The Darkening Hour Read online

  ‘You’re suggesting I might neglect him!’

  ‘No, Dor, but you can’t meet his every need while you’re working.’

  ‘I think I’ve done a pretty bloody good job so far,’ I snapped.

  Anita held her hands up, and Simon gave her a look. Luckily Terence, our elder brother, came over then. He was the Successful One, occasionally metamorphosing to Ruthless when he strayed too far from the family fold.

  ‘The sooner we get Dad’s house on the market, the better,’ he said. ‘I’ve researched the cost of care homes and we’re talking a grand a week. Looks as though selling’s the only way of funding it.’

  ‘There’s no need for a care home,’ I said. ‘We can talk about the future when we’re not all ragged with the funeral. It would upset Daddy to mention it tonight. It would throw him completely. He’s staying with me for the time being.’

  I was Theodora, the Selfless One, doing the right thing and I could hear the relief in their sighs.

  ‘Has anyone checked that the pub has put out the food?’ Anita asked.

  ‘Yes. Terence checked earlier,’ said Simon. ‘Perhaps it’s time we made a move.’

  We gathered in the Mayflower in Rotherhithe, Daddy’s favourite pub, passing round sandwiches and discussing how Mummy would have enjoyed this reunion – something we had failed to arrange in recent years. We’d all been blinkered by relationship crises, worries about our children. It was only when Mummy fell ill that we noticed how she and Daddy had aged, how it was too late for the family gatherings our mother had spoken of, the holidays she’d planned.

  How ironic that it had taken her death to bring us all together at last.

  What I didn’t appreciate at that moment was how her death would also smash us apart.

  We shook the hands of her old friends and some distant relatives who had turned out, thanked them for coming. Leo slouched out to the deck for a cigarette.

  Daddy was agitated about the time, as if he had an important appointment to get to.

  ‘Dora,’ he said, ‘it’s high time we were off. We don’t want to be late. It’s frightfully dark.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ I put my hand on his arm. ‘There’s no rush. There’s nothing to get back for.’

  And he gave me that bewildered look, the one that said, Are you trying to fool me? Or am I losing my mind?

  Anita was battling with her two young children, arguing with Richard about who was the more exhausted. As soon as the whisky had been downed, they’d strap Jack and Jemima in, plug them into the screens installed in their Audi Estate and be off to their cosy life in Muswell Hill.

  By seven o’clock, as I predicted, they were saying their farewells.

  ‘If we go now, we’ll make it to Ben’s for dinner,’ I overheard Richard mutter. Did he lack any shred of sensitivity, or was this his way of ‘dealing’ with his mother-in-law’s death?

  Terence and his new partner Ruth were checking they had enough cash for a taxi.

  ‘Dora,’ Terence said, placing his hand on my shoulder, ‘Daddy needs to get home. He’s shattered.’

  ‘I know.’ I tried not to sound irritated. ‘I’m going as soon as I can prise Leo from the bar.’

  He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.

  My siblings refused to understand Leo. They thought, as Roger did, that I indulged him, that if I spoke to him firmly he’d go out and get himself a job instead of spending all day every day smoking and gazing at car chases on screens. Right now he was back on the deck with a Red Bull and a Marlboro. It would be a battle to get him away. But I didn’t want to leave without him – I never knew where he might end up.

  Simon was chatting to his companion. They had snuggled into an alcove and were settled in for the night.

  I helped Daddy into his coat, playing for time, avoiding the confrontation with my son.

  ‘I know,’ I heard Simon chuckle. ‘In your language you say “open” and “closed”. Here we say “dark” and “light”. Yes, even when we talk about colours. So what is it now, light or dark?’

  ‘It’s closed?’ she said, and he laughed and I heard the smack of his kiss on her cheek.

  Daddy’s bereavement, the work that lay ahead of us in caring for him, had passed clean out of Simon’s consciousness now the funeral was over.

  Yes. It seemed that every one of my siblings began to show their true colours, the day we buried Mummy.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I come down on Sunday morning to find Mona in the kitchen, perched on a stool, her hands squeezed between her thighs.

  I’m thankful to Roger for organising this, but reel a bit at the enormity of what he’s achieved. Transporting a whole person across Europe especially for me. It showed, I suppose, that he still felt guilty that I’d been the one to have to leave, that I was supporting our son.

  And it was OK. It was legal-ish. At the border, Roger had had to make out she was his live-in help – that she was tied to him. Fortunately, as we were once married, it wasn’t difficult to make it all look above-board. If questions were asked, I would simply say Roger had returned and Mona had stayed on with me.

  Her visa means she can’t change employer, however; she is mine and mine alone.

  ‘You must meet Daddy,’ I say.

  Mona stands up and follows me out of the front door, along the side of the house to the basement steps. Daddy’s main entrance would once have been the back door to the house. I’d sealed off his front door at the bottom of the steps – which led straight up to the road – to prevent Daddy wandering out, or burglars forcing their way in.

  The garden is unruly. I haven’t time to mow the grass and there are limits to what I can ask of Leo. Golden leaves from the trees at the end of the garden filter through green ones. Pears lie rotting on the grass. The air seems full of falling things – leaves, spiders, seeds, husks, the last languid insects. I can’t believe it’s October again, a year since Mummy died.

  ‘Daddy has his own flat,’ I tell her as we go down the steps to the basement. ‘It’s a way of keeping an eye on him, while maintaining his independence.’

  She looks at me. I wonder again how much English she understands.

  I open his door at the bottom and take her inside.

  At first, I’d welcomed having Daddy in the house, in spite of the sad circumstances. Mummy dead after her swift illness, Daddy, who had relied on her, uprooted and moved into the granny-flat beneath me. Two lively, successful, even glamorous people diminished within a year, one to dust, the other to a shadow of his former self. Daddy’s proximity made me feel whole again, as if two parts of myself that had been separated, adult and child, had been reunited. I would show Daddy I was still the same person, deep down, he’d treasured before I’d grown up.

  Work had been going well then. I’d been promoted to mid-morning after my first minor forays into radio and had been given my own show, Theodora Gentleman, the Voice of South-East England. Leo had come back to attend a sixth form over here. Roger wanted him integrated into English society in time to go to university, and we’d got him a place at one of the best schools in the area.

  Then he got in with a bunch of friends who turned out to be a bad influence. He began to skip lessons. It all came to a head when he was found dealing drugs outside school. He was hauled up to the Principal’s office. After that he withdrew, dropped out. Roger still blamed me.

  For a while Leo helped look after Daddy. They got along together, though they didn’t do a lot. Then, as Daddy’s health deteriorated and Leo lost interest in everything, including his grandfather, I could no longer cope with them both. In the end I’d cracked, phoned Roger, listened to him rant about my working too many hours and neglecting our son.

  ‘It’s unfair to expect him to care for his grandfather.’

  ‘Maybe. But I have an important job and I can’t do everything.’

  ‘We all work, Dora.’

  ‘It’s all right for you – you have staff to run your home.’


  ‘I’ll get someone for you, if you think that’s the answer.’

  And here she is. Mona. Roger’s ‘gift’ to me.

  ‘Daddy has a kitchen,’ I say, enunciating my words like a nursery school teacher, waving at the small galley area where he has a cooker and sink, ‘and shower room.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she says, smiling. ‘I understand. You don’t have to speak slowly.’

  ‘Oh. Good. We’re lucky, the previous owners had the basement converted to let out, so it came with the house.’

  ‘Converted?’

  I may not have to speak slowly, but it’s obvious she is nowhere near fluent.

  I don’t elucidate, because Mona speaks next.

  ‘He can’t live upstairs?’

  ‘Daddy’s very proud. He used to live in a big house. Then Mummy fell ill. It was hard moving him at all. He wants to be independent – for his own self-esteem. That’s where you come in.’

  ‘But it’s better he lives with you in the house,’ she says.

  Why does she persist? Does she think I’d neglect Daddy? The man I love more than almost anyone? The man I’ve brought into my home when no one else was prepared to?

  ‘That’s why I’m looking for help.’ I turn and speak firmly. ‘So Daddy can live here. As he wants to.’

  I hold her gaze – a steady look I give my admin staff at work when they’re slacking. She looks back for a few seconds and I wonder if she’s going to be defiant. Has she, with her soft face and gentle smile, in her headscarf, come to help me? Or is it the opposite? Has she come to ridicule the mess I fear I’m making of life since Mummy died?

  Might she be more a hindrance than a help?

  Zidana flashes into my mind and away again. I don’t want to remember her. But Mona bows her head, clutching her hands together, nods, and smiles sweetly at me. We move on down the steps.

  Daddy, bless him, is sitting upright in a suit and tie, a champagne flute in one hand.

  ‘Lovely to see you all,’ he says. ‘Such a pleasure. So good of you all to come.’ He looks up at Mona and me. ‘Oh, it’s you. I thought you were never coming. You’ve missed the vol-au-vents.’

  ‘Daddy, this is Mona. Mona’s here to help me, to help you.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure, I’m sure,’ Daddy says. He holds out his hand. Mona takes it, shakes it, smiles.

  Daddy’s wearing his charming expression – the one in which he holds the eye of the person he’s greeting. It’s as if nothing has changed at all. He’s still the man I adore. When he’s like this, I wonder if I’ve been imagining his Alzheimer’s. That he’s been putting it on – a little game – and, though I know it’s foolish, I allow myself to feel relief that the game is over.

  ‘Dora,’ he says, ‘get this lady a drink and pass around some cashews, will you?’

  I glance at Mona. Does she detect anything odd in his request?

  She carries on smiling at him, unaffected.

  Of course, Mona’s lost none of him the way I have. What she sees here, now, is all she’ll ever know. However batty he appears, he won’t rend her heart in two, as he does mine, each time I witness another step of his deterioration.

  ‘Have you eaten this morning, Daddy?’ I go to his kitchen.

  He’s had nothing apart from the imaginary canapés. There are a few unwashed supper things from last night in the sink but not a scrap to indicate he’s had breakfast.

  ‘Mona,’ I whisper. ‘You must make sure he eats. Every morning, noon, night. OK? Then help put his night things on. It’s important. He’s getting too thin. Look at him. Come.’ I beckon her into the kitchenette.

  It’s sad to see a parent ageing, terrible to see them leave a beloved home.

  But it’s Daddy’s fridge that breaks my heart.

  A mini-cabinet, perched on the work surface. How small everything has become, as he’s aged! His world has diminished along with his shrinking frame. The fridge contains tiny dishes of jelly, miniature tins of drink, small portions of left-over food. Halves of things; clementines, tomatoes. And his one shelf, bare but for a quarter-bottle of whisky. One solitary glass like an orphan.

  I think of our family home with its floor-to-ceiling pantry shelves bulging with packets and jars. Its drinks cabinet of aperitifs and liqueurs. Spirits and vintage port. Rows of glasses: tumblers, champagne flutes, goblets for wine and brandy.

  You would never have known how grand he once was. How grand we all were. You would never have believed, in those days, that he would end up like this, a shrivelled old man living in a Deptford basement. Would he have been better off at Anita’s? Until we found him a home? Am I guilty of dragging him down with me? Should I have had him in the guest room beside me? But it would have humiliated him, living with his grown-up daughter in the little room next to her.

  I take a lasagne out of the tiny freezer compartment.

  How can his life be reduced to this? A Marks & Spencer ready meal for one in a container the size of a box of Cook’s matches?

  I’d like to run from it as my siblings did.

  But someone has to confront it, someone has to care.

  I put the lasagne in the microwave and show Mona how to set it. Then I show her how we have to make sure he eats, as you would a child, checking the temperature, making him spoon the food into his mouth without spilling.

  Daddy’s on his best behaviour.

  ‘It’s very good actually, very tasty,’ he says, dabbing at his mouth with one of the starched napkins he insists on using. The microwave has slipped under his radar. If he registers me warming his food, he objects that it’s not cooked from scratch.

  I show Mona Daddy’s plastic pill box with the days marked on, that he keeps on the Lazy Susan where Mummy once kept her condiments, feeling that pang again; when did the superior chutneys, mustard and sea salt metamorphose into bottles of flurazepam and Co-codamol? I show her the small en suite bathroom where he wees, washes and does his teeth. I show her where he keeps his clothes and his night things. His whisky bottle – he insists on a measure every night, says it helps him sleep – and how to measure it.

  ‘Aaah!’ he says, when we sit back down. ‘So nice of you to do all this for me. What did you say your name was again?’

  He’s looking at me, not at Mona, and my heart plummets. It always shocks me, however I prepare myself. I want to cling to those periods where he’s lucid, where he seems not to be unravelling before my eyes.

  ‘Daddy, I’m Dora.’

  He frowns, glances from one to the other of us.

  ‘Of course you are. I’m so sorry. Forgive me do. Dora. And who is this?’

  ‘Mona, Daddy.’

  ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘You will,’ I say, bending to kiss him goodbye. ‘You will.’

  And as we mount the steps back to the house, I think with a sudden euphoria, Mona’s here now to cope with this.

  Mona will make it bearable for me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When I’ve met Charles, the old man who I’m going to be looking after, Dora shows me round her house.

  ‘The drawing room,’ she announces, opening a door. The smell hits me in the face – cat, mixed with stale smoke and beer.

  Though it’s morning, the room’s dark. Her son doesn’t look up. He’s slumped onto the sofa. The cat lies along the back of it, its tail hanging down, its eyes glowing like the lights on the TV. It should be outside hunting mice and rats. I wait for Dora to chase it out. She ignores it.

  ‘It’s dark because Leo finds it easier to see his screens like this. This room really needs redecorating – painting, I mean.’ Dora makes a motion with her hand.

  ‘I can paint it for you.’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s not your job, I’ll get a man in sometime. Leo, let me show Mona the room. I’m putting the light on for a second.’

  The cat jumps off the sofa. Slinks around our feet into the hall. I watch it, bile rising in my throat.

  ‘Leo, say hello,’ Dora hisses.

  �
��Hey,’ mumbles the son, without looking at me.

  ‘Don’t use street speak,’ Dora says. ‘Get up, please, and greet Mona properly.’

  He stands up, not removing his eyes from the screen, holds out a huge hand and shakes mine, then slumps down again.

  ‘These are Barley Twist banisters,’ Dora says as we climb the stairs. ‘These houses are the oldest in the area. For some reason, they demolished all the others – thought they were unsuitable for habitation. It brought the area down-market. But this street remains desirable. You can’t replace these wonderful old terraces. So, you see, now we arrive at the piano nobile.’

  She pushes open a door. The room is a pit of ashtrays, dropped clothes, beer cans and magazines.

  ‘Leo sleeps in here,’ she says.

  I make a noise with my tongue.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No, you said something,’ she says. ‘I didn’t catch it.’

  I shake my head, shrug.

  ‘He’s a bloody fright when it comes to tidying his room,’ she says. ‘And as you can see it could do with a good clean.’

  There’s a large desk-top computer in here like the ones the kids taught me to use at Madame’s house – not the iPads that people were using on the plane. If I can remember the things Madame Sherif’s children showed me – how to use Google, for example, how to do a search – I can start to look for Ali. My heart-rate increases. I’ll come in here as soon as Dora’s at work and Leo’s out. If he ever goes out. He looks sealed to that sofa down there.

  ‘Now,’ Dora says. ‘Up we go.’

  The house is tall, one room on top of another. I follow her up the next flight of stairs to the bathroom.

  Of all the rooms I’ve never had, a bathroom is the one I most desire. I’ve always yearned to lie in a tub of warm water, in a cloud of bubbles like they do in films. Madame Sherif refused to let us use hers, though she had several. Dora’s let this one decay. The carpet curls up at the corners, the taps are dull, the windows grimy.

  ‘The laundry room’s here, next to the bathroom – there’s the washing machine and the airing cupboard.’ She holds the door open to a small room, with the scent of washing powder and ironed linen, that takes me back to the garment factory where I worked before I had Leila.