My Cleaner Page 7

  When Mary goes upstairs with plates for her and Justin, they are piled so high they hardly fit on the tray.

  ‘Are you sure that Justin is going to eat that?’

  ‘Do not worry, Miss Vanessa. It is good for him. By the way, Miss Henman, excuse me,’ she says, sweetly. ‘I am leaving the dishes for you to wash.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ gobbles Vanessa, her mouth choked with fibre, but Mary is gone.

  Vanessa, of course, has no intention of doing it. She goes to bed, and lies there for hours, listening to the sound of her borborygmus. Then she sleeps heavily, only to wake at three am to the sound of voices. People laughing, or quarrelling. It must be in the street. She sleeps again.

  In the morning, someone is in the bathroom. Vanessa has an urgent need. She doesn’t want to trek to the downstairs loo while she is still in her short ‘Pachamama’ t-shirt. She stands outside fretfully for several minutes, listening to someone, who must be Mary, talking to herself and farting like a tuba. Then there is the sound of the loo roll rattling furiously upon its holder. Vanessa goes tactfully back to her bedroom so Mary does not find her there. After a few more minutes, tact is impossible. She emerges, crab-wise, but the door’s shut again. Justin is inside, grunting like a baby. Vanessa limps furiously back to her room. By the time she gets in, the bathroom smells like a midden. This will become her morning routine.

  And in the kitchen, the washing-up is still there. The work-tops are clean, but the washing-up, two lots of it, covers the draining-board, and overflows on to the dark oak table. Vanessa is incapable of leaving it. She puts on the radio, and stacks the machine.

  After all, at least she has a dish-washer. Whereas Mary had probably never even seen one.

  More and more exotic foodstuffs arrive. The kitchen starts to feel like a harvest festival. Many of the newcomers are unfamiliar. The bananas are not over-ripe, Mary says, indeed they aren’t bananas, they are matooke. Whatever that may be, thinks Vanessa. And there are big dry nuts with pink papery skin. Once Vanessa finds an insect she has never seen before, a weevilish thing with a fat hairy body, and she squashes it savagely, with a phone-book, because she is afraid of it. The compost bin is always full.

  ‘And where do you buy all this?’ asks Vanessa. ‘Surely most of this food is African?’ And so is my kitchen now, she thinks, a little sourly; it always seems hot, and swirling with steam.

  ‘But London is full of African things,’ Mary answers. ‘London is full of Africans’.

  The house is much louder than it was before. Mary Tendo is not a light woman. She does not run upstairs, as Vanessa does, fleet as a bird on small stiff legs, or pad like Justin, who never puts his shoes on, and likes to be silent, so his mother does not notice him. Mary has a stately, womanly walk that Vanessa starts to find irritating. How does she have time to walk so slowly? Why is she always walking about, or clashing spoons in the kitchen, or closing doors loudly? Why does Mary have to sing hymns as she cooks?

  ‘Where is the serving dish?’ Mary asks. ‘I am cooking pork ribs with cassava and cabbage and I can only find one serving dish.’

  ‘Is it in the cupboard?’ Vanessa asks, guiltily. She knows she has not emptied the dish-washer.

  ‘I do not think so, Miss Vanessa. Can you please find me the serving dish?’

  Grumpy, Vanessa opens the dish-washer, to find she has forgotten to switch it on. She extracts the dish and does it by hand. Gives it to Mary without a word, and Mary accepts it with a curt nod.

  ‘Dinner will be ready in half an hour.’ Mary’s words seem innocent enough, but Vanessa knows she has been dismissed.

  Fifi rings, at nine, some time after they have eaten. Vanessa is lying on the floor of her study, trying to do her usual curls and crunches, but her stomach is still busy digesting the food, and complains as she doggedly lifts and straightens. She is glad to be interrupted by the phone, but a little disappointed that it is Fifi. Part of her expects her cousin to ring, her cousin in the village, her long-lost family.

  Fifi wants to know how things are going with Mary. ‘You said she had barely showed her face.’

  ‘Well that’s changed completely. She’s always in the kitchen.’

  ‘That’s brilliant. You see, I told you not to worry.’

  ‘Almost too much, as a matter of fact. In some ways, the house doesn’t feel my own. In fact – ’

  ‘Well you can’t have it both ways, can you? With live-in servants, you can’t be private.’

  Vanessa doesn’t like being told by Fifi. She resolves not to show weakness again. ‘Mary is a marvellous cook,’ she says. ‘Terribly healthy. Lots of vegetables.’

  ‘Oh by the way, that reminds me,’ says Fifi. ‘Mimi has been nibbling my spider-plant. They’re supposed to be terribly good for cats. But isn’t that sweet? Do you think she knows?’

  ‘I was trying to do my stomach crunches,’ Vanessa interrupts her, irritably.

  ‘Oh fine, fine, I was just concerned. Last time you sounded all over the place. So basically now you’re happy?’

  ‘Couldn’t be happier,’ Vanessa lies.

  16

  Next morning the phone rings at seven am. A man with a foreign voice is shouting.

  ‘Wrong number,’ Vanessa says, half-asleep.

  He seems to be shouting, ‘Merry Christmas’.

  ‘This is a wrong number!’ she shouts back, and crashes the phone back on to its cradle. She is teaching today: she needs her sleep.

  Two minutes later, the phone rings again. She snatches it up, and bellows ‘Yes?’

  This time the voice is speaking very slowly, as if to a dangerous idiot. ‘Mary Tendo please. I am phonin’ from Uganda. This is her house? I must speak to Mary Tendo.’

  Vanessa goes to the door, her eyes still half-closed, and bellows ‘MARY!’ at full volume. ‘Telephone! From Africa!’ Mary seems to appear from the wrong direction, from Justin’s bedroom rather than her own, and brushes past her without a word, sits down on her bed, and takes possession of the phone, leaning back on Vanessa’s pillows, smiling and swinging her feet up cheerily.

  After three or four minutes, which feels like an hour to Vanessa, standing there frowning and rubbing her eyes, Mary Tendo rings off, and says, ‘Thank you, Miss Vanessa.’

  ‘It was very early,’ says Vanessa, meaningfully.

  ‘It is all right, Miss Vanessa, do not worry. I was already awake, relaxing.’

  ‘I hope the phone-call was important. Is somebody ill? Has someone died?’ Vanessa is not at her best in the morning, but the edge of irony is lost on Mary.

  ‘Thank God, my friend is very well. This was my friend the accountant, Charles. One day you will meet him when he comes to London!’

  ‘Oh really.’ Vanessa’s voice contains a wealth of meaning, but Mary has already gone back to bed, smiling a broad and kindly smile. Vanessa cannot get to sleep again.

  17 MARY TENDO

  Three hundred and sixty-six pounds and fourteen pence. £366.14.

  I have been here three weeks and things are still going well. The money I have earned is growing like a mango pip dropped on the ground in the forest at home: by morning, there is a mango tree. Soon my life will be full of mangoes.

  It is true I have had a small financial setback. I bought myself a mobile phone, for £49.99. It was one of the cheapest, pay as you go, but still it looked fine, small and neat and shiny, and the salesgirl described it as a ‘clamshell model’. Of course it seemed like a good investment, so I could contact old friends in London, and also call up Charles, in Uganda. I bought it in Harlesden and on the bus home I sat listening to the ringing tones. Several seemed nice, I couldn’t quite decide between ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Ave Maria’, so I played them over and over again until a man with a miserable face and glasses leaned over from the seat behind, tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to stop. ‘I’ve got a sodding headache already,’ he said. ‘One thing I don’t need is “Amazing Grace”.’ His face was very red, his breath smelled of
wine and there was something sticky on the lens of his glasses. So I stopped playing my ring-tones, but scrolled on down and was pleased to find they had ‘When the Saints’. I forgot about the drunkard and started to play it, but suddenly he snatched the phone from my hand. ‘This is a British bus and you can’t do that.’ ‘Give it back!’ I shouted. ‘Not till you get off.’ ‘I am getting off now.’ ‘I don’t believe you.’ I threatened him a little with Vanessa’s umbrella, because we know how to deal with thieves in Uganda, and he said ‘Mother of Jesus’ and gave the phone back. I was playing ‘When the Saints’ as I walked back home, only as soon as I got in, Vanessa came and asked, ‘Did you happen to borrow my umbrella, Mary?’ While I was busy pretending to look for it (I eventually ‘found’ it by the bookshelves in her bedroom), I somehow managed to lose my phone. Every so often, I search for it. In the meantime, I use Vanessa’s phone, which was awkward on the morning my kabito rang. She stood rudely by the bed, and would not go away. What if we had wanted to sweet-talk each other?

  I am carrying on my detective work, all the while helping Justin get better. And I myself am quite well again, though a little heavier from eating so much. Now we all defecate every morning in order, including Miss Vanessa, although she would not like me to say so. I make these Londoners shit like Ugandans!

  I am earning my money by shopping and cooking. It seems like easy work to me, but I know Miss Vanessa thinks cooking is hard. On my first week here she was doing the cooking and sighing and swearing as she did it. She left the kitchen looking red and exhausted, like a muzungu who has been in the sun, though all she had done was take food out of packets. I hope she is glad I have taken over.

  But sometimes she comes and interrupts me and tries to talk about Uganda. She is very proud she has been to Uganda. She went last year, and she stayed for three weeks. She claims she was teaching Ugandan students to write. The British Government sent her there, together with some other British teachers, though I cannot imagine why they chose Vanessa. They stayed in an American hotel, with air conditioning and no mosquitoes. She wants to talk to me about Kampala, but the things she has seen seem ordinary to me. She is very excited by the smelly old storks which drop white birdshit all over the city. We do not like those ugly karoli. Ugandans think they are common, and dirty.

  She also pretends to like the taxis. She calls them matatus, a Kenyan word. I tell her that we just call them ‘taxis’, even if they carry twenty people, but she thinks I do not understand. ‘Oh no, I didn’t go everywhere by taxi. I wanted to live like the natives, you know. I wanted to do everything like you.’

  I pretend to sneeze, and go on with my cooking.

  But soon she will be back again. This time she wants to talk about western Uganda.

  The guests of the Nile Imperial all went there, and talked non-stop about western Uganda. They told the staff, very proud, at breakfast, ‘Tomorrow, you know, I’m going to the west. I’ve heard it’s very beautiful, western Uganda.’

  ‘Oh yes, Madam. Very beautiful’.

  ‘I am excited. First time on safari.’

  ‘Oh yes, Madam. Enjoy your safari.’

  Then some of them would ask us, ‘Have you been there recently?’

  And we always said, ‘No, Madam. Enjoy your safari.’

  Kampalan people do not go on safari. Only the bazungu go on safari. I talked about this to my friend the accountant.

  ‘Charles, why do we not know our own country? I too would like to go to western Uganda.’

  My kabito had never thought about it. ‘Mary, why do you want to go there? There were enough animals in my village. The bazungu like animals more than people. They even like lions and crocodiles.’

  But I am stubborn and do not agree. For a start, I myself like animals. (Jamie and I, we both liked animals. When I was a child, I grew very fond of goats, because I liked the boy who was the goatherd, and I liked Jamie’s pets, even the mangy hamster, and I took him to London Zoo on Saturdays.) I told Charles, I want to see my country. It is our country; it does not belong to them, these old bazungu in their four-wheel drives, wearing pale brown clothes all covered in pockets, which makes them look like ancient soldiers hung about with battle-kit, with cine-cameras and walking-sticks and water bottles and binoculars. They go on safari with polite black drivers. Without the drivers they would be too frightened (yet they think they own them: they always say ‘my driver’, ‘Could you go and see if my driver is waiting?’).

  One day I will have money, and time for a holiday. Most Ugandans do not have holidays. And then I too will go on safari.

  But until I have been, I will not talk about it. The lion who roars too much catches no game. I will not discuss it with Miss Vanessa. She thinks she will show me she loves my country; she believes she will please me with all this ‘knowledge’. But why should she lecture me on western Uganda when most Ugandans have never been there?

  She gabbles on, but I say nothing. I make a loud noise with the spoon in the saucepans. After a bit, Miss Vanessa gives up. It is not her fault. She is ignorant.

  18 VANESSA HENMAN

  Oh shit oh shit it has all gone wrong. Just when everything seemed so hopeful. That is the thing, they’re unpredictable. Even though I have known Mary for years. You never really know what they’re thinking. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

  It all began with the problem with the mornings. Except for the days when Mary goes shopping, she really is quite hopeless in the mornings. She rolls down, yawning, around eleven, when I have already been working for hours. My study is next door to the kitchen, and I have tended to stay out of her way, because it is annoying to find her there, still in her slip-slops and a thin cotton nightgown through which you can see too much of her body. She really has the most enormous breasts. What if Justin should walk in and see her? She is hardly setting him a good example.

  And then today I smelled something. I am sure I smelled cigarette smoke in the kitchen. I am allergic to it, which makes me notice. I am mildly allergic to a number of things, though Tigger always laughed at me when I said so. But even a hint of smoke, and I know. It is not that I blamed Mary Tendo at all. I am sensitive, I have been to Kampala. I suppose nearly all Ugandans smoke. Bad things come from the west, and they jump at them, because they do not realise the dangers. It’s a cultural thing. One understands it. One tries to be culturally aware.

  When I said this to Mary, she became sulky. She did not deny that she had been smoking, but she pretended it was rare in Uganda. I felt sorry for her, and did not argue. But Mary had better not smoke in my house.

  Moreover, the bitch should get up in the morning.

  No, I’m not angry. I did briefly lose my temper when Mary said something inflammatory, but now I am completely calm. This whole disaster is not of my making.

  I suppose I felt she was taking advantage. Taking advantage of our distress.

  It wasn’t as if I rushed into anything. I hadn’t been able to sleep last night: too many comings and goings on the landing.

  What were they doing all night long? Why did nobody but me get up in the morning? I was unable to concentrate on my marking, so I sat in the kitchen and waited for her, and that was when I caught it, that faint smell of burning.

  By the time she came down, I was a little cross. I think I had been looking at the house with fresh eyes. Without my noticing, it had got filthy. The kitchen was cluttered with monstrous vegetables. That dirty black cooking pot of Tigger’s was always sitting on the Aga. The rest of the house was even worse. No one had bothered to dust or vacuum. (We do have a Dyson. It’s not exactly hard.) The lavatory bowl, which is always in use, has developed brown stains, and the shower is blocked. The dust on the window-sills is thick as fur.

  She shambled in around a quarter past eleven, yawning and smiling, and I had to say something.

  ‘Mary Tendo, we must have a talk.’

  ‘Yes, Vanessa.’ (I distinctly remember I had not asked her to call me Vanessa, she just suddenly did it, as bold as brass.)
‘But it is not Saturday today.’

  Saturday is the day she gets paid. I felt all she cared about was the money. She was only thinking about herself. I did not invite her here to be selfish.

  ‘Mary, do you know what time it is?’

  She shrugged. ‘There is a clock in the kitchen, Vanessa.’ She was smiling a lot, but I think she was nervous.

  ‘Somebody has been smoking here.’

  She sniffed, disdainfully, then laughed a little. ‘Perhaps Mr Justin has been smoking.’

  ‘I know my son. He never smokes.’

  She looked at the ground, as if I didn’t know him.

  I couldn’t put up with it any more. ‘Mary why do you never get up in the morning?’

  ‘Because I am tired,’ she said, rather sulky. Her eyes had gone dead, in a way I remembered from a few little quarrels when she worked here before. It made it impossible to know what she was thinking.

  So she was tired. But I was tired, I was tired from working and not really sleeping because of the noises I heard on the landing!

  ‘Mary, why are you tired? You are not really working. I hoped you would do your bit with the cleaning. This is a big house. There is a lot to do. I am obviously very busy at the college. I cannot do everything here as well.’

  ‘You did not ask me here to do the cleaning.’

  I saw she was going to be aggressive. ‘Mary, I am paying you very well. I brought you here to look after Justin, and obviously help in the house as well. And now you do nothing and pretend to be tired.’

  And then she looked at me, full in my face, and said something terrible I cannot remember, and I lost my temper – I regret I lost my temper, I hardly ever lose my temper, except with Justin, of course, and Tigger – and I am afraid I shouted at her, ‘How dare you say such disgusting things! You are my cleaner! You are just my cleaner!’

  And now Mary Tendo is upstairs, packing. It is all over.

  But what shall I tell Justin?