by Judy Croome
‘Let’s go inside,’ Samanya says to them. ‘I want you to meet my wife.’
What woman does a man like this marry? All that she is not, Jamila suspects. Rich and beautiful, confident and sophisticated, accepted wherever she goes, by the sheer virtue of her name: Samanya’s wife, The Brumer Pharmaceuticals Heiress.
Her shame crawls to life. Jamila Johnson, daughter of a country beggar, will always be on the outside. Always an outsider, never one with them, not even when she becomes Mrs Dawud Templeton. When Dawud obeys Samanya’s gesture and guides her into an enormous entrance hall, all sharp steel and brilliant colours, as empty as Samanya’s gaze, she has to blink away her fear as she holds out her hand to greet his wife.
Chuki Samanya doesn’t surprise her. Tall and elegant in a white pants suit that shows off her olive skin, she’s an easy and gracious hostess. There’s a subtle confidence in her stance that eats at Jamila’s already fragile control. It tells her of a lifetime at the top. No shame for this woman; no Papa to lose her future with his errors as he lost himself in self-pity and laziness.
‘Dawud Templeton, and his fiancée, Jamila,’ Samanya says. ‘I told you about them.’
Jamila, so sensitive to nuances, so aware of rejection by those she longs to call her friends, shudders as husband and wife exchange glances.
They despise me because I’m a poor girl from the country. I’m the Jamjar to him.
How would he see her today if she’d said no? For years afterwards, in the aftermath, she lies awake and wonders how different, easier, her life would be if she had said no.
She finds she has some strength left to draw on, or perhaps it’s the comfort of Dawud’s clasp as he makes meaningless small talk with Chuki Samanya. He draws her closer, into the inner circle.
She’s grateful for his money, that buys her the dress, and for his love, that doesn’t question the cost. At least there, in her black dress, with its thin crossover straps and her matching open-toed sandals, she can have pride.
‘Jamila,’ Chuki Samanya says. ‘Daren never told me you were so glamorous.’ She draws Jamila’s arm through hers, and saunters with her into a large dining room where several other couples wait. Their haute couture clothes and the judgement in their eyes keep Jamila at a distance. Chuki introduces her to the other women. ‘Jamila’s one of the Templeton wives, or will be, soon enough.’ They all relax, and smile at her. The reserve in their faces melts on an inaudible sigh as they realise she is, after all, one of them.
The room they sit in is a good reflection of their hostess. Elegant, refined and as long and narrow as Chuki Samanya is tall and slender, it thrills Jamila. She’s never encountered its like before, not even in the city.
When she met Dawud, he was the epitome of city-polish to her. Here, in this stark house with minimum furniture—and, what there is of it, all chrome and mirrors, angles and leather—he’s out of his depth. The easy-going misfit while she, in her sexy dress and happiness is one of them, fitting in as a foot fits into a glittering glass slipper.
The house is a marvel. If Jamila saw it in a magazine, she’d dismiss it as cold, and dangerous and wonder what – if any – normal emotions live in the people who stay in such a place. Chuki Samanya surprises all her prejudices out of her. She’s all that Jamila expects her to be, but also so much more. She sparkles and makes an effort to put Jamila at her ease in the group.
‘Your dress is gorgeous.’ As the other women pause in their talk to assess the black dress, Jamila runs a hand over the skirt, nervous that Chuki, like her husband, can sense the residue of Dawud’s ardour. ‘Where did you find it?’ her hostess asks.
Relieved at the innocuous question, Jamila has enough experience of the city to answer correctly. ‘Oh, some boutique,’ she says, which is not a lie. ‘I’ve had this old dress for ages,’ which is a lie. When she hears a dark chuckle vibrate in her core, she reassures herself one small, harmless lie can’t hurt; one small lie that doesn’t hurt anyone, but gives her a much-needed veneer of sophistication, doesn’t count as an error.
‘It’s lovely. Lovely!’ Chuki says. She slips her arm around Jamila’s waist and it rests where her husband’s handprint reverberates along Jamila’s skin. ‘My husband has a lot to answer for!’
What has Samanya told his wife? The woman who is all Jamila longs to be and—do miracles happen?—who has accepted her. Does she know? Does she know of Jamila’s Great Error and of the abomination in Samanya that finds an answer in Jamila even now, as he leans near a vibrant canvas of violet and scarlet sunflowers and watches them…watches her?
Before she can thaw her frozen muscles and run, run to Dawud’s side where she’s safe, Chuki continues, and Jamila can breathe again.
‘Daren told me you were pretty,’ Chuki says. Her hand around Jamila’s waist strokes up and down, up and down in an absent-minded rhythm. ‘He should have said you were beautiful!’
Jamila glances into her open face and sees what she wants to see.
‘You’re too kind,’ she says, torn between her awkward awareness of that feminine hand on her body, delight at her acceptance, and Daren. No. Samanya. She’s never allowed herself to think of him as Daren. Somehow, for what he is, for what he did to her, it’s too intimate to think of him as Daren.
Does Chuki whisper his name in the heat of their passion?
The thought, terrible in its detail, makes her head spin and spin and Chuki’s lips open wide in a grin, a death’s head grin that curls the name around Jamila in a steamy rush.
Darennnnnnnnnnnnn.
The other woman’s face melts; Jamila, dizzy, lifts a hand to her head and turns away from the exotic overlaid face, which is no longer the face of Chuki Samanya, but the face of Jamila’s temptations swarming into her mind.
Darennnnnnnnnnnnn.
He’s there. His smell. Oh, Spirit King! His glorious smell. And another smell. This one safe. Dawud. That’s right, Dawud, she loves him and sobs his name, and the hands are all on her, as they clutch and lift and walk away with her. ‘Dawud,’ she cries, for she wants him to save her this time, please save me, please, please.
But her love leaves her in Samanya’s arms. He walks next to Samanya and scolds himself. ‘I should’ve noticed she wasn’t all right. She’s been different to her usual self all day.’ Dawud pats her hand, the one on Samanya’s shoulder as he carries her up the stairs. ‘You should have said you weren’t well, Jilly. Why didn’t you say?’
She can’t answer him. Can’t hear him, for he’s lost to her, lost in the feel and smell and taste of Temptation. All she can do is close her eyes, a flimsy barrier at best, and reach for a greater defence, the words of the Spirit King, save me, oh Great Spirit King, warrior wild, save me, save me. But the Spirit King has been silent for too many years, all the long years since she went out onto the balcony and kissed the face of her ezomo.
Ah, her essence cries, will my Great Error be ever before me? No one answers her, except Samanya’s wife who says, ‘Put her in our bedroom, sweetheart. She can rest awhile, and rejoin us when she’s better.’
‘I should take her home,’ Dawud says. Jamila groans agreement, but Samanya drowns the puny sound. He slides her out of his arms onto his bed—his marriage bed, she realises with an inarticulate aversion—and says to Dawud, ‘No need for that; the colour is already back in her face. Let’s leave her alone for a while.’
His breath scorches her cheeks with memories. Hot, enticing memories of that other time he leant over her like this.
Have mercy upon me, O Great Spirit King…
Perhaps the Spirit King is there after all. A Spirit King who hears her plea because, before she can succumb to the urge to stretch up and place her arms around Samanya’s neck to keep him with her, near her, in her, Dawud says, ‘We’ll let you rest, Jilly love. Stay here until you’re okay.’
She’s grateful for the respite but shivers and shakes as if she’s survived her own Armageddon.
Later, when all that is left is the refrai
n inside her head, Jamila opens her eyes and stares around the room.
Another surprise, like Samanya’s wife. She has to force back a sob at the thought of Samanya’s wife sure that, with her stupid faint, she’s made such a fool of herself that she’s lost all chance of forging a friendship with the woman who was everything she ever wanted to be. What happened, Jamila? What happened?
She finds the answer in the immense white room. Painted a pure white, the room is full of innocence and light, truth and hope, its colour provided by the dark green leaves in a bowl of white roses displayed on a table between two easy chairs near a central fireplace. It reminds her of the innocence she once had.
Jamila slumps back on the eiderdown covering Daren Samanya’s marriage bed and realises it’s too late. She has lost her miracle. She has drowned. Her eyelids flutter open in a desperate attempt to hold back the floodwaters. But the pristine white of his bedroom is too painful. With a groan, she closes her eyes and cannot prevent her fall back into the shapeless depths that have enslaved her for so many years.
What would have happened if she had made a different choice, that long-ago balmy evening, when the moonlight and the man stole her faith from her and left her an unbeliever? How different would her life have been if only she had made a different choice?
Consumed with restless urges, which Dawud has never been able to satisfy since she kissed her ezomo, her legs thrash the white covers into a tumbled mess. All she can taste is the Levid’s smell. Samanya’s smell. And the wildness within, after building in her all day, reaches a crescendo. She cries and gasps out great sobs. No matter how well she hides it, no matter how she fights it, Samanya was right. She’s as weak as he is depraved, because what she can never forget—what she remembers every time Dawud, her beloved, lays a hand on her—is that she never feels with him what Samanya made her feel that night she learned how to err.
• • •
It takes Jamila a long time before she’s ready to join the others. She wants to be certain that she has every unravelled thread in the mask she wears sewn back tight enough to withstand Samanya’s company. Dawud has made it clear he wants to do business with Brumer Pharmaceuticals and Samanya won’t go away any time soon.
Her thoughts falter for a moment. Would tonight have been different if she and Dawud were already married? But she’s convinced, in the part of her brain that always remembers her shame, that the long years it has taken Dawud to keep his promise to marry her is the other side of her atonement.
After Samanya, after her ezomo found her passionate in his arms, she has to be patient. She must endure her clandestine vice, at least until the Spirit King forgives her on that perfect day when, before his nova and the court of St Jerome, she becomes the irreproachable Mrs Dawud Templeton.
She draws a shaky breath and presses a hand to her stomach, her flesh pale next to the black crêpe dress, black as the Levid. Did she fail another of the Spirit King’s tests today when she bought this dress to show Samanya he hadn’t destroyed her? Vanity is a transgression, but she couldn’t fail Dawud, could she? She had owed it to him to look her best. For Dawud, and his love, is her buttress against the Samanyas of this world and, these days, is much more real than a Spirit King she never sees or hears anymore.
Although the image grows fainter every year that passes, she remembers the nova, high above the school gates. She survived the humiliations of her childhood. She’ll survive this, even though she must go back downstairs to face Samanya, his guests and their inevitable laughter at her stupid country-girl folly.
Jamila stands and tugs her dress straight. She hides the ravages of guilt behind a smooth new layer of make-up, wishing she could smooth her memory clean as easily as she swipes the paled foundation over her cheeks.
The Pale One has no friends other than herself. Reckless with hope, Jamila decides to tell Lulu about this night. Whom could Lulu tell her secrets too? Whatever she reveals, will remain secret, like a disclosure, but not a real one.
If the Spirit King is willing, telling someone, even Lulu, will purge her of the last of her error. And her years of penance will be over.
Chapter 15
Zahra (The Past)
“Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot
That it do singe yourself.”
After Enoch went to Grace the night of the Hunt Ball, I turned more and more to Barry. I revelled in his eager surprise. I hated him for it too. He loved Little Flower each night, as my Daddy had loved her. He never loved me. But what else did I have to offer, except the remnants of an ezomo that destroyed all in its path?
Sometimes I pitied my young son, Barry III. What chance did he have for a happy life when his father loved Little Flower, who had lost her hope of redemption when Enoch turned and walked away? I was only Zahra and I, too, was lost.
My poor little boy. My poor little Barry played on. He crawled on chubby legs amongst the rose garden, abandoned for I had lost interest in it. The bushes had started to grow wild. The thorns and blooms overlapped one another and spilled into the path. Young, and unaware of the dangers, my son Barry ran freely, enjoying their fragrance. I watched him, my back to the merciless ocean. The damp wind rolled off the waves and blew my hair around my face as he screamed with excitement each time he dodged the capricious clutches of the thorny bushes undulating in the wind. Inevitably, they captured and tore his tender young flesh. Oh, Spirit King, there was the blood, so red against his innocent baby flesh.
I couldn’t bear the knowledge that he was doomed, as I was doomed—as we all are doomed—by our very humanity that, too often, succumbs to the ezomo that lives within each of us. The secrets of life eat away at the foundations of our being and even their weight cannot keep them drowned forever. For always, always, the monsters must rise from the ocean depths and drag us back down. We are lost, and I was painfully aware that the glimpses we have of love, a transcendental love that is sacrosanct, are reserved for the privileged few. Like Grace. Saint Grace, who had stolen Enoch’s love and abandoned me to the mercy of my ezomo.
I stooped and clutched my son to my chest. I ran through the garden as his wails of pain ebbed into whimpers as he realised he was safe in my arms. Grace waited at the top of the stairs, serene and a bit frail, attended by that stranger I no longer spoke to.
‘Take him,’ I said and pushed the child at her, even though he clung and cried. ‘Take him!’
‘But…he wants you, dear,’ she said. She cradled a protective hand around his head. They were flesh of one flesh: the blue veins of old age showed through the wrinkles on her hand, reflecting the blue veins of youth that shone beneath the pale fluff of my son’s hair. I was not part of that magic circle that was of the same bone and blood and spirit.
‘I can’t help him,’ I snarled and hoped neither of them heard the despair that plagued me and dragged me deeper into the mayhem. ‘I can never help him.’
Her eyes, somehow defenceless, flooded with pain and the wrinkles etched deeper into her skin.
‘Oh, Zahra, dear,’ she said. But she looked at him, not me, at him and, although I refused to acknowledge his presence in any way, I squinted in his direction.
He watched me and I hated the expression on his face. What woeful being did he see when he looked at me? But he had deprived me of all hope. I had offered him my love, and all of Little Flower’s love, and he had turned his back on us and given all that he had to Grace.
‘What?’ I ignored him.
‘Barry’s too heavy these days,’ she said. ‘You must carry him. Take him back, dear, take him back.’
‘No,’ I said. As Enoch had, I turned away. Away from more than my son. I turned from Grace and her beloved. And I turned from the false promise of paradise he had offered me, when he held me in his arms that gritty day I should have died at the hands of the rebel soldiers.
‘It was too soon,’ he said to Grace, ‘for her to understand our love.’
‘Poor Zahra,’ she replied softly. I almost missed her words a
s I walked into the coolness of the mansion, no longer Grace’s, but mine. ‘Poor Little Flower.’
At her compassion, all the anger and all the strength I had, arose and converged on that old woman who was all I could never be, because once I was Little Flower before I became Zahra, who was both unloved and unable to love.
• • •
My son was asleep in bed, his wounds patched but far from healed, when his father came home that night.
‘Reubens sold today!’ Barry said. He put a hand on my shoulder and rubbed a finger along the hollow exposed by the crew neck of my cashmere jersey. ‘That’s the last of them, Zahra dear. The last! All the pharmacies in town are Templeton pharmacies, love, like you said they’d be!’ He pressed deeper; he wanted my praise but could not ask for it.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Good.’
This was all that counted. Hard ambition and hard wealth. Love and hope brought pain. Wealth—ambition—power. I could count on them, in the same way that I could count on the hard steel trigger on a hard cold gun.
Barry hesitated, then with one last rub, removed his fingers from my neck as he added, ‘I was a bit…uh, when the old man brought the papers, he cried. He kept on crying.’ Uncertain of my mood he tried to gauge my reaction, although he didn’t want to jeopardise the bedroom feasts he was enjoying after all the years of famine. ‘We own all the others in the Sea City. Maybe we should have let him keep one pharmacy.’ He sighed and rubbed a forefinger over his closed eyes. ‘So it wasn’t such a loss in his life.’
‘He’ll survive,’ I said. ‘We all do.’
This time I was wrong. Three weeks later, the old man shot himself. He died in an instant. Barry, after he heard, never visited Little Flower again. Through the long restless nights that followed, I told myself I was glad he no longer called to Little Flower, for then I could be Zahra.
Only Zahra: strong and safe and angry.
• • •
With the new pharmacies to manage, Barry spent less and less time at home. Sometimes he even worked through the night. So he said. I never questioned him. All that mattered was that the pharmacies prospered. I reaped the rewards. My beautiful mahogany cupboard and, later, the whole mansion soon overflowed with what I could see and touch. I told myself I was happy.
