by Kitty Wilson
‘I do.’
A thought pops into my head. I’d forgotten my intention for this evening. ‘How did it go with Jamal?’
Everyone is seated now and the cast, all in Victorian costume, are gathered by the entrance to the dining room.
‘Oh yeah.’ She pulls a face. ‘He didn’t take to me but thank you for trying. I really appreciate it.’
A large man in very tight trousers, a long tailcoat and high narrow-brimmed hat strides out into the centre of the room.
‘What do you mean he didn’t take to you?’ That’s ridiculous, these two are the perfect match, her project has to appeal to him on so many levels. There must be a mistake.
‘Will you shhhh, it’s starting.’ She wallops me on my leg. I yelp and the couple in front turn around and give us furious looks.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming tonight.’ The actor adopts the Lord Flashheart pose and a hammy shouting voice. ‘I am in dire need of your help. My wife has disappeared…’ he pauses, ‘…so I am desperately searching for Fanny!’ The audience guffaws. Someone starts making pig noises.
What has Belle Wilde brought me to?
Wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss,
But cheerily seek how to redress their harms.
* * *
December Eighth.
Belle.
The wind nips at my cheeks and my ears, making them burn one minute and numb the next as I walk briskly to my trial morning at my first new job. Today is a crazy day of new starts, lots all hurled into one day, and truthfully, I’m scared of how I’m going to manage. It’s a lot. So, I’m going to break it down into manageable units and fret about one at a time. I may well resemble Crazy Eyes from Orange Is the New Black by teatime but at least by then I’ll have got most of the day out of the way. And who doesn’t like a little rocking in the corner by the time the evening is here?
Right now, I’m borderline hypothermic – despite my seven layers of clothes – which has a strange way of concentrating the mind. I may have to reconsider my decision to always walk to places within an easy distance.
However, my survival and determination to get somewhere slightly warmer than the current Arctic temperatures are distracting me nicely from whatever I’m about to walk into. These seven layers are intended to keep me warm but have the added bonus of making sure no one can get me naked easily at my next destination.
Not that I think they will try, but you can’t be too careful. I have Luisa’s number open and ready to press in an emergency and Find My Phone is clicked on with my location available to her all day. Not that I’ve told her what I’m doing. The ad I have responded to, a card in the window of Temperance’s mini-mart, wants a cleaner who is hard-working, discreet and open-minded.
Being a bit of a loner covers discreet, and I’m way more open-minded than anyone should be. I’d once put on one of those human bridle things for Sam, an ex, and then cantered around his room neighing loudly – his flatmate had never been able to look me in the eye again. Luckily this story didn’t have to feature in my phone interview, general assurances seemed enough, and now, at the crack of dawn and trudging through a wind that would have made Shackleton wince, I am going to do a trial shift at Hope House.
My psychic senses are telling me this will probably be okay. My bank statements are telling me this is definitely going to be okay. I have also reassured myself that as much as I need to pay rent, and as much as I don’t want to take money from Luisa, I am an adult and will not be staying anywhere I’m uncomfortable, or suspect there is stuff going on that just isn’t all right. With no real idea of what I’m walking into, I have both worst-case and best-case scenario expectations.
I arrive at Hope House. It looks fairly normal. A house typical for Bristol with its big Victorian bay windows and contrasting stone around the doors and the windows. Usually these houses are divided into flats but as the howling Siberian gale helps me up the steps to the door I can only see one doorbell.
There’s certainly nothing from the outside that screams twenty-first-century bordello. I close my eyes and hit the bell.
‘Hello,’ a friendly enough voice says through the intercom.
‘Hi, this is Belle, I’ve come for the trial.’ And then I add hurriedly, ‘The cleaning trial.’
This is going to be fine. This is a good job for me as it means that the rest of my day is free for job-hunting and dream-chasing and two hours every day is £140 a week, which is my rent just about met.
I push the door open and walk through the hall. So far so good.
‘Come on through.’ I follow the voice and push open the door. There’s a very nice living room – bookshelves line the walls, there’s a big screen in the corner and a drinks trolley that would not look out of place in a country house hotel. There are two sofas and on one is a large woman, a grin taking up most of her face. This is not what I had imagined.
‘Come in, come in, you are early, this is good. Look at you, so skinny. I’m Dorothy and you’re Belle, eh?’ Dorothy looks as if she runs a Sunday school not a Community Collective for Female Sexual Safety, Welfare and Empowerment, which is how she described Hope House to me on the phone yesterday. I nod in agreement and she continues. ‘Let me show you around and you can get started. We have everything you need, all the sprays, lots of gloves. I like to run a clean house which is why I need you here every day. The girls like to come to work and have it smelling good, you get me?’
‘I do.’ I nod. I may not be great at keeping my flat tidy but I do have a weakness for the smell of bleach. Somehow it makes the whole world right – ditto Dettol, Germolene and creosote. ‘If your girls want clean, they shall have it.’ I smile, channelling the love child of Doris Day and Mary Poppins. If I had a wand I would wave it.
She nods, slowly and about seven times, before leading me through to a cupboard under the stairs. A Hoover, a mop and bucket – four mops actually, each a different kind – neatly piled dusters and cloths, and every cleaning spray on the market stack the shelves. Mrs Hinch would be catatonic with joy.
‘Green for the bathroom, pink for the bedrooms, blue for the loos and yellow for the kitchen. At this time of the day, things should be nice and quiet, so you can do a good clean of everything. I want it spanking,’ she says this with no hint of irony and I battle to keep a straight face as she proceeds to show me around the bedrooms, every single one nicer than any room I have ever had. ‘We take online bookings and run a 24/7 operation so if a room has a red light on outside, please do not go in. Come back and do it when it is green again.’ I clock the discreet panel next to the door, point at it to confirm I know what she means and nod my head. This is going to be fine. The light system means I’m unlikely to accidentally witness someone’s bobbing bottom.
‘Oh, and Fat Alan will be in the basement every morning. He likes to sleep here at night. But don’t worry about him, just go around him. He’ll be fully restrained and his mask means he will be able to hear but not see you if he’s awake, so he shouldn’t be a problem. If he makes a noise just tap him with your feather duster and he’ll settle down and wait for Ariana, our BDSM expert, to come in. Okay?’
I’d cleaned the house from top to bottom, gingerly flicking Fat Alan with a feather duster as directed – he seemed to like it and very politely said a muffled thank you before settling back down – and I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he had a security guard’s uniform folded neatly in the corner of the room, complete with his Dalton’s swipe card on top. Did he not go home at all? I felt a little sorry for him.
Job One seemed to be in the bag. In fact, my trial shift this morning had been the most successful part of my day. I then visited two schools and I’m now on my final school stop of the day – the primary school around the corner from me. In the two secondary schools I started with, I had been diligently led in to see their headteachers. The first one listened to me for a couple of minutes before cutting me off, explaining I had picked the worst time of year to
be coming in and that they didn’t really have the budget for that sort of thing. When I countered that I was offering a free session in return for testimonials, she merely smiled, her attention back on some papers on her desk, and waved me out of her office.
The second Head had been much friendlier, although to get in I had to pass through metal detectors, and trek down corridors full of laughing, shouting children, past toilets that reeked of smoke. It was bedlam. If I got invited back I’d be rocking up in head-to-toe Kevlar.
He sounded interested, although, to be honest, it could have just been desperation – I never can tell the difference, ask Luisa – and said he was keen but it would have to go through the Head of English who was on a course. However, before we could arrange anything more concrete his secretary came racing through screeching that there had been ‘another incident’. His face went green, and muttering apologies he shot out from behind his desk and raced out of the office. For the first time in my life, I questioned just how dedicated I was to Shakespeare.
This primary school though is lovely: everything is brightly coloured and scenes of winter and Christmas fill all the walls. The sounds of the children feel right – not as frenetic as the previous school. I like it here. However, whether the headteacher will see much need for Shakespeare is another matter. At least the secretary had sounded positive yesterday on the phone when I had called.
It was Jamal’s rejection that had spurred me on yesterday, turning today into a crazed maelstrom of trial followed by interview, followed by interview followed by trial. It had reinvigorated me into realising, after twenty-four hours of blissful daydreaming about being funded, that no one was going to get this project off the ground if it wasn’t me. So, I admitted I could no longer hide behind my computer mewling that the project wasn’t finished and I called around to schools in the area.
I knew the run-up to Christmas was poor timing, but I also knew if I didn’t do something immediately my self-esteem was going to take such a battering that I’d curl up for a bit and not take any next steps for a few months.
I take a deep breath as the school secretary waves me through to the headteacher’s office with a smile.
‘Hello, come in. Nice to meet you.’
‘Ah, Mr Latham, thank you for seeing me.’
No one had mentioned Mr Latham is a dish. Somehow, I manage to articulate a sentence. The parents must be hurling themselves, panting, at the school railings. No wonder the school looks immaculate, they probably have mothers from other schools volunteering here. I imagine the PTA coffers are overflowing. They’d only have to auction him off for ‘an evening with…’ at the school fayre and that would be three minibuses bought.
He’s like Orlando Bloom – you know, as he got older and all hot – with that flicker of naughtiness in his eye. I sit down in my chair, try to breathe evenly and use my most graceful posture, the one that is second nature to my mother and that I have never, ever felt the desire to emulate before.
‘Absolute pleasure, how can I help? You mentioned something about offering workshops for the children?’
‘Yes, yes, exactly that. I have developed a package for primary school children introducing them to Shakespeare at a young age to familiarise them with the language and story to help them access it both now and as they go through the school system…’ And I’m off.
Twenty minutes later, I am panting a bit myself. Although not with desire, merely because I’d got a little over-excited discussing why I thought it was important that children were familiarised with a long-dead Elizabethan playwright.
‘You are certainly passionate about your subject area.’ Mr Latham smiles.
‘I am.’
‘And I would love to have you.’
‘I would love that.’ I wink.
Mr Latham smiles again. I can’t decode it.
I had winked!
What the actual hell did I think I was doing? Way to go, Belle. Is my self-sabotage now at such a high level it has crossed from merely making shitty decisions in my personal life into making them in my potential professional one as well? Why, why, why would I mess up with the first person I have sat in front of who is interested in what I have to say and can kickstart me? I feel myself sliding down in the chair.
‘Unfortunately, Belle – I can call you Belle, can’t I?’ I nod but fail to smile or make eye contact, my shame still washing over me in a tsunami. ‘The run-up to Christmas is insane but if you have a free spot in um…’ He pulls up his diary on his laptop. I sit up straighter. This is it, this is a booking. ‘…May of next year, we’d love to have you in then.’
‘Oh my goodness, isn’t this so pretty?’ A woman next to the display I am close to holds a bauble aloft. ‘It reminds me of how my daughter decorates her tree.’
I’m on my second job trial of the day and this customer looks like a mum, or at least how I always picture a mum should be. You know, like how grandmas are always supposed to resemble Mrs Claus, a little tubby, carefully styled but dated hair and a pair of pince-nez. This woman looks like she could knock up scones whilst bathing a grazed knee and still play Monopoly with a spare hand. Mothering 101.
‘They’re one of my absolute favourites,’ I agree. ‘I love how the different glasses all fuse into one another, and that colour, it’s ice sprites, and snow fairies, winter balls in the ice palace. Magical.’
‘Oh, she’ll love this. It is all those things.’
‘Isn’t it lovely? It’s so delicate. I think it goes beautifully with this one as well.’ I pull up another bauble, this one in the same colour scheme of icy blues and greens but with little feather details on the inside of the glass, tiny, as if Jack Frost himself lived inside and had very lightly blown upon it.
‘You’re so right. She’s going to love them.’ She takes four of each – they aren’t cheap either – and I’m shot through with a thrill I never had when I sold coffee or shoes or a sausage roll or two in that ill-fated month in Greggs. Mind you, the less said about that the better.
This is turning out to be a whopper of a day, I have cleaned a den of iniquity – who would have ever thought I could have added that to my CV? – secured my first school booking and now I’m selling Christmas decorations in the best ever shop in the world and smashing it. At least I think I’m smashing it.
A friend of mine, Sarah, who had gifted me the Dickensian evening tickets, had to suddenly fly to Australia, her mother being in some kind of accident. She had a seasonal job at the Christmas bauble shop and knowing I was out of work and that she wouldn’t be back until at least January she pitched my name to her employers and called me to tell me to follow up with them. Which I did. On my super-industrious I-will-not-be-beaten-Monday.
And now I’m doing a couple of hours to see if I exude enough Christmas spirit to work two shifts a week in the most Christmassy shop ever.
I love it in here; it’s actually part of my Make-Rory-Love-Christmas plan. But it has to be done carefully – this can’t be pulled out the bag until he is practically converted and far more ready to enjoy the full Christmassy-ness this shop brings. It will have to be once all that nonsense about being scared of sparkling lights has been eradicated from his soul because this is sparkle and glitter and snow and Santa heavenliness all in one place. You can’t move for rows and rows of baubles and trees, all set out in colour-coordinated joy.
The store is madly busy, as it always is when the Bath Christmas market is on. Traffic swirls out of the city like worms on a rod. People queue for miles and as the market throngs, the majority of shoppers can’t fail to be pulled into this shop.
My customer seems content with her purchases and I help her carry the baubles over to the till. They’re so fine and so delicate it seems sacrilegious to put them in a basket, to risk them being knocked in the crush of customers. I catch the manager looking at me, is he pleased? Or does he want me back on the shop floor? Is he cross that I’m guiding this woman to the till instead of making her browse her way to pay? Arrgggh
hh.
I’m not going to risk making any positive assumptions. I head back into the throng, only stopping when I see that someone has put a red icicle on the tray of pale gold baubles. Savages. That wouldn’t do, oh no, and that blue one is meant to be all the way over the other side of the shop.
I can still feel the manager’s eyes on me so quickly swish them back to their correct place. I must stop fussing, I need to interact with someone and quick.
‘Excuse me…’ Oh, thank you, Christmas Fairy Godmother.
‘How can I help?’ I turn around to face my saviour with the perfect I-know-everything-about-baubles smile on.
‘I wondered what you knew about Christmases in days gone by. I’m looking for a traditional Christmas in my home this year, one with a historical bent, but these things are all so pretty it’s hard to focus.’
‘Oh, isn’t it. I know exactly what you mean.’ Thank you, CFG, I mutter up a prayer. ‘I think as tempting as these are, if we head over here you can see the more traditional decorations. Back in the Tudor times they would bring in all the evergreen from outside, the fir and the pine, the holly and the ivy, mistletoe. In fact, the first recorded decorated tree in England was in the fifteenth century but it wasn’t until the nineteenth century we adopted the German tradition of bringing the whole tree inside.’ The woman looks genuinely interested. ‘Up until the tree became commonplace most houses would have the kissing bough, a ball made from evergreens and mistletoe. I think if you go for a theme as green as possible and maybe don’t use tinsel or too many baubles, then you should be fine. These pinecones here, and maybe these mini green decorated trees, would be perfect. And if you had the time and wanted to, you could thread popcorn for your tree. I do that and it’s ever so soothing. Christmas movie on the TV, glass of wine and a bowl full of popcorn to thread. Although, of course we also have these pinecone garlands over here…’