The Darkening Hour (16 page)

‘When else?’

‘When she reaches up to clean cobwebs off the ceiling roses,’ I tell him.

Mentioning the cobwebs in my house, in order to fuel his fantasy, feels like taking a step across a strict boundary. We don’t go to each other’s homes. Obviously I can’t go to
his with his wife and kids, but he’s never been to mine either. It’s an unspoken rule between us. The snippets I’ve revealed to Max about it have always been carefully chosen. The
view of the church, the way my bedroom spans the whole width of the house, the wooden floors, the capacious kitchen and the drawing room that runs from front to back – they might have
conjured any number of images of ideal homes, in his head. I don’t want to disappoint him.

‘Does she stand on a chair?’ Max seems undeterred by the mention of cobwebs. ‘As if she were behind a chariot? Like Boudicca?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh Theodora, oh God we have to find ourselves a room. Now.’

My moments with Max are as sweet as they are brief, always imbued with the knowledge that they’ll end too soon. That Max has to leave in the small hours is nothing new
– I’m used to it. Our affair has always consisted of short bursts of passion. I convince myself that this suits me. I have enough to worry about in my everyday life, fitting a lover
into it would add to my stress.

But today, as Max kisses me in the hotel lobby, disappears through the turnstile into his taxi, as I make my way through the empty streets, needing time to assimilate our night before I too flag
down a taxi, I’m left with the sense that this evening has ended too soon. His words play over in my mind: ‘Tell me about her.’ Why does he need me to tell him about someone else?
Doubts pile into my mind. Why does he only ever text me when he’s about to get on a plane or a train and go off again? Why can’t he arrange to get here earlier, stay a little
longer?

It’s true I’ve been tied up until now, but he could have suggested staying overnight this time.

I rest my head against the taxi’s cool interior, watch the sleeping streets of south-east London slip past. There’s no traffic on the roads yet. Just me, alone, transported past
people sleeping behind curtained windows, in proper couples, snuggled up with one another. I wish I could call Max back, ask for reassurance.
You do love me, don’t you?
It looms into
focus again, his salacious interest in my housemaid.

The unfinished business between us this evening feels as if we haven’t tidied up properly. As if we’ve uncovered some rotten thing hidden behind the shelves in my drawing room, and
then left it there, forgotten to put the shelves back.

Max will go off into the night with his fantasy, while I have the reality to face: a woman, working for me, in my house. It makes me feel exposed and ashamed.

This feeling accompanies me all the way home. I go up the front steps, put the key in the lock, creep in. It’s gone four o’clock. I need a drink, something to help me sleep,
something to still my mind.

In the kitchen, I put on the kettle, sit at the table, try not to think about Max excited by the idea of the woman behind the door – just there – in the back room beyond the kitchen.
I’m letting Mona disturb my peace of mind. She’s here to care for Daddy. To clean and to help. Not to add to my worries. She must not be allowed to encroach on the rest of my life.

I drain my mug and, feeling a little soothed, start up the stairs to bed. I’ve barely reached my bedroom door when my mobile goes.

It’s Desiree, from next door.

‘He’s out again,’ she says, without bothering to introduce herself. ‘I heard his front door slam. He kicked over the milk bottles. I think he’s gone down to the
river. He shouldn’t be left alone overnight. He’s a liability.’

And she puts the phone down.

I drag my coat on and race out of the front door. Sure enough, Daddy’s making his way down the street, lit spookily through a swirling mist by orange streetlamps so that he appears pale,
ethereal. I catch up with him. He looks pathetically old and frail. I place my hand gently on his shoulder. ‘Daddy, please come back to bed.’

He turns and starts. Then he begins to scream.

‘You’re not Mona! I want Mona! Where’s Mona?!’

Mona’s on her side, in a foetal position. I shake her, tell her she has to go after Daddy.

She raises her head. Frowns. ‘Now? It’s dark.’

‘Yes, Mona,’ I say. ‘Go now.’ I’m still dressed, too keyed up to sleep.

She gets up, blinks at me, She’s wearing a T-shirt over bare legs, revealing firm, caramel-coloured thighs.

She moves so slowly, I grow impatient.

‘Wake up! It’s an emergency.’ I can’t bear her slow, laborious gait when I’ve instructed her to go.

When at last I hear the front door close, I go up to bed. I need sleep. I need to be fresh for work in the morning. But sleep is elusive.

I shut my eyes, try to use the relaxation technique they teach you at yoga. But every time I begin to drop off, Mona’s thighs float into view, as strong and muscular as
Boudicca’s.

Accompanying this, Daddy’s horrified screech echoes in my ears.

Mona! I want Mona!

I’m dreaming.

Ali has run into the white house again, covered in sweat, in tears.

‘You must hide me!’ And each time I try to find a place where he can hide, the walls fall away and he is standing in front of the crowds as they encroach on him down the street,
their batons raised, broken glass and sticks and hammers brandished in front of them. I run, to stand in front of him, to protect him, but then I see Leila: she is walking into the crowds and they
are turning on her.

I go to grab her and one of the men with a shard of broken glass crosses over to me. The pain is thin and high-pitched. It seeps into my consciousness, expands, blooms, fills my head with
unbearable brightness, like flames – red orange yellow. That’s when I wake.

A woman stands over me, not a man. Sweet relief. The pain, the fear, was all a dream. Dora’s long hair is a copper halo against the soft light falling in through the kitchen door.

For a few seconds I’m afraid. She’s discovered I’ve sold her spoons.

I try to sit up, struggling against the weight of sleep.

‘Mona. I need you to get up, go to Daddy.’

I get out of bed, still in that half-dream world.

‘Hurry up.’

It’s midnight. No, much later. That time of night when the world is dark and the cold so deep it’s as if all mankind were at the bottom of a well.

I’m too fuddled, too much in my dream to think straight. Dora’s dressed, as if she has just come in.

‘Wake up, it’s an emergency. Daddy has gone out onto the street.’

She’s fully clothed, in her coat. Why hasn’t she gone, since she’s up and dressed? She looks at me in an odd, cold way.

‘Yes. I’m coming.’

And she’s gone.

I move down the road, the streetlamps lighting the faces of the cherubs and figureheads so they peer through the mist, half-concealed.

It’s so cold my teeth clash together. I’m wide awake now, the mist wet against my skin, my eyes smarting in the chill. The other houses are all in darkness, curtains drawn, softly
protected against the harsher side of the city. One of the curtains in the house next door moves as I pass. I’m being watched by more than the effigies tonight.

I see him, emerging from beyond a row of wheelie bins. He shuffles towards the High Street like a ghost, almost as if he too has been sculpted, out of mist rather than stone.

I catch up with him outside the halal meat stores.

‘Charles.’

He doesn’t look at me but I fall into step beside him.

‘Ah Mona. I need to get to Billingsgate before the others,’ he says. ‘If we go now, we can beat the rush.’

‘It’s OK, Charles. You must come back to bed. We will go later. Come, come with me.’ I crook my elbow for Charles to take, turn him and walk him slowly back to the house, round
the side and across the garden to his steps. I settle him back into bed and return to the house.

There’s no point in trying to sleep now.

Though it’s still dark, there’s a roar in the air, traffic starting up, planes flying overhead. Tubes vibrating through the ground of the city. It must be nearly morning.

Something about Dora’s face in the moonlight has upset me. Does she suspect me of lying? Or of stealing?

I can’t let her think this. I remember Dora’s delight at finding her taps polished, the first day I started work. I take a rag and a bottle of oil and work away at the kitchen taps,
rubbing and polishing until they shine.

I’m finishing them off as Dora comes in. I know instantly that the polishing is not to her liking.

‘Leave the taps, Mona. There are too many other jobs to be done.’ She switches on the kettle without speaking. She’s tired. She has attempted to cover the bags under her eyes
with some too-white, too-luminous make-up. She must have only just come in when she woke me last night. Now she is suffering, too, from lack of sleep.

‘How far did he get?’ she asks.

‘Charles?’

‘Of course.’

‘End of the street. He wanted to go to Billingsgate.’

‘You must tell him he doesn’t need to go to Billingsgate any more. You must tell him, when he thinks he’s living in the past, that things have changed.’

‘But—’

‘This can’t go on,’ says Dora. ‘Daddy needs watching at night too. I’ve got to go. There’s a lot to be done. If you finish the cleaning, washing, shopping and
cooking for Leo and Daddy, you can put the rubbish out. Do the ironing. And then you can polish the silver.’

She walks across the kitchen to a wooden box and lifts the lid. Inside are knives and forks and spoons, all arranged in lines slotted into a kind of velvet cushion. I see at once that the spoons
I’ve just sold must have been part of this set. There are two layers; the spoons must have come from the lower one.

My heart almost stops.

‘These were my mother’s. A family heirloom, though none of my siblings places value on such things, so I felt no compunction in taking them. They’re tarnished, you see. They
don’t look very special to the untrained eye. But once they’re polished, with silver dip, they’ll shine like new.’

She reaches into a cupboard and brings out a pot of silver polish.

‘Can I take Charles perhaps to this Billingsgate one day? To make him happy?’ I ask, hoping to distract her, to stop her from lifting the layer of knives and forks and finding the
soup spoons missing.

‘No! You must stay in this area. Don’t do everything Daddy asks, Mona, he doesn’t know what he really wants. You’re here to do as
I
say. So just keep to the
market and the street and you’ll be OK. Daddy’s confused. You need to help him live in reality, here and now. He needs to know where he is, and who he’s with. Do you
understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘He must not go to the fish market.’

‘It’s a pity, I’d like to make him happy.’ I say it in Arabic.

‘What did you say?’

‘Just that I understand I must do as you say.’

She moves away from the cutlery container.

‘And Mona, if he wants to buy my mother flowers, you tell him she’s dead.’

I stare at her.

She’s putting on lipstick in the mirror as she speaks. ‘You don’t buy things without telling me and then keep them for yourself.’

‘Of course.’

‘And you don’t take things that aren’t yours.’

And then she’s gone.

I have supposed for a long time that I am ‘in love’ with Max. But after occasions like this latest one, when we’ve been apart for months and then our meeting
lasts less than twelve hours, I wonder whether it’s worth it. The pain of tearing myself from him seems, in the aftermath, worse than not seeing him at all.

I awake the next morning with a dull headache, nervy and raw-edged from lack of sleep and with that nagging feeling that we’ve left things unfinished. The vision of Max saying, ‘Tell
me about her,’ as he holds my thigh, still won’t leave me.

I consider emailing him, telling him how his curiosity about Mona has left me miserable, but I know I won’t do this. He’ll reassure me that it was nothing more than a passing
fantasy. He’ll probably laugh at me – point out that he’s never even met this woman; she’s just a concept – no more real than the statues he likes to use to embellish
his fantasies.

And I’ll make myself sound needy – something I’m careful not to do in case it drives him away. I represent freedom from his home-life, his work – he doesn’t want
another shackle.

Perhaps then I should email and say we have to call the whole thing off?

That I can no longer bear the weeks that lie between one meeting and the next. That being close to him and then detaching myself is like suffering a terrible hangover after only one glass of
wine.

Then I remember Daddy in the streetlight, turning his petrified face to me, and crying, ‘You’re not Mona! I want Mona! Where’s Mona?!’

With his words ringing through my ears, I turn the other way at the bottom of my front steps before going to work; take the alley round the back to Daddy’s flat. I need to check he is all
right, after all. That Mona got him back safely. I want to reassure myself that he was just confused last night. That he meant to call for
me
, not Mona.

‘Morning, Daddy.’

‘Eh?’ He’s in his chair, a paper on his lap though he doesn’t look as though he’s been reading it. His cereal bowl’s on the table beside him so he’s had
breakfast.

I must admit Mona is a conscientious worker.

‘How are you this morning?’

‘You’re not Mona. Bring me Mona.’

‘Daddy, I’m your daughter. Theodora. I’ve come to see if I can get you anything.’ I’m fingering the chain round my neck, drawing his attention to it.

‘You can get me the lovely Mona,’ he says. ‘She’s a sweet girl and she knows what I like.’

I unhook the necklace, take it off, hand it to him.

‘You remember, you bought me this,’ I say, feeling tears come to my eyes. ‘Don’t you remember? You always called me Theodora, your “gift from God”.’