The Darkening Hour by Penny Hancock Read Free Book Online

tell Ummu, if and when I get to speak to her, that my employer, though rich, hasn’t time – is too important – for her home, for hygiene.
    Even the windows are grimy. Black mildew creeps up the panes like dried blood.
    I find a rag in the kitchen just beyond my room, half a lemon in Dora’s enormous fridge, and polish – until the pale watery sunshine falls into the room, and I can see outside. My
room overlooks the garden at the back of the house. An oasis of green and scarlet, enclosed by grey. Grey sky, grey walls, grey backs of houses beyond. There’s even another statue. A grey
stone head of a woman on a concrete plinth at the top of the steps that go down to Charles’s flat.
    There aren’t many leaves on the shrubs, but those that remain are gold. The bushes drip with red berries; flame-coloured lanterns. There’s a tree whose load of pears has been shed so
the fruit lies rotting on the grass. What a waste – lipstick inside, pears out! The pears that have retained their shape will make a lovely clafoutis. I’ll bake it later, a welcome
offering for my new employer.
    It’s impossible for me to live in this mess, so I start by arranging the books and files on the shelves and tidying the heaps of DVDs and clothes. What would Ummu think of this? She makes
a point of snipping buttons and zips from worn-out clothes to sew back into newer ones, removing laces from shoes beyond repair. Saves tins to use as storage, bottles to refill. All this stuff is
worth hundreds of dirham, yet here it’s left to gather dust.
    When the room’s to my liking, I finish taking my things out of my bag. My scrapbook with its photos of Leila and Ummu and, in the background, the chickens that live on the roofs. Some
incense, the sandalwood type I love best. Next, Ali’s blue handkerchief. A soft packet of black tobacco cigarettes for emergencies. The cosmetics I managed to grab here and there (Nivea face
cream, shampoo, a bar of soap in a pink plastic box). A book of English verbs. If I’m going to go home better quali-fied than when I arrived, I shall have to learn to read and write English.
My passport. I open it. My face peers up. I’m hunched up as if I’m afraid they’re doing something worse to me than taking my photo. I
was
afraid. That at any moment they
would refuse it, say
no passport for you
. I must guard it with my life. I tuck it into the bottom of my bag and place the other things on top.
    That’s me. Squished into these few belongings.
    I put my nose to the bag and breathe. It smells of journeys, airports, strange cars and of diesel oil. I hoped I might smell home. I pick up Ali’s handkerchief. Press my nose into it and
breathe, drawing in his smell, my eyes screwed tight shut. I want to believe, for a few moments, that I’m on our roof where we were at our happiest.
    Before he left.
    It’s just before dawn. Silver moonlight reflecting off the still water of the estuary. The warmth in the white walls contained since the day before. The scent of roses coming not from a
vase where the petals have brown frills, but from Didi’s basket on the front of his bicycle as he begins his rounds. And the smell of Ali, coming not from the 20 square centimetres I have
left of him, but from the warmth of his body through the cotton of his kaftan as he wraps his arms about me, puts his mouth to my ear.
    I’m startled out of this daydream by a knock on the door. I’d forgotten Dora was in the house.
    She looks different this morning. Dressed for work in a grey jacket and skirt, her amber-coloured hair that so far she’s worn tumbling past her shoulders in corkscrews pinned up into a
loose style off her face. I notice now things I didn’t on arrival, perhaps because of the lack of natural light – lines fanning outward from her eyes and furrowing her forehead. I guess
she’s a good ten years older than me, though it’s hard to say. She wears a gold chain around her neck with a word on it. It must be her