CHAPTER 5 NIGHT CLEANERS

 

The night cleaners would be working from 10pm till 6am and they would be polishing the floors of the new school and the Link corridor with big electric machines that were fitted with large round, disposable, polishing pads.

I got back to the school at 9:45pm and with a certain amount of trepidation I let myself into the front doors of the new school and opened the door of the office.  Thankfully, Andy had laid out all of the things they would need, cloths, cleaning fluids and sprays, the polishing machine and the floor pads.  Good Man! I decided to sit and wait for the cleaners as I hoped I would only be here for 20 minutes or so.

I had locked the front doors behind me so they would have to knock to get in.  I had a set of keys for each of them which they could use to open and lock the areas they were going to work and a key for the front doors so they could let themselves in each night.  

I looked at the newspaper that had been left on the desk from earlier in the day.  The crossword was half completed by Andy.  I started to look at the clues.  I thought I would see if I could finish it.

I studied the clue: ’12 down: Area of ground where soldiers drill, six letters.’ Parade! I was sure that was right but the answer Andy had given to 8 across crossed it.  There was an ‘R’ but it was in the wrong place.  Clue, ‘8 Across Supreme, 9 letters’. ‘That’s Paramount I thought.  Then I saw what Andy had written for supreme 9 letters!.

‘Diana Ross’! 

I threw the paper in the bin, laughing….then I heard a door rattle nearby.

I got up and stepped out into the school foyer and walked to the door with my keys but when I looked up I saw there was no one there.  I looked through the glass panels into the front entrance area but there was no sign of anyone.  I could see the cars parked in the street and to my left I could see the cars that had stopped at the traffic lights in Water Lane as it crossed the Romford Road.

I went back to the office and picked up the newspaper.  After a few seconds I heard the door being shaken again.  I stepped out of the office and looked at the doors.  Again, there was no one there.  As I turned to go back into the office I heard the doors rattle again.  I span around and could see that there was no one standing outside the front doors.  I walked towards the entrance and could see there was no one around outside.

Suddenly the doors rattled again but this time they rattled very hard but, from where I was standing, I could tell it was the doors to the corridor on the right of the Hall.  These were internal doors and I was alone in the building.  This wasn’t the wind making them rattle, everywhere was shut.  They rattled again as I tried to make sense of what was happening.

What the hell was causing this?  The doors were rattling every five seconds or so.  Someone was shaking them from the other side of the door.

I listened to the sound as it echoed around the building.  When the school was empty every single noise, no matter how slight, was magnified.  This was echoing like thunder.

Then it stopped.  I stood still and listened.  There was no sound, no rattling, no shaking, nothing.

I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye and immediately there was a loud knocking sound behind me.  I spun around and saw the two night cleaners standing outside.  I unlocked the door and let them in.

“Thanks Dave,” Derek said as he stepped back allowing Jill, the other night cleaner, to step in first.

“What a Gentleman!” She laughed.

“Have you just got here? I asked, locking the door.

“Yeah, I picked Jill up and parked outside.  Will I be OK there?” He asked pointing to a Ford Sierra parked in the street right outside the front gate that hadn’t been there before.

“Yeah, no problem.” I told him.

They told me that they had both been to the school and spoken to Jim who, in a break with tradition, had given them a tour of the premises himself!

“It’s the corridor floors and surfaces mainly isn’t it” Jill asked, “Machine wash and polishing??”  I agreed.  Having the 8 cleaners arrive at 6am until 8am and 3.30 pm until 6pm every day seemed to make these night cleaners a waste of time and money but, it was not my problem.  The machine polishing was needed but I still couldn’t figure out what was going to take 8 hours five nights a week??

I was still thinking back to the door rattling.

I almost asked them if they had tried to get in through another entrance but it was pointless.  They had no keys and they had been told to come to the front doors.  Whatever it was that had shaken the internal corridor doors wasn’t trying to get in the building.  It was already in the building and I had the uneasy feeling that it had been here a long time: and it was going nowhere.

 

There were two parts to the school, the old Victorian part and a more modern part which was linked by a corridor that had a large toilet and washbasin block housed in it.

A month later I went in one morning at 6am to let the regular cleaners in and the night cleaners were still there about to leave.

Derek  said to me, ‘Dave was there some fancy dress party in the old school last night?’  the school was always being used for parties, wedding receptions etc.  I told him there was nothing going on and asked why.

It transpired that he had seen a child of about 12 in dirty smeared Victorian clothing that kept running around the corridors and looking around the corner at him, and he and Jill had searched all over the new school and the corridor linking to the old school but to no avail, they didn’t find her.  I couldn’t explain it.