Confessions of a Window Cleaner (14 page)

Luckily it doesn’t matter too much that Elizabeth’s legs are shut tighter than a pair of rusty scissors because I’m getting more than I need elsewhere. Sandy is still shacked up with her spade and I’ve gone off Brenda in a big way but the rest of them are all ready, willing and very able. Of course Elizabeth knows nothing about this and she still reckons I’m practically a virgin. Not surprising really, because by the time I get round to her sometimes I’m so knackered I can hardly poke my old man through the zip of my fly. Maybe it’s because deep down inside I reckon I’m going to get married and have to settle down, but I’m screwing everything that moves at the moment. It’s as if I’m trying to build up a rich storehouse of memory before I go under.

Thinking about it, that’s probably why I was so glad to meet Sonia.

Sonia was a dancer, an acrobatic dancer. I don’t know what she was like because I never saw her do it – acrobatic dancing I mean – but she showed me an album of press cuttings and there were some pictures of her doing the splits and jamming her leg up against the wall so it looked like a giant hard. She was billed as ‘Kismetta the Fantastica’ which might have gone down well at the Aldershot Hippodrome in 1942 but was hardly going to pack them in now. Somebody else had obviously had the same idea because when I met her she was ‘resting’ as she put it. Anyway, let me tell you the whole story.

One of the places I did was called the ‘Fitzroy Hotel’ but it was more like a doss house really. The glass sign outside was broken so you could see the bulbs inside and the lino cracked up like baked custard. There were never many people there and I can’t see how the place stayed open. I wouldn’t have passed water there let alone the night. The owner was a miserable old git who always tried to knock down my price and said that he’d do it himself if it wasn’t for his back and that I was taking advantage of him. I took this a couple of times and then I told him to stuff the job up his Jacksie, which put our relationship on a more professional footing. After that he never gave any trouble but just wandered round making sure no one had left a light on and that I knew he was watching me to see that I didn’t nick anything.

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning when I first met Sonia. I didn’t expect anybody to be around then and I got a bit of a shock when this pile of bedclothes suddenly springs up and flashes a couple of tits at me. It’s worse for her because I’ve woken her up and she glares at me and pulls the sheet up to her chin.

She’s about thirty. I suppose; boney, sallow, hollow-cheeked, lank-haired; her tits are small but they droop like foxgloves which gives them shape. There’s a beat-up, world-used scruffiness about her which I feel at home with. Any bird that sleeps starkers always interest me and she looks better than a lot I’ve seen considering she’s just woken up. Elizabeth has never let me see her naked yet. She always wears a nightdress and though I’m allowed to mess about underneath it, it stays on, come hell or high water. I think it’s because she secretly thinks what we are doing is sinful and feels a bit better about it if she is wearing something.

The bird in the bed is saying something but I can’t hear what it is so I pull the top window down a bit and manage to drop my squeegee into the room. Then I find the bottom window is jammed so I have to indicate that I need assistance. The bint raises her eyes to the ceiling in a ‘you prick’ gesture and swings out of bed wrapping the sheet around herself but not quickly enough to stop me seeing that they’re the same colour as the hairs on her head. She stalks across to the window, picks up the squeegee and hands it to me over the top.

“Haven’t you got a hanky?” she says.

At first I don’t know what she means and I’m wondering if there’s a large bogeyman hanging out of one of my nostrils. Then I cotton on that she’s talking about dropping handkerchiefs.

“Hurrah,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“I could see your mind working. You got there in the end, didn’t you?”

“I usually do.”

“What do you mean by coming and waking me up?”

“Somebody had to do it. Do you know what the time is?”

“About eleven?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I know what the time is, then, don’t I?”

I’m still standing on the window ledge and I am beginning to feel that this may be a position in which I have difficulty doing myself justice.

The bird obviously agrees with me because she shakes her head and wanders over to the door where there is a dressing gown hanging up. In one quick movement she drops the sheet and has the dressing gown round her shoulders. It’s a man’s dressing gown and it’s far too big for her. She feels in the pocket, pulls out a fag packet and sticks a dog end in her mouth. No matches. She points to her fag and looks at me and I nod. I don’t smoke but I always carry a box of matches for just such moments. It’s like boy scouts carry around those penknives with bits on them to get stones out of horses’ hooves. She shrugs her shoulders and with a feat of strength that impresses me almost as much as the view down the front of her dressing gown she pulls up the window.

“If we’re going to go on handing things backwards and forwards to each other you’d better come in. You’re not going to rape me, are you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Pity. I feel like being raped this morning. Do you ever get feelings like that?”

“Sometimes. Only it’s different for me.”

“Of course. You’ve got to do the raping, haven’t you? I wonder what happens when somebody who wants to be raped meets somebody who wants to rape someone. It can’t be rape, can it?”

“No. I suppose it’s normal.”

“Or passion – yes. I think it’s probably passion.”

She sits down on the bed and crosses one leg over the other, which is something she does very well. I light her cigarette and start wiping over the inside of the windows.

“What’s that thing called?”

“It’s a squeegee.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of those. I always thought it was some kind of mop.”

“I think it’s that, too.”

“Well, I’m glad we thrashed that out, you learn something new every day, don’t you? Do you want a cup of fabulous, taste-bud tickling Nescafé while you’re here?”

“Yes, ta.”

She has an accent which is a mixture of posh and working class so you can’t quite tell what it is but the vaguely piss-taking way she talks has a definite style to it.

She puts the kettle on and washes out a couple of mugs in the washbasin.

“The milk’s off. Do you mind it black?”

“No, that’s fine. What are you doing here?”

“You mean what’s a nice girl like me doing in a place like this? Well, I’m resting, dahling.”

She makes her voice go all husky.

“I’m a theatrical you see and at the moment no one wants to know about me.”

“But why here?”

“Well, I usually stay at the Ritz but when I heard the Aga Khan was staying there I thought it would be more diplomatic if I dossed down somewhere else. We were lovers for years, you know.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“No, well you wouldn’t would you? It was a terribly well kept secret. I used to have a couple of fantail pigeons which carried messages backwards and forwards between us – “Be by the bandstand on Clapham Common at eight o’clock on Thursday. My private plane will collect you” – that kind of thing. Then we’d be off to Biarritz or Budleigh Salterton or wherever his exotic fancy took him, making mad passionate love until it was time for him to go off and be weighed in jewels or something. He was a slave to Islam you know.”

I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about but I’m impressed.

“You’re an actress then?”

“Brilliant. I could see you were a bright boy the moment I clapped eyes on you. Yes, sort of. Ooops – coffee time.”

She switches off the gas and hands me my coffee,

“What have you been in? Anything I’d have seen on the telly?”

She claps a hand to her heart and looks disgusted.

“Television? Oh! Goodness gracious me, no! I work in the live theatre – and besides, nobody has ever asked me.”

“So what have you been in?”

“You are persistent, aren’t you? Well, let me see. I was Becket in ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ – no, actually, the last thing I did was to stand next to a girl with a very personal problem in the chorus of “Babes in the Wood” at the Granada, Tooting. You may not have seen the show, but you probably smelt it. You know: two balloons up your jumper and a string of jokes about baked bean commercials.”

“When did that finish?”

“You’re not from the Inland Revenue, are you? My goodness, but you ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m sorry but I’ve never met an actress before.”

“Well, I misled you a little bit. I’m not really an actress, I’m a dancer. An acrobatic dancer – or I was. Now, I’ll do anything within reason, and provided I can keep my knickers on. Would you like to see my credentials? I was waiting for a fan to show up.”

She doesn’t stop for an answer but goes and gets this book of press cuttings I mentioned earlier.

“Come with me down memory lane,” she says and pats the bed beside her. I sit down and she takes me through the book. It’s a bit sad because all the big cuttings are from a newspaper in Baldock which is where she must have come from and which would probably make it a front page story if one of the locals farted outside Covent Garden Opera House.

“Who’s the bloke?”

In some of the pictures there’s a good looking dago dancing with her, wearing some kind of gypsy costume. His hair is slicked down and parted in the middle so the parting looks as if someone made it with a meat cleaver. He reminds me of Valentino who Mum is always going on about, and he’s probably meant to. A few photos later he’s wearing a turban and a lot of boot polish and then he disappears altogether.

“That’s the Great Fakir, if you’ll excuse my pronunciation.”

“The what?”

“That was what he called himself in the act – in that one anyway. He was also known as ‘The Sheik’ and my husband – he wasn’t very good at that though.”

“Is that his dressing gown?”

She smiles and pulls it closer around her. “Yes, I – yes. How observant of you. But then I suppose it’s unlikely that I’d go out and buy a man’s dressing gown, isn’t it?”

“You’re divorced now?”

“No, we were never married. I said he was ‘known’ as my husband. Roy was doing you a favour just to live with you. He was too bloody clever to get married. I was married, though, before I met him. God! But I made a wonderful botch of things. Still, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this; a complete stranger who suddenly appears on my window sill.”

“Probably because I ask so many questions.”

“Maybe. Perhaps it’s also – oh, it doesn’t matter. You’d better get back on the job, hadn’t you? – if you’ll excuse the expression. You’re losing money sitting here.”

“That’s alright. I like talking to you.”

I look into her eyes and she looks back at me very cool. I can feel her mind examining the same set of possibilities as mine.

Then there’s a knock on the door.

“To be continued,” she says, and tightening the sash round her waist she opens the door.

“Oh, it’s you, Miss er, Miss Hatchard?”

The voice belongs to the miserable berk who runs the place.

“That’s right. Who did you expect it to be?”

“Oh, no one, it’s just that I saw the ladder outside your window and I wanted to check that everything was alright. You know, I mean you’ve got to be careful these days, haven’t you? I thought you might have gone out and – you know?”

“That was very thoughtful of you Mr. Drake.”

“Well, I like my guests to feel that their welfare is at the forefront of my mind.”

Mealy-mouthed old shit bag. He obviously thought I was knocking off stuff from her room – or wanted to make her think I would do, if I got half the chance.

“Thank you Mr. Drake. I do appreciate that – oh, Mr. Drake,” her voice is soft as a kitten’s stomach.

“Yes, Miss Hatchard?”

“I feel I should tell you that I’ve got a long needle, and if I find you peeping through the bathroom keyhole again I’ll ram it straight through your eyeball.”

She slams the door and stalks back to the bed.

“Dirty little rat. He’s always pawing me with his eyes. Asked me if I’d like to come down and watch his telly the other night. Christ, can you imagine it. Two brown ales and his podgy wet hands creeping towards you. I’d rather be on the game.”

I can see that Drakey has smashed the nice little atmosphere of mutual sympathy and understanding that was building up between us, and that it would be a smart move to get back outside and arrange to see her later if I can. “I’d better get out of here,” I say. “Tell you what, let me buy you a drink later. You get dressed while I finish this place and I’ll take you round to the boozer. It’ll soon be dinner time anyway.”

She thinks about it for a minute and then nods.

“Yes, why not? Thank you very much. I can’t stay too long, though, because I’ve got to go to an audition this afternoon. I’m supposed to be there at two o’clock, though they’ll probably keep me hanging around for bloody hours as usual.”

So I hop outside again and she winks at me through the window, which is a promise of good things to come I carry with me round the rest of the job. Drakey pays up without a murmur, though he gets a bit tense when I ask him why one of his eyes is watering. I also enjoy his expression when Kismetta, or whatever her real name is sails out looking mean, moody and magnificent in a maxi skirt slashed to her navel and her hair practically straight down the front of her face.

I guide her round to the pub and I can see that the lads are impressed. With this in mind, I steer her into a corner and get her a lager and a cheese roll – fast. You can’t leave a bird like that alone for long without reckoning that some other bleeder will be chatting her up.

“Your real name isn’t Kismetta, is it?” I say as I shove the drink into her hand.

“You must be joking, dahling.” She blows smoke over her left shoulder and I can see her lapping up the way everybody is slopping the beer down their bibs because they can’t take their eyes off her.