:-
The Window Cleaner Only Rings Twice
Richard Doran
It promises
to be a good day. But how could it not be? You are only half way through the
six week summer break and the return to school is a long way off. You are in
your younger brother’s bedroom helping him play with his Lego. His room is, of
course, much bigger than your own and as the weather is unsettled for August,
indoor activities are the order of the day. Helping your brother play with his
toys is one of them. You’re not really playing, of course, because you are 14
years old and too mature for baby stuff – but helping your 9 year old brother
play with his Lego doesn’t count, after all it’s educational – for him that is.
It’s 1964 and these are the golden days of Lego with
simple standardised bricks. The things you make come out of your head, not from
the picture on a box containing a prefabricated object that requires no skills
other than an ability to do jig-saws. Your brother breaks your concentration,
‘Did you hear that?’ he asks.
Yes you did; it was the familiar sound of wooden
ladders scraping against the front of the house. The bloody window cleaner is
here! Of course he is, look at the weather; your mum says he only comes when
it’s raining and she’s right again. She’s out shopping at the moment but at
least she should be back in time to pay him.
Nevertheless the mood is spoiled, the game of hide
and seek has begun. Well at least you’re not in the front room where he always
starts. From there he will extend his ladders and do the front bedroom. Then
he’ll come round the back and scrape his grimy rags over the windows of the
living room followed by this bedroom. By then you will have crept out, if
course. You just don’t like being in the room while he is cleaning the windows.
It is not as if he is a stranger – he’s been turning up once a month since you
were a toddler, but there is something unnerving about pretending he’s not
there and carrying on as normal while he is gurning through your window from
the top of his ladder. It makes you feel uncomfortable and you resent being
herded around the house by the sound of his ladders.
But that’s only the half of it.
You add more Lego to the roof of a fire station but
your mind isn’t on the job anymore. There is a tension in the room. Your
brother feels it too – he knows what’s coming; its happened to him as well,
many times. Still, your mum will probably be back soon.
You recall that from an early age how Clive, the
window man, would engage your mum in chit-chat when it was time to pay him;
could he have some water? Could he use the outside toilet? Could he rinse his
rags? And always - how’s the young lad doing? And your mum would inevitably say
to you, ‘Come and say hello then.’ You would have to oblige, of course, because
you were a good boy. Clive would then lean over, hold you against his legs and
give you a good patting down – ‘My, he’s getting to be a big lad isn’t he,’ he
would chortle in his peculiar Harry Corbett voice. He would then let you go but
not before giving your buttocks a good squeeze.
This became a regular monthly routine but your mum
didn’t seem to mind so you thought nothing of it; it must be all right. You
were too young to consider that she probably took his attentions as a
complement to her nurturing skills. It was not as if she had much to be proud
of except her kids. If anything she encouraged it – ‘Pay the window man,
there’s a good boy,’ she would say handing you some real money and endowing you
with a responsibility that almost made it worth being groped for.
The ladders bang against this side of the house.
He’s doing the living room. Next will be this bedroom – time to evacuate. You
both retreat to the sanctuary of the attic bedroom where his ladders cannot
reach. You resent the intrusion of this odious man into the routine of your
day. Please come home mum in time to pay him.
You say to your brother, ‘You can pay him if she
isn’t back in time,’ knowing that your mum would have left the money downstairs
on the sideboard.
‘Mum should be home soon,’ he says hopefully, ‘I
don’t want my arse felt.’
As your brother grew older he too was eventually
obliged to participate in the ritual and you were able to take a back seat and
watch from the safety of indoors.
‘My, he’s getting to be a big lad,’ pat - pat - pat
… squeeze.
Your mum finally stopped asking the both of you to
pay the man as if she suspected something but was perhaps too embarrassed to
say anything. You did mention once that you didn’t like being grabbed like
that. ‘Oh he’s just being friendly,’ she said. Well that’s all right then. She
must have had some doubts about his ‘friendliness’ though because she once said
in a matter of fact way, ‘He’s harmless you know. He told me he’d had it shot
off in the war.’
It’s true to say that he never did anything untoward
or took a squeeze too far but you instinctively didn’t like his over
familiarity.
He must be doing the back bedroom now; your bedroom.
His probing gaze would be intruding into your personal domain, pat-pat-patting
over your bed, squeezing your things. Your brother pretends not to be concerned
but you know he is as anxious as you are and it looks like your mum is not
going to get back in time. Sure enough there is soon a cheery rappity-tap on
the back door.
You consider setting the dog on him – not because
the beast is fierce but more in the hope that its offensive smell might repel
the fellow.
‘He’s getting old,’ your mum would say about the
dog, ‘he can’t help it.’ She would also say the same about an elderly
great-aunt who would occasionally visit. You wonder how long you’ve got before
you too become malodorous as if it is an inevitable process accompanying
decrepitude.
Your mind returns to the current dilemma.
‘I’ll go,’ you say heroically and you make your way
downstairs, wanting to get it over with. The trick might be just to put the
money on the window sill. He is very crafty and will make a point of standing
away from the door with his hand out so you have to take his money to him and
fall into his grasp. It’s been months if not years since you last endured this
humiliation so when you open the door with a fake grin on your face his eyes
widen.
‘My, you’ve grown up since I last saw you – I bet
you’re playing with it all the time now – eh?’
Your first thought is - how does he know that? Your
second thought is that you are too big to grope now so he’s trying a new tactic
and has stepped over a line.
Your foot lashes out into his goolies and you shout,
‘Take your money and piss off you pervert, leave us alone!’
At least, that is what your brain tells you to do.
In reality your traitorous mouth says, ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ and
leaving his money on the sill you retreat, angry and ashamed shutting the door
behind you.
You just can’t bring yourself to be rude to the man.
You’ve been brought up to be polite to adults, after all you are just a kid and
they are grown up – say please, say thank you, sit up straight, sit still. It’s
a working class pride thing – you might not have much but you know how to
behave, you won’t show your parents up.
You don’t see much of Clive after that. He might
have retired, been arrested, died - you don’t really care. But you are somewhat
relieved when your mum informs you that the window cleaning round has been
taken over by a pair of young lads who seem very nice and do a good job. You
are less relieved after burglars expertly break in one night through the
kitchen window and nick ten precious quid from your wallet. It turns out that
this pair were supplementing their window cleaning takings with a bit of thieving
on the side.
What about the present day? Are you scarred for life
by the stress of such perverse attentions? Do you need counselling? Not a bit
of it; there was no harm done and it was all part of growing up. The only
legacy is that you clean your own windows now, thank you very much.
copyright©Richard Doran 2012. All rights reserved.
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First place in the Article competition in 2011 was won by Fulvio Colonna with his fascinating tour of Pisa.
Fulvio Brigante Colonna
The ancient university town of Pisa straddles the lower course of the Arno as it flows from Florence to the Tirrenian Sea
Little remains from Roman times, but the town achieved prominence in the Middle Ages when, protected by the surrounding marshes and connected to the sea by the Arno estuary, it projected its commercial interests across the Mediterranean .
As any Italian schoolboy, I learned that, in that time, the four Maritime Republics of Genoa , Pisa , Amalfi and Venice
I do not presume, in this brief article, to do justice to Pisan history, art and lore, but will take you on an informal walk and talk, as I would do with visitors to the place where I spent my childhood, and the most formative years of my youth.
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Before we venture down this old street, let us take a look along the river.
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In central Florence , the buildings crowd around the Arno and even reach across it on Ponte Vecchio with its goldsmith’s shops and the Vasari gallery, but in Pisa
On the South end of the bridge, the rebuilt town hall with its clock tower faces the tall pillars of the covered market, on the north, the bank widens into a sunlit piazza with the bronze statue of Garibaldi, a favourite student’s meeting place.
Upriver on the north bank we find Piazza Della Berlina, so called because it once housed the stocks, and the church of San Mathew
Downriver, along the southern bank, the Chiesa Della Spina overlooks the water like a miniature Gothic cathedral in white marble. Beyond it Ponte Solferino, also rebuilt after it toppled in the aftermath of the 1967 flood, when I saw it lying on its side, in the pure rain-washed light of a glorious September. The bridge and the embankments had held through a night of fear, when Florence was flooded and Pisa
For all the devastations of war and weather the Lungarno is beautiful, with its array of noble palaces and the air and light it brings to the heart of the city. I saw it as a canyon or an elongated, meandering amphitheatre, and in fact this space is a venue of spectacles and games, taking over the place and function that the central piazzas occupy in Florence and Siena
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The highlight of the Pisan summer is the feast of San Ranieri, the patron saint of Pisa, and controversially of thieves, a medieval figure of whose life I remember little fact and much legend, most of which irreverent. Granddad said that young Ranieri had his finger chopped off for stealing cheese and I strained to see this mutilation when the mummified body of the saint was exposed to the faithful.
But the solemn mass in the Duomo was a mere side show compared to the top billing events centred on the Lungarno: the Luminara and the Gioco Del Ponte.
La Luminara takes place on the night of San Ranieri, June 16th, when the houses and bridges on the Lungarno are decked with white wooden frames which both highlight their architectural features or add to them. At regular intervals along the frames, metal hoops hold glass-encased candles. At dusk, all electric lights are extinguished and the candles lit. The city, outlined in flickering flames, is reflected in the low waters of the river, on whose flat surface more lights are floated, like a fairy armada drifting slowly to the sea. Along the Lungarno, closed for the night to motor traffic, the people mill around among the stalls selling nutty crunch, candy floss and sweet wafers in the white glare of their acetylene lamps, the soft summer air heady with the whiff of candle wax and burnt sugar.
Just before midnight, all eyes turn to La Cittadella, old gateway of the river port before silting separated the estuary from the city. Fireworks reach up from the fort and its bridge again and again, alternating shapes and colours until the final free for all. In the sudden silence, a pale frayed cloud drifts away.
The Gioco Del Ponte follows on the last Sunday in June. In the afternoon sun, the facades of the palaces are draped with flags and banners and the standards of the twelve districts (six each for Tramontana and Mezzogiorno) in which the city is divided. All windows and balconies are crowded, but a circuit along the two main bridges and the Lungarno is cleared for the historical parade. Here come the lords and ladies, resplendent in thirteenth century garb, the men at arms, the flagmen and the drummers beating a steady rhythm for the march.
Then the contest begins: two platoons of men clash head to head on the bridge, straining to push their adversaries back to their bank. In ancient times this was a massive scrum, body crushed against body with the only protection of a narrow wooden shield: ribs cracked, men slipped underfoot or fell into the river. In more civilised times, direct contact has been substituted by a trolley on rails at the ends of which a banner will drop, signalling defeat.
During the bout each side is encouraged from behind by its drummers and its flagmen waving and juggling the district’s colours in a turbulence of colour.
After six bouts, the results are added and the winning side proclaimed.
I remember rooting for Tramontana from my aunt’s rooftop terrace, and feeling victory so sweet, defeat as bitter as football could never again inspire.
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Turning away from the Lungarno and its memories, we can venture north, down the shadowy porticos of the Borgo Stretto. We may take a short detour to peek into the Piazza Delle Vettovaglie, the old market place where the street vendors promote their merchandise with loud cries and saucy innuendo, but we cannot tarry, and reaching the conjunction between Borgo Stretto and Largo
The piazza is dominated by the Scuola Normale with its marble staircase and the Chiesa Dei Cavalieri, sacred to the knightly order of Santo Stefano and filled with the crescent-moon banners snatched from the Moorish ships at Lepanto.
The palace with the arch on the far end of the piazza is known as the Tower of Hunger, after an earlier building where Count Ugolino Della Gerardesca was locked up to starve, with his sons and nephews. In his Inferno, Dante places Ugolino in the swamp of traitors, but also condemns Pisa Arno and cause all the Pisans to drown.
Skirting the tower, we arrive in the small Piazza De Amicis, with the church of San Sisto
We skirt the piazza and the convent of the Silesians, turn right into Via Santa Maria, full of rich merchant’s palaces, now taken over by the University, and follow it in a long leftward curve to Piazza Dei Miracoli.
The term miracle might seem excessive, but Pisa
A vast meadow bordered at the far end by the city wall and gate, on the left by the road leading to the gate and the wall of the old hospital, and on the right by the marble side of the Monumental Cemetery
Nearest to us, the Leaning Tower Pisa
The inner spaces hold further treasures: carvings, inlays and the two massive Pisano pulpits, and more significantly, the candle scented peace and mosque-like feel of this house of God built on the proceeds of eastern trade.
Having bypassed much in this brief tour, there is one last thing we cannot miss. Behind the Duomo, a marble wall conceals the cloistered Monumental Cemetery
I have never ceased to marvel at the vision of the anonymous painter of this ode to mortality and the hereafter. As a child, I was morbidly fascinated by the devils, leering through boar’s teeth as they disembowel the damned, and Satan himself, multi-eyed and bright green like a space invader. Today these images appear naïve and cartoonish, but they were all too real to Dante’s contemporaries and must have haunted their imagination and their conscience.
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Enough said for today: we can stroll out and enjoy the Tuscan sun, or maybe I can interest you in a spot of lunch? Da Buzzino is just round the corner…
Copyright © 2011 Fulvio Brigante Colonna. All Rights Reserved
