Hired help with a French connection
22nd October, 2006
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Eyes widening in surprise at my answer, she regarded me with a patronising blend of pity and amusement.
"Who does your cleaning?" my inquiring colleague had asked.
Apparently my wife and I are members of an underprivileged minority. There I was thinking we were getting along quite nicely, enjoying what to me seemed a pleasant existence when in reality we were the subject of scorn and pity. I rang my friend and asked if she had a cleaning lady.
"Only once a week," she said.
Further inquiries proved that the cleaning lady, like a plasma television screen, was now regarded as an essential of life. "Lazy bludgers," I mumbled, but the idea had taken hold. Who were these "cleaning ladies"? I recalled a friend telling me that when he lived in Los Angeles he would watch with disgust as Mexican women, illegal immigrants many of them, were dropped off by their men every morning outside the houses in his well-heeled suburb for their day of toil: washing, ironing, cooking and cleaning for less than the minimum wage, which itself was a pittance. They'd take the money because they needed it and because they were illegals. If they complained, one phone call and they'd be on their way back across the border. My mind began to explore the cleaning lady question. Did they, I wondered, speak with a French accent, dress in short black skirts and low-cut white blouses and flounce around waving a feather duster? Perhaps I had been too hasty in dismissing the cleaning lady issue. It was then that I remembered a friend of mine had once employed topless housecleaners. This, I assume, was back when there were topless bar attendants and even topless hairdressers. I don't recall how my friend had stumbled across a topless house-cleaning service but he found one that sent around two attractive young females who dropped their clobber on arrival and swept, scrubbed and polished clad only in their knickers. I gather it is considered etiquette to go out while the cleaning lady is performing her duties. Not so with my mate. I ran into him in the city one day and suggested we have a drink. "Sorry, mate. I can't," he said, looking at his watch. "I've got to rush. The cleaners are due in 20 minutes." He claims it was the best money he ever spent, providing as it did a clean house and a two-hour floorshow. I imagined, however, that the era of topless cleaners had long since gone. That left the French maid fantasy, though I guessed my wife might not completely accept my assertion that the only person in a city of a million-plus people I could find to clean our apartment was called Fifi and had nothing in her wardrobe except short black dresses. It's not that we like cleaning. Scrubbing shower recesses, washing floors and wiping bolognaise sauce off the walls isn't how we prefer to spend our Saturday mornings. How the sauce gets up there still confounds me. I'm careful, really careful, but when I've finished cooking it looks as if I have filled a saucepan with bolognaise sauce, tied a rope to the handle and swung it around my head. A week has passed since I had the cleaning lady conversation and for the first time I have begun to resent doing housework. Why should we be washing the floors when everyone else is kicking back, watching telly and lifting their feet to let the housecleaner get past with the vacuum cleaner? I remain troubled, however, for there seems to be something distinctly un-Australian about having a servant. A drinks waiter, of course, would be different. "Dude! Fetch me another gin and tonic." House cleaner?! What was I thinking! |
