The Darkening Hour

by Penny Hancock

  The roses Daddy bought for Mummy.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I let the rose incident pass. I need Mona too badly to make an issue of minor transgressions.

  The following Saturday I take advantage of her. I go to the gym, have my hair done, walk back along the river. It’s one of those crisp autumn mornings with a bright, low sun. I feel as if Mummy is very close to me, maybe walking along beside me as I head home.

  Feeling her presence, sensing that death has not torn her away from me but that she lies very close on the other side of an imperceptible membrane tensile as the cobwebs that veiled my walls – until Mona arrived – soothes me.

  The tide’s out. I can hear people with children down on the beach, hunting along the tideline, and pleasure boats pootling about on the water purring gently and sending waves rippling across to lap the shore. I breathe deeply, drawing in the silty smell.

  As I walk, my mobile pings and my heart leaps. I barely dare to look. To see if it’s Max. It’s only 7 a.m. in New York. But maybe he’s not in New York – maybe he’s here.

  Hi gorgeous, I’m coming through London on Wednesday. Meet me under Boudicca, Westminster Bridge, 5 p.m.

  I text back immediately, telling him I’m free. Free! I have Mona! I can accept an invitation from my lover with no hesitation for the first time in months.

  I feel good. Cleansed inside and out. From the gym, from the hair-do. And from the release of the anxiety that hounds me until I hear from Max.

  You could almost be at the seaside here, if you shut your eyes. I enjoy the warmth of the sun on my face, the rattle of the waves on the shore, the mewl of the seagulls. Yet the view itself has its own beauty, the black spikes on the railings echoing the spires of an old church on the other side of the river, which itself reflects in miniature the Gherkin. The towering blocks of the City’s Square Mile dwarf old rooftops and chimneys beneath. Layers of London history. The masts of a galleon that has moored a little way downriver are like a marvellous apparition from the past. I feel relaxed and at peace. I walk, rounding bends and taking short cuts between new buildings, following the river walk beneath its cranes and round its creeks and marinas.

  At Paynes Wharf, I stand and admire the majestic arches of the old shipbuilders’ palace, which frame and contain the sleek skyscrapers on the other side of the river on Canary Wharf. I find the image interesting, the bigger contained within the smaller. Here I am, like the arches, small yet able to contain all this within my vision.

  Theodora Gentleman, counsellor to the whole of south-east England.

  A woman in mid-life, still able to summon a lover all the way from the States. Daddy’s ‘gift from god’, caring for him when no one else in my family is prepared to.

  By the time I get home my face tingles with the cold morning air, and as I open the front door, I’m greeted by a scent that takes me straight back to Daddy’s restaurant. The waft of spices, cumin, coriander, paprika.

  I stand in the hallway, for once clear of shoes, which Mona has organised onto shelves. Clear of junk mail, and of Leo’s discarded clothes that are usually draped over the banisters and across the floor. I remember how when a house is fresh and aired it also feels calmer, and I breathe in the tantalising North African aroma and a warmer, cosier scent of fresh yeast coming from the kitchen. I move down my hallway towards the end, push open the door.

  Mona’s squatting on the kitchen floor, a floured board in front of her, kneading dough. I stare at her. It’s a vision of perfect domesticity and I’m overcome by a sense of appreciation and goodwill – of being looked after. As if my mother had risen from the grave. Not that she had made a loaf of bread in her life, certainly she’d never squatted on the floor like this to bake. But seeing Mona there, lit up by a ray of sun sliding in from the window, gives me a feeling of contentment I haven’t experienced for a long time. The scene is like a Dutch painting, a glimpse through the door of a quiet private moment of feminine labour.

  ‘It smells fabulous in here,’ I say.

  I move into the kitchen, aware that I’m not needed, that Mona is happy here on her own. A fleeting sense that I’m in the way in my own home passes through my mind and away again.

  Mona glances at me and smiles before looking back down as if embarrassed.

  ‘I’ve cooked lunch for you all. Charles and Leo and you. A national dish – I haven’t made for a long time. This is our special bread. And I’m making something piquant. Leo likes spicy food.’

  ‘That’s lovely, thank you, Mona.’ Does she think I don’t know that Leo likes spicy food? ‘I look forward to it,’ I say, taking off my scarf.

  ‘Your hair, it looks nice,’ she says.

  ‘Thank you. I’ve been to the hairdresser’s.’

  ‘Very good, very fine,’ she says. ‘In my country, we don’t have this style, we find it very beautiful, like something precious.’ She smiles, her fingers dancing in a rippling motion around her head.

  ‘What, curly hair?’

  ‘Yes, like you. And people try to make your colour. With henna. But it’s difficult, with our hair.’ She pulls a face.

  I smile at her. ‘Don’t be silly, Mona, your hair is beautiful too. Oh, and I bought cupcakes. So we are both thinking of our stomachs today!’ I pat mine, and she laughs. ‘I got them from Borough Market.’

  ‘Another market?’

  ‘Yes, much nicer. Up the river.’

  ‘I’d like to see.’

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  We’re interrupted by the doorbell. Anita and Simon are on the steps.

  ‘We thought we’d come and see Daddy,’ says Anita. ‘Wondered if we could scrounge a coffee first. Blimey, it smells fab in here. What are you cooking?’

  ‘It’s Mona,’ I say. ‘Something Moroccan.’

  They follow me down to the kitchen.

  ‘We thought we could take Dad out for lunch,’ Simon says. He’s wearing a beanie, his headphones strung round his neck. Simon’s in his thirties but still resembles an errant schoolboy.

  ‘You’re a bit late,’ I tell him. ‘Mona’s just made Daddy’s lunch, haven’t you, Mona?’

  Mona nods, lifts the tray she’s laid for Daddy and carries it out of the kitchen.

  It’s typical that my brother and sister’s good intentions are mistimed.

  ‘We were going to take him up to the Mayflower. They serve most of the afternoon, I think,’ says Simon.

  ‘It’s not the pub that’s the problem,’ I say. ‘It’s Daddy. He has to eat at twelve so he can sleep after lunch. Anyway, who would drive him? I’m the only one with a car here.’

  ‘We could catch the bus.’

  ‘Have you tried getting Daddy on and off a bus recently?’

  ‘Dora, we just want to help out a bit,’ Anita says. ‘I’ve roped Richard in specially. He’s taken the kids to his mum’s this afternoon. You never let us help. You haven’t changed! It’s like when we were kids and you always had to be the best, the favourite.’

  ‘You can’t spring surprises on Daddy. He’s only just got used to Mona. A change of routine would throw him completely.’

  ‘Oh well, it’s been a wasted journey then,’ says Anita. ‘Typical.’

  ‘Mona looks nice,’ Simon says. ‘Kind of maternal. Reliable.’

  ‘Terence says we should all contribute to her pay,’ Anita says. ‘He says we could dip into Daddy’s savings. It isn’t fair that you should shoulder the whole bill.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a turn-up – Terence thinking of someone else for once!’

  ‘He wants to help, Dora. We all do. He’s our father too. No one would be expected to pay for his care costs as well as having him downstairs. Even if you’re getting the benefit of a clean house thrown in!’

  ‘It isn’t just the cost that’s a drain.’ I feel the old resentment course through me – my sister has no idea! ‘There’s the space Mona takes up in my home. Keeping an eye on her. Live-in carers have to be watched. You can’t just trust them and leav
e them to get on with it.’

  ‘Blimey, Dora, you’re impossible to please,’ says my sister.

  ‘Oh come on, you two,’ says Simon. ‘Enough sparring.’

  ‘I’ll accept graciously then,’ I say.

  ‘So it’s all going OK?’ Anita asks. ‘With her, I mean?’

  ‘It’s going fine so far,’ I say. ‘She reminds me of someone. Someone to do with Daddy’s restaurant maybe. One of his waitresses?’

  ‘God, we worked so hard in those days,’ Anita says. ‘In his restaurant. All that ridiculous stuff he made us do, getting the most slices out of a tomato, the most batons from a carrot!’

  We sit silently, remembering Daddy’s mood swings when he was at work, how we’d all try our best to stay on the right side of him. I worked twice as hard as anyone else, yearning for Daddy’s praise, to show everyone I was his favourite. One or two staff members bullied me behind his back, calling me a sneak, a Daddy’s girl.

  I should have learned then that being favoured could evoke resentment. I suspected this was behind Anita’s snide comments about me as a child.

  ‘Which waitress does she remind you of?’ Anita asks.

  ‘I don’t know. I keep trying to think . . . it won’t come back to me.’

  ‘Right,’ says Simon suddenly, jumping up. ‘I’m going down to see him. Laters, Dor.’

  When he’s gone I say, ‘I’m sorry, Anita. It’s just that having Mona isn’t all a breeze. I worry she looks down on me. The house, I mean. She was working for a Saudi in Morocco, and those ex-pat houses were palatial. You remember Roger’s? Chequered hallways, marble work surfaces, all those bloody leather sofas. It’s different here.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Anita says. ‘Women like her are not in any position to judge. Anyway, you live in one of south-east London’s most desirable streets.’

  Anita knows I’m sensitive about where I live. I have a theory about London. That the affluent reside on its hills: Highgate Hill, Notting Hill, Primrose Hill. At the base of these salubrious areas are the places where drug abuse, gang culture and prostitution reign: Tottenham, Archway, Wood Green.

  Deptford.

  She says I’m out of touch, that these are the very areas being snapped up by young professionals. But when you’ve grown up on one of London’s hills, in a large house in Blackheath, moving down is belittling. I’m the only one of us who’s ended up in a trough. Terence lives in a detached house on Dartmouth Hill. Anita and her banker husband Richard, in Muswell Hill. Simon is itinerant, but will no doubt wriggle his way into some wealthy woman’s home in Hampstead or Highgate eventually.

  I’ve ended up in a house in one of London’s dank river basins, where 1970s council blocks dominate and the High Street’s a magnet for deviance and vagrancy. Roger and I bought the house, believing our street, with its beautiful terrace of Georgian ship-merchants’ houses, would go upmarket.

  Which it has, in a way. It’s the location that hasn’t.

  ‘Anyway, does she know you are “the Voice of the South-East”?’ Anita asks. ‘She must respect that.’

  My sister’s right. People don’t come across the world to do domestic work for fun. And this house, that Roger and I bought as a bolt-hole when we first went abroad, may not be as big as our Moroccan residencies, or as luxurious, but it’s beautiful, and elegant enough in its own way. Mona is desperate, appreciates the work I’m giving her.

  I’m about to ask Anita what she thinks of Mona buying the roses, when Mona herself comes back in, closely followed by Simon.

  ‘That was a waste of time,’ says Simon. ‘He refused to look at me. Only had eyes for Mona. He’s certainly taken to you,’ he tells her, and Mona inclines her head shyly.

  ‘OK – well, I’m going to see him now,’ Anita decides. ‘He’s finished his lunch now, has he, Mona?’

  Mona looks at Anita, her eyes travelling up and down, taking in her fashionable wool skirt, her cashmere cardi and her expensive boots.

  ‘Your daddy needs to sleep now. He’ll be ready to see you in one hour.’

  Anita glances at me as if to say, ‘Blimey, she’s feisty!’

  And I feel a kind of loyalty towards Mona. My brother and sister can’t even get here at the right time to take their father out, while Mona has cooked for him, cleaned up, taken him to the loo and given him his medication.

  ‘I tell you what,’ I say. ‘You and Simon can spend the afternoon with Daddy when he’s had his sleep. Mona hasn’t had any time off yet. We’ll go for a little walk, Mona, and I’ll show you the river.’

  ‘Fine,’ says Anita, exchanging a glance with Simon as if it isn’t really fine at all, but knowing now that they have no choice.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘Do you know, Mona,’ I say, as we go past the houses with their figureheads above the doorways, ‘this street is very historic. The houses were once owned by shipbuilders.’

  She nods but doesn’t speak.

  ‘One of them, at the other end, I think, was a girls’ club, set up by a local woman to help the “Gut Girls”. They were called Gut Girls because they worked with meat. There used to be a cattle market on the High Street, and those poor girls had to slaughter the animals. They slaved away from dawn ’til dusk, hacking beasts to pieces with meat cleavers. Wrenching bones apart. Can you imagine it? It was hellish. Cold, dirty, smelly and gruesome. Imagine how it must have sounded – cows moaning as they died. The crunch of breaking bones. Not a girl’s work.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But of course girls were cheap labour, could be exploited. Anyway, one day, a kind woman, seeing how terrible their lives were, set up a special school in this street to teach these Gut Girls laundry, cooking, and housework. She raised them out of the depths of squalor. Gave them a future.’

  I’m aware as I talk of the parallel in what I’m doing now, for Mona, employing her to do my laundry, the cooking and housework, to raise her out of whatever depths of squalor she had to tolerate in Morocco.

  The city’s a closed fan, I want to tell her, its layers of history hidden one behind the other. I often like to imagine the scenes witnessed by the little statues above the doorways – acts of folly and deviance, murders and rapes, dealings and exploitations. I glance at Mona, wondering if she understands the little history lesson I’m giving her, but her face remains impassive.

  ‘We’ll take a bus to Rotherhithe and go for a walk along Paradise Street,’ I suggest. ‘There’s a nice view of the river along there.’

  The afternoon’s already darkening by the time we arrive in Rotherhithe. The tide’s up now and the water moves against the wall just a couple of feet beneath us. We find a bench and sit down. I point out Tower Bridge, looming through the dusk as its lights come on, and explain to Mona how it parts in the middle and lifts to allow tall ships to pass.

  I unwrap and hand her one of the cupcakes I bought from the market. As we sit and nibble our cakes, two mothers, side by side, I think that everything is getting better again because Mona has come!

  Mona and I can help each other out. We’re like two towers of the bridge, one essential to the other. Like my mother and I when we used to fold the sheets, when I was a child, something I loved to do with her, holding the corners between us before moving together to fold them. Apart again, and together until we had a compact bundle to put into the airing cupboard.

  ‘You are happy today,’ Mona says suddenly.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Today you look a young woman.’

  I’m dying to tell someone about my text from Max. I can’t mention my lover to my best friend Gina! It’s torture to me.

  That’s when I find myself telling my new maid all about him. One of the sides of my nature, that Daddy used to point out in the old days, is that I’m too trusting.

  In retrospect you can see the point at which you should have stopped. But in the fading light of this autumn’s afternoon, I feel I’ve not just employed a carer for my father, and a cleaner and housekeeper for myse
lf, but a confidante too.

  And I begin to speak.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘I’m happy because I’m meeting my man next week. I haven’t seen him for ages.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.’

  I look at her to see if she’s acting dumb. Leo said he’d seen her looking at the photo of Max in my room. She must realise there’s a man in my life. But she’s gazing out over the river, no guile in her face.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘But I’ve been here three weeks. I haven’t seen this man.’

  ‘No. Well, he lives in the States.’

  ‘Then – when do you see him?’

  ‘When he has time to come here.’

  She looks at me, turning her lips down.‘You wait till he has time?’

  ‘I have to, Mona. No choice.’

  ‘You met him in the USA? Or in London?’

  ‘Oh, it was extraordinary how we met. At the Albert Memorial.’

  ‘Albert Memorial?’

  ‘You’ll see it, one day. I’ll show you. It’s in Hyde Park, opposite the Albert Hall. I was waiting for my husband – you know – Roger. We were due to be at a Prom in a few minutes’ time.’

  ‘Prom?’

  ‘Promenade concert, classical music, at the Albert Hall. You can stand and listen, or walk around – “promenade” – unless you have seats. You’ll see, one day . . .’

  ‘I’d like to.’

  ‘I was looking at the memorial, thinking about the love Queen Victoria felt for Albert. She had it built when he died. She was devastated. Mourned for years . . .’

  I stop. Glance at Mona, remember she, too, is a widow and realise with remorse that I have trodden upon sensitive ground again. I move on.

  ‘All along the steps, there were people in love, cuddling, kissing. I wondered whether I’d missed out on something. I had never felt this passion for Roger. It was a shock to me to realise. But you know,’ I turn to Mona, to emphasise the feeling behind the words I’m about to say, ‘it’s almost as painful to realise you don’t love someone as it is to learn they don’t love you.’