 The
Rose Revived
When May teams up with Sally and Harriet, it is the
best day’s work she’s ever done.
Each of them needs money, badly. Which is why they
are reduced to working for Quality Cleaners under the watchful eye
of ‘Slimeball’ Slater. When they discover it is them
being taken to the cleaners, they set up as an independent team.
And that is when things really begin to take off.
With more lucrative jobs coming in, they soon find
that they are able to take the first steps towards freedom and independence.
For May that means paying the mooring fees for her adored houseboat.
Harriet can take art classes and reveal her gift for painting, and
Sally can save up for a place of her own. But while they are making
a success of their working lives, they risk overlooking the romantic
possibilities they have created …
Chapter One
May’s Doc Martens tripped over the step and brought her
into a small room which smelt of stale cigarette smoke. Five women,
all apparently bored out of their minds, looked up at her and then
looked away.
‘Hi!’ said May. ‘Is this right for Quality Cleaners?’
One of the women nodded. She had two-tone hair and obviously knew
her way round a vacuum cleaner. ‘There’s a pile of application
forms over there. You have to fill one in.’
‘Blimey,’ said May, picking one up. ‘It’s
long.’
‘Yeah,’ said the woman. ‘You have to push it
under the door when you’ve finished.’
‘Oh. How unusual.’ May didn’t carry a handbag,
but she patter her pockets hopefully. ‘Um, has anyone got
a pen I could borrow?’
No one moved for a moment, then one of the women, who was about
the same age as May, put down her book. May recognized it as one
on the Booker Prize shortlist. ‘I have. Here.’ The girl
rummaged in an ancient shoulder-bag and produced a fountain pen.
May regarded her more closely. What sort of cleaner – or
potential cleaner – read proper books and wrote with a fountain
pen? She was berating herself for stereotyping cleaners when she
noticed a new-looking holdall under the girl’s chair, as well
as a soft-topped suitcase and small vanity case. Another time, May
would have been intrigued as to why anyone would bring luggage to
an interview, but for now she was too concerned with filling in
the form for idle speculation. She smiled at the girl and took the
pen.
‘Thanks.’
May’s block capitals were inclined to let her down on forms,
but she made a special effort with this one. She needed the job
so badly. Well-paid, unskilled jobs were as rare as rubies –
and to May, infinitely more precious.
When at last she’d devised answers for almost all of the
many questions, she returned the pen. She gave her an I’m-friendly-please-talk-to-me
kind of smile, but the girl’s lips just flickered and she
went back to her book. The chance of conversation gone, May settled
back to inspect the competition.
There was the woman who had shown her the forms, older than May,
possibly too old to fulfil the ad’s ‘young and enthusiastic’
criterion. There was a mother with a toddler on her lap, who was
undoubtedly young, but whose dark circles under her eyes and totally
worn-out expression seemed to make her lacking in the enthusiasm
department.
There was the girl who’d lent her the pen. She was young,
obviously intelligent, but, in her navy-blue-suit, little pearl
earrings and black velvet headband, looked far too ladylike to be
applying for a job as a cleaner.
Still, I hardly look the part myself, though May, for the first
time giving her own clothes a critical appraisal. She had put on
her best pair of dungarees, the ones with only a tiny splatter of
blue paint on them, and her jumper was clean, if a bit baggy at
the sleeves. Her Doc Martens, worn with scarlet socks were quite
shiny.
She sighed regretfully. She didn’t have any of her smarter,
more conventional clothes on her boat, and had rushed to the interview
almost as soon as she had spotted the advertisement. It had been
on one of the sheets of newspaper she was about to light the stove
with, and although May was not superstitious, it had seemed as if
fate was offering her a helping hand. She had leapt on to the Tube
before all the ‘opportunities to be part of a team’
were taken. But even in the right clothes she felt she had little
chance of convincing this ‘new branch of an established business’
that she could get a grip of that stubborn limescale.
No, if the advertiser had any sense, he’d employ the remaining
two women who had competent expressions and the sort of clothes
which fitted naturally under nylon overalls. You could tell, just
by looking at them, that they could dismantle a rebellious cistern
and have it working before you could say ‘Harpic’.
Cover Illustration: Mary Claire Smith; Calligraphy:
Stephen Raw
|
