19
Wednesday, 25 April 2012
David Barlow was on the doorstep when Stella arrived at Aldensley Road. She preferred clients to be out while she cleaned but, maybe because she was deep cleaning, today she did not mind. She would put off telling him she would not meet him until she had finished; she wanted to enjoy the shift. When David Barlow offered to carry in her brand-new room sanitizer, she let him.
‘Here are details of the pub I suggest, I’ve put in the post code so your navigation system can find it and my number should you have to cancel. I am crossing my fingers that you won’t have to.’
Stella took the note, in fact a sheet of Basildon Bond writing paper, the sort on which Suzie had made her write ‘thank you’ letters when she was little. This memory and the trouble that David Barlow had taken confounded her and she could not think how to reply.
‘I’m going out. I need to go to the cemetery, tend her grave.’ He lifted up a bunch of flowers from the hall table. ‘The place is yours.’ He looked about him, seemingly impressed by Stella’s equipment lined up in the hallway: the floor scrubber-drier, carpet cleaner and the Planet vacuum cleaner. He added, ‘Please clean absolutely everywhere. No stone unturned!’
‘Of course.’ Stella felt a stirring of excitement.
‘A fresh beginning.’ Barlow brandished his bouquet and, stooping down, hauled up a plastic tub from beneath the table. ‘No more delaying. I must do Jennifer proud.’
‘Creating Life from Glass’: the tub contained twenty kilos of ‘Festive Green Aggregate (Jade)’. Stella started to lift it, but it was too heavy.
‘Let me.’ David Barlow swung it up. ‘For the grave. Saves the time spent weeding.’
A great one for saving time. Stella vaguely thought weeding was good for grief. She was starting in the bathroom. She gathered up her equipment bag, which bulged with boxes of disposable gloves and aprons, antibiotic wipes and disinfectant scented with woodland pine to dissolve all grease and banish germs.
On the half-landing she noticed that the layout was the same as her dad’s house. Typical Victorian terrace with one door on the first landing, two on the second landing, the far one was probably Barlow’s bedroom, as at her dad’s house it had been his. Again she remembered the time she had gone to her dad’s house after his death. Stella shivered and gripped the disinfectant. She had no time for ghosts.
She knew from scoping the job that this bathroom, unlike Terry’s clinical white, was a mix of sickly colours like the orange Ford. No doubt it was the dead wife’s taste. Stella recoiled again at the scalloped suite, the shell shape echoed in the ‘sea-bed’ pattered shower curtain. Pink tiles offset custard yellow walls. Only the ceiling was white. Stella suspected Jennifer Barlow had ruled the roost. She did so from beyond the grave soon to be decorated with jade aggregate. He might regret his invitation to supper; it was too soon. Stella would leave a note letting him off the hook.
She wheeled in the floor scrubber and stopped. On her last visit she had not noticed the coved flooring. A mandatory feature in hospitals and other hygienic environments, she had never seen it in a house. She considered David’s pristine appearance, his specific efficiency; the coving would have been his idea. He was serious about hygiene.
So was Stella. She set to work.
The next two hours passed blissfully. She tackled the tiles, bleached grouting and scrubbed in corners, crevices and grooves. She washed the walls and the ceiling and ran alcohol wipes down cords for shower, the light and the roller blind. This she dismantled to clean at sluice temperature on her own machine along with the shower curtain. She boiled kettle upon kettle of water, suspecting the tank of dead birds. There was little dirt. Stella began to suppose she was not the first to deep clean here. This was disquieting; if she was liable to jealousy it focused on those who had cleaned before her.
Had she been one to reflect, Stella would have agreed with Jack Harmon that the measurement of time was necessary only for punctuality and invoicing. Otherwise it got in the way. The afternoon shift was drawing to a close, but she didn’t want to stop.
Stella’s previous deep-cleaning client, Mrs Ramsay, had made her clean under the bath and in other places no one saw. David Barlow hadn’t specifically requested she include this in the itinerary. Yet she would. Stella unscrewed the bath panel and slid it out. Here at last was dirt. The panel was streaked with cobwebs and furred with muck. She washed it over the bath. Soon water in the bath was grey; she let it out, pinched out strings of cobwebs clogging the plughole and tossed them into her rubbish bag. She switched on her torch and turned her attention to the cavity under the bath. Usually rational, Stella had been affected by Mrs Ramsay’s fervid imagination and had dreaded discovering an animal, putrid and rotting, or worse, a human corpse. Now she banished the possibility from her mind.
She saw something. Her heart pounded.
Her fingers grappled with a stiff mound and she was grateful for the latex protection. She found purchase and hauled it out. It was a man’s jacket. She laid it on top of the bath panel. The garment had been folded as if for sale in a shop, the sleeves crossed over the chest. Stella shivered; the jacket’s pose and its rictus-like state did make her think of a dead person.
The fust of years pervaded the room. She gave several dog-like sniffs – her sense of smell was acute – and detected a faint suggestion of hair oil. Gingerly she unfolded the jacket. It had narrow lapels and the material could be seersucker. Engrained with grime, it was the grey of the bath water, but beneath the lapel the material was a pale blue. Stella didn’t know anything about the history of fashion, but Suzie had grumbled that when she met in him in 1965, Terry was a Mod, trim in his suit and two-tone winkle-pickers down the Hammersmith Palais on a Saturday night. In natty outfits and free with his wages, Terry had hoodwinked her because after they married the dancing stopped. Stella resisted reminding her mother that weeks after they married she was born. Nights at the Hammersmith Palais would have been a rare treat.
The jacket had been under the bath a long time. It wasn’t David Barlow’s; he would be careful with his clothes. It would belong to a plumber or someone. She slipped it into a bin bag and replaced the panel, leaving slack in the screws should he ask her to clean there again. She trundled in the ultra-violet sanitizer and programmed it to run for half an hour.
David Barlow had not returned by the time she had finished. Stella was irritated; how much work did a grave need? Mrs Barlow had only been dead a few months. Stella had opted to have Terry cremated. She had no grave to tend. Or to visit.
She hesitated over whether to pop the jacket into the dry cleaner’s by her office, but doubtless Barlow would throw it out. She left it out for him to decide.
She loaded up the van. No sign of his orange car. She would have liked him to see her work, to confirm it was what he wanted. She drove out of Aldensley Road. Driving down Shepherd’s Bush Road, Stella realized she hadn’t left a note cancelling dinner. Perhaps after all she would meet David Barlow.