DAY 23: Sunday
No skimming today.
Money made for tinnie or Tearley: $14.50 ($810.50 to go—at least we’re getting closer.)
Tearley came around after breakfast with a couple of buckets and rags.
‘I know how you can make some money to pay me back for the camera.’
‘How?’
‘Mum was speaking to this nice woman yesterday who said she would pay for someone to clean her house.’
‘I hate cleaning,’ I said.
Wrigs turned up and saw the buckets. ‘We’re not going to do that windscreen thing again, are we?’ he said.
‘No, house cleaning,’ said Tearley.
‘I hate cleaning,’ he said.
‘The three of us can do it,’ Tearley said. ‘Mum said she used to get fifteen dollars an hour when she was a cleaner.’
Fifteen bucks an hour. We’d make a killing as cleaners. Maybe we could still get the tinnie.
‘We could knock on other people’s doors and see if we can do their houses, too,’ I said.
‘This lady’s house is just up the street,’ said Tearley.
We walked up the road until there was only one house left.
‘Ms Burke,’ said Wrigs. ‘There’s no way I’m going to help that witch out. She’ll pay us nothing.’
‘C’mon, Wrigs,’ said Tearley.
‘Nah, I’m outta here,’ he said. ‘I’ve still got all the scabs on my legs from when Digger and I tidied up her backyard.’
Wrigs stormed off.
‘You still owe me seventy-five bucks,’ Tearley said to me.
I had no chance of getting out of it.
The house smelt of old people. Musty and humid. It was stuffed full of hundred-year-old couches and dressers and faded carpets. The curtains looked liked they hadn’t been opened in decades. Every surface was covered with photos of old and probably dead people.
And everything was covered by a centimetre of dust. We spent ages cleaning and dusting and vacuuming.
I accidently knocked over a whole lot of photos that were standing on top of an old wooden cabinet. Tearley came and helped me put them back up. She pointed at one of them.
‘Look who it is,’ she said.
It was a teenager grinning at the camera. His front tooth was gold.
‘That’s Mr Black,’ I said. ‘The photo must be fifteen years old.’
‘I wonder what Mr Black’s got to do with Ms Burke?’ said Tearley.
Ms Burke walked back in at that moment. She had on a long white glove and was running her index finger along the top of the surfaces we’d cleaned. She was checking for dust.
‘Who’s this, Ms Burke?’ asked Tearley pointing to the photo.
‘Why do you ask?’ said Ms Burke.
‘Is he your son?’ I asked.
‘My son? Good heavens, no,’ she said. ‘He used to do odd jobs for me but I had to get rid of him when I caught him stealing. I don’t even know why I still have his photo here.’
‘He looks familiar,’ said Tearley.
‘He moved away from here years ago,’ she said. ‘He was a bad egg.’
She took the photo into the kitchen and it sounded like she threw it in the bin.
She walked out again and asked, ‘Have you finished?’
‘Yes,’ said Tearley.
Ms Burke gave us her best weak-old-lady smile and dropped a couple of two-dollar coins into Tearley’s hands.
Four dollars! We’d been cleaning her house for two and a half hours. It was even worse than when we did her backyard. Wrigs was right, we should never have come here.
I was about to walk out when Tearley said, ‘Thank you, Ms Burke. Are you happy with the job?’
Ms Burke looked around the house and said, ‘I think you have done quite well, thank you.’
‘I’m glad you’re pleased,’ said Tearley, sweet as pie. ‘Now, the going rate for a cleaner is fifteen dollars per hour and Digger and I have been going for five hours between us. That’s seventy-five dollars.’
Ms Burke sucked in her cheeks. She was about to say something, but Tearley went on. ‘However, I know you’re a pensioner, so we’ll discount it to ten dollars an hour. That means you only owe us fifty dollars.’
Ms Burke opened and closed her mouth a few times, but no sound came out. I don’t think anyone had ever spoken to her like this before.
‘And as a special introductory offer,’ Tearley continued, ‘we’ll only charge you seven dollars an hour, to say thank you for trying us out. That makes a total of thirty-five dollars, which is a saving of forty dollars.’
Ms Burke opened her purse. There were so many banknotes jammed into it, it looked like it was going to burst.
‘I’ve only got twenty-five dollars,’ she lied.
‘That’ll do,’ said Tearley and took the notes from her.
So we walked out with twenty-nine dollars all up. The twenty-five dollars in notes and the pair of two-dollar coins. Fourteen dollars and fifty cents each.
If we keep making money like this, we’ll still be able to buy the tinnie before Uncle Scott puts it on eBay.