Chapter 2
‘We don’t normally employ other students to clean up after those living in our halls of residence.
’ The woman from Residential Services and Cleaning Services, who’d been assigned to meet us in the stairwell at Bodington Hall, looked both of us up and down through narrowed eyes.
‘Why aren’t the pair of you in lectures yourselves?
On a grant, aren’t you? Taxpayers’ hard-earned money?
And yet you’re not going to lectures? Are you sure you’re up for this? ’
‘Well, our bank accounts most certainly are, and we’re here,’ Fliss said cheerfully.
‘We did explain this to the woman yesterday – neither of us have lectures on Wednesday and Friday mornings. That’s two mornings we can clean for you.
And,’ she went on, ‘we’re not a bit afraid of hard work.
’ She glanced across at me. ‘I mean, how hard can it be?’
‘Students can be pretty disgusting creatures when it comes to clearing up after themselves.’ The woman – Yvonne, according to her name badge – sniffed.
‘The contract cleaners who normally come in are off, either with long-term sickness or just had enough and gone off to work at Asda. Can’t say I blame them.
The students are supposed to clean up after themselves up to a point but, if they don’t, we move the cleaners in and then bill those in the shared flats.
It’ll only be temporary work for the pair of you – I’m all set to interview, and hopefully set on, several new contract cleaners next week. ’
‘Oh well.’ I smiled. ‘We’ll do our best.’
‘And I just love cleaning,’ Fliss chirruped as Yvonne took a key from around her neck and unlocked a door in front of her. ‘I’ve a touch of something called OCD, you see,’ she added confidentially. ‘So, lead on, Macduff…’
‘Sorry?’ The woman turned and gave Fliss such a look, I wanted to laugh.
‘Your cleaning necessities,’ Yvonne now said, handing over a couple of Day-Glo orange tabards with the words Leeds University Contract Cleaners emblazoned on both the front and back in black lettering.
I had a sudden image of offenders in the US wearing their orange boiler suits when ordered to do Community Payback.
‘Now, you’ll see in every kitchen a list explaining who is responsible for what: you know’ – and here, Yvonne air-mimed the words – ‘“Know Your Cleaning Responsibilities”. Of course, they profess not to know them and that’s why we have to come in.
So,’ she went on, handing over mop and bucket, dustpan and brush, toilet rolls, bleach and a rather cute red vacuum cleaner, apparently called Henry, ‘you’ll need this lot.
And don’t, for heaven’s sake, mix the bleach with toilet cleaner.
If you do, you’ll produce a toxic gas which will possibly blow the toilet user sky high as well as potentially wiping out the UK’s future doctors, dentists and lawyers. ’
‘D’you get the feeling she doesn’t like students?’ I whispered as we dragged the cleaning paraphernalia up to the first of the twenty shared apartments.
‘Do not venture into the students’ actual bedrooms.’ Yvonne appeared to shudder at the very thought.
‘Not only do you not know who or… or… what they might have in their bedroom with them, but obviously there’s personal things – some expensive speakers and Hi-Fi paraphernalia – in there and you don’t want to be accused of stealing anything when said student has actually lost it while making his way home full of lager from the union bar… ’
‘They lose their speakers on the way home from the pub?’ I giggled in an undertone to Fliss.
‘Yep,’ Fliss whispered back. ‘Students definitely not her bag.’
‘…so, I’m going to leave the pair of you in Flat 1. Please follow the instructions about bins, refuse sacks, how to clean the ovens, microwaves and fridges.’
‘Should we be checking the contents of the fridge?’ I asked, to show this woman I was a responsible cleaner and not just a second-year student wanting to make a fast buck. ‘You know, throw out anything that’s past its best?’
‘You’ll have a mutiny on your hands if you do,’ Yvonne said. ‘No, just clean the outside and inside of the fridges. I’ll come back in half an hour to see how you’re getting on and whether you’re doing it right.’
‘Right.’ Fliss and I spoke as one, and Yvonne pointed at a laminated list of instructions stuck to the inside of the kitchen door with Blu Tack.
‘Just follow the instructions that this lot are supposed to follow but don’t. Idle, entitled bloody lot they are.’ Yvonne gave one final sniff of disdain and left without a backwards glance.
‘Right, come on,’ Fliss said, clicking her fingers at Henry Hoover as though he were a dog. ‘Let’s work together. Toilet or kitchen first?’
‘Definitely kitchen. Break ourselves in gently.’
‘Jesus, mother of God, pray for our souls!’ Fliss crossed herself, her full-on convent education obviously having her back recalling the liturgical terms she’d renounced on coming to Leeds and taking on board more than her fair share of both alcohol and sex.
I moved in front of Fliss, who appeared rooted to the spot, and stared. How could educated, and therefore presumably responsible, human beings live like this?
‘I’m not doing this,’ I said. ‘Sorry, Fliss. I’m not clearing up after blokes who think it’s someone else’s job to clean up after them.’
‘How do you know it’s blokes?’
‘No woman would put up with this,’ I said. ‘Our house can be bad enough at times,’ I went on, picturing the kitchen in the red terraced Victorian house Fliss and I shared with two other girls, ‘but we’d never ever leave it like this.’
‘Come on, let’s crack on.’ Fliss grinned weakly in my direction. ‘Just two days of this. That’s all we’ve signed up for. And we’ll have enough money to party at the weekend.’
I wrinkled my nose. There was a distinct smell of putrefaction coming from the open black bin bags no one had thought to take down to the bin area outside, a pinkish rivulet of bin juice seeping from one, spreading across the sticky cream floor covering.
The sink was overflowing with dirty dishes, welded together with dried cereal and tomato sauce, presumably from tinned spaghetti or baked beans.
Someone obviously had a thing for Pot Noodles because there were at least six pots, each containing varying amounts of the stuff.
Stacked up, almost artistically (maybe the students in this flat were on the Art and Design degree and this was a modern art installation?) was a veritable Leaning Tower of Pisa of pizza boxes.
‘Don’t,’ I almost shrieked as Fliss moved over to the fridge which was rumbling itself to a climax like a sexually overexcited walrus.
Too late. Fliss shut the fridge as quickly as she’d opened it. ‘You don’t want to go there,’ she said calmly. ‘Just don’t. Right,’ she went on, taking control. ‘Black bin bags. Let’s get that lot into these new bags and clear them out of the kitchen. Let the dog see the rabbit.’
‘Rats, I’d have thought. Or at least cockroaches.’
Well, I wasn’t my mum, Maggy’s, daughter for nothing and, always up for a challenge, I took my scarf from around my neck, tying it around my nose and mouth.
Fliss did the same with hers and, looking like a pair of bandits, we set to.
There is something cathartic about cleaning, particularly disgusting sites like this one.
My mum’s sister, my Aunty Sandra, would actually have relished getting stuck into this little lot.
She’d been cleaning half of Rothersley for years but once told me she was fed up of turning up for work at ‘posh folk’s houses’ in the beautiful and picturesque villages of Woolley and Cawthorne where, Sandra knew, the ladies that lunch had spent the last hour cleaning up in readiness for her arrival.
We spent the next hour clearing away the detritus left by our fellow students and imagining conversations I’d have with said students if I ever should come across one of these odious creatures.
They’d obviously come from homes where everything was done for them: either spoilt princesses or Mummy’s boys who’d never lifted a finger to make their own bed or empty the dishwasher.
‘You always called me a spoilt princess,’ Fliss said, lifting her scarf to respond as I aired my views about the inhabitants of this flat.
‘S’pose I did,’ I said. ‘I mean, you have come from a privileged background, Fliss. Boarding school, a pony, skiing in the Alps.’
‘Doesn’t mean to say I’m spoilt,’ Fliss interrupted stoutly. ‘And you’ve got a real family. That’s a privilege if ever I saw one.’
I looked across at her in surprise. ‘What do you mean? A real family?’
‘With a mum and dad still together; brothers and sisters.’
‘I’ve two brothers. No sisters. You know that. And you’ve got three brothers yourself.’
‘Half-brothers,’ Fliss corrected. ‘To two different mothers. And away at school or with their other families. Hardly ever see them,’ she added sadly.
‘You’ve a proper mum and dad,’ Fliss went on, ‘and you know where they are. I’ve absolutely no idea where either my mum or my dad is at the moment.
I was shunted off to boarding school – with those bloody nuns – when I was nine.
Nine for heaven’s sake. Matron was more of a mum to me than Tabitha. ’
‘Tabitha?’
‘My mum. She’s always told me to call her that. She likes to think we’re more like sisters; doesn’t want people to think she’s old enough to have a daughter at university.’
‘You’ve never said.’
‘No, well, you don’t, do you?’
Fliss looked crestfallen for a moment and then, replacing her scarf firmly around her mouth, moved to the sink and started washing the pile of dishes with enthusiasm.
‘Think I might start a cleaning firm.’ She laughed, stopping to bundle her beautiful auburn hair into a knot on her head, secured with a pencil she’d found under the pizza boxes. ‘Something I’m jolly good at.’