The Darkening Hour Read online

  ‘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!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  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”.’

  I look around to make sure no one can hear this sentimental appeal, though I know there’s no one but us present.

  ‘Hold it, Daddy, please. Look after it, and try to remember who I am. I’ve got to go to work, but I’d be here if I could.’

  He looks at the chain at last, takes up the ends in his two hands, stretching it out so he can read the name curling across it. At last he sighs, ‘Ah yes, Theodora,’ and looks up at me. I feel a flood of relief.

  ‘What are you going to work for on a Sunday?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s not Sunday, it’s Thursday. And Daddy, I’d like you to keep an eye on Mona, while I’m at work.’

  ‘Oh, she doesn’t need an eye on her. She’s a very hard worker, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure she is, Daddy. But I want you to make sure she doesn’t buy things for herself with your money.’

  ‘Oh no, she’s very generous. She spends it all on things for me. Now, you and Mona,’ he says, examining me, ‘I can’t quite understand it. You must be the same age, yet she looks so very young, while you . . . Oh dear. You do look tired.’

  I mustn’t take these comments to heart. Daddy’s condition means that he sometimes says hurtful things – it’s what’s known as ‘disinhibition’. I know this. I’ve read about it. Nevertheless, when he’s like this, it seems as if all the things that made Daddy sweet and lovable are crumbling away. As if a shiny veneer has eroded with age, leaving only the crude under-surface on show.

  I leave him, my feelings veering from concern to relief that I no longer have to deal with him.

  Mona is, after all, here to take some of these tumultuous feelings away.

  The Clipper’s full, people commuting, using laptops and smartphones, on iPads and on iPods. I buy a coffee – I need a good caffeine fix after last night – and go to stand on deck to get some air. I inhale the sludgy scent of the river. As the engine starts up, churning the murky water below us, the jetty starts to move away, and I stare down into the hurtling tide, racing along with the boat. When I look up, church spires and office blocks that were, a few seconds ago, in front, are vanishing behind us into the distance.

  I need this commuting time to think about Max, to unpack what I’ve felt since last night. I lean on the railings. I can’t get Daddy’s voice out of my mind, crying out for Mona. It’s hurt me more than I like to think. My thoughts are interrupted by a conversation going on beside me.

  ‘I know, darling. I know you want feedback, but it’s impossible for me to be objective. I love everything you do. I’m dizzy with pride.’

  A man and a woman lean on the railings. He’s maybe in his fifties, she twenty or so. They have the same eyes, the same low-slung eyebrows.

  Father and daughter.

  The girl sighs, says something that’s snatched up by the wind and tossed downstream. Maybe it’s lack of sleep, or a surfeit of caffeine but time seems to collapse. It’s as if I’m looking at my future, not my past. Gaping at the girl I dream I’ll become, lanky with adolescence, on the cusp of adulthood, basking in the undiluted approval of a doting father. Then as fast as the image appears, it’s gone. I’m catapulted back to now. Just as the spires and landing stages on the banks vanish, Daddy and I as we were, as we might have been, slip into the distance until we’re not even dots on the river bend.

  A memory comes. One of our early-morning trips to Billingsgate by car through the Blackwall Tunnel to buy fish for the restaurant. Daddy always chose me to go with him, to keep him company, and I treasured these excursions, especially the leaving at dawn to cross a London that was still sleeping.

  There was always a salty stench outside Billingsgate, like a mouthful of seawater. I was fascinated by the layers of dead fish in the boxes, the gaping mouths, the milky eyes. I hung onto Daddy as he picked up fish and sniffed them and squeezed them, and their unseeing eyes stared up at him, their mouths turned down as if they said, as they died, How could you do this to me?

  I wasn’t officially allowed on the wet market floor. So Daddy took me into the café in the corner where the fish merchants and porters in their bloodied white aprons ploughed through bacon and eggs and haddock and chips. And Daddy bought me a bacon roll and had his cup of coffee with two sugars. Then he disappeared to barter with the stallholders with their bare arms and tattoos and bloodstained overalls. I hated being left there alone. Tinny music mingled with the intermittent hiss of steam from the urns, and I’d long for Daddy to loom through the door, with his sea food for the restaurant.

  I distracted myself trying to finish songs in my head before all the little lights lit up on the front of the fruit machines. If I didn’t reach the end of a song in time, Daddy would never come back to me. I would be left here and kidnapped by one of the fish men and taken on a boat to somewhere far away and strange, sold into the white slave trade.

  When Daddy did come, the relief was so warm, such a release, I would sing out loud all the way home.

  It’s that relief, that beautiful warm gush that followed his appearance that I long for today. As the Clipper draws into Bankside Pier, I realise I’m waiting for Daddy now. I feel tears come to my eyes, hot and pressing. I’m waiting for the Daddy I used to love to come back to me.

  Knowing that this time, I didn’t reach the end of the song in time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘I want you to make those cakes,’ Dora says, her back to me. ‘The ones you told me about.’ She’s gathering things – her mobile, her keys – dropping them into her bag. ‘Here’s some money for today.’ She slams a ten pound note on the table, crosses the kitchen to the cooker, and turns suddenly to face me. ‘The ones with almond and honey. Leo likes them.’

  I nod, aware that her kitchen is an armoury of domestic weapons – its shiny set of knives, the meat hammer, her blender with its blades of steel. Its iron.

  ‘And I’d like you to make up all the beds with fresh sheets. Leo needs cigarettes, he’s run out, but don’t neglect Daddy.’ She
bangs the rolling pin down on the work surface, and I watch her back as she stalks down the hallway, leaving me wordless, in her kitchen.

  Charles refuses to come out with me today, says he’s busy planning menus.

  ‘I’ll tidy your room. Then I’m popping out to get Leo’s cigarettes. I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Yes, yes – be off with you. I need to get on.’

  On my way down the street I phone Ummu.

  ‘I’m much better, thank you, Mona,’ she says straight away. ‘The medication is helping, alhamdulillah. Thanks to your money I’ll soon have enough for the scan. The doctor says he’ll arrange one for me – to make sure, you know, that there’s nothing nasty going on.’

  ‘Of course there’s nothing nasty going on. You mustn’t think like that, Ummu.’

  ‘No. OK, Mona, but just to be on the safe side . . .’

  I wait.

  ‘I meant to tell you’ – another coughing fit – ‘Leila’s been to see the school. She’s so excited, Mona, you should see her face. She’s growing up too. Lost a tooth last night, first top one.’

  ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘Of course! She ran around showing it to everyone.’

  ‘She must look funny, with a top tooth missing.’

  ‘She looks cute as ever, Mona.’

  ‘Good. That’s good.’

  ‘So we’re doing fine.’ Cough. ‘It’s all working out very well. Thanks to you. Your wages.’

  ‘No news?’ I barely mention Ali’s name for fear of setting her off on another nagging session about finding an Englishman instead.

  ‘No, Mona. Nothing.’

  I don’t tell her I feel homesick. That hearing about Leila’s tooth has brought a lump to my throat. How Theodora, who I thought I would grow fond of, seems to be subtly changing, the way a fruit slowly darkens until it is no longer good to eat.

  I imagine my mother and the other women of the neighbourhood, sitting together on someone’s steps sharing a cigarette, and long to be there with them so badly it hurts. Where are all the women in this street, with its closed doors and its curtains? Don’t they need to laugh and chat together in this city? Don’t they ever open the doors of their homes? The doors seem permanently shut, as if they have their backs to the world.