Make Me Clean, page 1
MAKE ME CLEAN
Also available from Tina Baker and Viper
Call Me Mummy
Nasty Little Cuts
MAKE ME CLEAN
TINA BAKER
First published in Great Britain in 2023 by
VIPER, part of Serpent’s Tail
an imprint of Profile Books Ltd
29 Cloth Fair
London
EC1A 7JQ
www.serpentstail.com
Copyright © Tina Baker, 2023
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Typeset by Crow Books
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 800 81180 5
Export ISBN 978 1 800 81181 2
eISBN 978 1 800 81183 6
For my dad, window cleaner Pete Baker.
And all the cleaners and carers.
1
Maria takes the cloth from the bucket and wrings it, knuckles white, water red. The hot tap scalds her skin as she rinses and wrings, and rinses and wrings again, attempting to steady herself with the repetition. Her hands are strong, stronger than they have ever been, calluses along the palms. When Maria first started cleaning, she wore rubber gloves, as if she were a princess – a thought that makes her want to both laugh and cry.
On her hands and knees, frantically scrubbing, panting with the effort. The tiles are cold but sweat trickles down her neck. She reaches up to wipe it away and is startled by the absence – the buzzcut always a shock.
She hears Elsie cry out in her old office where she sleeps now, too frail to manage the stairs any longer, and hurries through from the kitchen to calm her, perhaps to beg her forgiveness, but the old woman’s eyes are closed. She’s curled into herself like a kitten, whimpering under the veil of sleep, creviced lips moving, her scrawny hands clawing at her pillow. Maria strokes the sparse silver hair and kisses Elsie’s temple, as she might do to soothe a child, if she had such a thing.
She picks up the empty glass from the floor where Elsie threw it and checks the carpet for bloodstains. She has already cleaned it, furious, frenzied, but she will need to repeat the process after she has dealt with the worse thing. Back in the kitchen, flinching at the sight that greets her there, she runs the tap cold to refill the glass. She places the water next to the old woman in case she wakes in the night, although, thank God, she seems to have settled again, which is something of a miracle in the circumstances.
She ignores the frantic scratching at the door, the desolate pleas for freedom.
Three deep breaths and she returns to finish cleaning the kitchen floor, pouring away another bowlful of filthy water, wiping down the sink, and stuffing the cloth in with the ruined towels. She will need to bleach the surfaces again later, scour the corners with a toothbrush.
She swills round the dregs of sherry in the chipped God Save The Queen mug, the only alcohol she could find, and downs it. Then she rolls back her shoulders and faces the old man. She lifts him from his chair, light as a bird, scoops him up into a tender embrace, holding him close to her heart as she elbows open the back door, careful with the step. Then she carries him out to the garden, into the chill of the night air, laying him down on the wet grass next to the ruined flowerbed alongside the gaping hole in the black earth where she will bury his bloodied, battered body.
2
That morning had been a normal day – a different life …
Her first regular job of the week is number 43. It is never a flying start.
‘Here, HERE, yes?’ The woman points, reaching up to mime wiping the top of the doorframe. She beckons Maria through to the dining room and points to the skirting board, dips like she’s receiving a damehood, and runs her finger along one of the grooves before holding it aloft accusingly.
‘See? Here, too.’ She thrusts the can of Mr Sheen in Maria’s face. ‘All around.’ She sweeps her arm in a circle, signifying the entirety of the house. ‘And I want you gone by nine thirty today, yes?’
Maria brings some basic cleaning materials, but they are not deemed good enough for number 43.
The woman turns on her heel, but cranes back to say louder, ‘No later than NINE THIRTY!’ as if Maria is deaf. Her first client of the day and the first time she bites back a comment.
While not deaf, Maria has affected dumbness in most of the homes she cleans – ‘creeping round like a bleeding mouse’, as Elsie put it. Easier that way. Maria gives a thumbs-up and flashes what she hopes is a cheery acquiescence, but when Nine-Thirty Woman rushes away to make a very important phone call (in this house every phone call is very important), Maria lets her face fall – resting bitch face, she’s been told.
After another half-hour stretching high and stooping low, Maria’s back aches. She stands, rubbing her knuckles into her lumbar region before heading upstairs. The throb intensifies with the mopping. Her ankle’s also playing up, as it often does when the weather’s cold. It’s February, a gnawing damp early in the mornings, a slicing wind in the afternoons. Where’s global warming when you need it?
She’s on her knees trying to remove splatters of dried-on shit from the rim of the toilet bowl when the woman opens the bathroom door and startles to see her.
‘God, aren’t you done in here yet?’ she exclaims and tuts, shamed into scuttling away to the downstairs loo. The people who live in these lovely homes do not like to be reminded of their own filth.
They must notice this dirt. How hard would it be to clean it up as soon as it happens, rather than letting it dry on hard? Maria realises she’s muttering to herself.
The woman exacts her revenge when Maria is about to leave, blocking her way out of the front door.
‘Next week you can make up this half-hour,’ she announces. ‘I want a deep clean of the en-suite tiles. I can see mould starting on the grouting by the shower head.’ This is said as if Maria herself might have summoned the spores to grow.
‘And you really must manage your time better. I need you to do some ironing next week.’
Perhaps I could shove a broom up my bum and do the floor at the same time? Although she doesn’t say this, Maria’s face must do something of its own accord because her employer sighs loudly and adds, ‘You know, I don’t appreciate having to watch you scowl. Thousands of people like you would be glad of a job like this.’
Maria wonders who people like her are supposed to be. Swallowing a retort is harder work than the mopping.
It can take her forty-five minutes to travel between the first two jobs, due to the unpredictability of the bus. The number 91 usually arrives in pairs, with an average wait of around a fortnight in-between. She might be better walking – it would probably be quicker – but it’s a heavy day, it’s just started to drizzle, and any opportunity to take the load off is welcome. She gets on at Russell Square and eats her late breakfast, a cheese and pickle sandwich, as she sits on the top deck. If she was a different sort of person, this might qualify as brunch. She washes it down with a swig of bottled water that came with the meal deal – special offer, half price – and pops in a chewing gum. God knows what she’d do if she needed a dentist.
She does the sums in her head – how much has she got left from last week’s wages for something to eat this evening? With the extra jobs she’s doing, will she manage to get to the food bank tomorrow before everything’s gone? Will the biscuits and tea her next client occasionally provides be enough to stop her belly rumbling? Will she go to bed hungry again?
There’s not a day goes by when Maria isn’t doing these calculations, worrying about pennies pretty much every waking hour. It is both terrifying and boring as fuck.
She alights at Carnegie Street and walks through to Cloudesley Square – a home here in Islington’s leafy oasis could buy an entire street where she grew up.
She hears a familiar thud thud thud as she approaches the door to the house. When Maria gets the keys out of the pocket of her fleece body warmer, the sound gets more frenetic, and as soon as she opens the door, Minty’s soft wet muzzle is pushing against her hand, the rest of the dog wiggling a delirious greeting accompanied by joyful yelps. Sometimes the animal does a wee of delight when she arrives, but Maria doesn’t mind cleaning that up because nothing on God’s earth has ever been so pleased to see her.
Minty makes Maria smile – a real smile, not the one offered to new clients to signal that she will be a benign presence in their homes, the forced professional smile reassuring, you can trust me with your property and possessions, with your animals and children. Those smiles are wearing.
She walks through to the kitchen and opens the back door so Minty can run wild. The dog does a single manic lap of the garden, squats briefly, then thunders back in to lean the whole of her weight against Maria’s thigh.
This is true love, pure love, total joy. She feels sorry for the animal, so often left alone all day.
‘Oh, please don’t call her that!’ gasped the owner, Mrs Santos, when she first referred to the animal as ‘a good bitch’. It was intended as praise.
‘I meant she’s a good bitch to breed with?’ explained Maria, attempting to make conve
But no, Minty is to be referred to as a ‘girl dog’ and she will never have puppies.
The real bitch in this house is the soon-to-be-teenage daughter who eyes Maria suspiciously when there’s no school, telling her mother loudly, to make sure she’s overheard, that ‘the cleaner hasn’t done under the bed’, although her room is so messy it’s a wonder she can find any place to sleep. The girl knows Maria’s name, but never uses it.
There’s also a boy in the house. Maria finds it difficult to look at him – he has dimples like Joby, which dredges up complicated emotions from her past.
She has never encountered the man of the house, although there are male clothes and shoes around the bedroom, aftershave in the bathroom. Her line of work – licence to snoop.
The dog adores the two children, a feeling not obviously reciprocated. Minty seems at her happiest when they’re at home in the school holidays, lying as close to them as she’s allowed, yet she always finds time to fuss Maria just the same, trotting over as if to say, You’re not my pack, but you are kind to me, therefore I love you.
Maria is no one’s family any more. Elsie is the nearest thing she’s got.
She would love a dog. One day, she promises herself, she’ll live in a flat that doesn’t ban animals, perhaps somewhere she doesn’t need earplugs and chains on her door; a place that more resembles a home.
Small ambitions.
Unusually, today Mrs Santos is at home because she has, ‘an appointment at the hairdresser later this morning and it’s really not worth travelling all the way into work and back again for only two hours at my desk, you know’. They sometimes tell her details like this, these people who pay for her to tidy up after them. Maria’s presence makes women uncomfortable, as if she might be judging them within the sanctuary of their own homes. Well, she is but …
Men don’t suffer the same guilt. They can easily ignore her cleaning while they sit at their computers or play on their Xboxes. She has to ask some of them to move their legs out of the way as she mops, or she might have to dust around them. Some covertly observe her as she works, checking her, or her finishes, and Maria does not like to be watched.
She is busy hoovering beneath the sideboard when Mrs Santos appears, making her jump.
‘Hello! Hello?’ She’s beckoned. Maria switches off the vacuum and hurries after her employer to the kitchen.
‘Can you give me a hand with this?’
The woman is struggling with the top of a mayonnaise jar. Maria takes it from her and twists off the lid in one swift movement.
‘You’re a godsend,’ smiles Mrs Santos.
She is one of the nicer employers. She paid Maria cash in hand when the family went to Dorset for two weeks last year. Maria was tasked with watering the plants in both the house and the garden, as well as giving the interiors of the cupboards a ‘spring clean’, even though it was the middle of August.
‘Just to keep an eye on the place, really,’ trilled Mrs Santos. ‘Of course, there won’t be very much to do with us away, but I’ll still pay you the same amount.’ Her expression was one befitting Mother Teresa.
Finally, thankfully, her employer leaves for the hair appointment and Maria gets on with it.
As she tackles the hob, she’s so tired she tunes out of what she’s doing and finds herself back cleaning the caravan – but that’s a dangerous place to be. She shakes her head to clear the images and refocuses on the stainless steel beneath her fingers. But that transports her to the clinical surfaces from her times in hospital, so she bends to stroke the dog again, to ground herself, to feel something benign. She cannot allow herself to slip into any thoughts involving Joby, or the aftermath.
When Maria finishes, she gives Minty a handful of dog treats as she leaves. She can’t bear to hear the dog’s piteous whines as she abandons her.
There are three more Monday jobs to go, including a new flat to clean, and by the time she finishes up at Elsie’s and gets back to the poky bedsit in the arse end of Wood Green that in no way resembles a home, Maria will be shattered. She calibrates her tiredness, looks forwards to a certain degree of exhaustion. If she’s lucky, she might crash out, sleep a few hours before she’s sliced awake once more by dark dreams.
Maria never willingly takes time off. Since Spain, she’s never had a holiday. Since Spain has she ever really relaxed?
The new job is a three-bedroom round the back of the big Sainsbury’s near Hornsey overground. She finds it stressful meeting new clients, although often this preliminary vetting is the only time Maria will ever see the homeowner.
The door is opened by an angular middle-aged man wearing a grubby tracksuit and Crocs.
‘What pronouns would you like me to use?’ he enquires.
‘Sorry?’
‘How should I refer to you? What should I call you – he-she-they, et cetera?’
‘Et cetera?’
‘I don’t want to cause offence.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand?’
‘He or she? Chap or chap-ess? You know, shepherd, shepherdess, actor, actress, although, I suppose they’re all ac-tors these days …’
Maria reacts with a blank stare.
The man can’t hold her gaze and flusters, ‘So … where are you from?’
‘Haringey.’
‘And,’ he sighs heavily, apparently exhausted by small talk, ‘before that?’
‘Sheffield.’
Maria never says where she’s really from. One of her irrational fears is that, if she talks about her real home or says Joby’s name out loud, he, or his family, might suddenly materialise in a puff of smoke. She’s superstitious like that. She’s constantly looking over her shoulder, even here in London, tortured by a foreboding that one of Joby’s relatives will somehow find her and exact a terrible revenge.
This new client seems irritated by her presence already. He walks briskly, guiding her through to the kitchenette where not a single surface is clear of debris.
‘My wife usually deals with all this …’ (Burglary? Explosion? considers Maria.) ‘But she’s away.’
Along with the pile of chaotic dirty dishes there are two pans on the cooker – one featuring burned beans, by the look of it – which she’ll probably need to chisel off, and another with a growth that might be a penicillin experiment.
‘Have you been cleaning long?’ he asks, as if this is a cocktail party.
‘Long enough,’ she replies. Far too long is the truth.
She guesses some of his other unasked questions. Has the agency sent someone who’ll turn up on time, work hard and keep their mouth shut, or someone who could hack into the computer and steal the contents of the bank accounts?
She lets the homeowner make of her what he will. She will slide from his mind soon enough and he’ll most likely make sure to be out this time next week.
‘Can you just crack on in here, please?’
‘Of course.’
He turns his back.
‘Excuse me? Where’s the stuff for the dishwasher?’
The man harrumphs around the kitchen, scrabbles under the sink until he finds a bottle of Fairy Liquid, waving it aloft triumphantly before plonking it on the table. ‘Just holler if there’s anything else you need,’ he calls as he retreats.
She’s about to point out the mistake with the washing-up liquid, but by the tone of his voice guesses that she is never to disturb him again.
Upstairs, a single pubic hair greets her in the bath.
So many cleaning jobs.
Maria didn’t have the energy to hate this life exactly; all the same, she deeply resented it. It was gruelling, soul-sapping.
But what she wouldn’t give to have that boring old life back again right now.
Because her new improved skills surpass everyday scouring and tidying and taking out the rubbish. Her special deep cleans now run to the removal of violent husbands and bodies rather than basic waste disposal.
Perhaps she should bill Elsie for the overtime.
3
Elsie’s garden is a meagre piece of land, shaded by a tall lime tree on one side and an overgrown tangle of hazel on the other. Narrow, although Elsie brags that for London it’s a fair old size.
