The Darkening Hour (18 page)

‘You can mix the almond paste, if you want. Then help me fill the filo tubes with the paste, and you can pour on this syrup.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘Honey and sugar. We made these at home. Before—’ I stop myself. ‘When we had the ingredients.’

He sits at the table and lights a cigarette. I stare at him.

‘Your mother doesn’t like you smoking in the house.’

‘She can’t stop me.’

‘Put it out. When I’ve finished we’ll go outside and I’ll have one too.’

‘You smoke?’

‘Occasionally.’

When the cakes are finished, and lying on a tray for Dora’s homecoming, I fetch my own packet of cigarettes. The one I brought with me in my bag from home. I haven’t had one since I
arrived here, but now the smell of Leo’s smoke has given me a craving.

‘We’ll go outside,’ I say, and to my surprise he follows me, out of the front door, round the back to the garden. We sit on a bench, light up, and for the first time in months
I draw in the taste of the black tobacco, feel the rush of smoke as it hits my head, and feel for a few moments, as we sit and smoke silently together, that I could, if I shut my eyes and imagine
hard enough, be at home.

‘You’re always on the computer,’ I say, ‘always playing those games. Car chases and so on. Don’t you ever get bored?’

‘That’s not all I do.’

‘What else then?’

‘Social networking.’

‘Ah yes. Everyone does that these days. I wish I knew how.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘No. I never had a computer before I came here.’

‘Fuck me, that’s crazy. I can show you, if you like.’

‘Really? Can you show me how to search on Google as well?’ Things are happening at last.

‘Of course. I can give you lessons, Mona, you’re fucked if you can’t use a computer.’

We sit side by side in Leo’s room at his screen. An hour later, he has set up a page just for me.

‘You need contacts to put on your page. Otherwise you’ll just have to wait for people to contact you.’

I shrug. ‘You could perhaps search for a few of my friends.’

I tell him the names, and he punches them in. Hait and Amina and Jasmine. Amina has a Facebook page and Leo presses what he calls a ‘friend’s request’ and sends it to her.

‘If she “confirms” your friendship you’ll be able to chat to her online,’ he says.

‘And you could try Ali – Ali Chokran,’ I say casually, as if Ali were just another friend.

Photos and names pop up. I peer closely.

There are hundreds of photos, none of them him. I’m swamped all over again with the sense of despair I’ve felt every time I realise how far I am from finding him, and try to hide the
look of pain that must have crossed my face.

As I get up to go and see to Charles, Leo calls me back. He holds out something shiny in his hands.

‘Grandad’s cufflinks,’ he says. ‘No one wears them any more. Thought you could sell ’em.’

By the time Dora comes home, Leo has helped me make a Facebook page and I’ve made a little extra cash and sent it all to Ummu. It’s then I realise what the dragging in the pit of my
stomach is. My period has come and I have no money to buy tampons.

I’m tired when I get in from work. I go straight up to my room, undress, put on my bathrobe which Mona has laundered and is fresh-smelling and fluffed up. It’s at
times like this I wonder how I managed without her. Hugging it around myself, I walk across the clean landing and down the stairs to the bathroom where I intend to lie in a deep bubble bath,
smoothing on exfoliator.

I push open the bathroom door.

Mona, on a stool, her hand in my cabinet.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Oh!’ She turns. ‘I’m looking for tampons,’ she says, her eyes wide, betraying her guilt.

‘Tampons?’

‘Yes. I bleed, I wasn’t prepared. It’s come early.’

‘But you have money for tampons.’

‘I . . . I have no money, I . . .’

‘Mona! I give you money for shopping, I gave you your wages, only on Friday! What do you mean?’

‘Sorry. Next time I’ll buy them. I forgot. It’s an emergency.’

She smiles. I see she’s hoping for a kind of conspiratorial warmth from me. I could of course let her take the box, or hand her a fiver, tell her to trot to the shop and buy some tampons
for herself, or, if I was the fool I was when she arrived, I would go myself. But I’m not.

And there’s something else I can’t even quite grasp. Something to do with Mona’s periods, using my tampons – such personal intimate things. She isn’t a friend. She
isn’t someone to share things with.

‘You may take one, for now. I bought you this.’

Her expression softens as I hand her the package, as if she thinks I might have bought her a present. She takes it from me.

‘It’s a monitor, you keep one piece by your bed and we’ll put the other by Daddy’s. Then if he wakes in the night again you will hear and can go to him.’

Her soft expression hardens again. Never have I known such an expressive face.

‘I cannot work twenty-four hours a day,’ she says.

‘You’ll work the hours I need you to work,’ I reply. ‘And you’ll buy your own essentials.’ She gives me another blank look then begins to walk away.

‘And Mona,’ I say. She turns. ‘You have your own bathroom. You’re not to use mine.’

Later, when Mona’s down with Daddy, sorting out the monitor, I go into her room.

What
is
happening to the money I pay her? She sends some of it to her mother and daughter, I know, but there’s enough, should be enough for her to buy basic necessities as
well.

I have a quick look about. The study is unrecognisable, tidier than it’s been since I moved back. She’s got her little photo album by her bed, a notebook. Her clothes are hanging up
on the back of the door. She hasn’t got many. Most of them are cheap manmade fabrics, tracksuit bottoms, T-shirts. No wonder she looks so dowdy, so middle-aged most of the time! There’s
one pretty purple dress, and a skirt, but that’s about it.

I go to the bureau. I find Daddy’s writing paper. And tucked into it, ten-pound notes.

Mona’s accepting my money, stashing it up, instead of spending it on things she needs. So that’ll be why she’s pilfering other things!

I go up to the dressing-table in my room. I’d taken the precaution, of course, of locking my jewelry up in a box I keep under the bed, and hiding the key. But I’m not worried about
this. Mona’s too clever to take things of any value and think she could get away with it. It’s the little things that have passed across my consciousness without my registering them
that are suddenly bothering me.

I open my expensive moisturiser. It’s hard to tell, but I’m sure someone – Mona, who else? – has put their finger into the pot and taken some. I’m certain there was
more rose-water in the bottle than there is now. I remember then the hand cream that disappeared. I barely paid any heed to this when I saw it had gone; it was, after all, just a free sample
I’d been given when buying some other products, but now, in the context of everything else that’s happening, I begin to feel a fool.

My heart starts to pound. I feel humiliation heat my skin, almost as if I were blushing to myself. A vision of a scorch-mark on a tablecloth flashes into my head. I push it away.

I’m not concerned about what these things cost me; it’s the fact Mona’s taking advantage of me.

I notice then that my blusher has been left open; a dusting of powder trails over the lid though I know for certain I haven’t used it this week. I go back to the bathroom. Yes, the
shampoo, I’m certain has been used.

‘Leo!’ I push open the drawing-room door and brandish the bottle in front of him.

‘Did you use my shampoo?’

‘What?’

‘I need to know.’

He shrugs. ‘Don’t remember.’

‘Did you help yourself to the dark chocolate I left in the fridge?’

‘You know I can’t stand dark chocolate, or you should. By now.’ He’s affronted that my questions imply I don’t know him, his tastes. It’s an unspoken issue
between us. I kick myself for putting my suspicions around Mona before intimacy with Leo. She’s even messing up the bond I’m trying to establish with my son!

‘I need to know if Mona’s been helping herself,’ I plead. ‘If you haven’t, it must be her.’

I want his affection, I need his response.

But he’s not listening, has reconnected himself to whatever film or game he’s playing. Disconnected himself from me.

I give up on Leo and go to knock on Mona’s door. Hold out the things I’ve shown Leo.

‘Just a reminder, Mona. You are an employee, not a guest,’ I say. ‘You buy these things out of your own money, it’s what I’m paying you for.’

She stares at me, with no expression on her face. That mask has come down that’s impossible to read.

‘I give you money to buy things. You don’t have to steal.’

‘You don’t want me to work for you any more?’

‘That’s not what I said.’

I look at what she’s been doing. It seems she’s been studying, in her work hours, from a little book of English phrases, writing into a notebook. I’ll tell
her later that she isn’t here to study, that I’ve employed her to work. I don’t have the strength now. Her expression’s unnerved me.

Instead I go down to see Daddy.

He’s settled already in his pyjamas, reading the local paper he prefers, the radio on, his whisky by his side. I can’t fault Mona on her care for him.

I smile at him. ‘Hi Daddy.’ I wait to see if he recognises me this evening.

At last he looks up. ‘Where’s Mona? I want Mona!’

‘You can have her later. I’ve come to see how you are. And to get my necklace,’ I tell him. ‘The one you gave me when I was born.’

‘What necklace? I haven’t seen a necklace.’

‘My special necklace, the one that says
Theodora
on it. I left it so you would remember that you live with me, your daughter, that I’m the one you always liked
best.’

‘I don’t know where it is.’

‘Daddy, you must know. I put it here, on your table, to remind you who I am. Your gift from God. Your eldest. Theodora.’

‘I don’t remember seeing anything.’ A furrow crosses his papery old brow, tears spring up in the corners of his eyes. I’ve upset him. This is not what I intended.

Mona’s made me do this. And I know now that tampons are the least of my worries. Mona is too clever to take things of value from my room, but she’s also clever enough to know what an
unreliable witness Daddy would be.

Smarting with indignation, I leave him, and return to Mona’s room.

‘Mona, my necklace is missing, I left it in Daddy’s flat. Where have you put it?’

She looks up at me. ‘What?’

‘My necklace, the one I wear here.’ I pat my throat. ‘I gave it to Daddy in his flat and now it’s not there. You must have it.’

Her face has gone stony blank again.

‘Where is it?’

She shrugs. And I know no amount of questioning will make her weaken.

There’s nothing I can do, because Daddy’s started to bang on the ceiling and faintly, through the floorboards, up the dumb waiter shaft, and simultaneously in an echo through the
baby monitor that she has set up by her bed, his voice fills the room in a chorus, calling, ‘Mona! Mona! I want Mona.’

It is Saturday, and I am drained and exhausted.

‘Today is the English weekend,’ I tell Dora. ‘I need a day off.’

‘I’m sorry, Mona, but Daddy’s requirements don’t stop just because it’s a Saturday. He’s very dependent on you. Won’t have anyone else.’

‘I’m tired. I haven’t had any free time since I came.’

‘I’ll decide when you’re to have a day off.’

‘Getting up in the night, working from first thing in the morning, I need to rest as well or—’

‘I think, Mona, that you have perhaps been paying yourself for more hours than you’ve worked. We’ll talk about it another time. I’ve got to go now. I’m meeting my
sister for coffee.’

‘Or,’ I call after her, as she gathers her things, ‘I could take all my days off at once and you could pay for me to go home for a few days.’

I finish clearing the kitchen, counting the Saturdays and Sundays I’ve worked, keeping a record of how many days Dora owes me. Then I go down to Charles’s – and stop in
shock.

The flat has been vandalised! The umbrella-stand has fallen over and the umbrella lies half-open across the floor. Papers from the table are strewn all over the carpet. A photo he keeps on the
wall has fallen off and the frame lies snapped on the floor.

Charles is standing on a chair in the middle of his sitting room in bare feet, his walking stick in one hand. The room’s in chaos. His broken whisky glass lies upturned on the floor, the
liquid forming a dark stain on the carpet. Books have been flung about, and a tin of biscuits has been wrenched open, half of its contents trodden into the carpet.

Charles himself is only half-dressed, in a dirty sagging vest and underpants. He’s got little goose bumps on his arms, and his legs look very white in the dim light.

‘Rats,’ he says. ‘A big ’un, just crossed the sideboard. They come in here and eat everything if you don’t keep on top of them.’

He thrashes at the cupboard, shattering a crystal glass decanter that he keeps there.

‘Charles, I can’t see any rats!’ I move around the flat, checking. If necessary, I think, I’ll drag Endymion down and make him work for once. But I can see no evidence of
rodents. Must be one of Charles’s hallucinations.

I take the walking stick out of his hand. Help him down off the chair, find a fresh pair of cashmere socks to pull onto his unexpectedly soft white feet, and sit him in the armchair next to the
gas fire, out of harm’s way.

‘Which one are you?’ he asks. ‘You all keep changing your hairstyles, it’s hard for me to keep up.’

‘I’m Mona,’ I tell him. ‘Dora’s helper.’

‘Mona, of course. My favourite girl, my favourite waitress. Of course Dora’s not here. I haven’t seen her for months. She’s got a very important job. On the
radio.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Terence is all over the world and Anita, the Pretty One, she’s got her children. They’re all so very busy. Simon doesn’t work but he hasn’t been to see me in
years.’ A tear has come to his eye.