Maggie Gee - My Cleaner

“Let’s go to Paris!” Fifi says again, laughing. “My grandma still has a house in Paris.”

“Why not?” says Vanessa, only half meaning it.

But as the evening draws on, she thinks about Paris: a little rosy gleam on the horizon. She’s in need of a gleam. She’s done eight hours of marking. She is still wading through the new intake class. It annoys her that Beardy, the silly old man (who, to make matters worse, is younger than she is) is arguably better than her favourite, Derrick. But Beardy has a tendency to cheap satire. After all the effort Vanessa puts in! It’s that little grin she keeps seeing on his face, twitching away under the white fungus…

But perhaps she is becoming paranoid. She turns with relief to her own writing.

And sits on for hours, in her autumn study, where unread books use up the air. She stares at the unforgiving slopes of her laptop, wondering if the book of her dreams, which would sketch out the truth of her life like a theorem, a silver vapour-trail behind her plane, might rise into being, clear and entire, but the screen shows only burnt droppings of phrases.

She finds herself wondering what Mary is up to. She heard her come in, around five pm, and then the usual hammerings and slashings and thumpings that meant she was putting the dinner on. The smell of cooking floats through from the kitchen, but Mary herself has disappeared.

Abandoning her struggle with the dreck on her screen, Vanessa creeps upstairs, and stands listening on the landing. Not a sound emerges from Justin’s room. She feels relieved, somehow, that Mary isn’t there. Nobody in the loo or the bathroom. She pauses by Mary’s bedroom door.

There is a curious, repetitive noise. A kind of quiet thumping that reminds her of something. But her brain won’t process it. And then she remembers. It sounds like the noise Mary made in the kitchen one night, grinding nuts in a mortar and pestle. Perhaps she is preparing food in her room.

It must be some Ugandan habit.

Mary Tendo

All I can do is write about Jamie. On and on, about the thing that happened. Because I talked about him, to Juanita. My heart is stirred up. I am not myself.

But I am not ready. I cannot do it. I wipe it away: delete, delete . I have to get up and look out of the window until my mind is blank as the sky.

And now I am back at my dressing-table, in this nice room, and everything is fine. On the whole, when I see my friends, I feel better. I compare our lives, and am not unhappy. I am not living in a small shared room for which I have to pay eighty pounds per week, doing night-work in a factory, without the right visa. I have not fallen into the clutches of Nigerians who sell other Africans for a percentage. I am back in London, but I am not a cleaner. I have certainly done better than Juanita.

And yet my heart pains me, because of Jamey .

I will not cry. I smile in the mirror. It makes me feel better to see myself, sitting very straight in the new yellow sweater I bought quite cheaply at Dalston Market. No, I am not going to think about Jamey. Instead I must sort out my thoughts about Justin. This is my job. I have not been lazy.

I have found out several things about Justin.

Firstly, a woman has broken his heart. This is why Justin has given up hope. This is why Justin needs me so.

It was morning. He sat beside me on the bed.

“I wanted her to marry me,” he said, like a child.

“But Justin, you are not ready to marry.”

(But then I remembered what I felt for Omar. I was not much older than Justin is. I was alone, and lonely, in London. The money for my grant had not arrived. Every day I phoned my aunt in Kampala. But her husband was no longer the President’s friend. Each time I phoned she became less friendly. In the end I knew the money was finished. But once I met Omar, nothing mattered. I knew we would be in love for ever. I still see his eyes, dark like pools in the forest. And his skin, which was like golden sand, so to me at first he looked like a muzungu . I will never forget his eyes, and his hands. Both of us were lonely, and far from home. In Uganda, Christians marry Muslims. We live together in the same village, so we marry each other because we are neighbours, and the families do not mind. It is ordinary. I did not understand things were different in Libya.

But Omar wasn’t racist. His heart was good. Yali mussajja mulungi nyo . He found me beautiful. He made me laugh. My life became sunlight, until the storms came. I have never lost my love for Omar. Perhaps things will work out like that for Justin.)

“Is she a nice girl?” I asked him, very quietly, so that I would not sound like the Henman, always asking things, and interfering. I stroke his soft blonde hair with my hand, so he knows I am not his enemy.

“She was perfect,” he said, “until she broke my heart.” And then he told me all about her. He met her at university. She is doing the famous MBA, which everyone knows is the way to get rich. “She will soon be an international businesswoman. She won’t want anything to do with me. Because I just lie here uselessly.”

I said to him, “You are not useless. You have been ill. I love you, Justin.”

“It wasn’t true,” he mumbled, at his chest.

“What was not true?” I asked him, very soft.

“She said I had another girlfriend.”

“She thinks you have another girlfriend?”

“It wasn’t true. It was my mother.”

“It is Miss Henman? I don’t understand.” But I began to understand.

“I always had to meet my mother.”

And so I understood the problem. This is what happens to the bazungu . When their children are little, they hardly see them. Later, when they grow, and are no longer any trouble, and the parents start to get old and weak, the parents want the children to love them. By then, the children do not know them. But the parents want to get to know them.

Then I thought about the evidence I had so far. I said to him, “Did this woman give you the necklace?”

He looked down at the ground, and shook his head, so my fingers, which were caught inside his curls, pained him, and he winced and frowned as if I had hit him. He looked as he did when he was a child and the Henman asked him too many questions.

This is when I showed my detective skills, for I have not read Agatha Christie for nothing. Sometimes Miss Marple could be very gentle. “Perhaps you borrowed it from her?”

He was quiet for a moment, but then he nodded.

And so I know this girl is important.

And I said to him, “You must visit her,” but he said, “She does not want to see me again.”

It does not matter, I am going to find her.

And here is the second thing I know about Justin. I know he was given the sack from his work. He did not steal things, or come late to the office, or tell lies about the other workers. He did not get drunk, as many young men do. He got the sack because he was not a woman.

He worked for an advertising agency, which paid him good money to invent advertisements. (Later I will ask him how much they paid. Probably he was paid more than me, although I am older and more experienced.) He told me the advertisements were all for women. They advertised perfume, and clothes, and cars, and cigarettes, and alcohol. And young women were their ‘target market’, because young women had all the money, so they wanted a young woman to write the advertisements. The reason why young women have all the money must be because they have all the jobs.

“I tell you, Mary, that’s the way things are. This city is made for young women. They don’t need men. We are obsolete. Just look in the papers. It’s the same there. All the columnists are young women. And they spend most of their time slagging off men. We’re all useless, and feeble, and wankers, apparently.”