SHE WORKS WHILE YOU'RE ASLEEP

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 121, 17 October 1941, Unnumbered Page

SHE WORKS WHILE YOU'RE ASLEEP

N old iron fence. The dingy backs of shops, with lines of scattered washing. Then a gate in the fence, a brick-flagged path bordered by a strip of green ‘lawn and a flower bed. A back door adorned with a sticker of the allied flags surrounding the victory "V." I knocked, avoiding the flags, and was ushered into Mrs. D----s’ sitting room. It was a comfortable room, large, with pale gleaming linoleum. "Excuse the mess," said Mrs. D--, " but it’s Monday, and I never bother to do very much on a Monday." I looked around. There was no sign of any mess, so I felt that "That’s quite all right," was hardly the right rejoinder. Unless Mrs. D--- meant the table cloth, and its presence was natural at 1.30. She evidently did, for as she spoke she whisked it away into the kitchen, still keeping up a flow of apology. "Just look at that linoleum. You wouldn’t think I’d scrubbed it yesterday, would you? It’s this house. It’s old-fashioned and it gets you down. You no sooner get the whole thing cleaned and nice than you have to set to and scrub it all over again." I looked at the linoleum again. It still gleamed palely, unspotted by mud or dust. eee "Don’t you get rather tired of cleaning and scrubbing for other people and then coming home and having to do it for yourself?" -----

"Bless you, I don’t mind the scrubbing. And when it’s your own house you like it to look nice, particularly when the children have got to come home to it. I could get it all done in two hours if I went at it hammer and tongs. But after all I’ve got alk day to do it in, so I might as well potter if I want to." I could easily imagine Mrs. D--going about her work in a smooth unhur-

ried fashion, getting things done when and how she wanted. Now she was sitting. down, hands in lap. They were rather large hands, red from housework yet not unsightly. She had an ample, but not over ample figure, a strong chin, a healthy glow in her cheeks and white hair brushed crisply back. The calmness and quiet strength suggested by her person contrasted with the bright babble of comment and reminiscence from her tongue. So Early in the Morning "Do you go out charing to people’s houses?" "JT used to. But I wouldn’t again if I could help it. No, all I do now is office cleaning. Start at half-past four in the morning (at least it’s four twenty- _--_-

five that we sign on) and go through to eight o’clock." " Don’t you find it rather inconvenient? No trams or anything when you start work?" "Oh no. I really enjoy the walk. Unless you’re an office char or a milkman you don’t get a chance to appreciate the mornings." . "But it isn’t even morning. It'll still night," I protested. "Tt was quite light this morning. In fact I thought I’d over-slept myself. You see that’ just shows you that you miss the best part of the morning if you're not up about four." " What about the winter? What about when it’s wet?" "TI confess I did slip up on it a day or two ago, when we had that storm, But that’s the first time, and I hope the last. Otherwise it’s a good job. We get £4/8 a fortnight, and that’s ‘just for the three and a-half hours a night and a bit extra on Thursdays." No Time for Ghosts’ "Don’t you find working at that hour rather eerie?" I asked. "First of all the walk along the empty streets, with only the sounds of your own footsteps for company, and perhaps the rain streak- ing down or the Wellington wind whirling round corners. Letting yourself into the empty echoing building, and the clank of your bucket in the stillness and the swish of the floor cloth on the wet boards." My imagination started to get warmed up. "Perhaps you look up for a moment. There’s a shadowy figure crouching over the desk-a figure that fixes you with a hollow eye and returns to pore over its non-existent balance sheet, a figure which you recognise as the ghost of the late managing director. Don’t you find that that sort of thing puts you off your work?" "Funny thing, I’ve never met one of those. I don’t think it’s the right sort of atmosphere for them. You see there are a lot of us and we all arrive at the same time, and we’ve got lots to say to each other so I suppose the noise would scare off any normal man. But once we start work we’re alone of course because we each have our. own particular set of offices, and we stick to those year in and year out. So it would be more likely for me to haunt the scene of my labour and scare a managing director than for him to bother about me. (Continued on next page)

THE CHARWOMAN’S STORY (Continued from previous page) "Yes, the strangeness soon wears off. And it’s nice light work. You see the offices get scrubbed every night, so there’s not much dirt about. If you’re working in a private house it’s different. "Most of the people I’ve worked for have been very’ nice people. I wouldn't have stayed if they hadn’t treated me right. The trouble is that it’s all right when you first go to a place. You ask them what they want you to do and they tell you. Then you find out that you're expected to do more and more,

Now I went to work as laundress at a maternity home once. I was told that I was expected to do the babies’ washing and perhaps an occasional thing for the doctor’s wife. Well it was all right at first but then I found there’d be one or two shirts of the doctor’s each week and finally there were three or four shirts and three or four sets of underclothing. I thought it was a bit thick. Anyway I think there’s something unnatural about a man who isn’t doing heavy work needing to change as often as that. So I went to complain to the mistress. I heard one of the nurses tell her ‘The washerwoman to see you, Mrs. Blank,’ but I said very firmly, ‘The laundress, nurse.’ I must say, though, that Mrs, Blank was always very nice to me. She gave me a pair of slippers for Christmas and a drop of the doings. Do you drink?" "Sometimes," I admitted. When Her Blood Boils "And quite right," said Mrs. D--, "TI always think you’ve got to move with the times. What with this wretched war on you've go to enjoy yourself ,because you never know-to-morrow you mightn’t be able to. We're really very lucky to be out here away from it all, When I think of what they’re doing with the women in Germany-making them go into the Labour Corps and thingsit makes my blood boil. I’m Irish, you know. I love Irish songs and when I was a girl I used to love reading Irish history and weeping over the wrongs of Ireland. But I don’t believe in wasting time doing that now. Nobody interferes with us out here-we can do as we like

and worship as we like-so I think we should concentrate on being good New Zealanders, We’ve got to win the war and we've got to be loyal to England." I rose to go. The eye of Mona Lisa caught mine from one side of the mantel. "Wonderful picture that, isn’t it?" said Mrs, D--. "Her eyes always follow you round the room. And see that?" She --e

pointed out a pencil sketch taken evidently from a head of some Greek athlete, "People are always asking me who that is, and I tell them he’s my fancy man." She laughed and the sound followed me as I walked back up the brick path and out the gate.

M.

I.