The Darkening Hour

by Penny Hancock

‘Your lover, this Max. He comes to the house?’

  Mona’s twinkling at me, a sponge in her hand, pink rubber gloves enveloping her arms.

  ‘No, Mona,’ I say. ‘Max is not coming to the house.’

  It’s Sunday morning – a time I always enjoy having to myself.

  When I came down, I could hear Mona’s voice behind the study door, talking rapidly on her mobile. I made my tea – Earl Grey – in my favourite bone-china mug – and settled at the table in my dressing-gown with the paper. But her voice was too loud, I couldn’t concentrate, and I put the paper down. I couldn’t understand a word of what she said, of course, but I heard names, and a wave of paranoia flowed over me as I realised she was talking about me. ‘Dora . . . blah de blah . . . Max.’ And then a giggle. ‘Max’ again.

  What a massive disadvantage you are at if you cannot understand a language that is being spoken within your own home. She came out after a few minutes and hurried past me, her head down, telling me she was off to check on Daddy.

  Now as she bustles about, her eyes are full of laughter, as if she finds something about the thought of me amusing.

  That look! It stirs that odd feeling again, the memory of a face from the past that I cannot quite identify. Or is it simply that there is something more behind it than she likes to give away, as if she knows more about life than she appears to?

  I assume that Mona is innocent – a woman with little education and whose life experience has been limited by poverty. But could this be some kind of act?

  She continues to move about, wiping surfaces, putting dishes away, for all the world as though my kitchen were hers. This is a time I like to sit in my dressing-gown lingering over a cup of tea, buttering my sliced white toast rather more abundantly than is necessary, listening to the radio, or reading the paper. I don’t want anyone to observe me in these private moments.

  ‘You told me,’ she says, ‘that you are going to see Max this week. So I think perhaps you want me to make the house beautiful for him? I’ll do it for you. Make it smell good, put some flowers out for you?’

  Her tone is conspiratorial, full of intimacy. I think of how I opened up to her yesterday. It is perhaps not surprising that she assumes this is how things are between us now.

  I don’t like her implying that she knows better than I how to please my own lover, however. If Max were coming here, it would be my job to worry about the house, not hers.

  ‘Mona, I want you to look after Daddy today. You could take him to the park. I’ll show you how to get there. Then cook him dinner. Daddy’s your job.’

  She bows her head, a gesture that has begun to rouse in me a mixture of discomfort and irritation. I realise how rash I’ve been. I’ve told her all about my feelings for Max when I know so little about her. The expression comes unbidden into my head: ‘You should not cast pearls before swine.’

  Is this what I’d done?

  When I was married to Roger and having help in the home was the norm, the staff had their own quarters and knew to keep out of ours until we’d vacated them. It was easy to maintain a polite distance. We could treat them as though they weren’t there.

  ‘A drink will be arriving soon,’ we would say to guests at a cocktail do, the passive form obviating the need to name the servant – a useful way to prevent familiarity. We were discreet, maintained a quiet authority, and the good staff fell in with this, gliding about with trays of drinks and canapés.

  It took me a while to understand the role I played in those days, all so fake, so out of step with the real world. But the rules were clear. When Zidana started to get away with things, Roger chastised me.

  ‘They expect to be treated a certain way. They’ll take advantage if you’re friendly,’ Roger told me.

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘Dora! Understand that you also do them a disservice. By being pally you’re raising their hopes, giving them the impression you are on an equal footing and that you can help improve their lot in life. You can’t. Don’t mislead people. It’s not fair on them or us.’

  It’s been too long since I had any help at all.

  I should never have confided in a person who is my subordinate. There were good reasons for maintaining a distance.

  ‘Mona, please. Go and see to Daddy now. I like to have the kitchen to myself on Sunday mornings.’

  There. I’ve said it.

  When she’s gone I pour myself more tea and open the paper. But I can’t concentrate. Now Mona’s mentioned Max, with that twinkle in her eye, her own confession from yesterday begins to taunt me. This woman in Morocco whose husband sexually assaulted her – what if the things Madame said were right, and Mona had been lying? What if Mona had deliberately tried to seduce the husband, then, afraid of being found out, accused him? Or at the very least, what if she’d encouraged him, spotting an opportunity? Who was telling the truth? Mona, or Madame Sherif?

  That look in her eye this morning! The way she was taking it into her own hands to prepare the house for Max!

  I wish now I hadn’t told Mona about my lover. I know nothing about her, not really.

  I’ve let the desire to tell the world about my feelings for Max drive me to indiscretion with an employee!

  Mona is a desperate widow; she would consider a wealthy businessman a golden opportunity, not just to escape poverty, but to escape her country. Marriage – an American passport . . . my imagination begins to run away with me.

  Max is successful, a consultant, and he is rich.

  In Mona’s terms.

  I finish my breakfast and go upstairs to get dressed. I’ll put on some decent clothes and phone Anita, see if she fancies meeting for a coffee. I need to chat to someone who is used to having help in her home, and Anita has always employed au pairs for the kids.

  I lean on my dressing-table, putting on my make-up, and reach for the sample bottle of hand cream I’ve kept.

  It isn’t where I left it, in the little glass jar of samples.

  Who other than Mona might want hand cream in my house?

  What could she want it for, other than to make herself more attractive?

  I must pull myself together. I put on some lipstick, mascara, and count the days until I’ll see Max.

  When I see him, everything will be all right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Next time I speak to Ummu, she tells me she’s been to the doctor and that he’s worried about her cough. He wants her to have a scan.

  ‘I can’t afford it, Mona.’

  ‘How much will it cost?’

  When she tells me the price I almost faint. But if she has something serious . . . I redouble my determination to save all my earnings for everything she and Leila need.

  I’ve just finished the call when Dora comes into my room and tells me she’s not coming home this evening, that she’s meeting her man.

  ‘That’s fine,’ I say. ‘Have a nice evening.’

  She smiles. ‘I hope I will.’

  ‘If you bring him back here I’d cook a good meal for you,’ I say in Arabic.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing. Please, enjoy yourself.’

  Ummu told me the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and this is also true with Dora’s son. Now I’ve found out what he likes to eat, I can make him do whatever I want. I’m not going to allow him to sit about, like Dora does. I’m going to get him to help me. I can’t understand how someone so big and strong, with all the advantages he’s had, can laze on the sofa in the drawing room, the TV on, all day long. I go into the room. The curtains are drawn against the small amount of light we get each day here, in early November.

  ‘You think I’m going to pick up all your dirty socks?’ I say. ‘It’s not my job!’

  ‘What do you want me to do with them?’

  ‘Pick them up, and if you’re good, I’ll wash them,’ I say. ‘But you – you need to get dressed. Sitting about in your . . .’

  ‘PJs,’ he says.

  ‘
. . . in your PJs all day long is no good. Get up, get dressed, wash, work,’ I tell him, then: ‘All the privilege you could ask for and you throw it all away! It’s criminal,’ I say in Arabic.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Leo shrugs, bends down, hands me his socks and carries his trainers through to the hall. Then he comes back in.

  ‘I can’t work. I don’t have a job,’ he says.

  ‘And you think you’ll get one sitting in front of the TV all day?’

  He ignores me. Picks up a packet of cigarettes he’s left on the floor, takes one out and changes channels.

  ‘Make me a cup of tea,’ he says. ‘Tea and two slices of toast with butter while you’re at it.’

  ‘I am not your slave!’ I say. ‘But I’ll bring you something if you put on some clothes and get up. I’ll bring you tea if you go to the High Street for me. Your mother gave me a list.’

  I wait. To my surprise, he grins, shrugs. Stands up.

  ‘Tea and toast first,’ he says.

  The minute he’s left the house, I run up the stairs to his room.

  Luckily, since I have never learned how to switch on a computer, the screen is already on, a pattern flickering across it. I move the mouse the way I remember Madame’s kids doing. The cursor jumps about. I click, and a page flashes onto the screen. Racing cars. I try to click it off again, but instead another page leaps up – pictures of bodies, close-ups, diagrams of veins and hearts. Some lurid photos of body parts with strange rashes and lesions.

  Ugh. I look closer, at yellowing pustules and pictures of the insides of bodies – things I’ve seen in Ali’s medical books at home.

  I peer closely, wondering what Leo has been looking at. I can’t read these words, they are long and must refer to the pictures – medical terms, maybe – and I haven’t got long. I must concentrate on what I’m here for. If I can find the Google page, I’ll put Ali’s name in, and do a search. Madame’s children showed me how to do this. At the time, no results came up for Ali, but things change. He must be somewhere. People don’t simply vanish!

  I fumble with the mouse and the cursor leaps all over the place.

  After several attempts with no success the truth hits me. I’m no nearer finding Ali than I was before I left home. The weeks are sliding by.

  I wonder if knowing the worst would be better than knowing nothing. What if he had been hurt – or, God forbid, killed? He has such a temper, it’s got him into trouble before. How would I know? I soothe myself, remembering that the last time he went away, before we had Leila, it was to study in Casablanca. I didn’t hear from him for a few weeks that time, but he did come back.

  Why, though, why did he tell me one story and Yousseff another?

  I sit on Leo’s bed, shut my eyes, listen to the steady patter of a cold rain that’s started up yet again against the windowpane. Wish I could get Ali out of my system. Wish his absence didn’t accompany me wherever I go.

  A waft of rain smell or the quality of the light sends me back to a day on the jetty years ago, before Leila.

  It was an ordinary afternoon, but unusually grey overhead. Ummu had finished her morning’s work and was having a siesta.

  I was alone. I couldn’t sleep. I got up and went down to the beach. The tide had withdrawn, leaving the sand scattered with debris. I wasn’t supposed to come here alone, but I was feeling something and wanted to work out what it was. It must have been quite soon after the day Ali gave me the fish. I wonder now if he knew somehow I was there, if he felt my thoughts somehow. We were like that, Ali and me, we communicated without speaking.

  He came up behind me. Didn’t speak, took my hand and led me up onto the jetty where men sat huddled under their djellabas on the rocks, their bamboo rods soaring out into the waves.

  I said nothing.

  This was a man’s place.

  But I couldn’t resist Ali. We walked out along the jetty to the far end where waves lashed against the rocks, the spray stinging our faces. Here you could imagine you were standing on the sea itself.

  Ali held me and turned me round in his arms so we were looking back at the kasbah.

  ‘From here you can see the city as a traveller might who is approaching our country from the sea for the first time,’ he said.

  Clouds were bringing rain in from the west. The colour of the city walls, white or rose-tinted in the sunlight, today reminded me of the offal in the souks. The imam’s call to prayer was rising towards a crescendo above the roar of the waves.

  ‘Out here I feel separate from our country,’ Ali said. ‘Back there, the souks and hammams are emptying, the mosques filling. Everyone is ruled by routine and ritual. Here, I’m free from those invisible forces. One day, I am going to get away from this country. Travel. Be free. Make my fortune in America or Europe.’

  I wondered whether he was aware of me as he spoke. He seemed in his own world, in a kind of trance. And I didn’t want to think of him travelling away from me to some strange country.

  He pulled me tighter to him. ‘You’ll come with me, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Ali.’

  His lips when we kissed for the first time tasted of salt.

  Now I try to remember his exact words on the day, six months ago, he said he had to go away again.

  ‘I have to help my Berber brothers,’ he’d said, like some sort of proud Berber warlord, as if he didn’t have me or Leila to support.

  I was on the roof of our white house, pegging out washing. Leila had a bowl of water and was washing stones in it, making them glossy, putting them in the sun to dry.

  ‘Why won’t they stay shiny?’ she said crossly. ‘I polish them in the water and they go all dull when I put them in the sun.’

  Ali came close to me, a grave look on his face. ‘They’re taking our Berber territories. I can’t just stay here and let it happen.’

  ‘But you are so close to having enough money to finish your studies,’ I said. ‘You were going to qualify.’

  His medical training had taken years. Years of intermittent study and demeaning work as a tour guide to earn the money to pay for it. He couldn’t throw it all away.

  ‘That can wait,’ he said. ‘The struggle can’t.’

  I knew by his tone that nothing I said would change him. His leaving was as inevitable as the shine vanishing from Leila’s stones in the sunshine.

  He took hold of my hand, pushed up my chin.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he said, gazing into me with his azure eyes.

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise. You don’t think I’d leave you and Leila if I didn’t have to. You must let me do this.’

  I couldn’t understand how he could care more for this so-called ‘struggle’ – for land he’d never lived in – than he cared for us, Leila at least. I sealed my lips. I would not speak these thoughts.

  In the end, however, I couldn’t stop myself, desperation find-ing its way into my voice. After all, I’d left my own work to have our daughter.

  ‘How long will you be gone? If it’s more than a month, we won’t be able to stay here. I’ll have to go back to Ummu’s.’

  ‘It won’t be for long,’ he said.

  ‘How will we manage, now I have no work?’

  ‘I’ll send money. It’ll be OK.’

  ‘But you won’t be working, you’ll be fighting. I don’t understand.’

  He lowered his eyelids so his long lashes veiled his eyes as he said, ‘It’s not your concern, Mona.’

  There was an edge in his voice now, one I chose to ignore.

  ‘Ali. I’m afraid. Why do you want to get involved in conflict? You might get yourself killed.’

  He laughed at this. ‘You worry too much,’ he told me. ‘Your job is to look after Leila.’

  He was leaving already.

  With each stone Leila placed on the white roof, I felt him take another step away from us.

  I held onto his promise.

  But the weeks
went by and the rent ran out.

  Leila and I went back to live with Ummu.

  The door downstairs slams – Leo’s back. I must put the pages away before he comes up and finds me. He will tell Dora. I move the mouse, but the cursor does its own thing. I try again, to click the windows shut. Nothing happens.

  I can hear Leo in the hall, the flump as he drops his leather jacket on the floor, his keys rattling.

  I click again, trying to force the pictures that have come up to vanish.

  It’s gone silent downstairs. Perhaps he’s moved down to the kitchen?

  I make several more attempts and at last the images dissolve.

  As I slip out of his room, my eye falls on a heap of coins piled onto Leo’s bed. I stop in the doorway. Listen again. There’s no sound of him on the stairs. I look at the money. He’s emptied his pockets and left the contents there as if they were worth nothing. I’ve heard it said that some people simply throw away small change, finding it a nuisance.

  I’m creeping up the next flight of stairs to the bathroom when he starts up the stairs.

  ‘Mona, look, I’ve got something for you!’

  I turn and look over what Dora calls her ‘Barley Twist’ banisters. He’s standing in the hallway, holding something in his hands.

  I run down.‘What have you got?’

  He holds out a bunch of silver spoons, round, like small ladles, all blackened with tarnish.

  ‘There’s a shop on the High Street that buys silver and gold. It’s the one next to the halal meat shop with a yellow sign. You might as well make a bit of extra cash. And Mona, if you want to use my computer, you can just ask me. Now, you can give me back those coins you took.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Max is waiting for me beneath Boudicca.

  I’m so relieved to see his open face, his guileless smile. I want to throw my arms around him, snuggle up close to him, rediscover his smell, his voice. I don’t want to waste a second. If I had my way, we’d miss the next couple of hours, move straight on to the bit we’re really meeting for, the bar, the hotel room.

  But as usual we’re awkward to start with, unsure of each other, our conversation strained, polite. It seems so long since we’ve been together.