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 fromOrange Is the New Blackby 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.
