Maggie Gee - My Cleaner

This time, at least, he does not have to duck, because Mary Tendo has cut back the roses, and he sees that the upstairs curtains are open, the curtains of the bedroom that imprisons Justin. Is that a good sign? Probably. He listens, carefully. So far, all quiet.

The rose has produced some last small red flowers. He remembers, wryly, that he put the thing in, maybe twenty years ago, maybe nearer thirty, when he still believed he would be living here. He sees his own reflection in the window. He still looks like a man who can get things done. He comforts himself that he is not old. When you’re self-employed, you cannot grow old. He still looks strong, sturdy, doesn’t he? Soraya even says he is handsome, but then, she’s an art-teacher, and short-sighted.

He takes a deep breath, and rings on the door. Vanessa insisted that he keep his door key, but each time they get burgled, she changes the locks, and by now he is several sets of keys behind.

A strange blonde girl answers the door. For a moment, his heart soars like a song bird. My boy has a girlfriend, he thinks in that flash. He’s got himself a girl, he must be back to normal.

“Hello,” she says, very doubtfully, with a foreign accent and a big white smile.

“And you are?” he says, grinning back at her, plonking his bag of tools on the doormat.

But straight away he realises he is wrong. She looks too shy, and she says, “Please. I am nobody, I am just here for job. Can I help you, sir?”

Then Mary Tendo appears behind her. Last time he was here she was standing in the hall surrounded by her bags and Justin and Vanessa, and the enormous row was going on, so Trevor didn’t really notice what she looked like. Now he sees Mary is plumper, older than before, but still attractive, still very much a woman. Her hair is even shorter now, which might look boyish, but her neck is long and soft, and she is curvy, bosomy. Once Vanessa had accused him of fancying her. He blushes, suddenly, and looks away. He has known Mary for years. Of course he doesn’t.

“Hallo, Trevor. I hope you are well.”

“Hallo, there Mary. How’s it going?”

And then she is off, talking loudly. Trevor smiles at her benignly, but doesn’t listen. Of course he doesn’t listen when women go on. Vanessa has gone on at him for over two decades, so Trevor had to find his own way of coping.

But Trevor has a lot of time for Mary. Little Justin would have been buggered without her. She must have put up with a lot, from Vanessa. What must it be like, working for her? (But then, of course, Trevor knows what it’s like. He’s been working for his ex for over twenty years. Coming round to fix whatever needs fixing. Unpaid and rarely appreciated.) So despite what Vanessa has said about Mary, he views her with understanding and pity. To come back here, she must be desperate for cash.

She is still full of vim, talking for Britain, or Africa as the case may be. “I am very busy. I am interviewing people. We need a new cleaner, and Miss Henman is at work, so I am taking care of everything. This girl is from Australia—”

“Austria—” the blonde girl corrects her.

“And her name is Anna—”

“Anya, Miss.”

Mary looks as though she enjoys that ‘Miss’, and smiles at her encouragingly, and at Trevor. “I just gave her a test, to open the door. Trevor, did you think she was good at it?”

“Al,” says Trevor, obligingly. “Very good door-opening, Anya my dear.”

“I think that Anna will be good at cleaning,” says Mary Tendo, with a queenly smile.

“Well, you get on with your interviewing,” says Trevor, tickled by this turn of events. “I’ll just go and make myself a cuppa in the kitchen and then I’ll get going on that toilet.”

“Trevor, you cannot go to the toilet. The toilet is blocked,” says Mary, firmly.

“Just a turn of phrase,” Trevor grins. “Come to unblock it. Madam called me.”

In the kitchen there is another surprise. Justin is there, sitting shelling peas, shucking one after another into a big white bowl, ping, ping on the shiny china, and he is freshly shaved, and looks young again, because last time his scruffy ginger minge of a beard made him look like an ageing down-and-out.

“Oi up cock,” says Trevor, and punches him fondly. “Making yourself useful, Justin lad?”

“Urn…” says Justin, but he smiles at his father, that enchanting smile that once made teachers melt, and girls swoon, and his employer take him on (for the mere six months when he has been in employment) and his mother more doting than was good for him, Trevor reflects, sitting down beside him.

“Maybe one day you’ll come and help your father.” Justin says nothing, but his eyes move slightly in a way that does not dismiss the idea. Trevor hurries on, encouraged, not pushing it. “Have a cup of tea, boy. I’ve brought my own as usual, it won’t be some of your mother’s rubbish.”

Trevor waves his Typhoo teabags in front of his son.

“We’ve got some, actually,” says Justin.

“Never,” says his father.

“Yes. Mary Tendo likes strong tea.”

Trevor feels vaguely affronted. Ness has always refused to have it in the house. The system is changing behind his back, the insane system he has always known. And the kitchen looks different, full of fruit and veg, great bottles of oil and jars of grain, huge hairy brown things and bulgy green things. It isn’t quite what Trevor is used to, and he has been coming here for over two decades. It even smells different. And Justin is here, out in the daylight. The prodigal son, the golden boy who one day slipped back into babyhood, wetting his bed and crying and sleeping. The brilliant spark who got lost in the dark. Oddly, the grief had brought them together, the sudden crushing blow of his breakdown. Vanessa, who thought she knew everything, suddenly knew nothing, and turned to Trevor.

And I didn’t have a bloody clue, thinks Trevor. But maybe Mary Tendo does.

Mary Tendo appears, looking bright and masterful, trailing Anya, who looks pale and skinny beside her, just as the kettle boils for tea. “Anna is going to do a tea-making test,” says Mary, handing her the teapot. Anya makes tea, nervously, and spills a little on the work surface. Mary tuts kindly as she hands her a cloth, and Anya wipes it up, too carefully.

“Aren’t you going to give the girl a cup?” asks Trevor.

“She would be embarrassed,” says Mary, drinking. “Cleaners do not drink with their employers.”

“Have I got the job then?” asks Anya, rather sharply. She has noticed Justin, and is staring at him hard. Trevor checks that his son is wearing both parts of his pyjamas, but for once he is, and the girl is still staring.

“First a washing-up test,” says Mary Tendo. Trevor notices a certain glint in her eyes. He wonders why she’s chosen such a very blonde woman. Vanessa comes home at half-past seven and Justin at once goes back to bed.

“Miss Henman, I have found you a cleaner,” says Mary.

“Vanessa,” she reminds Mary, irritably. “But is she experienced? Is she good? Will she clean my house till it sparkles?”

(“I don’t want to get landed with another African,” she has whispered to Trevor, in the hallway. Several of the candidates have been black, and Vanessa is afraid they will gang up on her.)

“Anna is Australian,” Mary says. “I think it is a very clean country. Also, I have given her several tests. Trevor heard me interviewing. I was excellent.”

“You were red-hot,” says Trevor, laughing. “She really gave her the third degree.”

“There’s not a lot to it, is there?” says Vanessa, irritated by all this praise. “I mean, they only have to be sane, and honest. Cleaning, you know, it isn’t brain surgery.”