was in danger of falling off. ‘Master Barry is sometimes too clever,’ he chuckled, his old wrinkled face alight with some secret glee. He thumbed his cap back and, his chest strained by too much laughter, started coughing.

  Grace and Enoch hurried towards him. She smiled at Elijah and, clasping his hand gently between hers, asked how he was as Enoch patted his back until the fit was over.

  We all headed to the Rolls. I slotted away every action, every expression, the old woman used. It would come in handy when I had to visit the sick, when Grace’s time was over and mine had begun.

  ‘Barry phoned me an
d told me you would take me shopping,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be too busy.’ She slipped her hand over my arm. I was unable to pull away as I usually do, for Enoch watched and absorbed and assessed my reactions as Grace asked, ‘Will you drive with me to the farm, dear? The children need supplies.’

  With Enoch there, not a foot away from us, I said a simple, reluctant, ‘Yes.’

  I hated that road through the Droogrivier Mountains. It twisted and turned through a wasteland of stony inclines until it broke free into the flatlands. But there was no escape from the desolation, for Grace’s strays filled the Templeton farm: the poor, the sick, and the needy. Children with eyes too big for their faces and adults with the dumbness of poverty leaching the life out of their limbs. More than the dust choked me when we went there. Memories rushed in. I’d come too far to let these pieces of human driftwood destroy all Zahra had fought for.

  I went with Grace that day hoping, perhaps, that the watchful gaze of Enoch would shine with approval, as well as with appraisal, and he would accept that I could offer him a love greater than any he received from Grace.

  We stopped at the corner grocery store, and Grace stocked the boot of the Rolls full. Soon we left the sea and the city behind us. There was little conversation between us; the drone of the car’s engine and the hushed sounds of Enoch and Elijah chatting in the front seat lulled us into that pleasant realm halfway between sleep and wakefulness.

  The cars we passed diminished in number as the road climbed upward through the mountain pass that would take us to the farm. Eventually, even Elijah ran out of conversation and I slipped deeper into sleep. When I saw the horsemen, I thought I was dreaming.

  Four men, draped in an absurd mixture of flowing black robes and khaki uniforms, rode alongside the road. They waved ancient rifles and shook them in the air. Incredibly, they gained on the Rolls. I watched them dreamily for I did not believe they were real.

  ‘It is time,’ I heard Elijah say, and I wanted to ask ‘Time for what?’ but my tongue was thick and sluggish and I couldn’t form the question.

  Enoch leaned across and gripped his bicep. ‘Have courage, my seer. There is nothing to fear from these men, for the Master is always with you.’

  And Elijah, swathed in the same dignity as when he donned his chauffeur’s uniform, gave him the giddy smile of a child who knew he was returning home. ‘I do not doubt it,’ he said and pulled on the brakes.

  Chaos erupted.

  I was awake. This was real. Across the worn leather seats of the regal old car that had taken both Grace and I to wed our husbands, we stared at each other. Would this be our hearse as well as our wedding chariot?

  The horsemen milled around, shouting in a foreign tongue and waving a flag I recognised as that of the rebel insurgents of the land to the north of us. A land torn asunder by The War, by corruption and violence, poverty and starvation. Why was this band of scrawny soldiers so far south, marauding our hills?

  I never thought The War would affect me. How could it, when it raged so far away, beyond our borders? Grace fluttered with fear and looked at Enoch. His attention was all on Elijah and she turned to me.

  ‘Zahra, dear,’ she quavered, ‘what will we do?’

  My tongue was frozen. I reached out and grasped her hand, for my comfort or hers I couldn’t tell. I remembered the Hunt Ball meeting I had planned for the afternoon. Would Barry hear about the tragedy that was about to befall him—the loss of his wife and his mother—when the committee telephoned him to ask where I was? Grace and I shifted closer until we were one in our uncertainty.

  Elijah rubbed his hand over the badge he had pinned to his lapel. As he reached into the cubbyhole and took out a small leather book I recognised as the Eden Book, I remembered those letters engraved on the star meant Court of Sion and Elijah was a lay Prior. I wanted to weep for his innocence and tell him that both his belief and his book were useless: they never saved Little Flower and they would not save us now.

  He shared one last glance with Enoch and climbed out of the car. Sheltered by his dignity, he ignored the anarchy around him and shut the door. He straightened his cap and slipped the Eden Book onto the car roof. With solemn ceremony, he opened the back door of the vehicle for Grace and me. Enoch climbed out too and stood behind the old man. The horsemen, used to strong warriors blenching when they strutted about, fell silent, staggered by the two unarmed men’s courage. The only sound was the scuffling of the horses’ hooves as they puffed up plumes of dust that settled on my smart lavender shoes as I stepped into the danger that awaited me.

  Grace followed and we clung together as one of the horsemen, a young rebel, not as disciplined as the others, let out a shriek. He bent low on his horse and ripped the pearls Barry had given me for our wedding anniversary from my neck. He held them aloft and they dribbled out of his clenched fist as he raised his arm in victory.

  The scent of their depravity was strong. The young one’s greed, his zeal to take what was not his, fed his ezomo, and that of the others. The horses sensed their masters’ eagerness and began to neigh wildly, their hooves a dusty susurrus.

  I wished fiercely I had my Daddy’s gun. It would help more than Elijah’s stupid doctrine. But the gun was long gone. The last time I saw it, it lay wrapped in plastic on the judge’s desk. I was defenceless: as weak as Little Flower ever was. Grace was no use; she shivered violently and clung to my arm without a sound. I turned back to tell the men we must fight, we must attack before the horsemen attacked us. But they stood and did nothing but whisper.

  ‘Take care of the madams,’ Elijah said and clasped Enoch’s fingers in a silent farewell.

  A drop of perspiration ran in a white rivulet down Enoch’s strained face as he nodded. ‘I will,’ he promised. He left Elijah alone at his post next to the old car and walked towards us as we cowered in the shadows of the looming mountains.

  Elijah, a serene smile on his face, lifted his Eden Book and peered at our captors.

  The air shimmered and a wind, like no other wind before, wrapped itself around us as Enoch reached our side and held us in his embrace. His elegant hands were firm in their hold as he pushed our faces into his chest and all else except the slow pounding of his heart under my ear receded into a soft roar. I jerked my face free, but could not speak, for what I saw and what I heard made me wonder if this was not, after all, a dream.

  We no longer existed to the horsemen. Only Elijah mattered. He stood there, his bowed back straight and his cough silent. He opened his small holy book, once white but creamed with age and use. The embossed gold nova glinted in the sun, blinding me. I wanted to close my eyes and bury my head in the safety of Enoch’s shirt, sweet smelling with cedar wood, but the simple grandeur of my old chauffeur, Elijah, denied me any such evasion.

  He did not waver. Not even as the rebels shoved him with their feet and pushed him with their horses. He staggered but did not fall. He lifted a hand to clutch at the piece of green felt, with its flimsy star, pinned to his jacket. As he held his centre, the rock that held him steady, he read from his Eden Book, pulsating with a peace that drove the horsemen frenzied.

  ‘Yea,’ Elijah quoted, ‘let them turn every one from his weakness.’ The opening spray of bullets hit him and splattered blood over his hands and over the cream leather with its gold nova. He forged on and the four horsemen screamed in fury and fright. ‘Let them turn from the violence that is in their hands…’ At last, he weakened and the book tumbled from his hands. He fell to his knees, his white shirt crimson and his face beatific. He held his arms to the sky and cried, ‘Master! Master!’

  I wanted to attack him and scream, ‘Leave him alone! Leave him alone!’ But I was not there; I was in Little Flower’s bedroom, shouting ‘Leave her alone! Leave me alone!’

  There was so much blood, but my Daddy was not dying, for more than one bullet boomed through the air. I dug my face deeper into the safe cedar-smell of Enoch’s chest as a fireball thundered, flinging us to the ground as the unearthly
wind roared to a crescendo before my world fell into silence.

  After a while, I lifted my head and looked around me. I saw the scattered bodies of the rebels, dead every one and burnt ashes to ashes.

  And, in the midst of that inferno, I saw the ghostly outline of Elijah dancing.

  He arose from the flames consuming Barry’s old Rolls, his chauffeur’s cap at its usual jaunty angle. His charred arms reached out as if to grip the reins of an ancient chariot and, as I watched, his transfigured remains collapsed into ashes, dispelling the flickering image in the clouds of smoke billowing around us in the aftermath of a malevolent evil I had thought I would never experience again.

  My head ached from tension and fear and I fell back onto the ground. I lay there, with my face in the dirt, tears I’d never cried before—no, not even when Daddy slumped dead against my breast—streamed off my chin and soaked into the dry and desolate land that cradled all of me: both body and soul, body and soul.

  Chapter 10

  Lulu

  “Trust nobody, for fear you be betrayed.”

  When the prison commandant had gleefully told me that Prior Ajani was the only person willing to give me this job, I had no real choice. Starve on the streets, or come to this sleepy little court. As a self-disclosed unbeliever, the last thing I wanted was to work in a place that reminded me of the small court at the Sacred Heart Holding Camp, where Dalia and I had daily cleaned the artefacts and symbols of the Spirit King.

  Not much changes. All I do here is clean altars and polish novas, but this time I do not believe what they promise.

  When Jamila leaves for the day, I stay. There is no reason to hurry home to the one-roomed apartment the court provides me. I’m alone, sitting in my new life and trapped with memories as familiar as the face that stares from my mirror each day.

  Sighing, I pick up the can of Brasso and cleaning rags. I have work to do. I must clean the stains and sorrows of other people’s clutter.