Maggie Gee - My Cleaner

“Thank you for my tea.” Mary waits for a moment, and then begins, sounding almost shy. “Vanessa, it is Sunday.”

“It’s Sunday. And?”

“Vanessa — I think I will not cook on Sunday.”

“I’m sorry? You have cooked every other Sunday.” Vanessa begins to boil up with frustration. There is no reasoning with Mary Tendo.

“Vanessa, this is why I must ask for more money.”

“Ah. You are going to ask for more money.”

Vanessa has been afraid of this. It has happened to several of her friends. People come over here to work, the wages are agreed, everything is dandy, both sides are happy, but then people claim that life is more expensive than they thought.

Mary starts again, talking faster and louder. “I have been working all day for Mr Justin. And recently I talked to Trevor. He assures me most people do not work on Sunday. And besides, I have also been talking to Justin. I learned how much money he was earning at his work. And so evidently, I must ask for more money.”

Vanessa sits down beside Mary with a sigh. “Mary, Justin is hardly an expert on work, he has only done it for a week or two. And trust Tigger to make trouble,” she adds, crossly. “He knows nothing about it, he has never had a cleaner.”

But Mary sits up straight, and looks her in the face. “I was your cleaner. I am not your cleaner.”

“Oh sorry. Sorry. I forgot for a moment.” Those wide black feet on her pale carpet.

It is all so difficult. Vanessa wants to get it right. She knows, in her heart, that the money is too little. After all, when she does a freelance lecture or workshop, she never charges less than two hundred pounds a shot. Not that there is really any comparison. How can you compare a writer with a cleaner?

They sit side by side on the edge of a gulf.

But Mary smiles at her, and tries again. “I think Mr Justin is getting better. I think he will soon want to go back to work.”

“Yes, yes, Mary. You are doing well.”

They sit in silence, staring at the carpet. They are a breath apart, with the world between them.

Mary is wondering how she can ask for six hundred pounds per month instead of five hundred. The Ugandans she knows here earn more than that, but they are not living in, with everything paid for. Besides, this job is not very hard. Perhaps it is too much. She will ask for five hundred and fifty. That is only about ten pounds more per week. But the Henman is unpredictable. She has stopped looking cross, her face is kind. Mary turns towards her, and says very softly, “If I have more money, I will cook on Sunday. And next week, I think we shall all go to church. It is good for Mr Justin to go to church.”

“Oh never mind that,” says Vanessa, alarmed. “I don’t think so, really, Mary.” She looks at Mary’s shoes. They are wide as boats. They are made of rope and canvas, hopeless for winter. The weather is changing. Mary must be cold. Perhaps she doesn’t have any winter clothes. And since Mary arrived, she does spend less on food, since Mary buys everything from the market. “How would it be,” Vanessa says slowly, “if I were to pay you two hundred pounds?”

Mary’s face becomes blank with disappointment. So Henman thinks she can put the money down. “Two hundred pounds. No, Miss Henman. Two hundred pounds is not enough.” She shakes her head so hard that her neck starts hurting.

“Not enough? Two hundred pounds a week not enough? But Mary, it is double what you have been earning. Two hundred and twenty a week, then. That’s my last word. And I really don’t know how I will manage to pay it.” (But in fact, Vanessa knows she can pay it. Her mortgage will be paid off next year. She has money in the bank from Fifi’s videos. And after all, it will not be for long. Justin will get better, and Mary will leave.)

But suddenly Mary is laughing beside her. It is a beautiful, infectious sound, a laugh full of happiness. And life. And humour. Vanessa wonders, do I ever laugh like that? I used to once. Tigger made me laugh.

And then she is squashed in Mary’s arms, and Mary is kissing her on both cheeks. “God bless you, Vanessa. I love you, Vanessa.”

And for an hour or so, she really feels it. The money is real. Such a lot of money. In a month, she will earn more than in a year at home.

Soon the stewpot is boiling loudly in the kitchen.

That night, they both go to bed feeling happy, but Mary wakes up weeping at three am.

Mary Tendo

Through my own hard work, I am becoming rich. My wages have gone up, through my own efforts. I have saved just under a thousand pounds. That is three million Ugandan shillings! I have put it in the top right-hand drawer of the dressing-table. A beautiful fat envelope. I blow on the notes so they don’t stick together. When I count them, I always hope to find one more. They rustle like the wind in the tall golden trees that wave at me from across the road.

Now I look at the planes taking off through my window and am happier, because I do not miss Kampala, or my sparkling white flat, or Charles, my kabito , since I know I shall go back to them soon. ( And Jamie will come back. He must come back .) The planes jump like fish into the red-pink sky as they take off from Heathrow every evening. They swim like tilapia towards Uganda. And I shall go back, with a case full of money. This is because I have been so determined. I think I have excelled at all I am doing.

For example, I chose the right cleaner! Today I was very happy with Anna. A good cleaner can change your life.

Because today, when Justin was making her coffee, Anna asked him if she could clean his room. And to my surprise, Justin said, ‘Yes’. Because usually he does not want anyone to enter. Of course, I sleep there, so I have cleaned the dust, and made it healthy for me to sleep, but I do not tidy Justin’s things, just take away my duvet and pillow each day. The room is very messy and confusing, and Justin is too lazy to tidy it.

And while Anna was cleaning, Justin sat in the garden. It is the first time he has been out of the house. He screwed up his eyes at the light like a baby, and nearly came straight back inside. But I brought out a chair, and told him to sit down, and then I fetched him the morning paper — I had never seen him reading a paper.

(In Kampala, there are fewer papers. New Vision is expensive, and does not tell the truth, and the government keeps closing down the Monitor , or forcing them to run ‘corrections’, or print long speeches by the President. In England they are lucky to have so many papers. They sit on the underground reading them, not looking at each other, rustling the pages, and sometimes you sit opposite a curtain of papers. Vanessa’s house seems stuffed with papers, so the box for recycling is always spilling over, and Anna has to jam the rest in the dustbin.

In Kampala it is very different. The vendors sit there, on the hot pavement, selling single copies of old magazines. Maybe two months old, maybe six months old, each one weighted with a big piece of glass, dusty broken glass that gleams in the sunlight, in case the precious things blow away. And Ugandans buy them, although they are old. We know that most things change very little. We value the stories, we value the pictures. Some people stick the pictures on their walls. But here in England they must always have new ones. Although mostly they write about plastic surgery, or film-stars divorcing, or diets, or depression, or how happy women can be without men, which I think must depress young men like Justin.)

Justin sat and read a story about Tony Blair, the prime minister who likes war so much, because he does not live in a country like Uganda, which has four wars going on at once. It is strange how Mr Blair is always smiling (he seems happier than anyone else in Britain!). And he likes our President Museveni, and so does Mr Bush, who came to visit. They all like war, and so they all get on, and no one tries to stop the bloody war in the north, which is killing so many Acholi children, and others, also, who try to pass through, and it is like a curse we cannot escape from; like a swamp that sucks us down.