Someone commented that my postings are too short. Here I start a story which is double-length for your approval.

Part 1 My Old Man’s a Dustman

Every story has a beginning and an end. I rather expect that today is the day my story ends. Who knows, I may avoid the fate that awaits me and am able to carry on with my life. It’s all in the lap of the Gods, or so they say.

As the words of the song go, my old man really was a dustman. Well, in this day and age he would have been described as a ‘refuse contractor’ or even a ‘household waste elimination agent’.

I really don’t know where they get the names that are only designed to hide the true nature of the process. My old job description was a ‘customer satisfaction arranger’ in a ‘location rearrangement’ office. Actually, I sat at a desk and allocated council flats to the down-at-heel.

My father led a good and productive life. In his very young days he had to pick up bins and empty them into the truck; the bins had to be at the kerb or else they would not be emptied.

Much later the bins were plastic mouldings and my father drove a truck with an extending arm which picked up the bin and upended it into the top of the truck body. He spent his whole working day at the wheel and ended up so fat his heart gave out as he tried to climb into the cab one day. So much for progress!

My grandfather, on my mothers’ side, had been a dustman as well. He would have to go into back yards and carry the full bins to the roadside to empty them.

He was a big man and when my brother and I were small he would lift us up, one on each shoulder, and say “Come on you two bits of rubbish, to the truck with you.”

He would regale us with tales of things he saw in back yards and it took me some years before I stopped believing that there were some houses that had a dragon chained next to the back door.

My mother was a cheerful woman, given to singing old songs of her youth in the eighties and also songs she remembered her own mother singing from the sixties. She was the fourth in a family of eight and brought up the four of us as well as she could; me, my brother and my two younger sisters.

My brother was older than me by a year and a half and was the apple of my fathers’ eye. I remember seeing them head off to the local stadium to see our football team get regularly thrashed but that never worried them. All they wanted to do was have fun, shout and sing and drink beer.

My brother never made it to his coming of age; the first time he went to a mid-week away match by himself he was beaten up by a bunch of louts that followed the other team and unfortunately died two days later from his injuries.

That devastated my father who then tended to keep himself to himself and he started the serious drinking that helped his arteries block up. My mother took it in her stride, being extra kind to me while doting on my twin sisters who were two years younger than I.

My mother took little side jobs to help with the family income and it was one of these that led to her demise. She was waiting on tables in a big restaurant that catered for the ‘older generation’ and a party of very young louts decided they wanted to eat there.

I was told that most of them had been high on meth at the time and it was that which led to the violence. When they ordered what they considered normal food and my mother told them that such modern fare was not on the menu, one of them exploded with rage and stabbed her in the neck with a dessert fork.

He got his just desserts with a life sentence but me and my sisters had to bury our mother next to her son and her husband, who had only been gone a couple of years.

I was twenty at that time and my two sisters were eighteen so we were all considered of age. I had finished secondary school, had moved into my own place and had got a job as a labourer with a garden designer.

I liked flowers and often would draw up my idea of what the garden should look like only to see it being created in a totally different fashion that would always get admiration. My sisters did pick themselves up after being coddled by our mother and stayed in the family flat while they did menial cleaning jobs. It was the menial jobs that brought them both husbands.

They were working for a financial company, cleaning in the evenings, when a couple of the office workers had to do overtime on a big job. They went home with the lads that night and both marriages took place within a week of each other some two months hence. My sisters were never ones to follow my mothers’ advice.

They ended up in the ‘stockbroker belt’ with growing families and affairs with their own gardeners. I guess they were happy but every time I saw them I was reminded of those awful ‘Real Housewives’ shows. They seemed to have everything and I think their husbands did as well, including mistresses in the city.

The garden designer I worked for had been contacted by a big plant supplier to build a special garden at the big flower show and it was this event that brought about the first change in my life. We were on site and had built a substantial wall behind a pond that we had yet to fill.

There was a rather elaborate spout on the wall which would provide the ambiance when the garden was finished. It was a pair of soaring dolphins, either side of the spout which was a fish with the water coming out of its mouth. We were both in the pool, tidying up and painting the walls, when something hit me in the back and my world went dark.

One moment I was happily painting away and the next I woke up in hospital with a lot of tubes attached to me and swathed in bandages.

As I got more aware I found out that I had broken both legs and that the water spout had hit me just under my anus and castrated me. I was told that the garden designer in the next plot had backed into the wall with his front-end loader and pushed it over. The doctors all told me I was lucky to be alive as the dolphins had landed either side of me. They had saved me from being totally hit by the wall; unlike my employer, who had been crushed to death. Even the nurses started calling me ‘Lucky’.

As I recovered I contemplated my future. I had been given one third of my mothers’ estate just the year before and a lawyer who visited me said that I was in with a good chance for compensation from my employers insurance and also some more from the other garden designer who was, I believe, too shaken up to come and see me.

Eventually I was able to walk again and finally left the hospital. One of my sisters took me home before heading off to some play her husband was taking her to. I did suspect that the leading lady was his current bit on the side. She kissed me on the cheek before she left and told me I was lucky she had to come to town or else I may have had to catch a bus home.

I had only been in my flat ten minutes and was going through the post that had piled up when there was a knock on my door. When I opened it I saw my landlord. I invited him in and asked him if he would like a cuppa from the kettle I had just boiled.

We sat at the kitchen table and he told me that I was lucky that I had paid in advance because there had been a few enquiries about flats. I took the hint and got my cheque-book and wrote him one for the next two month’s rent, saying that I hoped that I had a new job by then.

He was happy when he left; it’s nice when you can bring a little happiness to someones’ life when yours is totally in the shit.

I tidied up and then stripped to take a wash. I still had casts on both legs, near the top as the spout had broken them near the thigh, so still could not shower or take a bath. I could move around quite well without sticks, even though a pair had been provided.

In hospital they had given me oversize pyjama bottoms that fitted over the casts but I rummaged around in my drawers and found a couple of pairs of baggy long shorts with lots of pockets that had been the rage when I was in my early teens and they fitted well, even hiding the casts. With a long tee-shirt I looked unharmed, which was the look I needed to show if I had any chance of getting another job.

The next thing I did was set up a regular delivery from my local supermarket so that I had the staples without needing to go out and then I hit the phone for two weeks. Every garden designer I knew didn’t want to have anything to do with me. I was considered a liability and some even said that they did not want to employ a eunuch.

Funnily enough, when I looked up the discrimination laws, you couldn’t discriminate against gays, cross-dressers, ethnics, fatsos, dwarves and almost every other odd person there was but us eunuchs were not listed. So, a shift of career was needed; what on earth could I do now?

I still had my gardening knowledge to work with so started looking at the job adverts for gardeners, also logging in with my local ‘skills assignment office’ to see if they had anything. They did come through in the end, sending me to speak to a lady who owned a big house with about an acre of garden.

The ‘assignment officer’ who spoke to me said that they had sent several other gardeners to see her, some very well qualified, but that she had rejected them all out of hand. He said that even if I didn’t get the job it would give me a trip to the outer suburbs and I was lucky because the address was just off a good bus route.

Luckily it was a sunny day when I went there as someone walking around in baggy shorts in the rain could be considered a bit mad. I had my working boots and socks on and I thought that I, at least, looked the part.

When I arrived I had to press a button at the closed gates and a nice voice asked me my business, letting me in after I said who I was. I walked up the front path and looked around. The garden was nice, almost as if it was one of my own ideas. At the door I pressed the button and heard chimes from inside.

After a minute or so the door opened and the lady herself looked at me, took a good look up and down, peered closely at my face and then said “Come in, young man, I rather think you’ll do.”

She told me that she wanted her gardener to be full time and asked me about my experience. I was up-front and told her about my little accident.

She said “Oh, you poor boy!” but was half smiling as she said it.

We then took a walk around the grounds and I could see that it was totally within my capabilities. I asked her about the budget for new plantings and she said that anything reasonable was all right with her.

She showed me the spot where her husband was buried, a small plaque at his head, in the middle of a row of other graves. He had Rover and Trixie on one side of him and Tozer and Tizer on the other.

She saw me looking, “Matched wolf-hounds, his favourites” and then took me to an annex, opened the door, “This is where you can live. I said full time and I don’t expect you to traipse halfway across town every day. I’ll pay you a reasonable wage but you can consider yourself lucky that this will be home while you work for me.”

Part 2 Georgie Girl

Now, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. The annex was almost brand new and had all the things you would want, from a fully equipped lounge to a grand bedroom with a big bed, a walk-in robe and a huge ensuite.

I noticed that the toilet and shower had bars on the walls and, when I asked, she told me that the annex had been converted for her mother-in-law who had unfortunately died before she could move in.

When I looked closer I saw that the place had a definite feminine feel to it, the paintwork being a pale pink that went with the lavender curtains. I said that I could live with it as it reminded me of a rose bed.

She smiled widely. “That’s the type of thinking I like. Can you start Monday? You can move your things here over the weekend. I’ll pay for a van if need be.”

I went to shake hands on it but she pulled me into a hug instead and kissed my cheek. We then went into the big house where I filled in the forms needed for her insurance with me working here, as well as her signing the form that my ‘assignment officer’ had given me to say that I was employed. He could now apply for his little bonus from the government for getting a disabled man some gainful employment.

I contacted my landlord again and told him that I would be moving out over the weekend and he said he would organise a refund of the advance payment and my bond when I handed over the keys. I then saw my ‘assignment officer’ to let him know that I had got the job and he shook my hand and called me a lucky bugger to be working with the lady who, he said, looked as if she would eat me for breakfast every morning.

I organised a van and loaded it up on Saturday morning. There wasn’t a lot as the flat had been furnished but it was more than I could take on a bus. After seeing my landlord to hand back the keys and get my cheque I called my employer on the phone and she said to come over in the afternoon. She would make sure the gates were open.

When I arrived she helped me take my things inside the annex and was very interested in my wardrobe, saying that you can tell a lot about a person if you can see what they wear. It was a good job she didn’t see the two bags of things I had dropped into a charity bin on the way here.

When I took the van back she followed me in her car, paid the residual on the hire and drove me back to my new home, via a little café where she was known so we could have a meal.

She told me that I could have my breakfasts in the main house as there was plenty but was free to cook up other meals for myself. She did say that it was a bit lonely in the house and that she would not mind a bit of company from time to time. This was said without any sexual connotation so I took it as just that, a chance to provide companionship.

Over the next month we ate breakfast together before I worked in the garden and it then became a regular thing for her to bring me out sandwiches and tea for lunch and then we would eat together in the evening.

I did my bit by being chef on many nights and we developed a good friendship. During that time I had an appointment at the hospital where I had the casts removed and was x-rayed, walking out without the casts a free man, if a little bow-legged.

The garden was eventually brought into line with my vision and she complimented me on my skill and dedication. I must say it looked a treat in its autumn colours. That evening she did an extra special roast meal with wine and candle-light and I then learned why she had not chosen any of the other gardeners.

We had finished the main course and she raised her glass and proposed a toast

“To the garden! You have done very well in the garden, it looks magnificent. How would you like to double your wage?”

“How would I do that, ma’am?”

“You may find it odd why I am living here alone and do not have any friends. My late husband left the house to me in his will, along with a considerable fortune, on the basis that I not marry again, or even enter into a relationship with another man, for twenty years. I have been able to go out to parties during the season and it was at one of those that I met a charming man who wants me to marry him.”

“Now, my husbands’ solicitor is a very nosey bastard and he sometimes calls me or drops in to make sure I’m following the terms of the will. If I don’t I’ll get to keep some of the money but will lose the house. I have put up with it for five years but now need to have some fun.”

She carried on as I leaned forward to take it all in, “What I’m proposing is that you play me while I am out if anyone calls. Firstly we will give you a mobile phone that any calls to the house will be transferred to and I want you to practice talking in my voice so that you can answer. If someone calls at the gates you can go and see what they want, telling them to come back when I am home. That way I can get out of here for a few days at a time to be with my boyfriend. Will you help me find happiness?”

I sat for a moment and then we cleared the table while I thought about it.

With our desserts in front of us I asked “Are you sure it will work?” and she laughed.

“Of course it will. I chose you to be my gardener because you are a similar size to me, if I am away at night you could sleep in my bedroom and your silhouette will look like me on the curtains. Our voices are very close already, your lack of testicles have given you a very soft tone and it will not take a lot for your phone voice to be taken as me if it’s me that the caller is expecting. Think about it, you get a good income and I get some freedom, will you do it?”

I smile, “Yes, I think I will; but only on the condition that we can make the voices match.”

She must have anticipated my agreement because she went to a drawer and pulled out two small recorders, like the ones that reporters try to stick up your nose. One was pink, the other blue. She gave me the blue one and showed me how it worked and got me to say a few words and then playing them back.

She then picked up the pink one and said “Hello, this is Georgina Yardley, how can I help you?”

She then got me to repeat this until she thought I was close and then record it. We played them back, one after the other, and I was staggered that I couldn’t tell the difference with my eyes shut.

One thing I did discover was that she had two voices, one which I heard every day and the other she used on phone callers or other visitors which was more refined and lady-like.

Before I retired to the annex she took me up to her bedroom and put on the bedside light. With the main light turned off she told me to walk around in front of the curtains while she went outside to see if my shape worked. I did as asked but when she got back she was frowning.

“It just doesn’t work. When I looked all I could see was a shape of a man. The hair was too short and there was no bust-line. Damn it, I had big hopes on this.”

“Surely those are just details that we can rectify with the right attachments?” I dropped myself in it as the words left my lips.

Her face lit up, “Oh, you’re such a dear. Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can organise.”

She then went to her sewing and office room where she grabbed a tape and I was measured with her noting down the sizes.

I did say “If you are only measuring for a bra, why have you done my waist and hips as well?”

“You never know what may need to happen in the future, we may need you to be seen as me from a distance. Now, what’s your shoe size?”

Over the next few weeks I became adept at using her voice, both the normal and the lady one. The big test came in October when the phone rang while we were having our evening meal.

“This is your test, answer the phone and put it on speaker so I can hear who is calling.”

I picked up the phone handset; put the speaker on, “Good evening, Georgina Yardley here, can I help you?”

The voice on the other end said “Mrs Yardley, my name is Annabel Scott-Blowers and I am the president of the gardening club. We’re planning our spring open-garden days and I wondered if we could add your garden to our calendar?”

I looked over and saw her nodding so answered, “Yes, I think that could be possible. Could you please email me with the dates when you have them; as well as what you will be bringing in the way of tents so my gardener can make sure there is a place for them.”

Annabel said that she would and asked the email address and I read off the one that Georgina had written on a bit of paper for me.

When I put the phone back in its cradle Georgina gave me a hug and said “You were perfect, you said exactly what I would have said. We can go with it or reject it when they email. They will expect that I am present on the day but that will be all right. Visitors!”

She seemed very happy at the thought and I went off to the annex that night thinking that I had, once again, brought a little sunshine into someone’s’ life.

Marianne Gregory © 2022