Make Me Clean, page 5
Her offer doesn’t seem to calm him because the classes are the least of it. What’s really angered him, it transpires, are the other things – yet another rant from Elsie about him never getting his hands on ‘a single penny’ of her money. Plus, as soon as his back was turned (‘I was only on the bloody phone for two minutes, max!’), she poured half a mug of tea in his briefcase.
Maria smiles – as much from relief as from Elsie’s naughtiness. It doesn’t go down well with Del, who glares at her before carrying on.
‘She needs more help than I can give her,’ he moans, not unreasonably. ‘I’ve got my own life, you know!’
Maria repeats her litany that they need to keep Elsie in her own home where she feels secure and happy for as long as possible, in familiar surroundings; where she can keep the cats, where Maria can help look after her – that’s what Comfort recommends, that’s what Elsie wants – while at regular intervals, whenever the words ‘care home’ pop up, Elsie tells Del to ‘fuck right off’.
In the middle of this heated discussion, Maria winces, but not due to Elsie’s language. She’s putting the cutlery away when she drops a spoon, bends to retrieve it and spots a very small, but very obvious smear of blood at the bottom of the washing machine. Jesus! She struggles to keep the shock off her face.
Is she going mad? She’s sure – absolutely sure! – she cleaned up every speck after Monday night. She knows she did a good job cleaning Elsie’s bedroom and the kitchen, she’s a professional! But evidence to the contrary is right there in front of her.
Surely she would have spotted it before now – when Comfort came round or when she did the laundry? Is she seeing things? Has she turned into Lady Macbeth?
She daren’t bend down to wipe the smear off while Del is in the room, so she stands and shields it with her leg.
Del gets out his cigarettes, which provokes another round of Elsie telling him he can’t smoke in the house and Del saying he’ll smoke wherever he wants, although, to be fair, he always goes outside for a fag. That slides into another row when Elsie refuses a final plea for her to give him a loan to tide him over.
He steps into the garden, cashless, sulking, throwing a, ‘We’ll see what Nick has to say about this,’ over his shoulder as he lights up.
But Nick, snug in his shallow grave, mouldering down quietly with the worms ready to fertilise the roses, keeps his opinions to himself.
As soon as he’s out of the kitchen, Maria grabs a cloth and the bleach spray and starts rubbing at the streak of blood. On her knees as she scrubs, she sees fragments of fur and the tiny skull of something that once might have been a mouse or a vole; something that has been eviscerated and wedged under the washing machine.
Thank Christ! Never has she been so pleased to see a rodent corpse. As she prises the bones and squelchy remains from their resting place, Del comes in and tuts. She wraps the dead thing in kitchen towel before laying the creature to rest in the bin outside, and when she comes back, she notices she’s being observed by two pairs of inscrutable eyes as Spotty and Sweetie nestle together in their hammock, glaring at her as if to say, Find your own playthings; find your own things to kill.
10
She cleaned for her dad, of course, but Maria’s housework back then was slipshod and slapdash. When you’re young you aren’t interested in scouring the bath, are you? Cleaning is for those who’ve given up all hope of adventure; chores are for when you’ve settled down in a nice house or flat, with some nice little knick-knacks. You yearn for anything new and exciting when you’re young. You desire experiences as much as stuff. You want fun not furniture. And if you’re lucky, you don’t need the soothing repetition of simple tasks.
There was always something more interesting to do than clean back then – like netball. Tall for her age, Maria shone on court. She was an excellent Wing Attack and she loved visiting other schools for games, thrilled to be somewhere – anywhere – different. She was always keen to be out, away from her dad’s poky house, away to her future. She didn’t just want to read about places, she wanted to be there and taste the food and smell the smells. And she didn’t want passion confined to the pages of novels – thrilling though some of those descriptions were – she was desperate to experience it for herself.
‘Ants in her pants, that one,’ pronounced Frankie, perhaps somewhat jealously.
Her first professional cleaning job was for Murad, who owned the local Mini Mart, both in the shop and in his cluttered flat above it. She got the job at thirteen, after she’d been on at her dad to give her some pocket money and was told in no uncertain terms, ‘You graft for your money in this house.’
Murad was her dad’s mate – both used to play football in the Sunday league; both were widowed before they were forty, although Murad’s wife died of cancer. There was a photo of her in his flat. She was wearing a lovely red dress, looking young and glamorous, and there was a bunch of plastic flowers in front of it like a shrine. Maria thought it was wonderful. She told her mates, ‘I want my picture in a frame. I want someone to love me for ever after I’m gone.’ She sighed, adding, with no sense of irony, ‘It’s dead romantic.’
She learned how to wield the big mop, swishing it up and down the aisles late on Sunday afternoons, plus two nights a week. It wasn’t often busy. Murad blamed the big Morrisons that had opened on the edge of town.
You learn a lot about people by the way they treat cleaners. Most don’t even notice you; a few might smile a greeting, and some take great delight in wheeling their dirty trolley wheels over the bit you’ve just done. Classmates who popped into the shop would take the piss – ‘You’ve missed a bit!’ the hilarious joke Maria heard at least twice a week.
Her arms and shoulders became muscled with the work. It helped with the netball.
When she peeled off her rubber gloves after she’d finished cleaning the shelves and mopping, her hands would be sweaty, her fingertips wrinkled.
‘It is honourable to earn your living by the sweat of your brow,’ said Murad. He might have even meant it.
Honourable or not, Maria envisioned something better for herself when she left school. She hoped to stay on, do her A levels, perhaps go into teaching. She liked school.
When she discussed her future plans with her dad, he’d say, ‘We’ll see,’ but she knew he was proud of her. The issue would be if she wanted to go to university. He was dead set against any form of debt.
Murad was a nice enough boss. As well as the fiver he gave her, he’d let her take anything coming up to its sell-by date that she fancied. Inevitably, some kids from school started on at her to pinch stuff for them – cigarettes and booze, mainly. She refused. Then they’d call after her on the way to school, ‘Oi, scrubber!’ and laugh.
Eventually, Murad showed her how to do the till and, if he had to pop out, he left her minding the shop. He didn’t go out often but she was dead chuffed when he left her in charge. The money was never short when he cashed up. He told her dad,’ You’ve got a good girl there,’ and her dad smiled and said he knew, and she felt proud.
She sometimes dreamed of opening her own shop, perhaps somewhere warm, like Italy.
Small ambitions.
She never achieved a single one.
11
Del goes upstairs for ‘a bit of peace’ while Elsie settles to her soaps and Maria sits alongside her reading. Chapters are occasionally interrupted when Elsie pipes up, ‘Fancy him? She’d never give him the time of day! He looks like Mr bloody Potato Head.’ The comments are accurate, and Maria takes this as a positive.
When she gets her to bed, Elsie snuggles down soon enough, which has to be another good sign, doesn’t it? Surely she can’t be traumatised if she’s sleeping?
Maria is more anxious about Elsie’s feelings than her own. She daren’t even start to unpick how she feels. She forces herself to concentrate on cleaning, struggling to push down thoughts of the burial, fears of discovery. But the images keep flashing into her mind and a sickly guilt pervades everything she does.
She has an hour to herself before she has to get off to her overnight clean. Usually she would nap, but there is no hope of sleep right now, so she sets about cleaning the oven. She leaves Elsie quietly snoring and doesn’t bother saying goodbye to Del.
Depending on buses, she usually arrives at the luxury flat near the South Bank between midnight and one o’clock, when the owner is at work. The agency briefing notes informed her that the man, a Balogan (it wasn’t specified if this was his surname or first name), ran nightclubs and consequently slept during the day, not that it was of much interest to her.
It’s a blessing, truth be told, this single night when she’s left to her own devices, pushing through her fatigue until she is so dazed she can stagger back to her bedsit and collapse into a brief, dreamless sleep in the thin hours. She imagines the feeling must be what jetlag is like, but how would she know? She’s never been on a plane in her life.
Never have I ever flown, bought a Mother’s Day card, got a qualification, felt safe since …
What does she usually think of as she cleans? Money. Food. Elsie. But different thoughts swirl in these small hours. Silly notions.
Perhaps there’s a sense of how she might make things a little nicer in the world, one flat at a time. To clean away filth and restore some portion of order. Retribution and reparation in microscopic increments. Atonement.
How many clean surfaces, how many dust motes, equal a life?
She works harder tonight, almost manic. The harder she scrubs and vacuums the less energy she has to worry about what lies in Elsie’s back garden. The faster she polishes and scours, the less likely she is to think about what she’s turned into.
This is one of her best nights, in the lovely flat on the top floor, and she’s high in the sky, far away from the sounds of traffic, gazing down on all the London lights, which look so pretty from that vantage point, so full of promise. It thrills her that she can see The Shard.
Sometimes she wonders what it might have been like to leave home and come here to the city when she was young and full of hope, instead of what she ended up doing: running away from a small town desperate to see the world, but fleeing to a life even more constrained – from a terrace to a caravan.
She also imagines what it might be like to live in a place like this. She loves the space and the panoramic view which somehow makes her thoughts expand, as if they might fly away on the night air outside the window.
Only the issues with the neighbours took the shine off.
The people in the flat next door had moved in a few months ago. There were piles of packing boxes littering the corridor for several weeks.
They usually returned home around two or three in the morning and the cacophony – parties and ridiculously loud music (a mad mix of jazz and hip hop and other weird discordant sounds) stopped Maria’s daydreams. When it kicked off, the revelling was often accompanied by some sort of argument – raised voices muffled against heavy bass beats, shouts, slamming doors, banging and clattering – sometimes followed by noisy make-up sex noises through the bedroom wall.
She didn’t have headphones to drown it out. The cries rattled her as the bassline throbbed through her skull.
She guessed few of the other flats were occupied. These palatial developments were generally bought as investment properties, according to the agency. They sent cleaners to spruce them up when overseas owners ‘popped into town’ from somewhere exotic on the way to somewhere else exotic.
It wasn’t Maria’s place to complain about the noise.
Tonight, around two, there’d been laughter, the neighbours’ door opening and closing as people came and went, a constant pounding music. It quietened eventually. But as Maria is finishing off in the bathroom there are suddenly shouts, two voices, something smashing.
Then a wail – a fox’s scream? But you don’t get foxes ten storeys high, do you?
The shriek stops Maria in her tracks as she’s scouring the bathroom taps. She catches sight of herself in the mirror above the sink and sees her own terrors superimposed over her reflection – a pulse of horror from her past; a stab of violence from the other night; a glimpse of something darker within her.
She marches around to the neighbours’ and batters on the door for so long, if there’s anyone else in the complex they must be able to hear the commotion.
She springs back as the door in front of her is wrenched open.
‘What?’ snarls the sweaty face before her.
The man pushes blond floppy hair out of his face as he tries to focus on Maria. Fine features, almost girlish, although he looks much older than the hair suggests. Not what she imagined.
‘Is everything all right?’ She forces out the question, despite her throat tightening around the words. She plants her feet under her hips to counter the instinct to run, although she is quite a bit taller than this man.
‘Yeah, yeah. All good here. Just partying, you know?’ He smiles with too many teeth.
She is not taken in. His eyes are full of chemicals. She doesn’t move.
‘Whaddya want?’ he demands, leaning his shoulder against the door frame, crossing his arms like a bouncer.
She tries to peer around him into the room down the hallway. In the gap she sees a guitar on the coffee table, a double bass propped against the window, an overflowing ashtray, discarded pizza boxes on the sofa, two bottles scattered on the carpet. It pains her to see such a beautiful space made so grubby.
‘Is everything okay? I heard a scream.’
‘No. All cool, all cool.’ Posh-boy accent, feral vibes, his jaw grinding and gurning, his lips curling into a snarl rather than a smile. Deep lines exaggerate the expression, making him appear more animal than human.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah. Yeah. All—’
‘Is someone hurt?’ She can’t stop herself. ‘Did you hurt her?’
‘Fuck off!’
The door whooshes towards her and she’s forced to take a step back as it slams in her face.
She listens for a long time, but there’s nothing more. She returns to Balogan’s flat, finishes the clean, and packs up her things. She does not call the police. She doesn’t want to get involved, can’t afford to – not with what’s under Elsie’s rose bushes. She thinks of Nick as she puts out the rubbish.
After she leaves, she berates herself. She should have done more. What, exactly, she isn’t sure. What if someone’s hurt? She feels ashamed of herself.
She walks part of the way back to Wood Green until her legs ache, then she catches a night bus. Lights trail past the window, and she watches a shop opening up for a delivery, yawning early commuters. She yawns in response.
She feels no relief when she opens the door to the bedsit. The house has been butchered into six rooms without any thought for what might feel right. Mean, ugly rooms. Even before she spent so much time at Elsie’s, Maria made little effort to make this place … nice. It is clean – that’s pretty much all you could say about it. But it would never be her home, so what’s the point?
Maria rarely sleeps well. She falls to sleep easily enough, but the dreams often make uninterrupted rest impossible, forcing her awake.
And the recent night of violence has triggered deeper fragments from her subconscious. Nick might lie well hidden under the soil, but his burial has unearthed worse memories, and as weak dawn light filters through the thin curtains of her bedsit, the cry of the fox is her own.
12
She wakes groggy on the Thursday afternoon, disorientated by the change in her routine.
The rest of the day passes in a blur of hoovering and bin emptying and mopping and polishing, around Islington, Hackney and Haringey, and by the time she collects her overnight things and returns to Elsie’s, Del is keen to be off, saying, ‘I’ve already put her to bed.’
At least he’s not put her to sleep, thinks Maria, ungenerously.
She should feel relieved that today Elsie hasn’t blabbed, that Del hasn’t done a spot of gardening, that she’s not been struck by lightning. But if anything, her dread intensifies. It will happen at some point – discovery. She got away with it once, but she will be punished for these recent sins.
Maria gets up twice in the night and creeps downstairs to check on Elsie, who’s tossing and turning. She stands looking through the kitchen window to check on the garden, where Elsie’s husband is the only one sleeping the sleep of the dead.
She’s already had two strong coffees by the time Elsie wakes at six on Friday morning.
‘Ding dong merrily on high,’ Elsie starts singing at the top of her voice as Maria helps her dress. The lyrics morph into Chuck Berry’s ‘Ding-a-Ling’ and back to the carol. She is beyond perky.
‘Are we having turkey?’ says Elsie, clapping her hands together.
‘Perhaps,’ says Maria. Surely no one has ever been this excited by turkey.
Christmas was weeks ago, but sometimes it’s easier to go along with Elsie’s train of thought rather than attempting to force her into the present reality.
Maria has spent every Christmas with Elsie since she started cleaning for her. ‘You can’t be on your own at Christmas. It’s illegal,’ Elsie had declared.
But the first meal she ever had in this house was one Easter Sunday. Elsie asked Maria if she had anywhere to go for the Bank Holiday. The question took her by surprise, so she didn’t have time to think of a lie.
‘Come here, then.’
‘Oh, thanks but—’
‘Don’t be daft.’
Maria and Elsie had immediately hit it off, but spending a whole Sunday together was another level.
‘Are you sure? Can I bring anything?’ Maria tensed for a request that she’d be unable to fulfil.
‘Just bring yourself, babe. It means I’ll have someone on my side for once, rather than that miserable bugger scowling at me with his ugly mush.’
Maria assumed Elsie meant her husband. At that time, he had never been present when Maria cleaned. ‘Do you two not get on?’ she asked.
