by Ann Purser
She turned to go back downstairs, and her eye was caught by a pile of curtains in the corner of the room. “We’d better make a bonfire, Hazel,” she said. “There’s too much rubbish here for us to take away…or for the bin men.” She walked over to pick up the curtains, and stopped. There was something organized about them. It looked like a roughly-made bed, with an old cushion where a pillow might be.
“Hey look, Hazel,” she said. “What d’you think?”
“Down-and-out,” said Hazel with a shiver. “One of our ever-present homeless,” she added. Hazel knew the homeless scene pretty well, but in Tresham, not out here in the country.
“But how did he get in?” asked Lois, looking round nervously.
“Or she,” said Hazel. She shook her head. “God knows,” she said, “but when you’re desperate, you’ll find a way. Probably a broken window somewhere. Anyway, we’d better dump it all, hadn’t we?”
“Yep,” said Lois. “We got a job to do. I want this place clean and smellin’ of roses by the time we’ve finished.” She bent down and gathered up the curtains and the cushion, and shoved them into a black bag. “Probably moved on to somewhere else now, anyway,” she said. “Now the agents are bringin’ people round, nobody’ll hide out here.”
It took the pair of them hours to get the house into a state that satisfied Lois, and then they piled up the rubbish in the back garden and hunted about for matches. A couple of heavy raindrops hit Lois on the back of the neck. “Damn!” she said. “It’s goin’ to rain again! We’ll never get this fire going today. Better find somethin’ to cover the heap and come back when it stops.”
They found a large plastic sheet, neatly folded, in a disused washhouse at the back of the yard, and stretched it out over the rubbish, weighting it down with bricks to keep out the rain.
“I’ll take care of it,” Lois said. “I’ll be round this way again tomorrow.”
“Y’know what,” said Hazel. “We could ask our Enid Abraham to come up and light it when it dries up. They’re only just down the road.”
Lois hesitated. She was well aware that Hazel had reservations about Enid Abraham. This did not worry her, but she had had cause to trust Hazel’s judgement in the past, and did not dismiss it out of hand. “Well, she’s not really on our books until Monday,” she said. “No, I’ll do it, Hazel. And by the way, I’ve told Enid we always have a four-week trial period at New Brooms.”
Hazel nodded. “Mind-reader, that’s what you are, Mrs M,” she said, and touched Lois lightly on the arm. “Mum said would you like to drop in for coffee if you got time,” she added. “I’m off to the hall, so you girls can have a gossip together.”
Lois laughed. “Just watch it, young Hazel,” she said.
It was not until she sat having a late coffee with Bridie, telling her about the junk in the old farmhouse, that Hazel’s words came back to her. Down-and-out and homeless, she had said, and a sudden picture of a tall man in dark clothes, with a white, unshaven face, came back to send a shiver down her spine.
§
“Hello, Bill?” Lois had eaten a delicious savoury pancake, more slowly than usual to please Gran, and now reached across her desk for the notes she had made in Sackville’s office. “Bill, it’s Lois here. When did you say you could start? In two weeks’ time? Great. I’ve got just the job for you to start on, and I’ll fill in until you can take it on. It’s the estate agent’s…in your village, yes. What?”
There were chortles of an unmistakable sort at the other end of the phone, and Lois frowned. “Never mind about the blonde behind the desk! You won’t even see her – we have to be finished in the office before they open up. So you can forget any ideas in that direction. And this is a cleaning agency, not a dating…Oh, OK, it was a joke. Yep, well…” Lois reached for her mug of tea and took a slurp. Bill continued to apologize, until she said not to worry, she was not totally without a sense of humour. She would see him in two weeks’ time at Sackville’s office, show him the ropes for the first morning, and then introduce him to the others at the Monday meeting.
Bill put down the phone and turned to Rebecca, who had called in for a swift sandwich break from school. “Oops,” he said, “nearly made a mess of it there.”
“She’s not a soft touch, not by any means, according to Mrs Stratford,” said Rebecca.
“Who’s Mrs Stratford?”
“One of the school grannies,” Rebecca replied. “Very nice woman, works for Lois Meade. Respects her no end, but says you can’t take advantage. So if you really mean to make a go of this cleaning nonsense, you’d better remember that.”
Bill’s face fell. “It’s not nonsense,” he said. “You might give us a chance. You’re not ashamed of your bloke being a cleaner, are you? I mean, Rebecca, if that’s how you feel, I’ll give it up now, before I start. There’s bound to be farm work about sooner or later.”
Rebecca looked at his nice open face and relented. She’d been tempted to tell him that Sheila Stratford had more or less said she could get him work on the farm. But who was she to tell him what to do? She wasn’t his wife, after all. They had no kids to think of. She thought of all those thickos in the village pub, young sons of local farmers, whose conversation ran out of interest after two sentences. No, Bill was different, and if he wanted to be a char, good luck to him. There must be a euphemism for chars, anyway, like rodent controller instead of ratcatcher. Something like home refreshers? Rebecca looked at Bill, with his hefty rugby-player’s shoulders and square jaw, and laughed aloud.
“What’s funny?” he said defensively.
“Just wondering what I’ll call you,” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek.
“Call a bloody spade a spade,” he said crossly. “I’ll be a cleaner, and that’s that.”
“I’ve got it!” said Rebecca, moving away from him to a safe distance. “You’ll be New Broom Bill, sweeping the world cleaner!” He lunged, but she was out of the room and locked in the lavatory before he could catch her.
§
Sheila Stratford was a typical grannie, blind to her grandchildren’s imperfections, and certain that whatever shortcomings there were, were due entirely to faulty education in the village school. But she had nothing against Rebecca, and said to all and sundry that if anyone asked her, she would stake her life on Bill Stockbridge being a really nice bloke, a hard worker and totally trustworthy.
She looked at husband Sam now over the table. He had just said Bill must be crazy, or a poof, to want to do house cleaning. “None of our business,” she scolded Sam as he sat back from a satisfactory meal. “Nowadays,” she challenged him, “things are different. Women do men’s jobs, and men take on women’s work in loads of places. Take that son of her up at the manor,” Sheila added, warming to her subject. Sam was trapped, sitting in his socks, whilst Sheila cleared away the dishes.
“That son of her up at the manor,” she’d repeated. “Got a first at Oxford, whatever that means, but I know it’s good. Suddenly decides to be a nurse. A nurse! On skivvy’s rates of pay, and dreadful hours!”
“Yeah,” Sam said, getting to his feet and trying to edge past Sheila to the door, “and now he’s got some admin job…good pay and prospects…fast track to the top, his dad told me. So your argument don’t hold water, Sheila. No, I reckon your Bill’s one of them closet blokes. You can’t always tell, you know.”
“And what about Rebecca, then?” Sheila replied triumphantly.
“She’s his cover, see.” Sam had reached the door, and stood grinning at her. “I’ll be off then. See you later, gel.”
“Rubbish!” said Sheila. Sam was just an old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud. Well, she’d do her best to befriend Bill, show him the routines an’ that. And there were always jobs that needed a bit o’ muscle in New Brooms. Lois knew what she was doing.
Sheila swilled water round the sink, dried her hands and took off her apron. No, she thought, if there were going to be any snags to Bill Stockbridge, it was much more likely to
be on the Hazel Reading front. She had an eye for the lads, like any young girl. If Sheila were Lois, she’d make sure not to send them out on a job together. You couldn’t be too careful.
Eleven
Rain was still falling relentlessly next morning, and Lois abandoned any ideas of lighting a bonfire at the old farmhouse. Not that there was any rush, but she decided to ring Sackville’s and tell them what she had done.
“Thanks very much, Mrs Meade,” said the girl. “I popped in after you’d gone, and must say it is a complete transformation!”
“It’s clean,” said Lois.
“Yes, indeed! And such a good thing, as Mrs Charrington and her husband are coming over again today. She’s picking up the key from here – wants them to see it alone, without me rabbiting on! Now you’ve done such a good job, they’ll be sure to buy.”
“Well, we’ll see,” said Lois. “Now, if you were satisfied, I’d like to suggest we get this on a regular footing. What goes for the farmhouse goes for most properties. I do the same thing for another agent in Tresham, and it seems to work well. As you’re in this area, perhaps we could have an agreement that you’d call on New Brooms for any properties standing empty and needing a wash and brush-up?”
Gran, who’d come into Lois’s office at the start of this conversation, raised her eyebrows. My God, Lois was certainly turning into a real businesswoman! She wished her husband was alive to see it…he’d always said she had a good head on her shoulders. And he loved to be proved right.
“So what time is Mrs Charrington expected? I might drop in and see if she’s thought any more about a cleaner once they’re there.”
“Oh, well, I don’t know about that,” said the girl doubtfully. Then, since Lois said nothing, she added, “Still, if you’re just passing and see their car, or something…They plan to get there around eleven this morning.”
“Thanks a lot,” said Lois. “Our invoice on the farmhouse job is on its way. I’ll call in soon, and we could maybe see about a discount for quantity!” She made it sound like a joke, but the girl knew for sure that if she played her part, Lois Meade would deliver.
Lois put down the phone, and went back into the kitchen. Jamie had stayed at home today with a sore throat, and she sat down at the table with him to have a game of Scrabble. She looked at his pale face, with its special sweet smile reserved for her, and thanked God that Gran was now living with them. The struggle between motherhood and career would have been overwhelming without her.
Gran put a mug of hot orange juice in front of Jamie, and gave coffee to Lois and herself. It was warm in the kitchen, and with rain lashing the windows Lois felt no inclination to venture out. She allowed Jamie to win the game, and suggested he had a snooze in the old armchair with Melvyn the cat. She tucked a rug around him and waited until his eyes closed. Then she whispered to Gran that she just had to go over to Waltonby for half an hour, but would be back in time for lunch. “Keep an eye on Jamie, won’t you,” she said, and got such a withering look from her mother that she drove off through the downpour with some relief.
It was noon by the time she passed Cathanger Mill and drove on to Bell’s Farm. She felt a nervous shiver as she quickened the pace through the dark tunnel of trees, but today she saw nobody. The mill house was shrouded in curtains of rain, and large puddles were forming in the dip by the bridge over the stream. By the time Lois got to the farmhouse, she was wondering whether the Charringtons would brave this awful weather after all.
She reckoned without Rosie’s determination. Accustomed to getting her own way, Rosie had dismissed all protests from Sebastian that they’d get marooned, and made use of the opportunity to suggest the need for a four-by-four. She had parked her car just off the road in the farm entrance, and they’d hopped and dodged up the path to the front door of the house.
Sebastian’s mood surprisingly improved. “This is more like it,” he said, scraping his shoes on an old iron bar driven into the ground for just that purpose. “God, smell that air, Rosie,” he said.
She thought privately that the quicker they got out of the soggy rain-filled air the better, but smiled and nodded. “This is real, isn’t it?” she said, and turned the key in the lock.
For a moment she stood and stared, and then, “Oh, my goodness!” she said. “This is incredible! It’s like the fairies have been in and transformed it!”
Sebastian looked at her anxiously. Had she flipped or something? He was used to her going overboard about her enthusiasms, but what was she on about?
“It’s so clean!” she explained. “When I came before – I told you – it was deep in junk and dirt, and really took a feat of imagination to see how it could be restored. Now…well, it must be that Mrs Meade – I told you – and her cleaning service.”
They continued round the house, with Rosie exclaiming and Sebastian nodding approval. “Well done, Rosie,” he said finally. “This would be ideal, if I get the job. Plenty of room for the family, and – ” he peered through the sparkling windows at the rain-soaked garden and the paddock beyond – “and look out there. We could have a couple of ponies, some chickens…”
“And a Labrador…a black one, must be a black one.” Rosie’s eyes were shining, and she hugged Sebastian in an excess of excitement.
At this favourable moment, Lois knocked at the door. “I saw your car,” she said, smiling broadly. “Thought I’d just look in to see how you’re getting on…Maybe need some information about the area…facilities and so on?”
“How very kind,” said Rosie. “That would be most useful. Why don’t you come into the kitchen and tell us about buses and Women’s Institutes and things?”
“One thing,” said Sebastian. Lois looked at him. “What’s that heap in the garden there?” he said. “Looks like a funeral pyre.”
“Ah,” said Lois. “Well, it’s just a heap of rubbish that we turned out of the house.” She moved across to the window, blocking the view for the Charringtons. “I’m going to burn it up, as soon as it stops raining.” As she looked out at the heap, she was very glad they could no longer see it. A large rat put its head out from under the plastic cover and sniffed the air, scenting danger. It ran, a black streak through the grass, and disappeared into the old washhouse.
“Farmers are glad, though,” Lois said brightly. “It’s been a dry autumn, and now they need the rain.”
“Farmers,” said Rosie dreamily. “Of course. We shall be right in the middle of the changing seasons, Sebastian. I’m sure it’s wonderful on a crisp, frosty morning, Mrs Meade?”
“Oh, wonderful,” said Lois. They’d learn.
§
She got a call from Rosie much sooner than she expected, only a matter of weeks after this encounter. Apparently their smart house in Birmingham had sold immediately, and they planned to move into Bell’s Farm within days. Sebastian had got the job with the vet’s practice, and after Lois’s ministrations they could see that the farmhouse was habitable straight away. All the renovations they planned could be done whilst they were resident, and Sebastian had said this would be a good thing, as he could keep an eye on idle workmen. They had decided to give Waltonby village school a chance, and had talked to the headteacher.
“Everything’s organized,” Rosie burbled to Lois, “except the dog! If you know of any Labrador puppies, please let me know.”
Lois pondered on that one. She’d ask at the next Monday meeting. Enid Abraham might know of someone. She had started work several weeks ago, and all was going well. She turned up at her jobs on time, and so far had been reliable. Two or three clients had mentioned how pleased they were with her. So thorough and careful! And quiet as a mouse. One woman, a romantic novelist, who had stressed that the least interruption disturbed her muse, rang Lois specifically to say how wonderful Enid was…so sympathetic to the need for a cocoon of silence!
“Good,” Lois had said, and could think of nothing else to say. Blimey, you really saw it all in this job. Now she arranged with Rosie Charringt
on to send a cleaner in on Wednesday mornings, and said that very possibly it would be Enid Abraham from the mill just down the road. “I’ll have to look at my schedules, but it would make sense,” she said.
Then she remembered that the heap of junk was still there. It had been raining on and off for weeks, and the ground was waterlogged. The farmers had stopped being glad, and were on more familiar ground, happily grumbling that they couldn’t get on the land and the seed would be ruined. Lois decided to ask Derek to deal with the heap. He could pour petrol on it, or something, and make it tidy afterwards.
For about a week, the water from the mill stream had filled the ditches either side of the road with swirling, muddy water, and yesterday the banks by the bridge had burst and a deep torrent covered the road itself. Enid had reported that she’d had to go the long way round to get to Long Farnden this afternoon.
“Father’s quite worried,” she said to Lois. “He’s never seen the stream so high. And the mill pond’s dangerously full. We could be flooded in the house, he says. He’s been filling sandbags and piling them up at the ready.”
“Did your family ever work the mill?” Lois said. Gran had asked Enid to stay for a cup of tea and have a chat to Jamie, who was down with another sore throat. Tonsils, the doctor had said. Might have to do something about them, old chap. Jamie had made a face, but Lois was concerned that he was missing school and not his cheeky self at all.
Enid shook her head. “Oh no,” she said. “Father’s not a miller! Though he did all kinds of jobs in Edinburgh, school caretaker and so on, but really he’s happiest with just a few beasts and the hens. Reminds him of his childhood. He was injured, you know, at a factory in Scotland, and gets a small pension…just big enough to keep himself and Mother going. And then Edward brought a bit in…well, sometimes…” She tailed off and looked around the kitchen. “What a nice cosy room,” she said. “Are you looking forward to Christmas, Jamie? What’s Father Christmas bringing you?” Jamie winced, but obediently said he was hoping for a piano.