It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen Leo, showing his grandfather the coloured balls, the little things in the shape of birds and stars and reindeers that he says he remembers from when he was a child.
After lunch, when Charles has fallen asleep, I go up to find Leo who has retreated to his room. I want to check my Facebook page.
We sit side by side at his desk.
‘What do you do at the computer?’ I ask him. ‘Apart from all this social networking?’
‘I look up stuff,’ he says.
‘What do you look up?’
He glances at me and away again, pulls up his hood, wraps his scarf tight around his neck.
‘Illnesses,’ he says.
‘Illnesses?’
‘To see if I’ve got one.’
I remember the first time I tried to use the computer, the body parts and cross-sections that popped up.
‘Why? Do you have pain?’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes I do.’
‘What pain?’
‘Not pain, feelings. Do you understand the word “tingle”?’
‘Tingle?’
‘Your skin feels as if it’s fizzing. Pins and needles.’
I know what he means, the feeling you get when you have pure fear.
‘Or I think perhaps it’s something deep, slow, that might take a long time before I know I’m going to die.’
I know that feeling too. A long, slow journey towards something inevitable. I shiver.
I run my eyes up and down his big strong body.
‘But if you don’t have a pain, a sign, then you don’t need to be looking for some illness you might or might not have. You can be happy that you are well, without symptoms.’
‘But what if I’m not well?’ he says. ‘If I don’t spot it?’
‘You don’t have to look for it. Your body tells you. Is this why you have this in your room?’
I hold up a zip-up bag of medicine and pills and monitors.
He nods slowly.
I want to laugh. I’d even like to give him a hug.
I stare at this big, tough boy, with his massive shoulders and his head like a dog’s, and remember the first day I saw him.
How afraid I was of him.
And I realise that the reason he cannot find work, and doesn’t like leaving the house unless he’s drunk or on some kind of drugs is not because he’s lazy and good-for-nothing, but because he’s paralysed with fear. His fear isn’t like mine and Leila’s back in our country after Ali disappeared. His fear is not of poverty or people who can exploit or harm him, but of demons inside his head that tell him he’s sick when he isn’t.
I wonder if Dora knows this. If anyone does but me.
‘You should never be afraid of what Allah gives you,’ I tell him. ‘The thing to be afraid of is what human beings are prepared to do to you.’
He gazes at me for a few seconds.
‘And Allah’s given you good health and you don’t even believe it? Shame on you!’
He shrugs, looks away. If he wasn’t such a big tough man, I might have thought he was about to cry.
‘Can I look at my Facebook page?’ I ask him.
‘Of course.’ Then: ‘There’s a message from someone,’ he says. ‘It’s in Arabic, I can’t read it.’
I peer at the screen. Another message from Amina. I won’t let myself hope she might have heard something about Ali. I’m expecting something funny and light-hearted so I have to look twice at what she’s written. It’s been there for some days.
Been trying to find out more about Zidana. She worked here until before Dora returned to England, just over five years ago. She was pregnant. While she was working here, something happened that meant she lost her baby. It was something to do with Theodora. I’m afraid there’s worse. I tried to find out where she was living now, to see what actually happened. Just to give you the picture, Mona. But no one knows where she is. She’s dead.
When I am able to tear myself away at last, exhausted, to take a kind of refuge in my room, I find the lock on the door has been chiselled off. That’s when I get the feeling Leo spoke of, the tingle of pure fear.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
‘Dora.’ Rachel’s opened her door. ‘I’ll wait for you to finish what you’re doing, then I’ll speak to you in my office.’
Work’s picked up again lately. I’ve been presenting some excellent shows, received some good feedback. I was pleased with the application I made for my own job. So I go eagerly, fully expecting good news – that they’ve found me a position presenting a new programme.
In Rachel’s office a bevy of grave faces greets me. My stomach collapsing, I sit down opposite the formidable group, across the large desk.
‘It’s been brought to our attention that the listening figures . . .’ Rachel begins, as if we hadn’t already discussed this. She’s in role, my boss, no longer the friend who shared Mona’s tagine with me the other evening.
A new cleaner is busy polishing the interior window. I watch her for a while. Rachel’s mouth opens and closes, but I don’t hear her words, just the squeak of the cloth. But I must hear her on a certain level, because I can feel the shudder in my body as her words sink in, the collapse inside a child feels at being blamed for something it hasn’t done.
‘So,’ she says at last, placing her hands on her desk, as if she is preparing herself for a less than acquiescent response from me. ‘It’s unavoidable, I’m afraid. Your application, Theodora, though of course excellent as we would have expected, has not been successful. Your programme’s being cut.’
‘You’re firing me,’ I say.
‘What we’ve decided, is to offer you the opportunity to work . . . we would like to think you still had a job here if . . .’
‘But—’ I say.
‘I’m sorry, Dora. As you know, we simply can’t afford to . . .’ and so on. Her words blur. ‘The figures have plummeted. The programme will no longer be broadcast. We’re having to make a lot of cuts, and there’ll be far more changes to come.’
I lose my cool. Words tumble out. I am someone for whom responsibility, a sense of duty matters. I apply this to all areas of my life, my family and my job. The squeaking of the cloth on the window grows louder. The words keep coming. How I love my job. How my listeners will be lost without me. How I am the Voice of the South-East.
I think of that vision I had, my name emblazoned across billboards, my face, my voice, my fame when I took over the prime-time show.
Rachel and her colleagues stare back at me, their faces impassive. I think of Mona, her expressionless face. I feel as if everyone around me is turning to stone, that I make no impact on them, however loud I shout.
‘Theodora, we’re not getting rid of you. We’re asking you if you’d like one of the jobs we do have – if you’d consider a different role with us. You’re not the only one. At least we’re offering you something. We haven’t been able to do this for everyone. It’ll be a different workload, of course – the hours may be longer, the salary adjusted to reflect the job – but that’s the best we can do at the moment. We thought perhaps you would be interested in presenting the consumer programme. Charlotte is taking maternity leave so there’s going to be a vacancy in the New Year.’
Rachel lowers her head. She knows what this means. She is offering me a position on the graveyard slot.
She probably thinks I won’t take it, but she has to do something to compensate for her guilt.
I give up arguing, stand, fighting to hold back silly humiliating tears that threaten to roll down my cheeks.
My knees buckle as I walk out of the room. I catch the eye of the cleaner who is polishing the glass inner windows, clutching a spray bottle, a slight smile on her lips. It’s OK for you, I think, your job can’t get any worse. What does Rachel think she’s doing, anyway, imparting this kind of information in front of the office cleaner?
The cleaner turns her blue eyes upon me. She stops her polishing for a split second and
I know her eyes are on my back as I cross the corridor. I turn. She holds the bottle of disinfectant spray in her rubber-gloved hands, poised, directed at the glass, as if she were aiming it at the very place I have just been sitting. Then I notice that under her headscarf, she has wedged her mobile against her ear. She’s chatting, holding a conversation with someone while she is supposed to be working!
I retrace my footsteps, put my head back round the door. The other directors have gone.
‘That woman,’ I say to Rachel.
‘What woman?’ She’s already engrossed at her screen. I have walked out of her conscience the minute I’ve left.
‘That one there, the cleaner – you should watch her. She isn’t pulling her weight. She’s talking on her mobile when she’s supposed to be working. Take a good look.’
‘Dora,’ Rachel soothes. ‘Don’t take this so badly. I didn’t want to say this in front of everyone, but there have been more tweets about your attitude on air. And in the office. Hayley, the intern, has made a complaint. Try and take some time off, eh? I think you’re a little stressed.’
I can’t reply to this. I collect my coat from my office and leave the building, my eyes smarting as I confront the cold breeze.
I take the tube to Bond Street. It’s the week before Christmas, and lights are strung along Oxford Street. The crowds are intense, their eyes fixed on the windows searching for ideas, hell-bent on spending. The road’s being dug up and vast sewage pipes are on view – the squalid underside of the commercial heart of London we don’t normally see. Beneath all this glitz, beneath the pretty façades, the window displays, the Christmas trees and the designer fashions, is a steady flow of shit.
Rachel said there had been complaints. That they could not afford to upset listeners. What had I done to upset my listeners? I pride myself on my tact and diplomacy. It must have been that woman who wanted the swimming medal when she’d done nothing to deserve it. Or one of those perverts who attempted to get a bit fresh with me over the air and who I had to switch off.
Retail therapy is what I need. I’ll buy a dress, shoes, and a new bag. And I’ll buy stockings. I’m due to see Max at the Tower Hotel in a few days. I’ll take my mind off this news by treating myself.
I turn to go into Fenwick’s in a dream. A woman stands in the doorway and I push past her.
‘Look out!’ she growls.
‘You’re blocking the entrance!’ I’m not in the mood to apologise to people.
Rachel’s news rebounds in my ears. I can’t believe it – it can’t be true! I’d been about to be promoted. Now I’m being sacked! Where is this going to leave me? What am I going to tell Max?
I’ll splash out. I won’t be cast down by this.
I rummage through the packets of stockings in the lingerie department, ignoring the sales girl who wants to help. I don’t need help, I need to concentrate on getting this right. I want something with a sheen, something silky and sexy. On the way out I decide to buy a little more. Hell! If I’m about to have a salary reduction then I deserve to spend a bit on myself before it happens. I’ll look better than I’ve ever looked to Max. He’ll never guess what’s going on underneath.
I turn back, return to the lingerie department and spend a small fortune on a sea-green silk bra and knickers.
After this, feeling the relief buying good new clothes affords me, I take a walk along New Bond Street to Burlington Arcade. Roger used to buy me Armani or Gucci or Versace or whatever I wanted, when I lived with him and money was no object. At the time I began to see it as another way of his controlling me, of keeping me in place. If he spent money on me, I was under an even greater obligation, or so he led me to believe, to dress beautifully for his business dinners, to play the role, to keep the silence.
Now I wonder whether I don’t miss it at all.
When my head was turned by Max, everything else faded, as if precious metal had turned to pewter before my eyes. Nothing else held any interest for me. Only Max shone, only Max mattered.
I gaze in at the watches and rings and necklaces, and feel a pang for the life I’d have had if Roger and I had stayed together. For that sense of ease, the lack of worry. I was a successful man’s wife. It was straightforward and it was secure. I didn’t have to prove myself in a job that was under constant scrutiny. I only had to prove I was the perfect wife. Which was easy, of course, until Zidana messed it up for me.
Now my job defines me. Without it I’m nobody.
When I’m assailed by self-doubt, I usually soothe myself by thinking of Max. Picturing his doting gaze, remembering his fingers stroking my collar-bone, playing with my hair. I’m seeing him this week! But even this doesn’t comfort me. What will Max see in me when he knows I am not, after all, the Voice of the South-East but the presenter of a tiresome consumer show that goes out when the whole of London’s in bed?
I feel my surface eroding, that a dark underside is about to be exposed to Max like the sewage pipes on Oxford Street.
I tell myself not to be so stupid, that I am Theodora, Daddy’s Gift from God, erstwhile wife of Roger and mother of Leo.
Leo has come back to live with me. But even this isn’t any consolation since the truth is that it wasn’t Leo’s choice. Now he’s a layabout who doesn’t get up in the morning for me but who will do so for Mona.
I am Theodora, with the red hair, wild and passionate lover of a doctor from New York. Theodora Gentleman, Voice of the South-East.
I finger the gap where the gold chain should be around my neck. The full significance of its loss hits me.
It defined me!
Now it’s gone.
Suspicions flare up. Was it Mona who took it? Mona who is taking me apart, piece by piece?
The facts are these. I am no longer Daddy’s Gift from God.
No longer an elegant ex-pat wife.
No longer certain that my lover will stay with me – a doctor who needs me to talk about my migrant domestic worker’s thighs in order to keep his interest.
An horrific vision comes to my mind, of me and Daddy, our smooth exteriors crumbling. Like statues whose gold leaf is peeled away to reveal the black stone beneath.
Outside my house, with its angels guarding my entrance, the windows shiny now that Mona’s come, with its little bay trees in pots, I pause at the bottom of the steps. The brass door knocker and letterbox gleam, speaking of someone with good taste. I’ve been foolish to imagine that Mona can threaten my sense of self. But it’s employing her, after all, that proves to the world that I am still somebody of note.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
In the hot water, I shut my eyes and think about the hammam. I think of the water slopping over me in the dark, Leila leaning against me, the masseuse with her rough glove scrubbing at my skin, and the way we all sat and talked and told our secrets in the steamy heat.
When we’ve got a house of our own, Leila and I will be able to share bathtimes every day!
I climb out, feeling warm and relaxed, and pull one of Dora’s lovely big white bathtowels around me.
Dora had never offered me a bath, but she wouldn’t be back for hours and I knew Leo and Charles wouldn’t notice.
It was dark already by half past three, the streetlights flicking on outside. Charles was asleep, Leo engrossed in a computer game. I yearned for hot water, for the soothing feel of heat on my aching bones. But I also needed solace. To replace the physical comfort that had been missing since leaving my child, my mother, since losing my lover. The thought of hot water was irresistable, especially with the cold outside, the cold that grips me all the time here.
I lit the candles around the bathroom. It was looking lovely now I’d cleaned it. Got the grime off the light-pull, repaired the carpet where it was curling up. All it needed was a nail, found in a kitchen drawer, banged in with a hammer, found in the garden shed, to hold it down. I’d polished the mirrors, shined the taps.
I filled the bath with hot water, turning the big brass taps on, pouring in a cap
ful of bubble bath from one of the bottles Dora keeps on her shelf. When it was full to the brim and the bubbles looked like banks of clouds, I took off my clothes and stepped in.
The hot water was like a hug, soothing the pains in my arms and legs and back. I didn’t know how much they hurt until the aches retreated in surrender to the heat. I closed my eyes. For a little while I floated, listening to the clank in the pipes as they eased up again, the wind in the trees sighing in the back garden. I didn’t know how the anxiety about my mother, about Ali and Leila and now that odd message from Amina had been weighing on me.
In the water my worries floated away. Nothing seemed that bad, everything was going to get better. I’d keep sending the money for Ummu’s medicine, and for Leila’s education.
Sayed would help me find Ali.
I would watch Dora’s movements with a wary eye; she might have upset this young Zidana, but she would not intimidate me.
I’d done it! Taken our futures into my own hands. And then, buoyed by these thoughts, I felt an even greater conviction of my own strength.
Even should I never find Ali, I could hold it all together for Ummu and Leila – on my own. I was earning a good wage for them. My English was improving. I was learning to use the computer with more confidence. I could deal with Theodora.
I wondered how long it was since I had allowed myself to throw my head back and really sing? I sang ‘Inchaallah’ with my heart and soul. I felt an exuberance I hadn’t experienced for weeks as the words flowed out, as my voice rebounded off the bathroom walls, as my lungs filled, then released the sound.
This warmth was what I’d been missing. But one day, if I continued to work hard, it would be ours too, mine and Ummu’s and Leila’s. A house of our own, with a bathroom, where we could lie and sing as loudly as we liked whenever we wanted to. Inchaallah.
Now, with the soft towel wrapped around me, I rub a hole in the steam that’s clouded the mirror. I lean forward and look at my face. It’s bright and clean and healthier-looking than when I arrived and examined it in the mirror in Dora’s room. Something else good is coming of this work!
The Darkening Hour Page 19
