2005 - My Cleaner

by Maggie Gee; Prefers to remain anonymous

  Mum’s poor strangled garden, Vanessa thinks, remembering the nettles, the rusty wire. But then, Mum could never look after herself. Which meant we had to look after her. Dad’s awful, clumsy tenderness. I despised him because my mother did. It wasn’t comfortable, despising my father.

  Then later, having to get away. Being forced to reinvent herself. The difficulties when she came home from Cambridge, and Lucy and the others laughed at her new accent, which she herself wasn’t even aware of.

  Forty years later she’s still hot with shame.

  “Vanessa, you’re not listening!”

  She forces her lids open on the flat French countryside, the nondescript land between Lille and Paris, and tries to listen, but inside her head she is remembering the cleaning, always the cleaning, before school in the morning and when she came home, the only way to keep her mother’s nerves at bay, since Dad or Stan used to tramp the mud in, the floor in the kitchen was usually swimming, the old chipped sink bloomed with vile yellow stains…Her mother’s pale fretful eyes would be searching, restlessly looking for mess and dirt, more proof that life on earth was a nightmare, a hellish test she could not survive. Vanessa had to work hard to save her, for without her mother she knew she would be finished, since Mum was the only one who knew she was clever, too good to be a farmworker’s daughter.

  I tried to make everything different for Justin. Only the best was good enough. He had every chance that money could buy.

  Somewhere along the way, it went wrong.

  “So, did you enjoy your little trip to the country?” Fifi asks her, as they draw into Paris. “Wasn’t it awkward taking Mary?”

  “No. In fact, Mary was rather a hit. Everyone wanted to dance with her. My Uncle Stan was very taken.”

  Vanessa tries not to think about the fart. She would rather die than tell Fifi that. And it wasn’t important, in the longer view. Bridges had been built, chasms crossed.

  And, left on her own, while Fifi goes to see her family, in the tall, stuffy house where Fifi’s grandmother lived, Vanessa feels renewed, and hopeful. She sits down at the desk in the bedroom with her notebook. What she has learned will surely bear fruit.

  But in fact, for some reason things go against her. That weekend there’s a miniature Indian summer. The thick heat of August returns, and clings. Most of the windows are impossible to open, the wood dried and twisted in an airless clinch, and when she finally attacks one with a knife, prising at the frame with fierce determination, the paint flakes off, and then the wood splinters, and she cuts her hand before she gives up. Small beige moths flutter out of tall cupboards like rags and tatters of exploded lace. The polished walnut swirls uneasily with faces. On the dressing-table that was once Fifi’s grandma’s, a cloudy cut-glass bowl of pink face powder sits uncovered, breathing at her. Vanessa feels she is inhaling human dust.

  When she looks for respite at the walls, almost every centimetre is covered with photographs, framed and unframed, large and small, curled photographs of smiling children, proud parents, sprinting dogs, a crowded world of happy strangers that is slipping very slowly into the past. This family’s life seems like a long, sunlit picnic; they meet up in parks, in woods, in gardens, there are always at least half a dozen of them, and they dance and prance for the photographer, they hug each other and play leap-frog, they hold up small babies and exquisite toddlers, they ride donkeys or have swimming parties, cut big cakes or raise a diadem of glasses.

  However, when Fifi briefly returns, it is to complain of being snubbed or excluded. “You know what they’re like, Parisians! They pretend they don’t understand a word, when as you know I am practically fluent, you heard me talking to that taxi-driver…And they expected me to pay for myself. In any case, the restaurant was filthy. And Tante Clothilde was rude about my mother. Now I see why she wanted to escape her family!”

  When she leaves again, Vanessa stares at the walls. Those happy childish faces haunt her. Movies that have turned into still photos. Colour that is fading towards black-and-white, so she can never quite get to the reality of it, never find out if Fifi is right—

  But it’s painfully different from her own lost life, locked up in that low, dark house in the village.

  She thinks, it’s not that I’m envious, exactly. It is just that haunting sensation of other lives. We only live once. Has my life been all right? Have I really done my best for Justin? Did he have enough friends, enough happiness? Did we ever go for sunlit picnics? I wasn’t a great one for seaside holidays. I never let him keep a dog or a cat. I was an only child, so he has no cousins…

  Their life seemed thin, empty, cold, compared to the frieze around these walls, the children feasting on life’s banquet.

  Vanessa is crushed and stifled by ghosts. They brush at her consciousness like bruised moth-wings as she tuts and sweats in the warm soft heat, writing, or not writing, because the pen moves slowly, and she starts to imagine she hears childish voices, a high silver humming that torments her ear, but when it finally drives her out into the kitchen she realises it is just something electric, but she still cannot find it to switch it off, so it goes on vibrating like a thousand crickets as the sky outside the shutters turns indigo, a thousand insects or a swarm of lost children, the ghosts who should have played with Justin.

  I should have played with him more, she thinks. I shouldn’t have handed him over to Mary. But I had to work to pay the mortgage. I still have to work to keep my son.

  She stays there, grimly. She is a professional. “Bums on seats,” she always says to her classes. “If you sit there long enough, the writing will come.” But she sits there, solidly, and nothing happens. Outside the window, Paris calls to her, grey and silver, infinitely delectable, singing come on, you are still young, dance with me, dance, Vanessa —

  But Vanessa closes her ears, and sighs, and makes another wretched cup of instant coffee, though outside the doors there are glorious cremes, in wonderful cafes, and kir, and frites. She will not give in. She can sit this out. Like a terrier, she digs in, and waits.

  On their last evening, Fifi returns upset. “Today she did actually recognise me, Grandmaman, and she was sweet…But now Grandpa is dead, she will never come home. She thinks she will, she talks as if she’s going to, but her daughter Jeanne said to me it’s impossible, the stairs are too dangerous, she can’t live alone…So tell me, what is the point of all this? All the books and pictures and music and photos? All the objets she’s chosen with such exquisite taste? Just to end up in some wretched almshouse. By the way, darling, how has your writing gone? Why didn’t you go off and see the Louvre?”

  “Oh you know, a writer needs time on her own.”

  But the journey back is rather subdued. They agree that amassing possessions is pointless. Fifi makes a note of this in her expensive new palmtop, whose merits she then explains to Vanessa. Vanessa declares she is going to have a clear-out. She sits and lists things to do in her notebook, the one in which she had planned to write. But while Mary is there, she may as well make use of her. Together they can really make a difference. Mary can hardly say she is busy—

  Vanessa only half-knows she is fending off depression. “Kissy kissy kissy,” they say at Waterloo, but Fifi feels Vanessa hasn’t been supportive, and Vanessa is restless and frustrated.

  It isn’t so easy, facing up to the past. Tomorrow she has to go back to teaching. The precious empty week is gone.

  47

  She comes home in a black taxi at three pm. The driver complains about immigrants, and they have the mandatory argument. The fare of twenty-five pounds is outrageous. She walks even faster than usual up the path, bumping her suitcase along the concrete. She rings the bell, but they’re too lazy to answer, so she drags her keys out of the bottom of her handbag and jerks them irritably into the keyhole.

  “Mary!” she shouts as she comes in through the door. “Justin! Where is everybody?”

  In fact, she finds Mary out at the back, standing on the lawn, wearing a winter
coat of Vanessa’s, which blows open to show the annoying blue nightdress that Anya had found in Justin’s room. “Hallo, Vanessa.” She seems friendly, but startled. “I thought you were not coming back until this evening. Sorry, I have put your coat on.”

  “That’s quite all right,” Vanessa says, but she can’t quite get rid of the feeling that Mary isn’t totally glad she is back early. (She’s right: Mary had been planning to call Libya on Vanessa’s phone.) “That is rather a smart coat for the garden, Mary. Why don’t you borrow my anorak?” Or else put more of your own clothes on, she thinks to herself, but does not say it.

  “I shall make you a cup of tea, Vanessa,” Mary Tendo says, with a queenly smile.

  On the way back in, Vanessa pauses and takes a proper look at the garden. She is dismayed to see that a lot of it is bare. It is certainly tidy, but where are her peonies? What has happened to half her roses? Her heart sinks as she realises. Besides, there are sticks all over the place, thin bamboo sticks at odd angles which she supposes must mark new plants. Some of them project from the fence like spines. She pulls one out: it is oddly barbed. It looks familiar, but she can’t take it in. It almost looks like a kind of arrow. This must be a technique of the Ugandan farmer. Or else Mary has been murdering squirrels.

  “Mary, I didn’t ask you to garden. Just a little pruning was all I wanted.”

  “No, Vanessa, but I knew you would be happy. Because you said your mother liked the garden to be tidy, I finished the gardening while you were away.”

  “I see.”

  Mary Tendo has her back turned, boiling the kettle, unaware that there is anything wrong.

  Vanessa swallows rising fury. After all, Mary was trying to be helpful.

  “How was France?” Mary asks her. The tea she has made is too strong and black. Sighing, Vanessa pours herself more milk.

  “Oh well, you know, it was just Paris.” She has been to Paris a dozen times. There have been better and worse trips to Paris.

  “Vanessa, I have never been to Paris. I think that one day I would like to go.”

  Vanessa thinks, it’s maddening how she makes me feel guilty. Even when she’s blatantly in the wrong.

  “I have come back with lots of new resolutions,” she says briskly, swilling down the tea in one gulp, burning her throat unpleasantly. “I want you to help me clear everything out. We’ve got too much rubbish. Far too much stuff, I think you once said something like that yourself, that English people’s houses are full of things. Well I want to get rid of a lot of it. But first do you think you should put some clothes on? And where is Justin? Justin can help.”

  “I want to talk to you about him, Vanessa.” (Mary’s feeling happy, and proud of herself. The meeting with Zakira was a huge success. Justin and Zakira were in each other’s arms within three minutes of their arrival. While the two of them were kissing and hugging in the kitchen, Mary had filled Trevor in on the back story. “I thought that boy was a bloody fast worker,” Trevor said, but she could see he was worried. “What is the old girl going to say?” After two hours with Zakira, he had relaxed. “She’s a lovely girl,” he told his son. Soon the necklace was back on Zakira’s neck. The amber glowed on her blue-black skin. The tap was mended, the sink no longer leaked, and Justin stayed behind at the end. Mary is ecstatic. She has pulled it off! Justin’s up and dressed, with a job and a girlfriend. She cannot wait to tell Vanessa.)

  But Vanessa’s in the grip of the hyperactive state that is her only way of fending off depression. “Not now Mary, we have to get on.”

  In this mood, Vanessa carries all before her, but Mary and Justin seem slow and stubborn.

  When Vanessa asks Mary to clear out the cupboards in the sitting room, ready for Vanessa to sort, Mary says, “But Vanessa, that will make a mess, and Anya—there is a little problem with Anya. I am not sure she is coming on Wednesday.” (The problem is that Justin’s slept with Anya, the night before his reconciliation with Zakira, and Anya is in love with him. Whereas Justin just thinks she is quite a nice girl with whom he has made a little mistake. Or not so nice a girl, once she has kicked his television, and said he is a Dummkopf, and a loser. Justin thinks Anya might not be coming back.)

  “Mary, we are clearing up the mess. If we make a little dust, there are dusters in the cupboard. I hope you know where the cleaning things are.” Vanessa is aware that she sounds rather sharp, and makes a last-ditch attempt to sound reasonable. “I myself am not too proud to clean up. By the way, I really think you should take my coat off.”

  Mary removes the coat, which reveals the maddening nightdress, which is semi-transparent and looks—slatternly.

  “It is Anya’s job,” Mary says, politely. “It was Anya’s job, to do the cleaning. It seems her name was Anya, not Anna. If she has gone, we will find another one. In fact, she was not even Australian.”

  “For God’s sake, Mary, put some clothes on. Are you saying you are not willing to help me?” Vanessa’s voice is beginning to rise, to steer its way up through the unstable octaves. Her heart begins to beat unsteadily. There is a certain blind pleasure in losing her temper.

  “I am not saying I am not willing,” says Mary, but her jaw juts mutinously.

  Vanessa is too cross to listen properly. Mary’s double negative just sounds like ‘No’. “I think I have been fair with you,” she says. “I have treated you like a friend, Mary.”

  Mary’s eyes go dead. It is starting again. “Yes, Miss Vanessa. We are like friends.”

  “So don’t you think that you ought to help me?”

  Mary looks at the floor. “I ought to help you.” She thinks of the money. She is still hundreds short. She has to survive in this house until Christmas. And yet, the Henman is a madwoman. You do not start cleaning in the afternoon.

  “So do we understand each other?” Vanessa victorious. She’s full of adrenalin now, she is speeding. Sometimes these points just have to be made. She can’t let these people walk all over her. When you are too soft, this is what happens. She rides her crest of unhappiness; nobody likes her, not even her son, nor Mary, nor Miss Tomlinson.

  “Yes, Henman,” it sounds as though Mary says. “We understand each other, yes, Henman.”

  Mary goes to the sitting-room and opens the cupboards and starts to pull everything on to the carpet, bulging files, table mats, half-finished knitting. A box of old pens and broken pencils. A foot-high pile of old Christmas cards. A yellowing turret of ivory napkin rings. She doesn’t think, she just pulls it all out. In the end, almost the whole carpet is covered. She gives it a small but savage kick.

  But as she does it, she can hear the Henman screaming. The Henman is trying to get Justin to help. Whatever his response, it is not enough. Her rage, her grief are beyond all bounds. “You are useless, useless, you’ve always been useless. Why are you such a hopeless son? You have disappointed me and your father. Get up, will you, do something!”

  In the end, Mary can bear it no more. She leaves it as it is, the ruined sitting room, and goes upstairs to see what can be done, if anything can still be done to save Justin.

  “Miss Henman, do not upset yourself. If he will not do it, I will do it. ”

  “It’s quite extraordinary,” Vanessa says, in a voice that skates between laughter and tears. “All I’ve asked him to do is collect the photographs, the photographs of his own childhood, the photographs of our life as a family. It doesn’t seem a lot to ask. He has been dossing here for twenty-odd years. He has never given his mother a penny. He has never lifted a finger to help. Now I ask him to do one simple thing and he claims I am hysterical. I will get hysterical if you all want, I am ready to become hysterical—”

  “Miss Henman, please, do not shout any more.”

  “You are telling me not to shout at Justin. I am his mother. I care for him.”

  “Yes, Miss Henman. You are his mother. Of course, Miss Henman, you care about him. But please, Miss Henman, no more shouting.”

  And Mary helps her, and they get the w
ork done, and the dustbin is left bulging with paper and celluloid, duplicate photographs, dusty drawings; Justin sleeps with his pillow over his head (and feels he has a right to: the day before, he and Trevor worked a thirteen-hour day, finishing a painting job for a deadline); and slowly Vanessa wears herself out, and the terrible storm in her brain subsides, leaving the beginnings of unease and guilt.

  They do not go to bed until after midnight. “Goodnight, Mary. I know you have helped me.”

  “Yes, I have helped you. Goodnight, Henman.” Curious how she still couldn’t manage the name. “Vanessa, please.” And Vanessa disappears, smiling an anxious, placating smile.

  But Mary Tendo sits downstairs, brooding.

  48

  Vanessa Henman

  I am sitting in my study, too tired to write. I have just had another ghastly day. Sometimes it seems I am surrounded by fools. All day I have felt as if I was hung over, possibly because of yesterday’s argument. It wasn’t my fault, not entirely my fault, I was stressed from Paris, and Mary was—slow…

  And yet, one doesn’t like to lose one’s temper. One doesn’t like to raise one’s voice. And Mary is well-meaning. In the end, she helped. I wouldn’t want to jeopardise the very real friendship we were starting to achieve when we went to the village.

  Still, I’m sure by now she has forgotten all about it. One can’t be good-tempered all the time. Perhaps I will offer to cook, tomorrow. Though actually, I am too busy to cook.

  And today at college was an utter waste of time. I sometimes wish I was teaching something real, nursing, astrophysics, not Creative Writing. I sometimes wish I had learned something real. I always felt superior to my father, and yet he knew real things, he was a farmer, he knew about the fields and the animals, he knew about machinery, like Tigger.

  Is it possible that I have underestimated Tigger? He swears that Justin has ‘found his feet’. He says the boy has a wonderful eye, and might have a future as an interior designer, which sounds like a glorified painter and decorator—