The Darkening Hour

by Penny Hancock

  I smile. ‘The houses originally belonged to shipbuilders and merchants,’ I say. ‘Some of them have figureheads, see? But mine’s got two little cherubs guarding the door. Angel babies.’

  I put my key in the lock, push open the front door. The warm yeasty smell of bread greets us. The house throws off a gentle light; it’s spotless, calm, welcoming.

  Mona has obeyed my instructions to the letter.

  The kitchen door at the end of the hallway is ajar so we can see her framed in it from the passage as we approach.

  She squats on the floor, in her overall, which is pulled up around her knees, kneading dough in a big shallow earthenware bowl I’ve given her for the purpose. Her hair is pulled back into her black and orange headscarf, strands falling through and over her cheeks; her feet are in the little soft leather slippers she wears indoors.

  Her face is drawn, her eyes tired.

  Endymion has settled himself on the kitchen table, seems to be gazing down at Mona, blinking sleepily.

  Max stands in the shadows, watching through the gap in the door, remaining out of sight.

  As I walk into the kitchen, Mona stands up, and says quietly into my ear, ‘There was a message on the telephone. She tried your mobile but there was no answer. From the radio station. About a new job for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She said to ring tomorrow morning. It is a cooking programme. She has good news.’ My heart lifts. I’m about to ask more, when I remember neither Mona nor Max know I’ve lost my previous job.

  ‘Thank you, Mona,’ I say. ‘When you’ve done that, you must go to Daddy. It’s quite late.’

  ‘I’m doing what you told me to do.’ She says this loudly, squatting down again, not looking at me any more, refusing to show Max that we get on. I feel nervous. She looks resentful. This isn’t how I want Max to view our relationship.

  I want him to see that Mona and I have roles, yes, that she does as she’s asked. But that I’m a well-liked employer.

  ‘You told me to make bread when you came in. That’s what I’m doing. I need to leave it one hour, then I must knead it again. Then I must leave it to rise before I bake it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But you must go to Daddy while the bread’s rising.’

  She doesn’t answer but continues to knead. I grow hot and cross at her insolence on this one occasion when I most want her to cooperate.

  ‘Mona,’ I say.

  She doesn’t look up. It’s as if she hasn’t heard me.

  ‘Hi,’ says Max, stepping forward out of the shadows. ‘I’m Max. Lovely to meet you at last.’

  Mona looks straight at him through her wide brown eyes.

  I have the strong urge to slap her. Is she flirting with my lover?

  ‘Mona, isn’t it?’ Max asks, holding out his hand to shake hers. ‘How are you?’

  I look at Max, try to discern what he thinks is going on. I’ve given him his glimpse, isn’t this enough?

  ‘Dora and I will finish the bread, Mona,’ he says next. ‘Dora’s Daddy needs his supper. It’s a priority. You may go now.’

  Does he think I’ve let her get out of control?

  Mona continues to stare, wide-eyed, and turns to look at me, for affirmation that she may go. The way she looks is ironic, an act for Max’s benefit.

  She is trying to communicate something to him.

  ‘Max is right. Go now, Mona. Forget the bread. Go on.’

  She struggles up, rubbing her back, letting the overall fall around her knees. Bends over and picks up the bowl and places it on the sideboard so it is near the warmth emanating from the Raeburn, which is giving off a gentle heat.

  ‘Mona,’ I hiss, following her into the hall, ‘you will sleep in Daddy’s flat tonight. Do you understand? Anita’s son is ill so you’re not going there after all.’

  ‘But where? There is no bed in Charles’s flat.’

  ‘Yes, there is.’ I lower my voice. ‘You can use the cushions from the sofa. Make a bed on the floor, don’t complain. I don’t want you in the house tonight.’

  ‘But the floor is cold.’

  ‘Mona! You do as I say, not as you wish.’

  How dare she challenge me, the one night I need to show my authority over her?

  Finally she acquiesces, goes back through the kitchen, pushes open the door to her room, disappears for a second and comes out with her bag and her anorak.

  I watch her as she goes out of the front door, listening for her footsteps round to the back of the house. Then I go to Max who is sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a glass of red wine. I steel myself for some kind of prurient comment from him, something about Mona’s lovely thighs. But Max puts out his hand and pulls me onto his lap.

  ‘It’s like coming home,’ he breathes. ‘Really. The house, the cat, Mona, the breadmaking – it’s all amazing. When are you going to show me upstairs?’

  Mona has done me proud in the bedroom. The sheets have been laundered and ironed as I asked – starched even, by the feel of it. She’s lit the lamps around the room and they cast a dim light and soft shadows. She’s placed some kind of incense on the dressing-table, something she must have brought from Morocco, I guess. It gives the room an exotic, sensual feel.

  Max sits on the side of the bed and undoes his watch-strap. I wonder if this is how he goes to bed with Valerie, unbuttoning his cuffs, loosening his collar, using one foot to prise the shoe off the other.

  And this worries me. We spend no time at all undressing, when we’re in the throes of our usual fast and furious passion. Several times we haven’t even got as far as undressing, too eager to be inside each other’s garments to bother to remove them properly. Sometimes I’ve come home, my underclothes torn to shreds, treasuring the sensual dissolute feeling this lends to my journey amongst early-morning commuters who, I like to imagine, have never experienced passion like ours. I cherish the secret knowledge that we are unique in our carnal desire for each other.

  Max’s slow, formal undressing this evening alarms me. I reach across the bed, put my arms around him, feel the usual thrill of pleasure I get from the toned body beneath the white shirt, move my hands up over his chest, something that usually makes him groan with pleasure. He doesn’t respond, but continues to remove his trousers, his socks, as if I were his wife!

  I give up and swing my legs into bed, pulling the covers up over me, and wait for him to join me. Perhaps it’s being here, in my home, that threatens our passion. I should never have asked him to come. But he wanted to! He was the one to suggest it.

  His words come back, sweet and reassuring. ‘I’d like to sleep the night in a bed with you . . . that shapes itself to you . . .’

  ‘Max,’ I breathe. ‘Is this a mistake?’

  ‘What?’ he asks.

  Am I imagining it, or is he refusing to look at me?

  I do not want to trap Max. I have never demanded that he leave his wife. I have never tried to own him in any shape or form.

  But I cannot lose him. I love him. I gave up everything for him. Roger. Money. A luxury lifestyle. I’ve given up my home to him now – I’ve even offered him a sighting of my maid.

  ‘You coming here, was it a mistake?’ I persist. ‘Perhaps we only work when we’re out in the world – and we’re not meant to see inside each other’s homes?’

  He sighs, looks at me, tucks his feet under the covers too and puts an arm around me, pulling me to him. I rest my head in the dip between his shoulder and his chest.

  ‘Don’t, Dora,’ he says. ‘Don’t start to nag. I need to sleep. I’m jet-lagged.’

  I stay where I am. He has never ever complained of jet-lag before, not with me.

  ‘Is it to do with Mona?’ I ask, and this feels brave of me since it is the last thing I want to know the answer to.

  ‘Mona? Oh yes, I was going to suggest . . .’

  I wonder what he’s going to say. Can hardly bear to hear. But he goes on, ‘I don’t have to get up for an early flight for once. Could we
ask her to make us breakfast – and bring it up? Is that within her remit?’

  Why does he want Mona to bring up breakfast? Why can’t I do it for him?

  ‘Did she disappoint you though, to look at? Did I bring you here on false pretences?’ I test him.

  He shrugs, leans back over to his side of the bed, switches the lamp off. There’s just the one light now, over on the dressing-table, the small one, giving a soft glow, so he is in shadow as he speaks, I can’t see his face, but as he talks I feel with relief his hand on my thigh, the warmth of it, the way it does something to me instantly.

  ‘It’s nothing, Dora. I realise it was foolish, our little fantasy. She’s just doing her job. I felt bad, seeing her in reality, that I’d objectified her. That night after Boudicca, I was on a roll, seeing those bronze thighs!’ He’s laughing, pulling me to him whispering, ‘Let’s forget it and enjoy now. We have all night, and all morning.’

  And I’m so relieved I take special care over Max tonight, giving him all he wants without his even asking, and he doesn’t even need me to mention thighs or statues or domestic servants.

  Afterwards, I go downstairs and fetch the newly baked bread Mona has left on the side, and bowls of the harira she has made, and we eat it in bed, side by side, and share a bottle of wine. And soon, with the alcohol and the fatigue and the deep feeling of contentment, I am fast asleep.

  I wake an hour or two later. The small lamp is still throwing its soft light across one corner of the room, a beam falling upon Max’s goatee. I lean across and stroke it gently. I run my lips across it, enjoying the abrasive, masculine feel of it, wanting to wake him and start all over again. But I remember his jet-lag, and so I reach across and switch off the lamp, turn over, pull his arm around me, place his hand on my belly. At peace. At last.

  When I awake again, it’s still dark.

  Something has startled me. Something abrupt – a door slamming, or a window smashing – and I lie, rigid, trying to work out whether it was a dream. I feel for Max’s hand, but he’s moved. I put my arm out behind me. Grasp at an expanse of sheet.

  His side of the bed’s empty.

  I sit up, my ears straining. Listen for sounds that tell me he’s gone to the bathroom. All I can hear is a low purr – Endymion has slunk into the room and curled himself up at the foot of the bed.

  I can’t stop trembling. Whatever startled me awake has taken hold of my body and won’t let go.

  For once I should feel safe, not rigid with fear. For the first time since I left Roger, I have a man – other than Leo or Daddy – in my house. But I’m unable to move. Pinned down by the kind of dread I’ve only ever experienced when alone, convinced that someone has broken in. Broken in and is about to make their way through the dark house, up the stairs to my room. No one can do this. Max is here to protect me. He’s downstairs somewhere – he’d tackle any intruder.

  Even these thoughts don’t comfort me.

  It feels as though it should be morning, given how long I’ve been sleeping, yet the darkness is dead, silent.

  As my eyes adjust I see that Max’s watch is still on the table at his side of the bed, his trousers draped across the back of my chair, his polished shoes placed neatly beneath it. What time did he say he had to leave? Maybe he’s gone down to make a cup of tea before getting dressed, before he has to be off? No! He said it wasn’t an early flight for once. He wanted Mona to bring us breakfast.

  The numerals on the digital clock move on. The hands on Max’s watch tick around.

  I’m here with Max at last. I’ve let him in. We’ll enter a new phase, one where he’ll come home with me, cook Sunday lunch sometimes, we’ll drink white wine together while the shoulder of lamb sweetens in the oven. I’ll get Mona to make her pear clafoutis for pudding. We’ll all sit together. Leo, Mona, Max and I. Endymion. Almost a family.

  It’s OK. I’ll be back in my position at the radio. Mona said they phoned this evening with good news. A cookery programme! They never wanted to lose me. They’ll produce a recipe book, with a photo of me on the cover.

  Max can’t have gone for long, he’ll be back soon. We have another couple of hours before dawn – we can start all over again; we can linger over each other until it grows light, tease every last drop from each other’s bodies. For once not in a rush. Then I’ll get up and do as Max suggested – ask Mona to make breakfast and she can bring it to us in bed. Max will be impressed by the way we work together, a mistress and her maid. Max and I will linger over the croissants. We can even eat bits of them off each other . . .

  It’s no good. I can no longer bear the silence. There is no telltale sound of water gushing through the pipes. Max is not, after all, in the bathroom.

  I lie alert.

  I can hear nothing.

  The same dread I used to feel at Billingsgate, when Daddy left me alone, assails me. Images flit in and out of my head: Nancy Partridge. Mona. Stony faces. Abandonment. Rejection.

  No one has broken into my house – that’s not it. They have, rather, broken into my soul. In this otherworldly dark of night, I no longer know who I am. The precious gift I was, that made me Theodora, has been violated; parts of my persona have been stolen.

  My foundations are subsiding and soon the whole edifice that is me will follow.

  At last I unleash the fear that was there all along, a vague presence to which I haven’t dared give shape. A flash of panic rips through me, so violent I think I’m going to be sick.

  He has not, after all, been able to resist.

  Max has gone to Mona.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The cushions are lumpy and narrow. I push them aside. Spread a blanket on the floor instead, and stretch out on this. Pull the quilt over my body. I could put it underneath, but that would leave me with only one thin blanket on top to keep warm. I put a cushion under my head. It’s easier to stretch out with the hard surface beneath me. I desperately need to sleep.

  I started early this morning, before dawn. If Dora wanted the house to look good for Max then she would have it. I shut out all other thoughts. I took care of Charles. Washed, starched and ironed Dora’s sheets. Made her bedroom seductive as I knew she would want it for her lover’s visit. In the back of my mind a new plan was hatching: if I could somehow impress this doctor, if he had an influence on Dora, then he might, as Ummu suggested when I first arrived, help me to look for Ali. He might also persuade Dora to pay me more and to return my passport – or at the very least, give me some time off.

  Charles was irritable this evening.

  ‘You haven’t heated the plate. Now it’s cold. I can’t eat cold food!’

  ‘OK. Then I’ll heat it for you.’

  ‘It’s soup on a Thursday – I thought you knew the menu.’

  ‘But it’s Friday today, Charles.’

  ‘It’s Thursday!’

  Sometimes he is so insistent I begin to doubt the reliability of my own memory. Have I got the day wrong?

  ‘OK, Charles, let’s say it’s Thursday. I’ll do you some soup.’

  Finally I got him into his pyjamas, and he wet himself, and I had to begin all over again. And throughout all this, I thought of Ummu, sick in bed, Leila her little nurse, their waiting each week for the money that would buy Ummu the operation she needed so that she would live.

  And this kept me going, though my back ached, my knees complained, and I knew that even when I finally lay down it would be on Charles’s sitting-room floor to make way for Dora and her lover upstairs.

  Now, however, though I pray for it, sleep slips in and out like a thief at night, never giving me any peace. I flip over, stretch, curl up. And finally, just as I drift into a shallow slumber, something awakens me.

  Charles is calling, ‘Mona, Mona!’ And then an echo in the baby monitor next to me: Mona, Mona!

  I sit up. An intense pain shoots down one leg as I straighten slowly. I place my feet on the floor. Pull my fleece over my T-shirt.

  Charles is sitting up in bed, h
is eyes wide, his breath coming in short gasps, his puny chest beneath the loose pyjama top rising and falling. I put a hand on his forehead. He’s clammy.

  ‘Charles, are you all right? What’s wrong?’

  His eyes look up at me, unseeing. His breath rasps in and out. He doesn’t speak.

  I’m frightened for the old man, but I’m frightened, too, for myself. I must do the right thing, if I’m not to enrage Dora. My mind is cloudy with fatigue. I go to Charles’s phone that Dora has warned me not to use. ‘It costs money, Mona. It’s not for you. Only for emergencies.’

  But this is an emergency. I search through a pile of pamphlets and discarded letters for the doctor’s number Dora showed me when I first arrived.

  I finally find it and dial, my fingers clumsy. I have to wait for a list of options. I’m not sure I’ve understood. I dial again. Listen, my ears straining. In an emergency, press one. An automated voice gives me another number to ring. The emergency late-night number.

  At last, after a long wait, a live voice tells me I will have to bring the patient in.

  ‘But,’ I begin, ‘I can’t – I have no car. Can the doctor come here?’

  ‘If it’s a real emergency you don’t need us, you’ll have to call the ambulance.’

  ‘But he’s very ill, he’s not breathing properly.’

  ‘Do you have a neighbour who could drive you to Accident and Emergency?’

  And then I remember. Of course! There is a doctor here already. Dora’s boyfriend Max is a doctor!

  I pull on my trainers, leaving the basement door open, and hurry up the frozen steps to the garden and round to the front door. I unlock it, and step inside.

  I’m wary of going up to Dora’s room. I only ever go there now when she is out, to clean, to change the sheets, to prepare it for her.

  But tonight is an exception.

  I put my ear to the door. Silence. I push it open gently. It rustles over the soft carpet. The room is dark. Smells faintly of the incense I lit earlier, and of sleep, and of intimacy – a smell that I don’t want to inhale for it feels like intrusion. For a second I’m a small girl, awake in the night, walking through to the alcove where I believed Papa slept alone. I see them, my mother and father together on the banquette, smelling something like this, something like sweat, and body heat and secrets. And I know I am not meant to be here.