Genesis: the Beginning and the End | Band of Brothers

【Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ １６ － Ｓｃｒｕｂ】

Chapter 16 - Scrub

She didn't know it yet, but she'd remember that bus route for the rest of her life.

So there she was. In front of her home again. Too scared to go in again.

A week.

That wasn't very long.

But it was enough.

Margaret decided that she'd spend the week cleaning. She could focus on that whilst her brain worked on the problem in the background.

But she'd been staring at the door for ten minutes now.

Enough.

Taking a deep breath, she reached for the key through the flap and unlocked the door.

She left the door open so she had light and set her bags down by her other suitcase. It felt nice to be free of them, and she stretched a bit there in the doorway.

It smelled musty and damp and just not that pleasant.

The first order of the day, opening all the windows and taking down all the curtains.

Her house's front door opened into a small hallway, with doors leading to a small sitting room, a cupboard for shoes and coats and umbrellas, a large kitchen and the bathroom. In the kitchen was a wooden staircase leading to three bedrooms.

Margaret started at the beginning.

Well actually, before she started, she took a suitcase upstairs to her old room to change into proper clothes for cleaning. Sturdy denim trousers she'd stumbled across in the back of a shop in London – the owner said he'd been given the pair to sell but no one was interested so it just made its way to the back – a plain t-shirt she'd never liked too much and the apron that hung on the back of her bedroom door. That was her cleaning and decorating apron. After fishing out a bandana-type hairband to keep her hair from her face, she pulled down the curtains in her room and opened her window since she was in there.

Then down the stairs she went, back into the kitchen to fish for gloves. Once gloves were found, the curtains in her arms were laid out the front of the house. Then in the shoe/coat cupboard, at the back, the cleaning bleaches were found, with buckets and brushes and a mop.

Weak bleach for the kitchen surfaces, strong bleach for the bathroom.

Margaret set everything down on the table, then set about removing all of the downstairs curtains and taking them out to beside the ones from her room. Soon every curtain in the house was out there and every window was open. She even opened the backdoor too.

She would clean the kitchen first.

The dusting took ages. She started as high up in the room as she could, with the ceiling beams and a broom.

Margaret attacked the beams with her broom, scrubbing to get all the cobwebs and dust out, coughing and congratulating herself for having the foresight to open the windows first.

After doing as much of the ceiling as her eyes could bear, she stepped outside to actually breathe and get as much dust off of her as possible before she wiped it into her eyes.

When the dust had settled, literally, Margaret was back in there, taking things carefully off the dresser and off of worktops and the like. Everything went onto the large table, was dusted, and their home dusted before they were put back. The table and kitchen surfaces were cleaned with the weak bleach, and the light was definitely going now.

She closed the windows upstairs, and the bathroom and living room windows, then the front door.

The evening was more relaxed, and she washed the floor as the light waned. It was quiet. The hens had gone to sleep, and the birds to roost.