Dancing In The Shadows of Love by Judy Croome Page A

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 hungry 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