The Darkening Hour (35 page)

I put her letter down. Fold it in half.

I then go through to the study, the room that used to be my bedroom, and look out of the window.

The bust of the woman’s head is back at the top of the steps. The one that killed Max. For a while, I sit down and stare at a small bird with a red breast that has landed on top of it.

Endymion, the cat, sits beneath, batting at it with its paw. I watch, astonished, as the bird continues to sit, oblivious to its predator. Endymion squats, ready to pounce, and as he leaps, the
bird flies off into the winter sky.

I think how, if Leila were drawing the cat and the bird, they would both have down-turned mouths, the predator and its prey as sad as each other.

When I’ve finished cleaning I go back to Charles.

He is a little better, insisting he needs to go out, to buy fruit, buy his paper.

I have to wait until it’s growing dark. Dora’s instructed me not to speak to anyone. This was unnecessary. I never do speak to anyone, except Sayed, and I haven’t been back to
his shop since I failed to turn up to the meeting he arranged, too ashamed to admit my papers had gone, that I had no money.

I wear my blue anorak, hood up over my headscarf, pulling the collar of my fleece up as far as I can so it conceals my face. And I keep my head down, as I wheel Charles to the High Street. The
street is a little subdued now the Christmas festival is over, its usual noise and movement reduced, though the stalls are still open and women gather to fill their bags with produce.

I pay for Charles’s clementines without making eye-contact with the stallholder. I buy him a paper. Sayed isn’t in his shop today; it’s someone I haven’t seen before who
doesn’t speak, just gives me my change without looking.

The snow is now a grey slush along the pavements; the air is raw and cold.

We pass people I know so well by sight, but with whom I’ve never exchanged a word. The guy in the luminous jacket who sweeps the road, the skinny girl with the old woman’s face
selling magazines, the group of youths in hoods huddled around the money-exchange kiosk. We pass the chef who often stands outside a door left open to ease the heat of a steamy kitchen beneath
street-level.

I see them, but they don’t see me. We’re of no interest, an old man in a wheelchair, and his carer in a fleece, tracksuit bottoms and a blue overall, an anorak over the top, walking
slowly, her face turned to the ground.

I don’t know what makes me return to the river today. It’s so cold out there. In the market, the lights and smells and music thumping from doorways give the impression, at least, of
warmth. I push Charles through the back streets to the path, to the steps down to the water.

Here, the sound drops; it’s silent but for the slosh of water against the wall and the occasional drone of an aircraft overhead. I don’t look into the depths. I’m afraid of
what might stare back up at me. Yet, at the same time I want to see, I want to know. I imagine it, and shudder. Max’s long surgeon’s fingers reaching out, reaching for me. But
there’s nothing, just dark water lapping at the bottom of the steps. Ten steps are exposed, along with a layer of rubbish – beer cans and cigarette packets, burger containers and
plastic bags, all swirling in a brown scum on the surface of the Thames.

I stare across at the posts stained green and the landing stages with the signs that I know say
Danger Keep Off!
and I think how it is good that the river is dangerous, the structures
precarious. Because then if someone does find Max’s body and Dora does tell the police that I am responsible – I will come here and walk slowly down these steps, into the river, and
disappear completely and forever. Better this, than that Ummu and Leila believe I have killed a man and am in prison. I will end my life in the same country as Ali, but beneath the water, and
somewhere, some day, our souls will meet and mingle. And this gives me a kind of bleak comfort.

It’s dark now. My shoes have soaked up puddlewater. I don’t care, but Charles, whose hands look blue with cold where they clutch the paper bag of clementines on his lap, must get
home before the January night sets in.

Every day now it’s the same. After our walk I take him back, prepare his meal, fetch his pyjamas, warm them for him in front of the gas fire. I keep going. It’s OK. It’s not
hard to work silently. To keep quiet for Leila and Ummu. Ummu will have her operation. Leila will go to school.

Every day we turn the corner at the pub, as we’re doing now, and I push the wheelchair down the street under the shadow of the dark church. Past the angels and figureheads with their eyes
shut tight. I reach the house and take the side entrance to the back garden. Help Charles out of his chair and down the steps to the basement, disappearing into London’s bowels, its
underground.

Back inside, I assist Charles into his reclining armchair with its foot-rest. It’s more of a struggle than it was, getting him in and settled. He no longer seems to remember how to make
himself comfortable and I have to do this for him, adjusting his feet, placing his hands on the arms of the chair. He demands his dinner and I take it to him on a tray; I sit and spoon it into his
mouth, and wipe his mouth and offer him sips of water.

And when he’s finished his supper I peel a clementine for him. I feed him the pieces of orange, and the juice runs down his chin, and I dab it away.

I spoon Charles’s medicine into his loose pink mouth, and help him into clean night things. Pour him his two fingers of whisky. I kiss him on his papery old cheek. He moans, says he needs
the toilet. I lift him, let him hang on to me as he totters into his little bathroom. Hold his penis while he wees before I wash him and lead him back to his bed. Then I take the peel into the
kitchen and drop it into the over-flowing pedal-bin. I take the liner and knot it. I put it ready to take out. I replace it with a new one. I wash his dishes and tidy up.

Above, in the main house, comes the thud of someone pounding down the stairs, the rumble of a chair scraped across the floor. I feel the sound in my skin; it twitches and my
ears ring. My palms begin to sweat. I long for the day to end, for the moment I can lie down in the corner of this room on the makeshift bed with its one flat pillow, because I’m so terribly
weary, and oblivion more than anything is what I yearn for now.

But that sound, the scraping of the chair in the kitchen above me, means only one thing: it is time for me to start on the next shift.

Dora’s voice echoing down the shaft into Charles’s sitting room.

‘MONA!’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s seven o’clock. I’m hungry.’

‘Charles is going to bed now. Then I’ll come.’

‘You’re late.’

And the old man demanding my attention at the same time. ‘You’ve hidden it again! Blast and damn you, woman, you’ve taken my whisky.’

And the shout from upstairs – ‘Now!’ – and Charles grumbling, and my head beginning to pound.

As I hand him his whisky, he picks up his paper and we spot it together. There, in the bottom corner of the front cover, staring out, is a picture of Doctor Max.

And Charles speaks.

‘That’s the doctor who examined me – American chap. I saw it happen through my bedroom window. Dora pushed the statue of Maudy at him, and he fell down the steps.’

Max wanted to come back and live with me. He loved me, he wanted to leave Valerie for me.

And now he’s dead!

I spend the whole of the night rearranging history in my head. Placing things where they are meant to be.

It is a relief to go to work, to focus on something outside my house, to throw myself into creating the new show they have chosen me to present, ‘A World of Flavour’.

And now, as I arrive home, almost falling over his enormous trainers lying haphazardly on the floor, my heart lifts to realise that Leo must be home. His return, I believe wildly for a moment,
will erase everything that has happened since he left. Things will go back to normal. Max never happened. I drop my bag in the hall and rush through to the kitchen, where I fling my arms around my
son. I stand back to look at him.

He’s tanned, thinner, healthier-looking than I’ve ever seen him. And he’s smiling.

‘You look so well!’ I exclaim.

‘I bought you Argan Oil, Mum. Claudia says it’s the next big thing for hair.’

‘Thanks, Leo.’

I feel like crying. It’s seeing someone I love again. It’s realising how much this means to me. It’s knowing he must never, ever, learn the truth about the terrible things I
have done.

‘I’ve got some figs for Grandpa, too, and some new slippers for Mona –
babouches
, the kind she likes but says she could never afford. Where is she?’

‘She’s with Grandpa.’ I’m wondering, though I’m trying not to, whether slippers are a more generous present than Argan Oil, and why Leo feels my hair needs help
while he doesn’t feel Mona’s does. But I’m not going to let these thoughts take over. I’m going to relish Leo’s return.

He left a hole in my life I couldn’t see until now it’s been filled again. If he hadn’t gone away, things might have been so different.

‘I’ve made loads of New Year’s resolutions,’ he says, going over to the kettle. ‘Do you want a cup of tea, Mum? I’ve got so much to tell you. But it’s
my first shift at the bar tonight.’

I sit opposite him at the table. This is what I’ve needed, time with my son. Time in which I believe he actually wants to be with me, rather than in front of a screen or with Mona.

‘And I think, Mum, once I’m earning a decent wage, I’ll move in with Barnie and George.’

‘Good,’ I hear myself say. ‘That’s great, Leo.’

But I want to tell him not to, to stay with me, that I’ll pay for whatever he wants, that he doesn’t need a job.

You spend half your life resenting your dependants for sucking dry your time and energy, then, when they inch away, you want nothing more than to gather them back to you, beg them to need you
again.

Later, when he’s finished telling me about his travels, he says he’s going off to the bar.

It’s OK, I tell myself. Leo can leave, he can live his life. I do, after all, have the thrill of a new career in front of me again, and Mona to meet my every need.

I go to the dumbwaiter now, and shout down for her.

When she comes up, she hands me a pile of catalogues offering summer bulbs, and those lovely Toast clothes I’ve decided I’ll wear all the time from now on. I give her back the
envelopes for the recycling.

‘Have you done the rooms today?’ I ask.

‘All done,’ she says. ‘The bed’s ready for your massage. I was going to make a tagine.’

‘Good. The recording of my new show starts next week – and you’re to help me with the recipes. You’ll need to explain the techniques you use for spicing dishes. You must
tell me about the ingredients my listeners may never have heard of before, to give them the feeling they’re discovering something unique. I’ll need two recipes for each programme.
It’s going out once a week to start with and I’ll need six weeks’ worth, so that’s twelve recipes. I want you to tell me how you make your clafoutis, your
harira
,
your meatballs, and those lovely almond pastries you made with Leo.’

I sit in the kitchen Mona has made pristine and watch her, the way she chops the vegetables as if she were a trained chef, with those hands that gesticulate and wave and work so hard. Mona nods
her head each time I ask her to do anything. She doesn’t look at me. She keeps her eyes down.

A vision comes into my head, of Boudicca, of the night Max and I met beneath her and the way he gazed up at her – her strong legs, her valiant expression.

I feel that I have conquered everything – everyone. No one can humiliate me again. I am indeed a Boudicca figure, strong, powerful, in command.

And I thank Roger silently for bringing me Mona.

‘Mona,’ I say. ‘Full body massage today.’

This is something new I’ve discovered about her, her skill when it comes to massage.

‘Where did you learn such good techniques?’ I ask her, my voice muffled as she kneads my back, erasing all the tension, all the anxiety and fret, and yes, the sour taste left in my
mouth by recent events. ‘It is really extraordinary, the way you are able to reach deep into my muscles with your fingers. Your hands were one of the first things I noticed about you. They
are so expressive, so strong. ’

She has lit candles as I instructed her to do, and some more of the incense she placed around my room the night I brought Max home. I tell her to put Nina Simone on the CD player and I lie down
on the massage table and let all my troubles float away. I’ve dealt with each problem as it’s come. The fear that I would be made redundant. The fear of rejection. The fear of fading
the way I’ve seen other women fade when their lives become dominated by the needs of others and they are shunted off to the sidings.

It is safe to relax, to let go. I’ve taken control and it’s paying off. I don’t let myself think about Max in the river. He’s gone. It’s as if he’s just
returned to America again, is going through one of his silences.

I remind myself, however, that he loved me. And this soothes away some of the pain.

Mona’s fingers find a particularly tight knot in my neck and ease it out.

She bends a little closer. ‘I saw it,’ she whispers.

‘What?’

‘In Charles’s paper.’

I can’t turn my head as her hands are on my neck, my face pressed into the mattress of the divan.

‘A picture of Doctor Max. And the steps – the steps where we took him. Oh Dora,’ she says right into my ear, ‘they’ve found his body.’

I rear up, shoving Mona’s hands off me.

‘Bring me the paper!’ My hands shake as I snatch the pages from her. ‘Where? I can’t see it. You must have made a mistake!’

Mona points at the page, where I spot the item, my heart leaping into my throat.

It’s a tiny report in the bottom corner, as if this death was really very insignificant.