Home life
Coming clean
Alice Thomas Ellis
Janet says that whereas when most peo- ple use the royal 'we' they mean 'I', when I use it I mean her — as in 'Janet, we must do the spring cleaning/worm the cats/fill in some tax forms, etc.' The sun popped out briefly the other day and someone asked me why I didn't clean the windows. I explained that I didn't. clean windows; window-cleaners cleaned win- dows and I wrote a column for the Specta- tor. In truth of course when the moment comes to sit down to the blank piece of Paper one would prefer to clean all the windows in Wang House. The only time I feel any enthusiasm for housework is when I'm supposed to be writing something; the floors gleam, the lavatories sparkle and the washing blows on the line. Actually I wouldn't mind housework all that much if Whenever I did it everyone would go out for a week and leave the rooms as beauti- fully fresh as I have just rendered them. It is profoundly dispiriting to find the newly cleaned sitting-room instantly full again of half-empty mugs, crumpled newspapers, muddy wellies and people.
Tidying is the worst task of all. Someone has a good method of tidying cupboards. He takes everything out of them, so we have very tidy cupboards but rather messy hallways. I, on the other hand, incline to the Irish tidy which is to open the cupboard door gingerly, fling everything in and then swiftly shut it before everything falls out again. I cannot bring myself to throw anything away, which is foolish in more ways than one since if one of the family has died the house is mined with occasions of Pain and looking for a pair of your gloves You will find a pair of his shoes and the grief comes flooding back, unchanged by time. I have frequently thought that the dead should be buried with all their be- longings. It seems weirdly perverse that their clothes should still be here when the People you love best in the world have gone.
But then I have kept so many clothes that the wardrobe is in danger of collaps- ing; not only have I retained the wedding dress and the christening robe but I have a Pair of rompers which I wore as a tot, a
number of maternity smocks, all the daughter's baby clothes, evening frocks
Which went out of fashion 20 years ago, umpteen coats and skirts which are just too good to dispose of and a bundle of towel- wig nappies because you never know when
they'll come in useful. The floor of the Wardrobe is crammed with old handbags full of unanswered letters because sooner than sort them out which gives rise to intolerable guilt, every time a handbag becomes too heavy to carry I stick it in the
wardrobe and buy a new one; and lurking in a corner is a full-length musquash coat which is unwearable now since it fell in half. Possessions are a terrible nuisance; if they're nice they're asking to be stolen and whether they're nice or not they gather dust or get lost.
I mislaid Jeff the other day. We went along to receive his award and everything went off swimmingly with Jeff looking immaculately beautiful in his dinner jack- et. Then a lady came to whisk him away to have his picture taken and I never saw him again. The Writer of the Year had de- materialised. I've found him again since then. He came to lunch yesterday and was struck by another aspect of the cats' behaviour. They were wandering round in a rather aimless fashion and after observ- ing them for a while he realised that they obviously had a deadline to meet. They would stroll nonchalantly into the garden to look at the flowers or suddenly remem- ber urgent business and dash upstairs. Cadders disappeared completely at one point and was discovered asleep in the wardrobe on the bottom half of the mus- quash. He was quite clearly hiding from an editor.
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