by Claire Peate
So – far from becoming my childhood dream I had become, instead, another character from my distant past. Now I was the hungry caterpillar of cleaning. On Monday I filled seven bin bags with rubbish, but the top floor still looked messy. On Tuesday I vacuumed for three hours after a hard day at work, but the top floor still looked messy. On Wednesday I dusted every surface and filled another bag with clutter, but it still looked messy. On Thursday I moved the furniture, changed the linen, put up new curtains, moved the rug and blacked the fireplace, but it still looked messy. On Friday I assembled all my cleaning products on my kitchen table, rejected them all, and instead gave two fingers to cleaning, opened a bottle of wine and watched TV. And it still looked messy.
On Saturday I took firmer steps towards my cleaning regime.
“What I need,” I said to Mr Iqbal as we walked around his topsy-turvey Mini Mart, “is a cleaning product so powerful it carries a health warning.”
Mr Iqbal considered me for a moment. I knew he would have the solution to my grime. Mr Iqbal’s Mini Mart might look cluttered and small but it was the depository for every single item that I ever needed to live my life. And in my quest for a cleaner house it was my last port of call. I’d rejected the supermarket shelves full of environmentally friendly products which would softly cleanse dirt and gently target filth. They didn’t sound effective enough, given that my inner Havisham had allowed real honest grime to accumulate over the last few years. What the house needed was the indoor equivalent of what I’d done in the garden with my hatchet. The house needed a complete annihilation of the dust of history: cleaning on a mind-blowing scale.
“Come here, young Edna,” we walked past the yams and dented tins of chick peas and cheap toilet paper to a shelf of cleaning products. “Here you are.” Mr Iqbal picked up a bright violet bottle with day-glo pink lettering. FILTHY EXTERMINATOR.
“Looks good, Mr Iqbal.” I turned it over to read the instructions which were reassuringly badly translated: it boded well for an effective cleaning product as everything manufactured in the UK seemed too environmentally responsible and mild.
This our Filthy Exterminator range will slash through grime using MOST POTENT chemicals licensed for within household use! NOT LICENCED FOR USE IN FRANCE, GERMANY, USA, CANADA, BELGIUM, ISLE OF WIGHT. DO NOT MIX WITH OTHER CLEANING PRODUCT made China.
“Great – I’ll take it!” I said. “And the toilet cleaner and the window cleaner.”
“I get them from a friend in India,” Mr Iqbal said, gingerly taking the products off the shelf as if they were made of gelignite and walking them to the counter for me. “Now then young Edna,” he tapped the knackeredy stool beside the knackeredy counter. “Sit yourself down for a moment. I think there are a few things we need to read in the small print.” And then he put on two pairs of glasses: one stacked on the other which he’d explained to me before were just as effective as varifocals. I sat on the stool and prepared to be lectured at – in the nicest possible way. A quick trip to the Mini Mart was never a quick trip: invariably Mr Iqbal would want to discuss the purchases. Beth would never go to the Mini Mart, unfairly saying it was dirty and tatty, which was a shame because if she could have overcome her inner snob she would have enjoyed the experience. I did. But then sometimes it wasn’t the best choice of shop. I once made the mistake of trying to buy a pack of Marlboro Lights at 3am during a party and Mr Iqbal sat me down and explained exactly what they would do to my health with diagrams of cancerous lungs drawn on a paper bag.
“ ‘Warning’,” Mr Iqbal intoned, “ ‘Use of Filthy Exterminator range may cause breathing difficulties, blindness, deafness, hair loss, tooth decay—’”
“Tooth decay?”
Mr Iqbal held a hand out, “Be serious for once, young Edna. Now … ‘shaking, vomiting, palpitationing, dropsy, gout and the palsy.”
He put the bottle down on the counter and folded his arms.
“My house is quite dirty,” I admitted in a small voice.
He raised his twice-spectacled eyes at me. “I think what you’re buying might be dangerous. How about you buy chemical resistant gloves – here – and as my most charming customer I give you a BOGOF – you buy one pair and I give you a pair for free.” He slapped a second pair on the old counter.
“Thank you, Mr Iqbal!” I beamed, and then realised that it was probably just a line. “You put on the charm for all the ladies, don’t you?” I said.
“There are not many ladies in Brockley, Edna. But those that make it into Iqbal’s Mini Mart are assured of the very best service. Now then, can I interest you in fly paper? A mango? Basmati rice?”
Dressed in my oldest and least-loved clothes, and donning my chemical resistant gloves I started my cleaning by tackling the skirting boards and floorboards with FILTHY EXTERMINATOR X-TREME LAVENDER FLOR POLISH (for flors and dors) that stripped off a layer of varnish taking the boards back so they shone as brightly as the day the tree was felled by the Victorian woodsman. Except that now the wood was impregnated with the nose-singeing smell of Extreme Lavender and not its original pine. To disguise the smell, or at least compete with it, I arranged expensive vanilla potpourri in the newly black-leaded fireplace.
I stepped back and sniffed. It was a full on nasal assault.
When I recovered, spluttering and clinging on to the doorframe, I saw that at least the room looked clean and fresh and well worth the five hundred pounds I was going to be asking for it. I opened a window: after all I didn’t want to kill anyone and Mr Iqbal had been very concerned about safety.
There was a small bathroom to the right of the bedroom and I moved on to tackle that, throwing away my first pair of chemical resistant gloves, which had almost burnt through. This time I used the bottle of FILTHY EXTERMINATOR BATH ROOM SPARKELGEL (ensure room well ventillationed), until the tiles shone and the taps glistened and wisps of blue and orange smoke came up from the plug hole. I found a sea-blue rug in one of the stored boxes and put that on the floor, and unwrapped a bar of soap in the shape of a dolphin and put it by the wash basin.
I stood back and admired my week’s work, knocking back rosé straight from the bottle: there was no point messing around with dainty glasses when I was on my own.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the floor length mirror. Filthy. Sweaty. Dirty clothes and rubber gloves, drinking from the bottle.
Oh God.
The reflected me did not look good.
I really needed company. Had I left the interview too late? Would I be too far gone by next weekend? At least I had the secret society to look forward to in the meantime and get me used to being with people again.
Nine
Never before had a cat so plainly communicated the word GO.
I stared into Finley’s narrowed green eyes, ogled at what he was doing to me, and then grabbed my coat.
I would go.
For the past half hour I had been wandering the house, wringing my hands and talking my situation through with Finley: Should I go to the secret society thing, Fin? Eustace seems like a nice man – he is a nice man, Beth says he donates to charity and he has rosy cheeks and he’s really friendly and has a big house – but is guerrilla gardening legal? Should I get involved? Beth thinks I should and what she says usually goes – it must be OK if Beth says it is, she knows these things. But should I always do what Beth makes me do? Isn’t that the whole problem? That I’m too caught up in Beth and now she’s divorcing me – she’s not divorcing me is she Fin? – just moving on, should I do my own thing. What should I do Fin? Should I go or should I stay here with you? What do you think?
Really it had been quite freaky the way the cat had put the word go into my head.
The Finley effect only lasted as far as Beth’s flat on Manor Road. It looked so cosy and inviting that I had an almost uncontrollable urge to ring the bell: I could have a quick drink and a pep talk from Beth to calm my nerves before continuing on to the secret society meeting. No more hanging out with the slugs in her fir trees: now I
really needed her. And Beth would be OK about it. I wouldn’t be intruding…
I checked my watch. Dammit I was already five minutes late. There was no time for a quick drink and pep talk. I dragged myself past her flat and continued on to Lewisham High Road. By the time I’d reached the shabby Working Men’s Club all commitment to the cause had disappeared. I would much rather have gone back to Beth’s for a drink. Or home to the TV and a glass of wine. But then both of those options carried a heavy price: having to explain myself to Beth, or to the cat. It was probably better to summon up the courage to actually go into the grotty club house: after all how bad could it be? I’d actually enjoyed guerrilla gardening the skip.
The Working Men’s Club was a squat seventies building, covered in graffiti and – how ironic – weeds, with loops of razor wire and boarded windows that made it look derelict. It was not the sort of place I would have expected a man like Eustace Fox to choose as his secret society headquarters. It had a distinct lack of parapets and sash windows. What had the working men been thinking?
Had I got the venue wrong? Was there somewhere else, somewhere splendid, that I should have gone to instead? Dammit, had I been caught up in a Mesmer stare with the beautiful artist and not listened to where I should be going? I hung back from the dilapidated club house, loitering by the window of the South London Fried Chicken Parlour, pretending to read the menu (eight thighs in a special Deep-South-London Sauce) but surreptitiously watching the semi-derelict unlit building on the opposite side of the road.
I must have got the place wrong. I should go home. Or to Beth’s. This was ridiculous. I had been dreaming of adventure but standing on the Lewisham High Road, surrounded by the smell of greasy poultry, I was distinctly lacking in the Famous Five spirit. There was surely no adventure to be had here.
A few fried-chicken minutes passed as I floundered. And just as I was on the brink of turning on my heels an enormous BMW, something dark and sleek, pulled up in a screech of tyres. A tailored, coiffured woman sprang out, threw a pashmina around her shoulders and disappeared behind the filthy boundary wall of the Working Men’s Club. In an instant the car had executed a swift U-turn to avoid Lewisham town centre and sped back in the direction of Brockley.
Oh.
Maybe I had got the right place. There had been someone who was Eustace Fox’s sort. And if the pashmina woman could go into that filthy derelict building, surely so could I?
I made my way across the road and into clean, chicken-free air. Taking a deep breath I headed through the gate and followed a walkway running the length of the grimy wall, the gloom deepening as I left the orange glow of the street lights. It looked as derelict from the side as it was from the road: the windows were boarded and those that weren’t boarded were blackened with filth. It was silent, too, the only sound was my breath which was coming in nervous fluttery gasps.
Where was pashmina lady? What had happened to her?
A few steps further and I came to a boarded door. It was the end of the path. In the dark I could just make out that it was slightly ajar, the faintest crack of light coming from the side. With shaky hands I pushed and it creaked heavily, opening inwards and into a lit room. I walked in to a narrow cloakroom lined in filthy 1970s hessian wallpaper and there, in the centre, lit by a flickering strip-light, was Peter Shaw, Head of Planning: affability itself in a pink cashmere turtleneck and chinos. The contrast between his clean-shaven M&Sness and the dilapidation around him was bizarre. He put down the copy of the Telegraph he’d been reading and took a step towards me.
“Nice to see you again, Edda.”
“Hi,” I managed, completely weirded out, as Amanda might put it, to be seeing a work colleague – of sorts – in a place like this. It was like seeing Prince Charles in head-to-toe Spandex throwing shapes on a Shoreditch dancefloor.
“Just follow the stairs behind you and head down to the dungeons,” Peter said.
“The dungeons?”
“The basement!” he laughed. “No need to fret. Just the basement.”
“Great. Thanks.” Comedian.
Now I had no alternative but to look lively and head down the filthy, dark staircase in the knowledge that if the ground-level was revolting surely the basement would be even worse. What sort of secret society had a place like this as their headquarters? What the hell was I doing?
Thinking inner fire and handsome artist I gripped the stair rail with a clammy hand. What was waiting for me at the bottom? Did I really have to be doing this? Weren’t there other less extraordinary ways in which I could fill the Beth-shaped void in my life? Like Pilates? Religion? Baking cupcakes?
The vision of Milk Tray man helped me on my path. Guy would be at the meeting in a room at the bottom of these steps…
Five steps down and I was deep in an impenetrable gloom. And something unnerving was happening. The thick wooden rail beneath my hands had given way to a thinner handrail that was cool and glass-like to the touch. The staircase, too, had changed: the shallow metal-edged steps at the top of the flight were now steeper and sounded wooden underfoot. A few steps further into the dark and I felt the staircase turn and, following a faint glow of a light somewhere ahead I began to pick out the way. In this new, lesser gloom, I could make out that the staircase had changed – from the chunky seventies one I’d started out on to a grand, old, wooden staircase with wrought iron balustrade. With every step the passageway widened until I reached enormous double doors. From behind them came the unmistakeable thrum of conversation. Grasping a crystal doorknob in each hand I took a deep breath and pushed open the great doors.
A golden brightness dazzled me. Still gripping the door knobs I squinted into what was a vast jewel-like ballroom. Overhead great chandeliers glittered and sparkled, reflected in floor to ceiling gilt mirrors. The room was cavernous. And it was in no way whatsoever connected with the Working Men’s Club above it.
“Oh, I do so love it,” Eustace Fox was before me, ruddy faced and loudly dressed, “When someone joins us for the first time!” He placed a martini in my hand. “My dear, magnificent isn’t it? Do you like our Working Men’s Club?”
“I… ”
“You are inside,” he put an arm around me and propelled me into the middle of the room, “the remains of Shardlow Hall, Brockley’s most secret gem. German bombs took out the Hall itself but the basement ballroom remained. So – welcome to what used to be a store room for the working man’s weak beer and pork scratchings.”
“And now we keep our beer and scratchings upstairs and we socialise downstairs. Eust you’ve got it all wrong.”
I instantly recognised the chocolate voice of Guy Newhouse and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. He had come over, come right over, and was standing so close to me that I could feel his arm against my arm. There was every chance my inner fire would actually catch and I was going to burn down to the ground.
“I don’t believe we’ve got it wrong for an instant, Guy,” Eustace said. “Edda, let me introduce you to our group.”
At the far end of the ballroom everyone had assembled with drinks. Some of the faces I recognised from the brief time I’d spent at the party. The cool dreadlocked owner of the V-2 café was lounging against the bar with a beer: Hey there Edda! How’re you doing? and his hippy dreadlocked wife, Anja. Hey there! There were about twenty others, including über-cool art students from Goldsmiths: Yah, hi; a man called Jake, who looked as though he were built entirely of muscle Ngh; an identically dressed couple called Roger and Bronwen: Hey/Hi and many others whose names became a blur. I smiled and answered their polite questions and sipped my martini and thought, Thank God I didn’t do the Havisham thing this evening. This place was awesome. Beth was going to be so jealous…
“Now then,” Eustace said, taking prime position along a 1920s mirrored bar, “let me show our new recruit a little of what we do.” And he pulled out a copy of the Lewisham Echo from a blue leather Mulberry satchel. “If you wouldn’t mind, Edda, please read it out.�
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I settled onto my barstool and spread the paper out in front of me.
“It’s A-Oaky on the A2,” I began.
“Now now!” Eustace held his hand up as the company groaned. “Let the poor girl continue. Have some compassion.”
I continued, red-faced with embarrassment: it hadn’t been my plan to be any sort of centre of attention. “Last night twenty-eight substantially sized oak saplings appeared, planted at regular intervals along the verges of the A2, one of the most blighted highways in South London.”
“Media bastards,” muttered a severe-looking man from the back, “calling our stretch of the A2 blighted! The stupid journo’s obviously never seen the Seven Sisters Road.”
“Hey don’t diss the journalists,” a tall man from the back of the group said quite sternly. “Not all of us are as bad as you think.”
“Continue Edda, if you will.” Eustace said, laying a placating hand on the angry man’s shoulders. I bent down to the article again.
“The trees, some measuring up to two metres in height, were planted in the Brockley area and are believed to be the work of guerrilla gardeners known to operate in the area, but whose identity is kept a close secret. ‘We applaud the London ethic of taking responsibility and acting for the good of the environment,’ the London Mayor said, during a visit to the borough of Lewisham, ‘it just shows that a few people with the right ideas can work wonders.’ Since coming into office the Mayor has instigated the planting of an urban forest consisting of more than two hundred trees, although as many as one in three have been vandalised and—”
“That highlights an important fact!” Eustace cut in. “Thank you for reading, Edda, but I must say that we have to be vigilant! There are those who create and nurture, like ourselves, and there are those who would destroy it all. God help them and their worthless, petty lives.”
