Then I’m no longer the only face in the mirror – Dora’s is there too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I look up at the drawing-room window. The tree’s in place, tiny lights glowing against the darkening afternoon. Mona’s done as I’ve asked.
I climb the steps, put my key in the lock and push open the door.
In the drawing room, Leo’s lounging on the sofa, playing some kind of game on his DS. Daddy’s next to him, snoozing quietly.
It isn’t Daddy’s presence in the drawing room that upsets me today, but Mona’s deliberate flouting of my requests.
‘Where’s Mona?’
Leo glances up. ‘She’s taking a bath.’
And from upstairs I can hear a voice, singing, singing so powerfully I’m taken aback, singing as if its owner is completely at home.
For a few seconds, our two faces are reflected back side by side.
I see Mona glance at my reflection and back again at hers. Comparing!
I can’t speak. I remember for the first time since Zidana what it is to feel white-hot with rage. I try not to register that her skin is firm where mine is loosening – it isn’t relevant. But a thought worms its way into my head. Has she only been looking so old and dowdy because she’s been fatigued, first from her journey here, then from the long hours of work I’ve been giving her? Was Daddy in fact making more sense than I wanted to believe when he said how young Mona looked next to me? I remember the day on the river when I noticed that she might have a certain beauty, were she to have access to decent clothes and make-up. But she will never have access to the kind of products and therapies my friends and I are able to make use of.
I’ve never been someone to worry about ageing, so why do these thoughts assail me now?
At last I find my voice and it comes out low, tremulous.
‘I’ll wait for you to get dressed. Then I’ll speak to you in the kitchen.’ I’m aware that my words echo those of Rachel’s earlier this afternoon. Mona doesn’t turn, but stares at my reflection in the mirror. I stare back, my lips tight, the muscle in my leg shaking, my breath panting in and out. I’m fighting to control the urge to move towards her, a vision of Zidana flashing into my head, stopping me in my tracks. This must be done with dignity, with control, not in blind fury the way I dealt with Zidana, when my passion got the better of me.
I go down and wait for Mona at the kitchen table, allowing the truth to sink in. My maid’s been helping herself – and now the certainty hits me that of course it is Mona who’s taken my chain, who’s taken Daddy’s cufflinks, who’s stolen the silver soup spoons that were my mother’s! How foolish I’ve been to overlook these things.
She’s been cultivating Leo and Daddy’s affections and now they cannot see what she’s up to under their own noses. Impressing them with her cooking and cleaning and that singing voice. What more is she going to take from me?
And it’s all been happening while I’ve been out working, earning the money for everyone so they can enjoy my home without me.
Mona comes down five minutes later, in her shabby skirt and fleece, her hair wet, her face glowing from the heat of the water – from my bath.
‘Where’s your overall?’ I ask her. ‘You know you’re to wear your overall while you’re working.’
‘It’s in my room. I’ll get it.’
‘Yes. Now.’
She walks past me and I feel for the first time the ridiculous inconvenience of having put her in my study so she has to pass through the kitchen each time she goes in or out.
Then she stops and speaks.
‘Oh yes. I found this,’ she says, holding out my necklace. ‘It was under the cushion on Charles’s chair.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Dora’s at the kitchen table, clinging onto her martini glass as if it’s there to save her. She stares at the necklace for several minutes.
And then, without thanking me, she says, ‘What’s your least favourite job here, Mona?’ Her voice is soft. She must be grateful to me for finding her necklace. And perhaps that moment when our eyes met in the bathroom mirror, when it was clear we weren’t very different as women even if she is older than me, made her change her mind about me. I’d thought she was going to be angry that I’d taken a bath without permission, but perhaps it was a second’s intimacy.
‘I don’t like cleaning the toilets, of course,’ I say. ‘But I had a nice day today, in the end. Buying the tree with Leo and—’
She stands up, marches past me, goes into the little washroom I’m supposed to use instead of her bathroom and returns with bleach and a toilet brush.
‘You can do that first.’
After this she begins to pour forth orders.
‘This is my house.’ As if I didn’t know it! ‘My house. I’ve asked you to look after Daddy in his flat, not in the drawing room. And you are not to use my bathroom or my products. It isn’t a holiday resort, it isn’t a talent contest.’
‘A talent contest?’
‘I heard you singing. You’re not here to bathe in my bubbles and sing in the bath. You’re here to work!’
‘I know.’
‘But you weren’t working when I came in, you were in the bath. Daddy was upstairs. Your job is to care for him in the basement.’
I want to retort that I wouldn’t want this house, that if I had her wealth I would choose somewhere light and modern, not this dank place with its dusty corners and its clanking pipes.
But I can’t afford to let this go wrong.
I think of Ali, how much he had to tolerate before he snapped that terrible day. The day I took him into my arms and promised no matter what he was accused of, no matter who came after him, I’d protect him.
I think of Ummu’s cough, how urgently she needs the money for her operation, then afterwards for medication. I think of Leila’s education.
It’s easy when you have enough motivation. To keep quiet and get on with it.
In my room I tie my hair up in my headscarf, put the blue overall back on. For now I am back as Theodora needs me to be.
Mona. Domestic worker.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I awaken to a room bathed in brownish light. It’s the day I’m due to see Max. The sweet anticipation I usually experience is tinged with anxiety.
I pull back my curtains to reveal a sky that is pregnant with snow. As I get dressed, pulling on a cashmere dress and suede boots, running my fingers through my hair in the mirror, the creeping unease I felt when I awoke intensifies. Is the anxiety about what Max will think when he hears I’m not being promoted, after all, but shifted to the graveyard slot?
Or is it something else, something slippery, indefinable, to do with that vision of Mona that won’t leave me?
The soft white towel wrapped around her, her big brown eyes. No housemaid would be allowed in an employer’s bathroom in Roger’s house, or those of his ex-pat friends! She must know this. I had good reason to object.
But what bothers me now, in the leaden light of morning, is the level of rage I experienced at the sight of her. And the fact that even now, the vision of her in the bathroom will not leave me. The thick black hair hanging over one side of her face. The slender fingers that should by rights have become calloused given the work she does unreasonably smooth, holding my fluffy white towel to her chest. The slow defiance in her movements. Her strong thighs. That voice! I still can’t believe it can have been her singing. Daddy in the drawing room against my instructions, and Leo, too, knowing she was there, in the bath, letting her sing, letting her make choices in a house that doesn’t belong to her, as if I no longer existed.
And I remember the sensation I had when I saw her for the first time, the sense that she might be more than she appeared. That she might have another agenda for coming into my life. Where did Roger find her? A new thought enters my head, filling me with a brief shiver of horror – that perhaps Mona knew Zidana, had inveigled her way into my life to avenge her? Impossible! Yet she was
friends with Amina, the maid who moved in after Zidana left. I’m plagued by dreadful suspicion.
So many similarities! The way Zidana won Leo over, the things she took. The way she went blank when I tried to get her to confess. The way she flirted with every man that came to the house. Then I remember that Mona had not, after all, taken my necklace; she had found it and given it straight back, and I’m overcome by confusion and self-doubt.
But again and again, as I go about my day through the dismal short winter hours, I’m haunted by the sight of the smooth skin on Mona’s arms, the shiny hair like liquorice now she’s used my shampoo, the slow gaze of her enormous eyes. How can I stop her from invading my thoughts? Taking over my home, my father, my son?
Yet I can’t do without her.
I’ve got to work. I need help with Daddy.
Most of all, I have to see Max. I’m seeing him tonight! My anxiety is spoiling the one thing I most treasure in my life.
When I get home from work, however, things are back as they should be. Daddy’s in his flat, Leo’s out, and Mona’s got her hands in the sink.
I go upstairs, and spend longer than usual preparing. I pull from my drawer the silk underwear I bought from Fenwick’s, the frail stockings. I pull on a pencil skirt and a satin blouse. My favourite Rupert Sanderson shoes.
I’m dressed, made-up, perfumed and about to go out of the front door to my taxi when Mona comes along the passage. She’s in the overall with her hair tied back, her face tired and drawn-looking after all. As it should be, in her place.
‘Dora,’ she says quietly. ‘You forgot this.’ And she hands me my mobile.
The snow begins to fall gently as we move through the south London streets – confetti dancing around the streetlights.
‘There’s more on its way,’ the driver says, and I barely listen, aware only of the bald back of his head and my tumbling thoughts. ‘You won’t want to leave it too late to get back tonight, love. Most of us’ll be knocking off early. Wonder if it’ll be a white Christmas, eh? With only a week to go, you never know.’
We’re crossing Tower Bridge, enmeshed in a silver shower of snow. The water beneath us is glossy and black and dimpled, and then I spot the Girl with a Dolphin lit up by white lights, and my heart-rate increases for I’m about to meet my lover, that soon I can abandon myself to Max’s caresses, and forget all my troubles.
Max likes the Girl with a Dolphin even better than the Muse of Music in Embankment Gardens. We look at her soaring naked through the veil of snow. Her supple skin shines dark against the silver spray.
Like Mona’s, in the steam of the bathroom.
‘Gorgeous,’ says Max, without even looking at me when I arrive, but putting his arm round me and his hand straight up under my faux fur. ‘What a feat! To create a sculpture where neither figure appears supported, as if they really had taken flight.’
His touch thaws every bit of my frozen body. Eases the stiffness from my tense limbs.
‘I’ve booked us a room.’ He turns and looks at me. ‘Happy Christmas,’ he adds, kissing me briefly on the lips.
Thank goodness, I think. Thank goodness for you, Max. I lean against his shoulder, turn my face so I can draw in the smell of his good wool coat, the melting snow that has settled upon it numbing the tip of my nose. He’s wearing some new kind of aftershave, an expensive fragrance with notes of old leather and spice.
He walks ahead of me into the dimly lit hotel bar. A huge Christmas tree twinkles in the centre of the room. There’s the smell of pine, and of mulled wine.
Max gestures towards a luxurious sofa in a corner and goes off to order my martini, his Scotch. He brings them over to the window beside me to stare out at the snow over the river.
‘Beautiful,’ he says. ‘It’s good to be here.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Jeez it’s been tough at home lately, it’s great to get away.’
‘Tough?’
‘Work, kids, stuff. You don’t wanna know.’
‘No. I do.’ I’m desperate, I feel like saying, to hear about someone else’s tangled family problems for once.
‘It’s the usual Christmas show-down,’ he says. ‘Two out of our three kids decided to spend it with their boyfriends and the third doesn’t want to be alone at home with his mom and me. Can’t blame him.’
His face is solemn. There are lines I haven’t noticed before, running between his nose and upper lip. He looks tired. ‘But where else can he go? We don’t have grandparents on tap. His sisters find him annoying.’
‘So he’ll have to put up with it and stay at home,’ I say, thinking of Leo’s trip away. I must help him pack or he’ll end up flying off with no clean underwear. I must buy Christmas presents for him to give Roger and Claudia too. He’ll never think of these things for himself. My heart sinks again at the thought that I’ll be spending Christmas at Anita’s without either my son or Max, the two men I’d rather be with than anyone in the world.
‘Do you ever wonder if it’s worth it though?’ he asks, slumping down next to me on the sofa. He puts his arm round me.
This is the moment, I think. Snow tumbling down outside, my martini yet to drink. Mona, Daddy, my family and my job, a million miles away across the river. I wish I never had to move away, could stay here, on this sofa, with Max’s scent and the Christmas tree. We would be figures caught for eternity in an intimate embrace like the Girl with a Dolphin – a perfect moment preserved forever.
‘When I first met you,’ he says, ‘what was it, God, can it be four–five years ago now? It seemed so important. My career. Being recognised. Earning a sackload of money. But lately, I don’t know, it must be middle age. I wonder what it’s all about?’
I look up at him and he squeezes me into him.
‘Max, I thought your career was what kept you going. What you get up for in the morning.’
‘It was. But you know, with the kids growing up I’m aware of the way Valerie and I fight over whose job is more important and I wonder, perhaps neither is. Perhaps it’s the simple things that matter. A game of soccer in the park. Pancakes for breakfast. Home-made, I mean, not some junk from the mall. We screwed up, Dora, we should have made more effort. Now the kids are almost gone, I’m afraid. We could have, should have done it differently. Better.’
‘You must stop this, Max. Come on. You know as well as I do there’s no ideal family model.’
I think of my messy family, Roger and Claudia in Rabat, me and Leo here, Leo unemployed, Daddy down in a dark basement while his other children swan about doing as they please. ‘We all muddle along as best we can,’ I offer lamely.
‘Hmm.’
I know what he’s feeling. It’s that devil that assails us all as we get older – I’ve heard it time and again on the phone-in. Anxiety that we messed up. Regret that we didn’t do things differently.
‘Anyway, what’s in all these bags? Have you bought up the West End?’ I tease him. I want to lighten the atmosphere, fend off the compulsion to unburden my worries, to tell him too much.
He lets out a long, weary sigh.
‘It’s just money though, isn’t it, Dora? I spend money on my children to compensate for not being there. I never saw it before. Being in those shops today – people were frantic! I had a kind of epiphany. What the hell am I doing on the other side of the Atlantic, buying gifts when I should be with them?’
He swirls the ice around in his glass, gazing into the amber liquid.
I’m afraid. He’s about to say he’s leaving. Going home to be with his kids. He can no longer see me. It’s all been a mistake, I’m a component of the regret that’s assailing him.
A void opens before me: no job, no family, no Max.
But then he goes on, ‘I’m on the wrong track, but I don’t know how to get off. I’ve been so hell-bent on the pursuit of success. I’m thinking of giving up my job before it’s too late.’
This is his way of telling me he’s decided to spend more time at home. With his y
oungest son, with Valerie! I feel panic course through me.
‘If you gave up your job you’d have no excuse to meet up with me,’ I blurt out before I can stop myself.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’d get away to see you from time to time. That would be a priority. Of course.’ He bites my earlobe gently.
‘From time to time?’
‘As often as I could.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear it,’ I say, the panic receding a little. ‘But how would Valerie feel if you left work?’
‘She’d love it. It would mean she could put herself first, make sure she gets all the promotions she’s been angling for.’
I wince at the word ‘promotion’. But he goes on. ‘If I left my job, she could move on up the ladder. It would mean our downshifting, of course, but hey. You only live once. I want some quality time. I’ve had enough of the rat run. And in fact . . .’ he pulls me in closer to him, ‘it would mean I could see more of you, rather than less. I wouldn’t be constantly jumping on the next plane to go to some conference on the other side of the world. I could actually stay over, listen to you on your show . . .’
Oh Max, please, don’t ask about the show.
I say, ‘Are you sure about all this? Your career has always been part of you. You might miss it.’
‘It’s different for me than you,’ he goes on sweetly. ‘I am just an invisible cog in a very big wheel. I’m doing work that frankly I’m getting a bit old for. You’re about to become a household name. My sexy-voiced goddess!’
‘Oh come on, Max . . .’
‘No, really. It was the best thing you could do for yourself, getting that woman to help you out, so you can focus. How’s it going, by the way? How are those marvellous thighs? Is she still climbing the furniture to brush your ceiling roses?’
‘Max! Honestly! Her main role is caring for Daddy. But she’s freeing me up. I wouldn’t be here with you otherwise.’
‘That’s good. I’ve rather come to depend on her as much as you.’
The Darkening Hour Page 20
