The Darkening Hour

by Penny Hancock

  We make our way up again to Dora’s bedroom.

  This room’s as broad as the house with two windows overlooking the street.

  I touch her bedspread. ‘Very nice,’ I say. ‘Did you buy it here, in England?’

  ‘I bought it when I was in India with my husband. Many years ago.’

  There’s a dressing-table with bottles of perfume and pretty glass jars of cotton-wool balls, a jewelry box. I’ll find out what it contains when she’s out. You can learn a lot about a woman from her jewelry. There’s a photo beside her bed – Dora with a man.

  ‘That’s about it. There’s one more room – the guest room, here, at the back.’

  She opens the door onto a smaller room with a white bed and a window overlooking the garden. The bed looks soft and comfortable.

  ‘There,’ she says, ‘that’s about it. Now you know.’

  ‘I’ll clean it,’ I say. ‘Then to keep it nice, I’ll do it every day.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘But remember you’re here to look after Daddy. You can do the house after you’ve seen to him. I have to work long hours, and he needs watching.’

  ‘What is your work?’

  She straightens up as she replies, ‘I present a radio show.’

  ‘Local radio?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not at all. It goes out to the whole of southeast England.’

  ‘This is very beautiful, I think, this work?’

  She doesn’t reply to this, just gives a superior smile as if I can’t possibly understand how important her job is.

  ‘My point, Mona, is I am indispensable at work. I want you to look after Daddy as if you were me. As if indeed he were your own father. The house won’t suffer if it’s left for a while. Daddy will.’

  I want to tell her I would not neglect her father, but I can’t leave the house like this. I’ve always been praised for making houses beautiful. It’s what I’m good at.

  But I remember Ummu’s words – the ones she repeated to me before I left to work at Madame’s, my first domestic role. ‘A wise woman has things to say but remains silent.’

  In the kitchen, Dora picks up her cat, kisses its nose, strokes it.

  ‘The other thing you need to do is to feed Endymion. Every morning, every night. Leo forgets.’

  She opens the fridge with one hand and brings out a can of meat.

  She puts the cat down and scoops globules into a dish on the floor. The cat purrs and sniffs at the food, and the smell wafts up. I want to put my hand over my mouth and nose.

  ‘It’s better he eats outside,’ I say.

  She looks at me sharply. I step back.

  ‘Endymion eats here,’ she says. ‘He would eat at the table with me if I ate in the evenings.’ She shuts the fridge door. ‘You can go to Daddy now. Get to know him, take him for a walk. It can be a trial run. I’ve got to meet my sister in town, just for a couple of hours. I’m helping her buy shoes for her children.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘I am here to help now. You don’t have to worry. You have a beautiful home,’ I add, because I know this is what she will want to hear.

  When she’s gone, the cat presses its body against my leg, the smell wafts up and makes me gag. I give it a short sharp kick. It yelps, hisses. Then scampers out of the kitchen.

  I’m living here too now. There are certain things that will change.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I leave Mona with Daddy and hurry up to Town.

  As soon as I arrive in John Lewis’s children’s department I see why Anita needed help buying her kids shoes. Her au pair, she told me, is having a day off.

  The place resembles a riot – a toddler riot. Shoes are scattered at all angles across the floor; wailing children cling to their mothers’ necks. Women elbow each other. Harassed-looking sales assistants try to remain polite whilst ignoring the fury on the faces of those kept waiting. Small boys chase up and down the floor brandishing weapons at one another, girls wail that they didn’t want those shoes, why can’t they have the shiny ones, babies loot boxes.

  Jemima strains at the straps of her buggy, scarlet in the face and screaming, Anita tries to hold Jack down while forcing his feet onto the gauge where they almost skin the face of the young man trying to measure him.

  Parents on all sides plead and beg, ‘Darling, come here.’ Or, ‘Please, Tabitha, please put those big girls’ shoes down.’ Or, ‘If you sit for two more minutes, honey pie, we’ll go and look at the toys . . . yes, sweetie, you can buy something.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I say to Anita as we settle down at last in the café.‘Can’t these parents assert themselves? Are they afraid to say no to their children?’

  Anita has managed to silence her own two by stuffing the straws from some horrible-looking milkshakes into their mouths.

  ‘You’ve just forgotten,’ she said. ‘It’s so long since you had Leo. At least you can see why I can’t have Daddy living with us.’

  ‘Having a kid of Leo’s age isn’t that easy either. Demanding money. Smoking in the house, lying around all day.’ I look at her, hoping for sympathy.

  ‘Why though? Why’s he unemployed? Isn’t it time he got a job? It’s been months now.’

  It’s true I’ve sometimes expressed to Anita how Leo tests my patience. But he is my little boy, I’ve accepted this is how things are for the time being, only occasionally driven to moments of frustration with him. The fact is, I’d lost him once and didn’t want to lose him again. For the years after Roger and I split up, when I was in London and he in Rabat, I missed him terribly, his funny bright-eyed face, his jokes, his physicality. He was still a young boy when I left, pre-pubescent, smooth cheeks and a crude sense of humour, who let me hug or tickle him when no one was looking. By the time he came over to go to sixth form, he was six foot tall with stubble and a deep voice and wouldn’t let me near him.

  I was determined to make it up to him. To give him everything he wanted, if needs be.

  I had no idea how giving a person what they want can be so complicated.

  ‘He might look tough, Anita, but he’s fragile. It isn’t easy find-ing a job in this climate, unless you’re brimming with confidence.’

  ‘Hmmm. I suppose I’ve got it all to come,’ she says. ‘Anyway, Terence wants to meet up some time. Talk about what we’re doing with Daddy’s house. He wants it ready to put on the market. We’ve got to clear the rest of the stuff out. Think there’s some idea that since you’ve taken Daddy on, you should have first shout when it comes to the furniture.’

  She bends down to extract the plastic cup from Jemima’s mouth that she has decided tastes better than its contents. Most of Daddy and Mummy’s furniture’s too big for my house, she must know this. It’s why I’ve already taken the things that matter to me, sentimental mementoes none of the others care about.

  ‘How is it with Daddy, anyway?’

  ‘I’ve left him with his carer. They’re having a trial run.’

  ‘I always thought it was a bit ambitious, your taking him on.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he was always difficult without Mummy to keep him in order. He needed that matriarchal figure to boss him around. Mummy was so controlling, but it’s what he needed.’

  ‘Controlling? I never thought of her as controlling.’

  ‘She was, Dora. All that motherly home-making was her way of manipulating him. Manipulating all of us. But he needed it – he was so wayward without her.’

  ‘That’s not how I saw it at all.’

  ‘Don’t you feel a relief, being released from Mummy’s watchful eye? Not allowing us to be our true selves?’ She leans over and picks up Jemima, although the toddler seemed perfectly happy where she was. She holds her like a shield against her chest.

  ‘No, I don’t. I miss Mummy.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying. We all miss her, but there are things I like about not having to live up to her expectations. But you left home before it got really unpleasant to be wit
h her and Dad. You should try being the youngest, living at home when your siblings have all gone.’

  ‘Well, Daddy’s been fine with me – until recently. But that’s because of the dementia.’

  I don’t want to tell my sister how hard it has been with Daddy. I don’t want her to know that I sometimes feel he is a complete stranger to me. I’m not sure if it’s because I have changed – after all, since I last shared a home with him I’ve been married, moved abroad, divorced, had a successful career – or whether it is him. Daddy is less amiable, less fun than I remember him. I wonder if on one level, Anita’s right. Perhaps as a grown-up I perceive things about him I’d overlooked as an adoring child, things that are difficult to accept. Neither of us is quite who we were, and it is hard work getting along together. Can even be painful. What I hadn’t predicted when I’d offered to have him live in my basement was just how painful it would become.

  As if to illustrate my thoughts, Daddy’s in one of his irascible moods when I get home. I go straight down to see how he’s got on with Mona. She’s washing dishes in his little kitchen, but leaves discreetly when I arrive.

  I go and sit with Daddy and he looks up at me.

  ‘You!’ he says. ‘I was hoping Terence would come. Terence was always so good to me. But he’s busy with his work, you know; he has an important conference and couldn’t make it. He’s a wonderful man.’

  ‘Daddy, Terence will be at his weekend cottage,’ I say. He’s too bloody selfish to put himself out for you, I think. And what is all this about Terence, who Daddy labelled the Successful, Ruthless One, who put money before people?

  ‘He and Ruth have a beautiful home,’ he goes on, ‘I loved staying with them. It’s so dark here. I can barely see you.’

  I grapple for a moment to remember the time Daddy’s referring to, when he’d stayed with Terence and Ruth. Sometimes his unreliable memory makes me doubt my own. It takes a moment to register that he’s never stayed with them, that this is one of his errant fantasies.

  ‘I don’t even know who you are. You could be anybody,’ Daddy goes on.

  ‘I’m Theodora, Daddy. You know very well who I am.’

  ‘Theodora . . . Theodora. Which one was she, Maudy? Which one was she?’

  Tears rise and lodge behind my eyes. If this is confusion caused by his dementia, it seems cruel. If it is a side of him I’ve never seen before, it’s devastating. Whichever way I look at it, Daddy has the capacity to forget I am – or ever was – his favourite.

  As I always do on these occasions, I think of the others, Terence and Anita and Simon, content in their own homes, oblivious to the effort I put in, to the way Daddy speaks to me. As if they have cast him out of their minds since the night of the funeral. It’s all very well saying I can have first pick when it comes to the furniture from his home, as if this can make up for the emotional strain I’ve gone through, having him. They have no idea. Because they never see him.

  I leave Daddy pining for Terence and mount the steps to the garden then go round to the front of the house.

  ‘Mona!’ I call. ‘Daddy needs you again now.’

  I watch her hurry down the steps, her face averted, in her headscarf.

  I go upstairs and run a deep bath.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  At first, I think the distant roar I can hear when I awake is the sea. Then it hits me –it’s the traffic that must start up before dawn. I remind myself that though I’m so far from the people I love, Ali could be somewhere this country, this city, even. But this makes me anxious again. I push the fear that he may be in trouble to the back of my mind. They say no news is good news.

  I try to recall more of the conversation I’d had with Ali’s friend at the Café des Jeunes that day.

  ‘Nah,’ Yousseff had said. ‘Nothing bad’s happened to him.’

  ‘Have you heard from him?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not since he first left. There were a couple of texts.’

  I’d had those, too, when he’d first gone away – they said he’d be in touch as soon as he could.

  ‘My advice is, let him do what he needs to do, Mona. It’s for the best.’

  ‘Why hasn’t he contacted us? Leila at least?’

  Yousseff sighed. He was impatient with me, I could see.

  ‘Maybe he lost his phone. Maybe he can’t contact you?’

  If he’d lost his phone he would have written. Perhaps there’s a letter waiting for me now, at home. As soon as I have credit on my phone I’ll ring and find out. Today then, my goal is to get money from somewhere. Or to ask for an advance on my pay, if I dare.

  I look about my room, imagining what Ummu would say if she could see it. There’s stuff everywhere – shelves of books, other things wedged onto the book cases: packs of cards and a magnifying glass, badges and a hairbrush, loads of DVDs – and an old TV is shoved into a corner. A lipstick! Cast aside.

  What kind of woman throws her make-up aside? I pick it up, open it, try out the colour on the back of my hand. It’s pretty. And obvious Dora no longer wants it.

  I push it into my tracksuit pocket. I’ll try it on later, see if it suits me.

  The cat slinks in, puts its two front paws on my bed, claws at the rug.

  ‘Tsssss!’

  It looks indignant, as if it has a right to walk over my bedclothes. I push up the window. Pick up the vase of dead roses, take them out and hurl the water at the cat, who leaps up onto the sill and out into the bleak grey world. It’s left its hairs over everything. Cats carry fleas and disease. It shouldn’t be allowed to creep over my bed.

  I’ll tell Ummu, if and when I get to speak to her, that my employer, though rich, hasn’t time – is too important – for her home, for hygiene.

  Even the windows are grimy. Black mildew creeps up the panes like dried blood.

  I find a rag in the kitchen just beyond my room, half a lemon in Dora’s enormous fridge, and polish – until the pale watery sunshine falls into the room, and I can see outside. My room overlooks the garden at the back of the house. An oasis of green and scarlet, enclosed by grey. Grey sky, grey walls, grey backs of houses beyond. There’s even another statue. A grey stone head of a woman on a concrete plinth at the top of the steps that go down to Charles’s flat.

  There aren’t many leaves on the shrubs, but those that remain are gold. The bushes drip with red berries; flame-coloured lanterns. There’s a tree whose load of pears has been shed so the fruit lies rotting on the grass. What a waste – lipstick inside, pears out! The pears that have retained their shape will make a lovely clafoutis. I’ll bake it later, a welcome offering for my new employer.

  It’s impossible for me to live in this mess, so I start by arranging the books and files on the shelves and tidying the heaps of DVDs and clothes. What would Ummu think of this? She makes a point of snipping buttons and zips from worn-out clothes to sew back into newer ones, removing laces from shoes beyond repair. Saves tins to use as storage, bottles to refill. All this stuff is worth hundreds of dirham, yet here it’s left to gather dust.

  When the room’s to my liking, I finish taking my things out of my bag. My scrapbook with its photos of Leila and Ummu and, in the background, the chickens that live on the roofs. Some incense, the sandalwood type I love best. Next, Ali’s blue handkerchief. A soft packet of black tobacco cigarettes for emergencies. The cosmetics I managed to grab here and there (Nivea face cream, shampoo, a bar of soap in a pink plastic box). A book of English verbs. If I’m going to go home better quali-fied than when I arrived, I shall have to learn to read and write English. My passport. I open it. My face peers up. I’m hunched up as if I’m afraid they’re doing something worse to me than taking my photo. I was afraid. That at any moment they would refuse it, say no passport for you. I must guard it with my life. I tuck it into the bottom of my bag and place the other things on top.

  That’s me. Squished into these few belongings.

  I put my nose to the bag and breathe. It smells of journeys, airports, str
ange cars and of diesel oil. I hoped I might smell home. I pick up Ali’s handkerchief. Press my nose into it and breathe, drawing in his smell, my eyes screwed tight shut. I want to believe, for a few moments, that I’m on our roof where we were at our happiest.

  Before he left.

  It’s just before dawn. Silver moonlight reflecting off the still water of the estuary. The warmth in the white walls contained since the day before. The scent of roses coming not from a vase where the petals have brown frills, but from Didi’s basket on the front of his bicycle as he begins his rounds. And the smell of Ali, coming not from the 20 square centimetres I have left of him, but from the warmth of his body through the cotton of his kaftan as he wraps his arms about me, puts his mouth to my ear.

  I’m startled out of this daydream by a knock on the door. I’d forgotten Dora was in the house.

  She looks different this morning. Dressed for work in a grey jacket and skirt, her amber-coloured hair that so far she’s worn tumbling past her shoulders in corkscrews pinned up into a loose style off her face. I notice now things I didn’t on arrival, perhaps because of the lack of natural light – lines fanning outward from her eyes and furrowing her forehead. I guess she’s a good ten years older than me, though it’s hard to say. She wears a gold chain around her neck with a word on it. It must be her name, Theodora.

  I stare at it as it catches the light, wonder how much it is worth. It looks like real gold to me. Solid, precious. I’d like to touch it.

  She says, ‘Goodness. Hmmm. You’ve cleaned the windows!’

  ‘Shall I clean the house now? Today?’

  ‘Yes. But you’re here to look after Daddy first.’

  ‘And shall I cook?’

  ‘Thank you, no need,’ she says. ‘Leo likes to eat at seven, but I’ll use the microwave. You can put the recycling out. It goes in there.’ She waves at some enormous plastic bins beside the garden fence outside the window. ‘And you must take the wheelie bins out on a Wednesday night. Daddy needs breakfast, however. You should have done that before the room. He can’t wait, the house can. He needs help with his toilet. Then you can take him out to the market, or for a walk by the river. He prefers the wheelchair. He tires easily.’