Spinning Around by Catherine Jinks Read Free Book Online Page B

though he hardly ever practises, these days). It’s impossible to clean, and it’s blocking the linen cupboard, and when he does play it—about once a month—it’s so noisy that I live in perpetual fear of the neighbours complaining. There are cobwebs on it, for heaven’s sake. And yet when Jonah scribbled on the snare drum with a biro, Matt threw a monstrous tantrum, even though he tells me that I ‘overreact’ when Emily gets into my make-up or jewellery.
    As for the housework issue, don’t even ask. The fact that he’s never been much good didn’t matter before—not when we were living in that rented flat in Darlinghurst. I remember we used to do the housework every Saturday morning, with the stereo turned up high, singing along at the tops of our voices. We’d take it in turns to vacuum, wash the kitchen floor and clean the bathroom, and it didn’t matter that Matthew was hopeless, because the flat was such a tip to begin with. The bathroom was so mouldy that the grouting was past redemption; nothing that either of us did made the slightest difference (and God knows, I nearly poisoned myself spraying mould killer about), so in the end we gave up. Same with the toilet, which had an unsightly brown stain on the porcelain just where the water gushed down from the cistern. When the shower curtain became slimy and black, we threw it away and bought a new one. When the plastic soap dish became too encrusted, we applied the same principle. It didn’t matter that the mirror was always streaky after Matthew cleaned it, because it was already a spotty mess, with brownish patches showing where the silver had peeled off, or rotted away.
    As for the carpet, it was so disgusting to begin with that vacuuming made almost no impression at all. Neither did steam-cleaning. We had it steam-cleaned when we first moved in, and the only result was an analysis of all the stains that seemed to be indelible. We were informed by the steam-cleaning man that the greyish spot near the wall had been a leaky sewage pipe, that the round, brownish one near the sofa was vomit, and that the orange one beside it was very possibly tandoori chicken. ‘It’s the smell that gives it away,’ he said cheerfully, before hastening to assure us that he’d seen worse—much worse. In one flat he’d cleaned, the previous tenant had kept several large dogs, and the carpet had been disfigured, not only by an ankle-deep mist of fleas, but by countless shit stains.
    When we bought this house, however, we were lucky. The carpet was brand new, and the bathroom was only two years old. It’s a lovely bathroom, with brass taps, a wooden toilet seat and a claw-footed bath. The shower recess has glass screens, not a curtain; there’s a porcelain soap dish cemented to the wall. Naturally, I’ve worked hard to ensure that this room has remained lovely, polishing the brass and keeping an eye on that hard-to-reach spot under the bath, where the dust collects. But has Matthew felt the same sense of responsibility? Has he hell. He never remembers the spot under the bath unless I remind him. He seems to think that scrubbing the ring off the bath and giving the S-bend a quick poke with the toilet brush constitutes a ‘good clean’. I don’t know how many times I’ve pointed out that we paid big money for this bathroom—that it’s an investment which shouldn’t be allowed to deteriorate. I might as well be talking to myself, for all the notice he takes of me.
    Sometimes I wonder if it’s a case of middle-class hang-ups versus working-class informality, and become prostrate with guilt. After all, hadn’t that always been part of Matthew’s attraction, for me? His had been a childhood of noisy, communal sessions in front of the TV; friendly, beat-up, smoke-kippered loungeroom furniture; football boots on the kitchen table; five strapping boys being served by