‘Ah, look, roasting chestnuts,’ says Charles. ‘Let’s buy a bagful and take them home to eat by the fire. Follow my stick.’
The market swirls about me. The bales of purple and orange and gold fabric seem brighter, the saris, the sparkling piles of watches and mobile phones. Everything looks pretty in the light – even the nuts and bolts and rolls of tape in their gleaming blue baskets. I look longingly at the stalls of sweets and toys. Oh, to have the money to buy something for Leila! But there’s no need to fret. Soon I’ll be back with Ali, and Ummu and Leila can come and join us!
A picture of Ali comes to mind, swinging Leila into the air when she was tiny. And I can feel Leila now with my whole body, the weight of her tied onto my back as I go about my chores, or in my arms as I feed her. Her body sprawled wetly against mine as we bathe together at the hammam, the warm dense doughiness of it.
How her eyes would have shone, if she could have seen these stalls of toys, as if the world did after all possess some magic dust that could bring to life everything she’d ever wished for. I pick up a toy London bus, turn it over in the palm of my hand, picture Leila pushing it over the floor on her tummy, humming to herself gently. She deserves to have these things. I never wanted my child cast into an adult role so soon.
I remind myself, however, that Leila finds it easy to be overjoyed. She might not have many toys, but she can be mesmerised by a pregnant spider spinning its web, by the jewel-like seeds set in the flesh inside a pomegranate. She finds the magic around us, in the everyday, in stones made shiny under the water.
Sayed’s at the counter in the newsagent’s, scanning an old woman’s shopping at the cash register. I wait for her to pay up and leave. Charles sits and looks at the papers, allowing me a moment to myself.
‘Sayed,’ I say in a low voice, ‘I need your help.’
‘Sure. What is it? You need documents? I can get passports, at a cost. Or you want me to send money?’
‘No, it’s nothing like that. I need you to keep this secret.’
‘Don’t worry, man. I know the score. Tell me.’
‘I’m looking for this man.’
I pull Ali’s photo from my tracksuit pocket and hold it up for him to see. Ali with Leila, his arms around her, their eyes squinting into the sun.
‘He’s in London, and I need to find him. He’s a medical student. He believed he could get work here.’
‘Does he speak English?’
‘Yes, well. He always talked of coming to London. I’ve been told he’s here but I’m afraid something’s happened to him because he hasn’t been in touch.’
Sayed examines the photo. ‘What’s his name? He’s a medic, you say? I’ll ask around. See what I can do.’ He grins and looks at me, waiting for something. Then I see what he wants.
‘Here.’ I hand him five pounds, five pounds out of the money Dora’s given me to spend on the food from her favourite shop, Waitrose.
He rubs his thumb and finger together. ‘You expect me to help you for a fiver?’
I look at the money in my purse. Hand him another five pound note.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ he says.
We leave the newsagent’s and I push Charles up the street to the 99p shop where he bought his chocolate that first day I was here. I can get exactly the same stuff Dora wants from Waitrose for less than half the price here.
If this leads to something it will be worth a thousand pounds – and anyway, then I won’t need Dora or her money any more.
Later, I ask Leo if I can check my Facebook page on his computer. My hopes soar as I see that there’s a message from Amina, my friend who works for Dora’s ex-husband. Has she heard news of Ali? I click on the message and it pops up. But what I read, instead of throwing any light on my situation, casts a shadow over everything.
Mona, my lovely friend, I’ve been talking with the gardener, Idriss. He’s been here for years. He told me how much better it is now Claudia’s in charge. I asked him what he meant but he wouldn’t say any more. I just wanted to check you’re OK. That Theodora is treating you well. I don’t know what happened. What I do know is that he said if he had to work for Theodora again, after what happened to Zidana, he’d rather go and beg on the streets.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
‘Gosh,’ says Sally, standing in the hallway, looking around. ‘I can see you have help. Blimey, Dora, it’s made quite a difference – the house looks pristine!’ Sally’s an old friend from my Blackheath days. We’ve known each other years, and kept in touch, as she still lives locally.
‘Are you saying it didn’t before?’ I ask, smiling, taking her coat.
Mona’s cleaned the house from top to bottom, and everything gleams. I’m feeling positive. My applications for the new presenter posts are in, one a move up, one a replacement of my current position, and though I’ve heard nothing, I feel certain they’ll be well received. I’ve more experience than most of the likely applicants, and Rachel has always held me in high regard.
Sally’s partner Bob is behind her holding two bottles of wine, one white, one red. As they stand there, Gina arrives brandishing more wine. Then Rachel, with her partner Martha. It’s going to be a drunken evening – for them. I’m going to stay sober, keep my wits about me. Ensure I’m seen in my best light.
My only regret is that Max can’t be here to share the evening with us. One of the many drawbacks of my affair is that I cannot share special occasions with the man I love. Christmas, New Year, Easter and holidays, he has to be with his own family. It’s at these times my yearning for him threatens to subdue any enjoyment I take in the occasion. Oh, I can smile, and talk and laugh with the others, but Max’s absence leaves me melancholy underneath. My senses become heightened to other couples’ intimacy, the protective shell afforded by a relationship. I yearn for that lovely post mortem where you can reveal your true thoughts about the people you’ve had to be polite to throughout the evening.
Without him, I feel raw and vulnerable.
It’s one of the reasons I’ve included Gina. Two single women provide solidarity for one another.
Mona’s laid the table we use at the far end of the drawing room with the white linen cloth, the antique embroidered table mats, and monogrammed white starched napkins that were my mother’s. She’s polished the silver bone-handled cutlery and put long tapered candles in glass holders. The only things missing are the soup spoons.
‘Mona, we use the round spoons for soup.’
She’s in the kitchen, wearing the overall that’s arrived, blue polyester with a white collar, her head bent over the large pan that’s giving off that mouth-watering smell only Mona’s capable of producing.
‘What?’
‘Soup spoons.’ I open what my mother used to call the ‘canteen of cutlery’; an antique walnut box where she kept the bone-handled knives, forks and spoons.
I lift the top layer. The soup spoons live in the bottom layer, cupping each other in their little velvet slots.
‘Where are they?’
She doesn’t reply, continuing to stir the soup. It’s happening again – the expressionless mask that descends when I question her.
‘Mona, I want to use my mother’s spoons for the soup. They’re not here. They’re not on the table. Where are they?’
She’s pouring the soup into a tureen as if she hasn’t heard me.
‘Mona! Have you seen them? The spoons.’
No reaction.
‘Dora!’ Gina is calling from the drawing room.
I give Mona a hard stare before I rejoin my friends, but she doesn’t look back.
My friends gasp and exclaim at the table.
‘You’re so lucky having Mona to help you!’ Gina says. ‘It all looks so beautiful.’
‘She’s an absolute star,’ I say.
‘Not meaning to be indelicate,’ Sally says, slumping down on the sofa in the bay window, ‘but doesn’t it cost a fortune having a live-in . . . what do we call her? She isn’t a nanny, and I s
uppose she does help with your dad, but she isn’t a carer as such.’
‘A live-in help?’ says Gina.
‘A maid?’ offers Bob.
‘We don’t have maids in England these days!’ says Sally.
‘It’s coming back into fashion,’ I say, filling their wine glasses. ‘Those of us with jobs and families are overworked, but there are plenty of people like Mona desperate for domestic placements. It works all round.’
‘Has she got a PhD?’ asks Sally. ‘Like the Eastern Europeans who come over to do our menial work?’
I wonder if she’s making some kind of point here.
‘In Mona’s case, no, she hasn’t,’ I say. ‘I know a lot of workers over here, doing stuff no one else is prepared to do, are highly educated. But Mona’s not had that benefit. She’s delighted to have a job at all.’
I’m thinking about the spoons. What would Mona want with soup spoons? Yet they’ve gone! We’ll have to use the stainless-steel ones I don’t like. I think of her stony expression when I asked her where they were, and wonder suddenly whether they were ever there.
Have I insulted her by suggesting she might have taken them? Her pride is formidable, and I don’t want to cross her. I haven’t used the cutlery since bringing it from Mummy and Daddy’s house – it’s possible the spoons were already missing. There’s also my necklace – which Daddy quite possibly put somewhere ‘safe’ and then forgot about. I need Mona too much to lose her by making any more accusations that might offend her, yet I can’t let her humiliate me.
When Mona appears with trays of briouates, the little Moroccan pastries I’ve told her to make, everyone gasps and exclaims again.
‘Did you make these?’ Sally asks, and Mona nods. ‘Well, Dora’s very lucky.’
‘Won’t you stay and have a drink with us?’ Bob asks.
I give him a look which he misses.
Mona smiles, and says thank you but no, and backs away. At least she knows the etiquette.
‘She might not be educated, but my God she knows how to cook,’ says Bob. ‘You could put her on MasterChef.’
‘We could do with someone like her,’ says Sally. ‘It’s a bloody juggling act working, with the kids at two different schools, and Bob away most weekends.’
‘Where the hell would we put a live-in maid?’ asks Bob. ‘We talked about having an au pair and agreed we don’t have the space any more. Or the money. You have to have room. Dora’s lucky. She’s only got herself and Leo here and it’s a nice big house.’
Sally gives him an accusing look, which says something like: If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Sally’s a teacher but she married Bob when he was earning a massive salary in some boom company that was hit by the recession. They had to downsize and now live in a cramped house in Brockley. Sally resents him for ‘deceiving’ her, even though she knows the economic crisis is not solely Bob’s fault.
‘You have to give them a decent space of their own,’ I agree. ‘Mona has her own room, where she can do what she likes in her free time. She goes in there to read, write, watch TV, or what-have-you.’
‘Quite a nice life really,’ says Gina. She’s moving around the room with her gin and tonic, as she always does when she comes to mine, picking up books and turning them over as if she’s checking I haven’t acquired anything I haven’t told her about. She’s a very competitive best friend.
‘She’s got that lovely spare room up at the top of the house to retreat to, hasn’t she? Spends the day doing a bit of mopping and polishing, then a couple of hours in her room to read. Then – what – a couple of hours preparing dinner, popping in to see your father.’
I wish Gina would sit down, stop examining my things.
‘The best thing is that you know you’re helping them out,’ I say.
I’m feeling stupidly ashamed that I’ve misled Gina about Mona’s room; worried my tiny lie might be spotted. That one of my guests might put their head round the study door and see where Mona’s really sleeping.
Mona comes into the room with the steaming tagine.
Everyone’s voice drops as she moves around the table, and Bob thanks Mona as she serves the lamb which is savoury with the zing of fresh coriander and a spicy undertone – saffron maybe, and cinnamon.
‘Has she got family?’ Rachel asks when she’s gone again.
‘She won’t talk about it. It upsets her.’
‘Bloody hell,’ says Bob. ‘That’s dreadful. I wonder what she’s been through?’
‘So I suppose she had nothing to lose,’ says Rachel. ‘In coming over here, I mean. It must have been a lifeline.’
‘But can you imagine it? Working for another woman, having to be subservient in her house. I’d hate that,’ Sally says.
You can divide the world, I realise now, into those who feel it’s OK to hire help and those who don’t. It’s a flashback to the times when the classes in England were more divided. It was easier then, when the employer and the servant had clearly defined roles and the rules about socialising were strictly adhered to. Now everyone’s so conflicted about it, feeling guilty on the one hand for affording help, on the other pleased to be able to offer employment to someone who otherwise wouldn’t have it.
‘She’s used to domestic work,’ I say. ‘She’s not got a problem with status, it’s her job. Things have always been like this. Once upon a time every house in Deptford had a domestic servant, even the working families with no money. It’s nothing new. Some people are born to serve. It’s what they do.’
‘And others to be served upon,’ says Gina, who’s knocking back the wine and sounds tipsy.
‘Anyway, going back to what we were saying, I think it must be bloody tough, leaving her own home in order to work so far away,’ Sally goes on.
‘Don’t be too soft, Sally,’ says Gina. ‘These migrant workers know which side their bread’s buttered. She’s got a contract, hasn’t she, Dora? Stipulating her hours, days off and all that. Holiday pay and so on.’
This is the second time I’ve heard talk of a contract recently; it was Anita who assumed we had one last time. But Roger made no mention of a contract and for the time being I’m happy to muddle along without. It’s a learning process for me, and I wouldn’t know what the contract should consist of anyway. I need to keep our arrangement informal until I’ve ascertained exactly how much I’m going to need Mona to do.
‘But what courage,’ Sally persists, and I begin to wonder whether she does indeed have a hidden agenda – that she wants to make me feel guilty for some reason. ‘When we travel, it’s for amusement, even those who claim they’re contributing. You know – gap-year students, gap-year oldies.’
‘Oldies?’ I ask.
‘Yeah! Semi-retired people who bugger off thinking they’ll help build schools in Burundi because their kids have left home. Frances did it – that woman I used to work with. But that’s temporary, a lifestyle choice. Imagine not having a choice, your only hope being to work for some complete stranger in her house. It must be horrid.’
‘Horrid? I hope not,’ I say. ‘I hope she appreciates living here with me. She’s earning a better living than anything she would achieve in her home country. What you have to understand, Sally, is that Mona was desperate. She was terribly poor. It’s hard to imagine what that means, sitting here in middle-class London. Literally, she was living hand-to-mouth, one step from begging.’
I pause. I don’t really have any idea about the circumstances Mona’s left behind, she’s so closed. So proud.
I go on.
‘Here, she’s getting huge advantages, apart from the wage – a comfortable bed, regular, wholesome meals, she’s learning English, and it’s taking her mind off whatever happened to her husband. So I don’t think there’s any need for middle-class guilt.’
‘I wouldn’t call it middle-class guilt,’ says Sally. ‘If you put yourself in her shoes, you can see that it must be lonely sometimes, and you know – demoralising.’
‘Oh come on, Sally,’ says Gina. ‘We don’t know what’s true and what isn’t! Could be she just fancies a British passport. You’ll have to watch she doesn’t bring her whole family over. You might have taken on more than you bargained for, Dora!’
‘Does she get the chance to meet up with other women from her country? People in a similar situation? Does she get to ESL classes or anything like that? Does she get time off?’
I open my mouth to say that I’m not a charity, that Sally’s concern is all very well, but when you find yourself caring for an elderly father, whilst supporting an unemployed son, when you’re in charge of a programme which goes out to a whole swathe of the country – you make use of the resources available. Which includes domestic workers eager to improve their lives. But I’m getting a little tired of the conversation.
Rachel senses this, and steps in.
‘I think we need to recognise that Dora’s situation is problematic at the moment,’ she says. ‘Employing Mona has been the best thing she could have done for everyone. For her father, for Leo and for Mona herself.’
I smile across at her. I know what she’s saying: it’s also the best thing I could have done for my career.
Mona brings in the dessert.
‘And,’ I say, ‘she likes it here. You like the river, don’t you, Mona? We had a lovely day walking up to Tower Bridge, didn’t we? We had cupcakes.’
Mona smiles, her eyes darting round the room from one to the other of us.
‘And you like taking Daddy to the market, don’t you? Choosing fruit and vegetables. Mona’s an excellent cook.’
‘I can see that,’ says Bob. ‘This is all bloody delicious.’ He smiles and winks at Mona. Is he flirting?
I wonder if Mona’s the kind of woman men find alluring because she looks naive, vulnerable. And the thought flashes into my mind that perhaps she knows just how to exploit it.
‘Do you get out much?’ Sally asks her. ‘Have you seen any of London’s tourist attractions?’
I give Mona a look. She glances at me, understands what she’s meant to say.
‘I hope to, soon. I’ve seen Tower Bridge,’ she says, ‘and I’d like to go to Harrods.’
The Darkening Hour Page 17