The Darkening Hour

by Penny Hancock

  I look over the balcony. From here, all I can see are endless buildings and cranes lit up, their necks like stalks stretched out to peer at the bright London sky. The dark ribbon of river, with its spears of light piercing its depths.

  No one passes. No one sees me.

  My heart batters against my chest. I’m so near to him.

  Soon, when we’re together again, who knows, I might phone Ummu and Leila and get them to come straight over. I’m not sure what the visa rules are for dependants, but if we show we’re a family, that Ali has been working here for months now, earning good money, paying taxes, then the authorities must allow us to be together. Ali will know what to do. Ali will sort it out. Ali with his good English and his cleverness, his doctor’s charm. And even, perhaps, when he is fully qualified and able to get work, we will go home, back to the little white house on the estuary, live as a family where we belong and want to be.

  Whatever the outcome, all that matters is that I have found him!

  I will not have to subordinate myself to another woman ever again. I will be in my own home, with my own family, my own work. I feel, in anticipation, the sweetness of relief, not to be holding it all together alone any more.

  Number 204 is nicely painted, unlike some of the others. It is blue, the colour of the better-kept doorways back home in the medina. Ali was always tidy, always paid attention to detail. The flat has a familiar air about it; maybe it’s the box of flowers on the windowsill, holding light within them so the colours sing out even in the dark, as if a tiny piece of Morocco had found its way into this hidden fold of London. A gold-framed arch-shaped mirror swings on the doorway. Another echo of Morocco.

  Ali has been dreaming of home.

  I feel warm, as if I, too, am close to home. Ali has kept his links with Morocco alive because I am part of them, a piece of home.

  I imagine his face when he sees I’m here, that I have come for him, found him, when he must have felt it impossible for us to be together after his time in detention, his struggle to get a visa.

  Now that I too have been treated like an underdog, I understand why he lashed out at Driss.

  I understand his longing to escape to a better life where he believed he’d be respected. For him it meant coming to a country where he could be the person he always planned to be – a doctor, helping others. Where his crime would not be known.

  I raise my hand to ring the doorbell, a proper electric doorbell. There’s a light on inside, but it’s dim, the kind Dora leaves on at night or when she goes out to tell burglars we are at home. If he’s not in, I’ll sit on the step here and wait.

  Funny how, having waited to hear from him for so long, these few minutes feel like an eternity.

  I can hardly tolerate the silence as I ring the doorbell again, wait some more.

  Please come, I whisper to myself. Please find me before Dora works out where I’ve gone. Comes for me, or sends the police after me.

  At last a shadow falls across the misted pane in the door, and there’s the rattle of a lock. The door swings open.

  ‘Hello?’

  I jerk my head up.

  There’s no one there.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  I don’t know how many hours go by as I sit and wait for Leo to come back with Mona. Daddy’s breath is coming in shallow gasps. He’s staring up at me, frowning slightly. I’m afraid that he’s going to die. I don’t want to leave him. Eventually, overcome by fatigue, I take some cushions from the chairs around the room and make myself a bed on the floor next to him. I can’t get comfortable. Each time I relax, I become aware of a draught, or the itchy fabric against my skin, or the discomfort of the uneven surface beneath me.

  After a while, however, I must have fallen asleep for I awake later in a terrible sweat, my clothes soaked. I’m shaking. A vision of Max has come to me in my sleep and remains before my eyes, his face with its mouth open, his sightless eyes gazing up at me.

  An incessant wind has been blowing all evening, a crane’s claw knocking against its side, like the toll of a bell. I don’t want to be alone with Daddy, his frail breath, his waxen face. I wish Mona was with me. I need her here to soothe Daddy, to lie with him so I can go to my bed, get a decent night’s sleep.

  How long before Leo finds her? Filled with a sense of foreboding, I look at the time on my mobile. If she’d gone to the shop, they would have been back hours ago.

  The newspaper article, the picture of Max in the corner, has brought it all back to me, slamming into me like a wall of cold river water. Another newspaper report swims before my eyes, one I’ve tried to forget. Zidana, a young maid, eighteen, takes her own life after falling down stairs and losing her baby. I didn’t intend it. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. She had humiliated me, just when I was being accepted into the ex-pat life. A burn mark from the iron on the tablecloth. Roger shouting at me. Me trying to explain it was her fault. And a gentle shove as she smirked at me, carrying the sheets at the top of the stairs. That was all it was.

  I lie on the hard floor and stare at the ceiling, wishing I could do what I have done every night since Max’s death. Call down the shaft to Daddy’s flat and ask Mona to come and sit with me.

  After all, it’s what Mona came for, to make everything bearable for me. And to make me bearable to myself.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  I look down.

  There is someone there. A child of about seven or eight is gazing up at me. A girl in a pink dressing-gown and slippers.

  I take a step back.

  The child stares at me, the way children do when caught off-guard. Unsure what to say or what to do in a new situation.

  ‘I may have the wrong address,’ I say, holding out my piece of crumpled paper. ‘I’m looking for Ali. Ali Chokran, he’s—’

  ‘Daddy?’

  I stare down at the child. Her dark hair is scrunched back into a ponytail with a little turquoise band and she wears tiny gold earrings in her ears. Her skin’s a shade darker than mine, but she has the most amazing blue eyes set in her beautiful dark face. A Berber face. Unmistakable. Familiar.

  I remember Leo using the word ‘tingle’. It’s how I feel now; I tingle all over with a kind of anaesthetised layer, an instinctive need for protection from what I know is to come.

  My feet go numb. Things are sinking in even before the child’s mother arrives, even before she apologises for being in the bathroom when I rang the bell, then invites me into the flat, gives me sweet mint tea, the way I would have been treated by women back at home. She asks if I am a relative over from Morocco, tells me that Ali will be back from work later. He works shifts, will of course want to see me. Am I a cousin? A niece? Not a sister, they have met Ali’s sisters.

  They are lovely, both of them, the mother and the child, bringing a plate of almond pastries, concerned for me. And the mother – petite and pretty with long black wavy hair. Smartly dressed in Western clothes, a pencil skirt, high heels, a tailored jacket over a white shirt – tells me she works here as a doctor, specialising in the elderly – ‘geriatrics’ she calls it – and I think of Charles and my own mother, and how she is who they need – but the biggest barrier that can exist sits between them and this woman.

  ‘My husband only recently joined us – ooh, six months ago – once we finalised his documents. He’s working here now, in a bakery.’

  ‘Not a doctor too?’

  ‘A doctor? Ali?’ She laughs.

  How can I hate this lovely woman and her daughter? They are in the dark just as much as I am.

  I don’t want to shatter their bliss.

  So I stand up. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘But I have to go. Tell Ali that Mona called.’

  I bump into him at the bottom of the stairwell, his physical presence, even with the filter of the information I’ve just gleaned, impacting straight upon me as if no time has passed.

  Immediately, stupidly, as if I had no brain, my body wants him again. I want to press myself against him, feel his han
ds in my hair.

  I look up at his face and know straight away that he is not mine after all.

  A lifetime’s fantasies shattered in seconds.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came looking for you.’

  ‘You can’t come here. This is my home, my life, my family.’

  ‘I thought I was your life. I thought Leila and I were your family.’

  He lets out a hissing sound. ‘You were in Morocco,’ he says grimly. ‘How did you get out?’

  ‘I was brought here by an English couple, on a domestic worker visa.’

  He looks disgusted. ‘Domestic work? That’s degrading, Mona.’

  These words hurt me more than I would ever have imagined.

  ‘I did it because I had to. For Leila and Ummu, because you had gone.’

  I’m gulping in air, hardly able to breathe, like a child who has been winded after a fall.

  I helped him when he was in trouble, when he was afraid the police would come after him.

  Surely he must help me . . .

  He turns his face from me.

  ‘When did you meet her?’ I nod towards the flat. I can’t express rage. All I feel is a dull ache in my chest, a need for answers.

  ‘Leave it, Mona. I’m tired. Just back from a late shift at work.’

  ‘But when? That child, she’s older than Leila! Is she yours?’

  His fist hits the wall beside him.

  I’ve done it now. Enraged him. I’ve chosen over the years to make allowances for his rage because I thought he loved me. It was not his fault, I told myself. He was a man of violent passions, good and bad. I was in love with him. But I don’t want to witness his dark side now.

  ‘Of course she’s mine. As is Slimane – my son, my boy. Hafiza and I were together way before Leila. We married before you and I.’

  ‘How can it be before you and I? We were together ever since we were small . . . we were meant to be.’

  ‘No, Mona. I met Hafiza the time I went to Casablanca.’

  ‘What? But you came back to live with me in the white house. You were working as a guide so you could continue your studies. You were about to become a doctor.’

  Anger darkens his face. ‘I had to tell you something.’

  ‘It was a lie?’

  ‘You went and had Leila. How could I tell you then? I was waiting for my visa to come through. Hafiza was living here, waiting patiently for me to come.’

  ‘But you never told me. About her.’

  ‘I couldn’t care for two families at once. Hafiza’s is my first family.’

  ‘You were never a medical student?’

  ‘No! Hafiza was. Is. She is working here now. She’s a registrar. You made the assumption and I didn’t want to disillusion you.’

  ‘But when you left this time, you told me you were going to help your Berber brothers. That wasn’t true either? You came straight to England?’

  He holds up his hands as if to say, It’s not my fault you fabricated a story about me.

  Nothing he has told me was true!

  Was Ali never the man I thought he was?

  ‘This woman got you out of the country, to a better life. Is that why you chose her?’

  Somehow this explanation makes it less painful. If he’s used her as well. If he doesn’t love her.

  If I am still his true love.

  He sighs, stamps his foot as though it were me who was in the wrong. As if I’m a nuisance he’d rather not have to deal with.

  ‘We met at university but I was never studying. I got a job as a janitor there. Then she came over here. We agreed I would follow when I could. This is where I live now, Mona, this is my marriage. I have two children here. You met Jasmine. Slimane will be in bed. But you, you should not be here. Go now.’

  ‘You never even sent money to Leila or to me.’

  ‘How could I, when I have mouths to feed already?’

  ‘And do you love them?’

  My question feels pathetic in the yellow lighting of the concrete walkway. Too weak, too insubstantial. What does it matter what his answer is?

  Everything’s too broken already.

  ‘Of course I love them.’

  The truth seems to expand and deepen and is worse than anything else I’ve heard tonight.

  He loves them.

  He doesn’t love me.

  ‘And you won’t help me?’ My voice comes out small, barely audible. ‘I need help, Ali, you’ve no idea, the situation I’m in here. My employer is cruel but I can’t leave her. I’m afraid she wants to kill me!’ I stop, worried this sounds too dramatic. ‘I’m tied to her, with the domestic visa. She has my passport. I need something. A little money perhaps, some documents that say we’re married, so I can get another job. Ummu’s very ill and I need to work, I—’

  He thrusts his hand into his pocket. Drags out a battered leather wallet, the wallet my father gave him years ago when he was maybe fourteen. A waft of home follows it – hot leather, the tannery where my father worked. He hands me some money, a fifty-pound note.

  And then he walks away.

  I leave Paradise Street. Paradise for Ali maybe, Hell Street for me. And Hell for Hafiza, Ali’s real ‘wife’, if she ever finds out about me.

  I cannot hate her.

  If I can only get to Leila and Ummu first, show them I did my best. Tell Ummu she was right after all about Ali. I’ve let her down. I believed all my dreams were to come true and instead they’re shattered.

  I have nowhere to go. No papers, only this fifty pounds.

  I return to the road. There’s no sign of Sayed or his scooter. He’s vanished into the night.

  Do I return to Dora’s, beg her to let me stay, to hide me if the police come? But why would she, when if she doesn’t place the blame on me, she will be next in line as suspect? And now I know she’s killed . . . intended to knock me down with the statue. I shudder again.

  At best, I will end up in jail unable to provide for my child, my mother.

  Back on the street, propelled by terror but not knowing where to go, I start to walk. I make my way along the side of the river. It’s silent, cold. The water seems to breathe heavily below me. I remember the way we pulled Max’s body into the tide: what choice did I have but to do as Dora told me?

  The water heaves and sighs.

  Frightened suddenly by its presence, I begin to walk faster. I don’t know where I’m going. Perhaps I can make my way back to Sayed’s home, beg him to give me a little of the proceeds from the sale of the locket. Ask him to get me a fake passport to get me out of the country?

  Suddenly, I am aware that I’m not alone: someone is following me. The path veers to the left, between tall buildings that are in darkness. I begin to hurry.

  The figure behind me hurries too. I pass under a lamp and the footsteps behind me accelerate.

  At last I feel a hand clamp down on my shoulder and I turn and see a dark, hooded figure in the shadows.

  One I recognise.

  One who gave me an instinctive shiver of panic, the first time I’d set eyes on him. One whom I had wanted to flee and hide from.

  One who had raised the hairs along my spine, and turned my blood cold.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  There’s a sudden rattling sound that makes me sit up. It’s Daddy. His breath is laboured, bubbles coming out of his mouth.

  ‘Daddy, are you all right? Speak to me, Daddy.’

  He opens his eyes, stares blindly at me.

  I move without thinking, lifting the phone, dialling the doctor’s out-of-hours number.

  ‘Can you bring him into the emergency clinic?’ the cool voice on the end asks, as if she had better things to concern her and finds my call nothing but a nuisance.

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘I am Theodora Gentleman.’

  I wait for her reaction, to see if my name makes her jump to it, as it should do. ‘My father may be dying. I need a doctor here urgently. Get someone round immediately or I
’ll sue you for neglect.’

  ‘We’re extremely busy. You’ll either have to bring him in, or if it’s a matter of life or death, you’ll have to call an ambulance and go straight to Accident and Emergency.’

  I slam the phone down.

  I take Daddy’s hand in mine. It’s frozen, the skin waxy.

  I pick up the phone again. Dial 999.

  ‘I think my father may be dying. Please, can you get an ambulance here as quickly as possible.’

  Then their ridiculous questions, all taking up crucial time: what are his symptoms, does he recognise me, can he speak? At last they concede that I’m not dramatising this, that Daddy is genuinely in need of urgent medical attention.

  ‘We’ll be with you as quickly as we can.’

  I put the phone down with a small shudder of relief.

  I strain my ears for sounds of Leo and Mona returning. The house feels deathly quiet upstairs. Only Endymion moves, nudging open the door, slinking into the room. I pick him up and hold him, and feel the soothing vibration of his purr against my chest. I’ll sit here and wait for the ambulance, and Endymion will comfort me.

  Then, all of a sudden, Daddy sits up.

  ‘I feel poorly,’ he says. ‘Bring me Mona.’

  ‘Daddy, Mona’s not here at the moment. But I’m here.’ I put my hand to his brow. It’s clammy, there’s a sheen of sweat on it.

  ‘I think I need a doctor.’

  ‘Yes. It’s OK, Daddy. The doctor’s coming.’

  ‘Poor nice Doctor Max!’ he says. ‘The one in the paper. The one they found in the river. The man you pushed down the steps. They found poor Doctor Max in the river and he’s dead.’

  My hands are damp, there’s a choking feeling in my throat – I can’t get enough air. Daddy’s so ill, so muddled, why does he suddenly sound as if he’s making perfect sense?

  And he won’t stop his ranting!