The Darkening Hour

by Penny Hancock

  ‘She’s a lovely girl, you know,’ he says. ‘An excellent cook. Generous too. She bought me clementines. And chocolate. And we bought something else . . . oh, I don’t remember now . . .’

  I squeeze his hand. Tell myself it’s fine that he should believe she bought the fruit with her own money; it’ll help them to establish a good relationship. I’ll let his mistake pass this time.

  I leave Daddy with his whisky and go up to the house.

  It smells fresher than it’s ever been when I get in. Of lemon and bleach and polish.

  Even the air feels cleaner, as if it’s been allowed to flow again after being shut in for a long time. I push open the door of the drawing room. There’s still the faint smell in here of stale cigarette smoke, and Leo’s on the sofa, but the debris that surrounds him after a day of TV gazing has been cleared away.

  Goodness! I don’t know how I stood it before! Mona has done an excellent – an amazing – job. I go over to the mantelpiece and run my finger along it. Yes, she’s dusted. I didn’t expect, when I employed her to look after Daddy, that I’d have the cleaning thrown in.

  I peer into the kitchen. Clean and tidy. Even the quarry-tiled floor – one of the things Roger and I loved about the house when we bought it, but that had got grimy over the years – gleams. It’s a beautiful kitchen. It attracted us straight away, with its built-in dresser along one wall, and its window out onto the garden at one end, onto the street and the church opposite, at the other, its Rayburn and the large table I like to sit at in the mornings. But I’d lost interest in its aesthetics recently, since Leo didn’t seem to care. Mona’s arranged the crockery on the dresser, placed lemons on a dish, even put some of the Chinese lanterns from the garden in a vase. It looks like something out of a magazine.

  There’s a light shining beneath Mona’s door. She must have retreated to her room in time for my arrival, and this discretion is something I approve of too. Something Zidana was very bad at, knowing when to make herself inconspicuous.

  I put the kettle on, take a piece of sliced white bread and a cheese triangle, fold the bread over it and bite. This is a secret pleasure. One I would never admit to my friends who are obsessed with the latest organic ingredients, all glued to cookery programmes in the evenings, or on diets. Give me a slice of white bread and some processed cheese, and I’m in heaven.

  I go up to the bathroom. It’s clear Mona has done more than a superficial clean in here, as well; she’s polished the taps so they shine. She has even dealt with the limescale in the toilet bowl. How? The limescale has been defeating me for years, a rough brown scum that looks as if I’ve given up caring, but that has resisted all my attempts to tackle it.

  Full of appreciation, I knock on her door.

  She’s at my bureau. Writing on a pad of Basildon Bond paper, with a Parker pen I recognise instantly as one of Daddy’s.

  ‘What are you writing?’

  ‘A letter home.’ Her hand cups the sheets of paper, as if she’s afraid I’ll try and read it. There’s no need, it’s in Arabic script, though I have to admit to being a little taken aback that she can write at all. I’d assumed that if she was literate she wouldn’t have chosen domestic work.

  ‘Mona, if you want paper, you only have to ask. You don’t need to take from Daddy. He doesn’t understand.’

  She looks up at me through those big brown eyes. ‘I must write home.’

  This stirs compassion in me for the poor woman.

  ‘You just ask me, OK? I’m not going to bite. I didn’t think. You could have phoned.’

  ‘Yes. I no have credit.’

  ‘You should have said! You must tell your family you’re OK, that you’ve arrived safely. You can use the house phone, this once – until you get credit. Have you any change from the ten pounds I gave you?’

  She glances at me with an expression that I can’t quite interpret. She hands me a few coins. It seems very little but then I remember Daddy mentioning chocolate and something else.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘So you got Daddy fruit?’

  ‘And chocolate.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  She gazes at me, fixing me with her eyes.

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘nothing else.’

  ‘Well, look.’ I hand her a ten-pound note. ‘Take this and get yourself some credit. It was stupid of me not to think of it. Do you know where to buy top-up here?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘I’ll get Leo to show you. I’ll pay you at the end of the week. You can’t go around with no money at all. And I’ll give you something for my shopping too, I’ll write a list. You’re to go to a shop called Waitrose – I don’t use the shops on the High Street.’

  She smiles but doesn’t say anything, and I wonder again how good her English is.

  ‘Come on – Leo can take you to get credit now.’

  Leo looks up as I put my head round the door but he doesn’t move when I ask him to take Mona to the mini market up the road.

  ‘Can’t she go by herself?’

  ‘Leo, I’m asking you to put yourself out for once. It’s dark, and she’s not safe walking around on her own in a strange area. Now, please. You can buy yourself something while you’re there. Here.’ I hand him another tenner, angry with myself for breaking my own resolution to stop indulging him. He’ll only spend it on cigarettes or beer or Red Bull.

  At last he gets up slowly, not taking his eyes off the screen.

  I watch them walk out of the door together. I might have had to use bribery, but I’ve got Leo off his bottom for once.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When I hear Leila’s sweet voice a wave of relief and love washes through me.

  ‘When are you coming home, Ummu?’ she asks. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  ‘Darling, it hasn’t been long at all. It’s Thursday today, so it’s only been a few days since I left.’

  I know it’s not to do with the number of days I’ve been away but how it feels to her. If I’d said I’d been gone just an hour it might feel like a year.

  ‘You’re fine without me,’ I say cheerfully. ‘I need you to be grown-up and look after Tetta. Are you feeding the chickens?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I can feel the pain in her chest in the ensuing silence.

  ‘Dora’s got a cat that sleeps in her house,’ I say. ‘She eats her dinner with the cat sitting at her table.’

  More silence.

  ‘How many chickens has she got?’ Leila asks at last.

  ‘None.’

  ‘Is she very poor?’

  ‘No, the opposite. Listen, let me speak to Tetta.’

  My mother assures me that Leila’s been fine; she’s only moody with me because she wants to punish me for going away.

  ‘What’s it like there? What’s the house like? The woman – is she married, has she children? Grandchildren?’

  ‘I’ve written a letter. It should arrive soon.’

  ‘What’s your employer like? What’s her name?’

  ‘Theodora. Dora. Her house is a mess. You’d be shocked.’

  ‘Is she married?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Shame. It’s the men you can usually wrap around your little finger.’

  ‘Ummu!’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I’m looking after her father – but he’s very old.’

  ‘Older than me?’

  ‘Much older. And he’s got Alzheimer’s, he loses his memory. But Dora’s too busy to care for him. She’s quite famous. Her job’s very important.’

  ‘More important than her father?’

  I chuckle at this veiled criticism. My mother loves to judge women who employ staff in their homes. It’s pride, but it’s also envy. She says they get their priorities all wrong, but for a few minutes, I wonder if what I’m doing – travelling so far from her and from Leila to earn money for them – isn’t that different.

  At least Dora’s kept her father nearby. She’s just lucky
she can afford to employ me to change his underpants.

  ‘He used to run an expensive restaurant. There are photos on his mantelpiece of him holding awards. He was handsome. It seems sad no one can see the man he once was.’

  ‘No one can see the woman I was. That’s why I cover my face.’

  ‘That’s rubbish, Ummu. You know very well you’re still beautiful.’

  ‘I would be, if I had the kind of luxuries your employers enjoy.’

  I’m silent for a while. I don’t like to hear my mother resentful, yet she’s only voicing things I’ve thought myself. I’ll try to send her something, something she will consider a luxury. She deserves it. She’s worked hard all her life until she could work no more. And so little to show for it.

  ‘Charles, though,’ I say, to get her mind off her own disappointments, ‘I’d like to put a banner on his back showing people he used to be a handsome restaurateur. However important you are, however successful you get, you can still end up invisible. All anyone sees now is an old man losing his memory, living under the ground.’

  ‘What do you mean, under the ground?’

  ‘He lives in an apartment, downstairs.’

  She’s silent for a moment. ‘He has his own apartment?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I knew you wouldn’t want Dora to know we share a room. She knows nothing.’

  ‘He’s lucky to have his own home, Mona.’

  ‘But living down there I worry we won’t hear if he needs us. Living all together under one roof has its benefits.’

  ‘All together under one roof in one room, you mean.’

  ‘You think if we had more we could live better, but there are things you lose if you have too much.’

  ‘You lose things if you have too little as well.’

  Now her self-pity is beginning to irritate me.

  ‘OK. I know, Ummu. I’m doing what I can. It wasn’t easy walking away from Leila to come here. You know that. I wouldn’t have done it if there’d been any other choice.’ Since Ali left, and our money ran out and there were no jobs at the garment factory where I’d worked before we married, since I’d lost my place at Madame’s . . . what choice was there?

  You could go further back to see how I’d ended up here; if my father hadn’t died when I was still a child, if I hadn’t had to leave school at fourteen, if my mother hadn’t damaged her sight providing for me, we might not be in this position now. But we are. I’m doing it for her as much as for myself.

  But I know when I’ve said enough.

  When she’s said goodbye, I press the off button and put my mobile down on my bed.

  I think of home, of the noise and bustle in the tiny room Ummu shares with Leila, with the people all around and the sun beating down outside, and for a few minutes I yearn to be there, however scarce the money, however bleak our futures, because there I was amongst people I love.

  I slip back under my covers and hope to get some sleep.

  By the end of my first week I’ve got into a routine. I couldn’t say I’d got used to this country, but it no longer feels as strange as the day I arrived. Funny how quickly you can adapt.

  On Friday morning, it’s tipping down with a slanting rain, the sky barely lighter than it was at night. I go down the steps to Charles. Get him up and dressed, brew some coffee in his little kitchen.

  ‘Is this how you make coffee?’ he asks, frowning into his cup. ‘So thick and full of grounds.’

  ‘It works with the coffee we use at home,’ I say, in Arabic.

  I take it from him, find the thing he waves at impatiently, and do as he instructs me: ‘Two spoons of coffee in the bottom. Water just off the boil. Leave it to stand for four minutes. That’s how to make good coffee.’

  While the coffee stands, I lead him to his chair.

  ‘One day, Charles, I’ll make you mint tea. Then you’ll know what a good hot drink is. Anyway, what are we doing today? We can’t go out. It’s raining.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind the rain.’

  ‘Charles! You will get wet sitting in the wheelchair. You’ll get sick.’

  I hand him his pills. One blue and one white. Two orange and one red. Pass him a glass of water and watch him swallow them. Then I pour his coffee.

  ‘One heaped teaspoon of sugar, and stir for one minute. I don’t have milk – coffee with milk is a sacrilege! Hmm. That’s a little better. We’ll soon sort you out, young lady!’

  I smile. ‘You are a good teacher, Charles.’

  ‘Now you can leave me, there’s a concert on the radio I’m listening to. You go and enjoy yourself.’

  Enjoy myself! Does he have any idea that I’ve no money of my own, that I would feel lost in this huge city were I to venture beyond the market? That living alone in a foreign country where you can’t read or write the language makes you feel like a small child, vulnerable, uncertain. When you don’t know whom to trust, where you feel the officials are suspicious of you so that you keep to the shadows hoping not to be noticed?

  I go back to the house and climb the three flights of stairs to Theodora’s bedroom. Leo has not got up yet, his bedroom door is closed. I move quietly, so as not to disturb him. I pull back her curtains. The bottoms are frayed and black. The windows need some serious attention. I rest my forehead on the damp glass, look out over the churchyard opposite. Watch for a moment a woman get into a car, open the car window. She waves to a man with a baby in his arms.

  It flashes into my head, unbidden. Ali lifting me, placing me down on the banquette while Leila slept in the other room, stripping everything off me in the heat of the afternoon. Pushing my hands up under his long cotton shirt, to find the soft downy skin there, the things we did to each other until we were wrung out like wet cloth. How I loved to feel his hot breath on my hair. I turn from the window, overcome by pure longing. For the house where we lived when we first moved in together, with its tiled floors that I kept swept clean, for its shuttered windows that, when thrown open, let in air that was fresh and had the sharp edge of salt on it from the sea.

  I let myself float back – white walls, stark shadows, smell of fresh bread from the bakeries. I think of the black soap I used to shine pans, how they gleamed in the sunlight before I cooked in them. The pride I took in the house we shared.

  For a few seconds it’s soothing to remember that it existed once. The only sadness being that we didn’t know it then. We didn’t know how precious our two rooms would come to seem, how sweet the smell of woodsmoke. We thought then we were on the way to something else, we thought there was better to come. I was restless with dissatisfaction, with wanting more – a home in the city, soft furnishings, a bathroom with a bath and hot and cold taps. I watched the tourists carry carpets back to what I imagined to be their opulent, lavishly dressed apartments in grand palazzos lining city streets, in Seville, in Paris. And I yearned to have what they had.

  Now in Theodora’s house I’m learning how these very things I had once longed for are, in fact, traps for dirt. How to keep them fresh requires constant labour. And I think how the more expensive the item, the more potential for ruin it contains.

  I look around the room, at her enormous bed with the embroidered quilt I noticed when I arrived. In the wardrobe, which is of walnut with carvings and a full-length mirror on the door, and whose interior smells of cedar, like the streets where the men carve the latticework, I let my fingers rifle through Theodora’s clothes. Satin and velvet dresses, wool coats, soft cashmere sweaters and scarves.

  Dora dresses well even if she doesn’t look after her house. In her drawers I find silk underwear, stockings, camisoles. The expensive fabrics feel cool upon my palms. On her dressing-table are pots and bottles, pomades and vials. Bottles of perfume with logos I’ve seen on advertising hoardings. I put my nose to each and smell, drawing in the expensive, delicate fragrances, the waft of privilege.

  Dora has more than she knows what to do with. There’s a beautiful tortoiseshell fan, a clip holding it tightly bound together, th
at I long to release, to hold up, like the Spanish women who came to dance in the square, in the good old days.

  I lean on the dressing-table. The mirror’s in three parts, my face reflected back many times, in profile.

  I’m shocked to see how tired I look, how aged. The last few months have told on me, Ali leaving, the trouble at Madame’s. The worry about work. The knowing how, without it, we would sink from scraping by to abject poverty. The realisation that my mother and my daughter’s welfare rested entirely on my shoulders. Then the travelling and the anxiety about what I was coming to.

  I should take more care of myself. If Dora wants me to work hard, then I deserve the odd treat. I dip my finger in Dora’s mois-turiser; it looks expensive, in a proper glass jar instead of a plastic pot, and I massage it into my cheeks, watch them grow soft, breathe in the fragrance of some kind of flower.

  I peer more closely. Somewhere, in the contours of my cheeks, in my eyes, I can see Leila, and this soothes me. In my mouth, I can see my mother.

  I think of Ummu, how Ali and I had planned that when he was earning good money, when he had qualified as a doctor, we would bring her into the house on the estuary, to live with us. How everything has happened the wrong way round. How Leila and I had to go back to live with Ummu in her one room, and were worse off than when we first made our lives in the little white house. How far I’ve travelled from the days when Ali and I first lived together, with all our plans before us. And the full weight of it hits me, that if I had appreciated what we had, if I hadn’t urged Ali to study hard, to aim high, we might still be where we were at our happiest.

  Dora has so much – a whole drawer here of tiny tubes and bottles and vials. And Ummu sounded so down on the phone, talking about being old and having to cover her face. I’d like to send her something to show her she too is a beautiful woman, with a body that deserves a little treat from time to time. I pick up one of the small tubes of cream Dora has put in the dish, one that hasn’t been opened, smell it, and put it back.

  I’m about to leave when I notice the photo I spotted next to Dora’s bed when she first showed me her room. I look at it. The man is white and tall, quite handsome, with a small neat beard, smiling, his arm round Dora. They’re standing in front of a building with a statue on the top of it, a naked woman draped only in a headscarf. I cannot read the caption underneath, but I can read the date. This summer.