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
Part 3 I’m a Believer
During that autumn and into winter I worked in the garden on the good days and at being Georgina on wet ones. She had planned to spend Christmas with her boyfriend so had talked me into playing her at the house for two weeks.
She took a photo of herself on her phone, followed by one of me, and sent them off to someone she had contacted.
Two days later the answer was positive so she made arrangements. In the middle of November I found myself in a small private clinic having a little cosmetic surgery on my facial features.
By December, after the bruises faded, we could stand side by side at a mirror and look like sisters, with me being the ugly one. My hair was a similar colour to hers and had grown longer so, instead of a wig, she ordered extensions on the internet.
That’s when I found out that she had worked in a beauty salon before she met her rich and possessive husband.
She had been amassing a wardrobe for me that was stored in the spare bedroom and two weeks before she was going to be away I was given a total make-over.
She did the full job on me, from hair removal on my body to the additions on my head. I now sported red toenails and attached fingernails and the breast shape that I had lacked was rectified. I even had pierced ears in two places, the same as hers.
I learned how to put a bra on and how to tuck my miniscule penis so that it didn’t show in my panties. Putting on stockings with my now hairless legs was a bit of a thrill, as was the feel of a silk slip against my body.
The shoes she had bought on-line ranged from a one inch to four inch heel and there were a couple of pairs of boots.
She told me that I must never wear trousers while I was playing her because seeing a person in a dress immediately gives the clue that the person is a woman, if everything else fitted as well.
I had two days learning how to do make-up and my big test, once she was happy, was to take the car and organise my meals for the Christmas period. I had boots with a jersey knit dress under a winter coat, carried my own handbag with her purse and cards in it. I took the car to the local butchers to buy enough for one over a two week period, having a deep freeze to save things in.
I was ready in looks but not ready in my mind to have the first interaction with other people but I need not have worried.
When I walked into the shop the butcher said “Good morning Mrs Yardley, what do you want today?” and I was off and running.
He took my order and said he would deliver the next day. I paid with her credit card.
As I left he called out "Have a lovely Christmas, Mrs Yardley, we’ll see you in the New Year.”
I also went to the bottle-shop and got a few bottles of wine with the assistant calling me madam and smiling at me. He said that I was lucky as the wine I had chosen was the last few bottles in stock.
What I didn’t expect was meeting a chap in the street who doffed his hat.
“Mrs. Yardley, so nice to see you. I know you have dark thoughts about me but I’m only following the last wishes of your late husband. I was planning to visit you between Christmas and New Year to make sure that you’re alone but my wife wants to go on a cruise in the Mediterranean. My son-in-law will call on you instead. He will be taking over the file anyway as I plan to retire in the New Year.”
“Well, I’ll be home and you, of all people, know why. I’m so glad that I am seeing you for the last time.”
Back at the house I reported this to Georgina who laughed, “If you can get that old bastard to believe that you’re me then we’ve done well.”
I warned her that he was going for a cruise in the Med and she said that she would be skiing in the Alps so it didn’t matter. Before she was picked up by her boyfriend, she gave me her old passport, saying that she had just got a new one. It had ‘expired’ stamped on it but the photo looked like me and I could always say that my new one was in another bag.
She also had culled her collection of cards and I had her credit card and some high-end fashion shop loyalty cards to show I was her if anyone got nosey. She gave me an envelope with the passwords and numbers of her bank accounts.
“I trust you with this and I know you’ll not let me down. If any bills come in you can pay them on-line.”
The boyfriend was a real dish! He didn’t see me, of course, but I looked out of the window as he loaded her bags into the car and they left. It was at night and the house was dark in case anyone was watching.
I closed the gates after they had gone and went up to the main bedroom. She had told me to use the house as if it was my own while she was away and this was the first night I would not be sleeping in the annex.
I undressed and hung my blouse and skirt away, did my cleansing as I had been shown and then put on one of her nighties. I got into her bed for the first time, putting out the light and sleeping deeply.
I woke refreshed and ready for anything. I went into the ensuite and sat to pee, something I had been doing for some time once my penis had got too short to get a good aim.
Putting a gown over the nightie I went down to get some breakfast. Georgina must have got up very early because I had never seen her other than impeccably dressed, even early in the morning.
After I had eaten, I went back up, had a shower, and dressed carefully and did my make-up. Today I planned to get used to the three inch heels while there was no-one to laugh at my antics.
It was a good job I had taken all of the care because, about eleven, the chimes announced someone at the gate.
I looked on the screen to see a chap in a suit and carrying a briefcase was standing there, his car parked at the kerb. I asked who he was and he told me that he was calling from the legal office as instructed by his boss.
I let him in the small gate and was standing at the front door as he arrived. I must have made a picture as he blinked a couple of times as he walked up the steps.
“Not what you were expecting, perhaps?”
Hoping that he was not going to say that he didn’t expect to see a man in a dress and heels.
He smiled, “Actually, Mrs Yardley, my father-in-law has described you as a money-grabbing harridan who had beguiled his friend before killing him with kindness. I didn’t expect to meet such a charming lady today.”
I smiled, “Thank you, kind sir; please come into my spiders web so I can bite your head off”
He laughed and came in behind me, closing the door on his way.
“It’s time for morning tea, will you join me?”
We went into the kitchen and I put out cups, saucers and plates for some cake I had set aside to treat myself with.
He put his case down, “I’m truly sorry about this but I was told to inspect the house to make sure that you’re alone.”
I laughed, “Go ahead, the only part that’s locked is the annex because that’s where the gardener lives. He’s away on his Christmas holiday at the moment.”
By the time he got back I had the table set and the kettle had boiled so I made a pot of tea and we sat at the kitchen table and chatted. I found out that he had been a junior in the firm when my case had come up and that he was mortified that my husband had been so possessive.
“When my father-in-law retires, I’ll go into your file and put in a change of circumstance so that we can drop the time that you have to remain single. It’s an outrage that your husband could have made such a demand that would put you into almost the too old bracket when the time limit expires.”
I thanked him for the ‘almost’ part and asked what sort of limit he would set.
“You’ve followed the letter of the will for over five years but I could set it at seven; that will be acceptable by the tribunal. My father-in-law need not know.”
I smiled and said that it would be lovely. When I went to rinse the cups out at the sink he was behind me in a flash and had his arms around my waist.
I could feel him against my butt. “So, there’s a cost for your services, I can’t give you all that you want because I cannot have a relationship with another man.”
He whispered in my ear “But you could have, shall we say; a dalliance.”
I turned around and he kissed me and I let him. It was not something I had ever thought I would do but this was for Georgina, a way out of her prison, so I put my all into being her, for him.
When our lips parted I said “What about your wife, the daughter of the boss?”
“Oh, her. I would divorce her for you, my love. I fell for you the moment I saw you. If I get your freedom in another year or so, will you marry me?”
I told him I would think about it, the two-timing money-grabbing sod. I knew that it was only my, or should I say Georginas’, money that he was after.
We broke open a bottle of wine to celebrate our future and one thing led to another with me ending up kneeling in front of him with his dick in my mouth, something else I had never contemplated before.
By the time he left he was certain that he had reeled me in He was sure that I was Georgina and that he would get my money, come hell or high water!
He was a believer, that’s for sure, not a doubt in his mind.
Part 4 Every time you go away
I was on a high for the rest of my time in the house. I had completely fooled a man into thinking I would marry him and had swallowed his cum to show I was his woman.
Christmas Day I made myself a nice Christmas dinner and proposed a toast to my future with the remainder of the wine we had opened.
He was back on the New Year’s Day with some paperwork for me to keep, as well as a few to sign.
I told him that I would look at it and give him a call and his face fell for a second or two. I told him that he must only come to the house when I call his office for him and that it must only be after his father-in-law had retired for good.
He saw the logic in it and I allowed him a few minutes kissing before he left. When Georgina got home a week later I could see that she was very happy. It made her even happier when I told her that we may get her out from under the yoke inside a couple of years.
I had to go through the whole thing with her and I left nothing out. I showed her the papers I had been left and we both had a laugh.
One was good, a draft of a proposal to the tribunal to alter the terms of the will as being an cruel abuse of position and not something that someone in their right mind would insist on.
The others he had left for a signature were straight-out crooked. If he had those he could take control of Georginas’ affairs as a ‘custodian’ of her wellbeing. We tore them up and dropped them in the bin.
Georgina smiled, “I was going to give you a bonus but was so excited to be going away I forgot. Why don’t we do it now?”
She powered up her computer and I gave her back the envelope with her numbers, unopened.
“No, you keep it,” she said, “Actually; can you help me with some movement of my money?”
I watched as she moved a nice bonus into my account, an account that I had not bothered with for many months, having room and meals supplied I hadn’t needed to tap it. We then worked through the setting up of an off-shore account in her maiden name.
I found out that her given name was not even Georgina and asked, “Is that the name on your marriage licence?”
“No, it isn’t. I married as Georgina.”
“There’s nothing to stop you getting married again but using your true maiden name this time. It isn’t bigamy because your husband is dead but it will allow you to marry before the seven years are up, if old shonky-dick doesn’t find out our secret.”
She pondered this for some time, “You, dear simple gardener that you are; you’re a genius!”
Then she went back and put another lump of money into my account. After that she shifted three-quarters of her money into the off-shore account, jotting the account number and password on the envelope, “Just in case I don’t get to access it.”
After that I was Georgina on a lot of occasions. We perfected the system and I moved into the spare bedroom, complete with my increasing wardrobe of outfits.
She even raided her own wardrobe and gave me several dresses that she didn’t wear these days. As the weather improved the only time I had my old stuff on was when I was out in the garden, generally with the special phone next to me because she was away more time than she was home.
I wore gloves to hide my nails as well as keep them safe, and a dust mask to hide the alterations should someone come to the gate. If I did see someone I would be carrying a small weed spray unit when I went to see them, so giving a reason for the mask.
The email from the garden group came and I got a plan together to make the place a wonderful display of colour when they came. On the morning of the open garden they set up their tent on a site I had prepared and I, as Georgina, spent the day showing the visitors around the garden and describing the flowers, saying that my gardener was ‘just wonderful’.
As they were tidying up the site that evening Annabel told me that she was amazed at my knowledge and that I should be on the Committee of the Gardening Club. I said that I didn’t have the time.
I had got to the point where I was Georgina so often that it had become a problem. An old song has a line in it that goes, “What’s the use in getting sober if you’re going to get drunk again.” I was in the position where I may as well dress full time as female. So I got onto the computer myself and ordered in some shorts, jeans and sturdy tops which I could wear in the garden, as well as nice boots and a big hat.
After that I was either Georgina in the house or the girl in the garden and no-one twigged that they were one and the same. I was able to keep my ‘beloved’ at bay with promises I would get back to him after he had organised the new time limit so he just had to work on it.
Georgina, under her real name, married her man in the summer. I obviously could not go but she showed me the pictures.
I was then her, twenty-four seven, and needed to organise another gardener but this one was only there on two days a week to keep the place looking nice. I paid myself a bonus on termination.
The paperwork finally came through and I rewarded my knight with another blow-job but pointed out that the seven years was still not up so he had better go home to his wife.
I saw Georgina about once a month and she was truly happy. This was good but it all came to an end far too soon. The light plane she and her husband were in flew into a mountain high in the snow-fields a few weeks before Christmas. I only found out by seeing his picture on the TV news with the report.
This left me in a strange position. I was now the only Georgina Yardley around and had access to her accounts. My lawyer wanted to marry me and I had this house to maintain.
This needed a lot of thought to work through and it took me into the next year before I had it sorted. My plan was simple; Georgina needed to disappear off the face of the earth and I needed to reappear as the original me, good old Lucky once more, but somewhere a long way away. I had all of my old ID’s in the annex and just needed to refresh some of the paperwork, a lot being possible on the internet.
I took my time and was very careful to cover my tracks as I went. I transferred most of her money to the off-shore account, now one only I had the access to. I kept enough back to maintain the house and the daily bills. I then got in touch with an up-market real estate company to say that I wanted to sell my house but that it could not be finalised until the date that my departed husband had placed on it. It all needed the utmost discretion.
Over the next summer I showed various interested parties around and had to explain that the occupation could only happen after the date stipulated. I did say that the place was being sold furnished and that the only things to be taken out were clothes and personal items.
I got the gardener to put a low wall around the little grave-site. I organised a tip truck of soil, ending up with a raised garden bed, doing that part myself, a small barrow-load a time. I planted it out with winter vegetable.
I got an amazing figure for the house and the buyer paid a deposit. I slowly bought new clothes on the internet to outfit the new/old me, most of them far better than I could have bought a few years ago.
I cleared the annex of all traces of me and took a few bags of things down to the charity shop bin. I then took stock of our clothes and personal items.
She had taken her best jewellery but left some things for me to wear so I got it all together and put it into a bag. I then collected all of the clothing that I could, without leaving me short for my remaining time as Georgina. These I put into a number of bags and took a few days out putting them into charity bins as far away as I could.
I stayed as Georgina right up to the day when the final payment was due on the house in the next spring. I exchanged the keys and codes for the alarm system for a very nice cheque. I signed all the papers as Georgina Yardley for the last time. I told the agent that the house would be vacant before the morning and went home.
On the way home I went to the bank and deposited the cheque which caused raised eyebrows at the amount. Back at the house I just needed to undress, peel off the forms for the last time, give my hair a trim, have a shower and redress as the old me.
With my new gear on, the bag of jewellery and my suitcases in the car with some more charity bags in the back I took a last look around the place, remembering all the good times I had here.
I also walked the garden, my pride and joy and the only thing I was sad to leave. My last act was to leave in the car and drive away. I stayed at a hotel that night and, over the next few days I just travelled around, dropping the last of the bags into charity bins and cutting up all of Georgina's cards and other things which went into rubbish bins as I strolled in the towns I visited.
Finally, I took the car to a big car-park next to a railway station, wiped the inside and left it locked, throwing the keys into a bin as I went to catch a train.
I now just had a couple of manageable suitcases and my own paperwork; not forgetting the access codes to the accounts. When I was a decent distance away I stopped at a biggish city and negotiated to rent a furnished flat.
It wasn’t what I had become used to but it would do. I went out and got myself a proper haircut then bought a laptop, a new phone and access to the internet.
The first thing I did was empty Georginas’ account, putting it all into the off-shore account. I had more than enough in my own account but needed a job to maintain my appearance.
That was when I became a clerk in a council office, dispensing largess to the down-trodden.
Marianne Gregory © 2022
As an apology for the double post of Uplifting, here is the next post of 'Songs for Two Lives.'
Part 5 The Magic Bus
I settled into my new life. My new manager told me I was lucky to have got the job as the budget had been limited the day after and that he wasn’t able to employ any more staff.
The job wasn’t difficult; I just had a database of all the properties that the council managed as well as another of the waiting list. My hardest part was matching properties with the right number of people in a family.
It was a bit like working out how many flowers you could fit into a flower pot and I was quite good at it. I had renewed my old driving licence and had use of a council car so would get the prospective tenants in the office, go through the details and match them with a choice of properties.
Usually they had an area they wanted to live in so I would then take them to the nearest property to their desired location and just give them the keys when they approved. Then and there they signed all of the paperwork. After that they were on their own.
There were girls in the office that I would take out for lunch sometimes but I never needed to start a relationship. I often found myself being critical of their outfits but kept my thoughts to myself.
It was my ability to relate to both the men and women that I saw that made me stand out. I started to get compliments about my work and one day was invited to meet one of the alderwomen.
We met for lunch and she told me that I was the sort of person she needed on a committee that dealt with the homeless. It tried to find accommodation for those who could not afford even the lowest rates we asked. So I joined her committee and spent a lot of evenings either in meetings talking about what should be done, or else out in the streets seeing that nothing had been done. It was a dead end as no-one would take the responsibility to actually try something.
In the end I went and had a chat with a few of the slum landlords to see if they could help. I told them that I would try to get some council assistance if they offered us the use of their worst buildings and a couple jumped at the chance.
I went back to the committee with the proposal that we take up the offer of the buildings and go for government money to restore them to some sort of liveability then placing some of our homeless into them. Everyone was relieved that something had been proposed so they all pulled together. If the plan worked they would get the credit; if it didn’t it was all down to me.
We hit a nerve with the government and the council and it wasn’t long before contractors were in these derelict places bringing them back to life. The slum landlord was beaming when it came to the first opening day and we managed to put together enough of the homeless that actually wanted a home to go and live in it, with council assistance on the rent.
It worked pretty well as more than half of those we housed also picked up their lives and found jobs. The next two buildings were a lot harder to fill because we were now drawing from a pool of homeless who didn’t trust ‘big brother’ or else were actually making good money being on the streets.
Our first house was a shining example, the second quickly got trashed and the third became a haven for junkies, much the same as it had been before the money had been spent on it. The committee, however, was buoyed by the successful one and no-one talked about the other two.
I found myself either being shunned for being too forward for my status, or else too much of a recluse to be a figurehead. I quietly left them to it and concentrated on my main job.
I did my job, I placed people in properties, I ate, slept and exercised but it wasn’t really living.
One day, I was eating my sandwich in the park and a young lad was sitting next to a tree and playing his guitar. He had his swag next to him and a cap for offerings so I could see he was living on the streets.
He sang and played and people gathered around, some putting money in his cap. I didn’t have any appointments that afternoon so stayed until the crowd went back to work. He stopped playing and looked at me and I got up and put a couple of notes in his cap.
He then said “Hello, I’m Sammy and you’re the geezer who helps people get council flats. You’re a bit of a legend on the streets.”
I laughed, “I’m no legend, just a guy doing a job” and sat on the ground next to him. We chatted for a while and I then asked if he had eaten anything lately.
He looked in his cap, “Maybe some fish and chips tonight.”
“How about some fish and chips now, my treat, and we can talk some more. It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to someone with original ideas.”
He packed up his guitar and swag and we strolled to the chippy, walking back to the park with our bags. We sat on a knoll and looked over the park while we ate and talked and, by mid-afternoon, we had both realised that we were soul-mates.
I asked him if he had somewhere to doss and he shook his head.
I smiled, “Look, I’ve a decent flat with a spare room and a camp bed. You’re welcome to doss with me, no strings and no attachments.”
He returned the smile at that and I led him to my council car. At my flat he put his stuff in the spare room and then we walked to the pub for a light tea with a drink or two.
That is how it started, my time with Sammy. He was a delight to know, friendly to everyone and generous with his time once I had given him the space to grow without having to eke out an existence.
He was thoroughly gay and had many friends in the gay world. He introduced me around as his friend and always emphasised the ‘friend’ part when anyone thought ‘boyfriend’.
He introduced me to gay clubs where I was among so many weirdos my own hidden weirdness no longer bothered me. One night he saw a flier for a drag fashion contest and suggested that I entered it, my feminine looks and still flawless skin making it easy.
I had never told him about my time as Georgina but I did hanker for the feeling of softness and grace that I had experienced all those years before.
I did some shopping in actual shops and a bit on the internet and, on the night of the show, I spent much of the afternoon getting ready.
I walked out of my room as an older Georgina, standing tall on my three inch heels in a sequined dress and a blonde wig. I had not forgotten my skill at make-up and still could do the voice.
I called, “Sammy, dearest, I’m ready,” and when he came out of his room his jaw dropped. Needless to say, I won the contest hands down and Sammy surprised me afterwards by telling me I was gorgeous and giving me a full-blown kiss, much to the delight of his friends. We then proceeded to spend the prize-money with drinks all round.
After that I would sometimes dress again for him and we would go out to the pictures or pubs looking like a couple. I did get some more normal clothes to wear so that I didn’t stand out as a vamp in ordinary society.
My work knew nothing of this and I really didn’t care if they found out. We talked about everything and anything; laughed a lot; went on holidays together and generally did everything together except sleep.
I got him gigs where he could play to an audience and his music blossomed, he even wrote his own songs and got a good following locally. I was living happily with someone I cared about and we remained the best of friends until he died.
We had close to thirty years together, sharing a flat but never a bed. I did get him a better bed of his own, though. He sometimes stayed out for a few days ‘getting a bit of rough’ and that was his eventual downfall, coming down with HIV in his fifties. He didn’t last long and I was by his side as he died.
His last words to me were, “Thank you, good friend.”
Once again I was filling bags to take to the charity bin. I kept his guitar with his name on. I had been losing weight for some months and, when the doctors saw me with Sammy in the HIV ward, they suggested that I get checked over myself, thinking that I may have been his sexual partner. That’s when they discovered something else.
It took a few days for all the tests to come back but they called me at my office and made an appointment for me to see a specialist. He sat me down, told me that I was lucky and there were no signs of HIV or ant STD’s in my system, that being something I already knew. He then told me that he wanted me to go into hospital for an ‘exploratory operation’ because they suspected that I may have cancer.
I checked with my work and found that I had enough holidays and sick leave to take me to my sixtieth birthday. I discussed the situation with my manager of the time, having worked for three of them in my time in the office.
He spoke to the upper management and HR and it was decided that I could take all of the time I had accumulated and put in my retirement papers immediately. There wasn’t an office party for me as I cleared my desk and walked out, but a week later some of my clients had heard and put on a street party for me where I got tipsy.
A week later I was back in the hospital and being prepped for the operation. What worried me was that they had suggested I write a letter with instructions regarding my property and leave it with my lawyer ‘just in case’.
When I did wake up again I was bandaged and had tubes but it wasn’t long before those tubes came out and I was able to move about. The specialist came to see me and gave me the news.
I had cancer, some of which they had been able to remove and some which they couldn’t without leaving me a cripple. It had been in my liver but also my bowel and lower spine.
“Look, I’ll be blunt. What you have is inoperable,” he said, “You have about six months to a year, maybe two if you’re lucky.”
Two weeks later I was discharged, spent a couple of days contemplating my fate and then walked into the city to a notorious road junction. That’s where I walked out into the path of a very quiet electric bus.
Part 6 You Don’t Always Get What you Want
I had expected to open my eyes again at either the Pearly Gates or, perhaps, having a shovel thrust into my hands so I could stoke the fires of Hell. But no, once again I woke to find a nurse looking down at me and smiling before going off to find a doctor.
“Bugger” I thought “Foiled again!”
I took stock of my situation. Once again I realised that the lower half of me was heavily bandaged and that both legs had full casts on, as did my hips. I knew that I must have a few cracked or broken ribs by the way it was difficult to breathe. My left arm was also in a partial cast but, as far as I could tell, I was perfect above the neck.
The doctor came by, told me that I must look where I was going in future, took some readings and then sat beside my bed to give me today’s wonderful news.
It seemed that I had been lucky again because the bus I had walked in front of was one of a new fleet with ultra-modern pedestrian safety equipment. Sensors had picked up my being in its path and automatic braking had occurred.
He smiled as he said that the only people hurt by the sudden stop in the bus were those not wearing the supplied seat belts.
As far as I was concerned, the front of the bus was one gigantic air-bag that deployed so saving my life.
One thing that had not shown up in tests, though, was that the explosion of the air-bag would throw me into the intersection where I was hit by a passing truck which, unfortunately, had no such safety measures.
He reeled off my injuries – broken legs in several places, broken pelvis, broken ribs and one broken arm. He then told me that I may be lucky to be out of hospital before the cancer got me but he wouldn’t bet on it.
When he left me I decided that if I was going to die in this bed it would be all right. One thing I had not done was tidy up my affairs before I ‘inadvertently’ missed seeing the bus.
I lay and thought for a long time, well, there wasn’t much else I could do. All input and output was carried through tubes and I was in a private room. I thought that they would put me with some other geriatrics later on, maybe in a palliative care ward so that we could all die close to the lift down to the morgue.
I just thought about my life and realised that I had actually been pretty lucky most of the time. Georgina had been an absolute poppet and Sammy lit up my life for the longest time. I did have a lot to be thankful for.
When I was a little more able I asked the nurse if she could bring in a phone and my wallet. She helped me extract the card I wanted and then rang the number for me.
I called the law chambers and, when I got through, asked to speak to the man who was holding my ‘final note’. When he answered I asked if his office could organise some things for me, seeing that I was unlikely to see the outside world again.
He made notes as I gave him a list of things I wanted brought in to me, mainly my tablet and some personal items. I asked that if someone came to the hospital I would give them the key to my flat.
I then asked if they could clear the flat and put all of the clothing and appliances that were mine into storage, to be sent to auction or the dump after I am gone. I did say that the person doing the clearing needed to be open- minded as there were some things not normally found in a single man’s wardrobe.
If he prepared the paperwork I would sign to give his office power of attorney to pay and receive accounts while I was bed-bound. I would give them the means to look after my account when the tablet was in my hands.
When one of their juniors came for the key I realised I knew him from one of the gay clubs. He smiled when he saw me and wished me well. I felt a lot easier when I gave him the key to the flat and told him that there was a lot of clothing that he had met me in that needed to be culled from my stuff before it went to storage.
I told him to take it to the club and give it to the management to give to the drag queens, as I wouldn’t be wearing it again.
Before he left he took hold of my good hand and told me that he was proud to help me as I had helped a lot of people in the past and that he had loved Sammy like a brother.
By the time he came back with a small bag of the things I had asked for I had been moved into a small ward with other dying men. What was interesting was their chatter that belied their predicament.
When the lad came with my tablet and the paperwork to sign I powered up the machine and gave him the numbers and password of the two accounts I normally used.
He told me that there was a trust fund set up for my affairs which would take the bond money when it was paid and then he said that the female outfits and accessories had gone down very well at the club.
It was then I realised that some of the jewellery had been the stuff left by Georgina and could have been worth a bit. Oh well, water under the bridge, as they say.
With that sorted I could rest easy. My affairs would be finalised and my funeral would be organised, not that many would be coming.
I then got caught up with the general chat with the other guys and the days passed fairly easily. One day they were talking and one of the chaps said that his son had sent him a clipping about an experimental procedure that a private clinic was doing.
He was amazed that they would even consider it. They had perfected all sorts of replacement surgery, from fingers to arms or legs, hearts, livers, kidneys, the lot. This was an operation to swap brains.
I asked to read the article and was immediately struck by the concept. My body was shot but my brain was good, or so I thought. It wouldn’t be once the cancer had worked its way up my spine, though.
I powered up my tablet and sent an email to the clinic, asking them if it was possible to be added to the waiting list but saying that I may only be on it a few more months. They answered the next day, telling me that there was no waiting list as such.
The operations were so expensive to do they needed to have a person who could donate the money as well as someone with a brain to spare.
I sent back my big question “If I had the money, how much would they need and how long would I be waiting?”
The answer didn’t take long to come back. They wanted to know where I was and that someone would come and see me.
Two days later I had a visitor. He was young and fit and looked like he had just stepped off a surf-board to come and see me.
He pulled the curtains around us and turned on the radio before sitting very close to me and lowering his voice. He told me that he had requested my file and had come to the conclusion that I would be a perfect patient for his next operation.
He wanted me to know that the procedure had worked about fifty percent of the time in mice but the success rate after three attempts on humans was zero. He did say that he thought that they had worked out the reasons behind the failures.
He then tried to scare me off by explaining the overview of the procedure. I would need to be pre-prepped because the operation would start as soon as a viable body was supplied so I would be put into a coma as soon as I qualified and had the tests finalised.
That meant that I would be asleep and would have no say in my acceptance of the body they would match with my brain.
“It may be man, woman, short and fat or tall and skinny, black, white or anything in between,” he said, “The only thing you will know is that we will only start if all of the matches add up to a viable chance of success. You may wake even more of a vegetable you are now, that is, if you do wake.”
I told him that if I was going to die inside a year anyway going a few months early wouldn’t be a problem.
He sighed, “This is all very good but you can’t afford it and we’ll have to wait for a donation before we even start.”
I asked him how much he would want to start setting up and he quoted a figure and then sat back, thinking that I would now start crying. Instead I powered up the tablet and, for the first time in years, looked at the off-shore account we’d set up forty years ago.
Even expecting it to be good I was surprised by the amount in it and looking at the few inputs of interest recently showed it was doing very nicely.
“Okay, what’s your account number to take the money?”
He called his administrator to get the number, writing it down on a bit of paper and giving it to me.
I transferred the amount plus a bit more to ensure that I would be ready to go. We waited until his phone rang and he was told that the money had gone in.
He shook my good hand and said “Thank you for that. I hope you don’t live to regret the donation, no, make it that I hope you live to appreciate the donation because if it goes wrong we’ll be burying you.”
After that things moved very quickly. I was carefully transported in a private ambulance to the clinic where they made sure that I could be worked on.
Blood tests and a very fine scan MRI of my head showed that I still had an unimpaired brain and that the cancer was still some way away.
I asked them to set up a trust fund in my name that could be transferred to whoever I became, that was if I lived. I signed that if I didn’t live the amount should go towards future operations.
I then emptied the off-shore account and the bulk of my savings. I put it all in the trust fund.
I had started this journal while waiting to die in the other hospital. It was a way to pass the time in a bed with just one hand available, luckily my writing hand. I had asked for a notebook and biro and wrote the above during the long days.
It was sad to wake up and see an empty bed with the nurses putting new sheets on in the morning. We all used to lift our orange drink glasses with breakfast and toast the one who had left us. We all knew that tomorrow we could be the one being toasted.
I put the following words right there at the start because they encapsulated my current situation post-bus.
“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 I’m able to carry on with my life.”
“It’s all in the lap of the Gods, or so they say.”
My last act with my old body will be to wind up this narrative and get a nurse to put it somewhere safe. Hopefully I might be able to start a new chapter, sometime in the unknown future.
I’m hooked up to live-giving machines and prepped to be put into a comatose state, to await my new body, should one present itself. That happens in about ten minutes. Whatever happens, it will be a last farewell to Lucky.
Marianne Gregory © 2022
Part 7 Morning Has Broken
I came back to consciousness, of a sort. I was unable to see anything but could hear machinery making noises around me. I felt different and suddenly thought that being able to feel at all was proof that something good had happened.
It took me some time before I figured out what the difference was. I was obviously in a hospital bed but now my body had no bandages while my head was swathed in them.
That could only be good, couldn’t it? I took my time, working up from my toes. I flexed and relaxed muscles starting from the toes and thought a lot about the feelings as I did so.
I had only got to my knees when I must have either gone to sleep or had been put under again. When I next woke nothing had changed so I started from the knees and carried on up my body.
I seemed to have more feed-back from my body this time and when I got to my groin I squeezed my muscle and felt the tube that was inserted there.
“That was odd” I thought. I knew what it felt like with no testicles but that felt as if there was no penis; or else mine had become very sensitive.
Working up I had the idea that I may be a lot thinner than before, perhaps I had been under so long my body had atrophied but, there again, it felt right.
I hadn't started on my fingers when I felt someone take hold of my hand and a voice said “If you can hear me, squeeze” so I did.
There was a gasp and then a series of questions about what I could or couldn’t feel, followed by some simple maths with the voice asking what’s two and two with me squeezing four times.
I don’t know if the voice was pleased or upset at my answers because not long after that I slid into blackness again.
Next time I woke I could see. Well, there were glows around me and I must have been in a dark room but I could make of shapes of monitors and slowly the focus returned, as if I had not used my eyes for the longest time.
There were still tubes in me because I could now feel them or else the bandages that kept them in place. My head felt lighter, less like a mummy.
“Of course” I thought, “they needed to take the top of your head off to get to the brain.”
The operation must have lasted days, with all the nerves to hook up. Thinking of that I wondered if I was still using my old eyes or new ones. I hoped to find out soon.
As I looked around a hand passed in front of my eyes and a straw was put on my lips. I closed my mouth and took a suck of what tasted like nectar but was probably only pure water.
A woman's voice said, “Can you make a sound for me, please?”
I did my best and croaked, “Hello, you. Am I alive?”
The voice said, “You most certainly are. You’re now a wonderful result of our work. It was your willingness and your money that pulled off the most advanced operation ever attempted.”
“That’s good,” I croaked and went back to sleep.
This was my life for some time. I woke, had a short conversation, gained a little more feeling and then slept again. Every time I woke my voice was easier for others to understand and I came to the conclusion that the donor body must have been female because I sounded female and my body felt female. I started to explore what I could with my hands and a couple of parts I did find were definitely female!
They started sending in a physio to work with me on moving my limbs first but it was forbidden for me to move my head, which seemed to be held in a frame.
I had no qualms with the girl who was the physio because she was very gentle at first, getting me to make more adventurous moves later. I was spoken to a lot but nothing was said about the success or otherwise of the operation.
One of the visitors told me it would only be considered a success when my head was free from the frame and I could stand on my own two feet. Two feet; which I could see when I raised my leg high enough, that were quite dainty and, I thought, not that old.
Likewise my hands were smallish with very long fingers, guitarists’ fingers. Then came the big day when the surfer surgeon, now looking a little older but very pleased with himself, stood next to the bed and explained the next step.
“First” he said, “We’ll put you under for a while. We need to disconnect all of the electrodes that have been monitoring your brain activity which is, happily for you, very close to normal. The next thing is to take out the screws that hold you in place. These had to be there to make sure you didn’t move and upset the healing process. As you can imagine, we had to open the skull so that we could work inside your head.”
He smiled at that, “Actually, both your heads.”
“We had to remove all of the hair first and it will take a while to grow back but you’ll be able to wear a wig which will also cover the ring of stitches around your skull. The skull you now have does have another small repair that was caused by the thing that gifted your body to us. I’ll get the psychiatrist to explain all that once you’re moving around.”
He then said, “Ready for another little sleepies?”
Next time I woke I was lying on a softer bed with a pillow under my head. The nurse was there with some drink for me again and then offered me some soft food, something like gruel, which she said was high in protein.
I could now move my head from side to side but my neck was a little stiff. Two days later the main tubes were removed and I was able to sit up in the bed. That was when I discovered that I now had real breasts. It took my mind back over thirty years to when I had the forms on for long periods. It didn’t particularly worry me.
Soon, I ready to do proper walking exercise and see the psychiatrist. Both were new experiences as the walking was different with the different bone structure and it took a few days before I was able to walk smoothly.
The shrink was another thing altogether. She slowly took me through the details of the body I now inhabited. I was in the body of Samantha Saunders, an approximately eighteen year old that had been shot in the head with a subsonic twenty-two which scrambled her brain and left everything else perfect.
I asked about my old body and was told that it had been cremated and a funeral service had been held with quite a big turn-out.
My new name had been added to my last will and testament and my old effects were now in storage in this building. All cash residue was now in my current account as was the money left over from the off-shore account.
All in all, I was a very well off teenage girl. Make that ‘nearly bald’ teenage girl.
Everyone was on tenterhooks wondering how I would take the change of sex but my previous time as a woman was making it easy. I had one session with a make-up artist and surprised her by nailing a good look first time.
I was able to walk in low heels and higher ones would be easier once my leg muscles got stronger. They had me in nighties and then dressing in day wear and I was carrying it off well. I was able to shower myself and it was a pleasure to be clean and smell nice.
I also took a long look at myself in the mirror. I was, I thought, reasonably pretty, in an impish way. My teeth were good and they had used the original eyes which were a stunning blue.
All in all, I looked good and would look better with some hair, some stubble now sprouting. The only odd thing about my reflection was the ring of stitch marks which looked like a crown of thorns.
Every day I also had a session on what skills I had remembered. I mentioned that I had started out as a gardener and they had me identifying flowers which went pretty well, considering that I hadn’t done gardening for over thirty years.
I had no problems remembering my work with the council or my time with Sammy. Oddly enough, when I thought about Sammy I could feel my fingers making chords so I asked if Samantha played and was told that it was thought she did.
We all had a lot of discussion about remembered muscle training.
The test was that we got the guitar from the store and I sat down with it and, sure enough, I could strum a tune. My own brain was able to remember tunes but I had never played in my life and considered that I had been too old to learn.
It would be interesting to see what else she could do, maybe she could roller blade, dance, sing; it would be fun to find out.
I asked how she got shot and was told was that she was standing in a supermarket when someone tried to rob it. The robbery went wrong and she had been held hostage but the robber must have got spooked and shot her, so allowing him to be taken down by the police.
It was because she had been taken away quickly and sent to the clinic inside twenty-four hours it was an easier operation, if you can call six weeks in a coma then thirty-six hours on the table and two months recuperation easy.
I was told that there had been three teams of six surgeons working four hours at a time.
The thing with Samantha was that she had no older history. The police had tried to trace her family and come up against a dead end when she was sixteen, or thereabouts, a girl living on the street first and then ‘sofa surfing’ with friends.
Those friends all had said that she wouldn’t speak about her previous life but had seemed angry when asked about it. It looked as if I could simply take over her life and go forward from there.
I was really looking forward to being a teenager with a sixty year old brain. The other thing that excited me was actually having working sex organs, the last time I had cum had been two days before the wall accident. I was working myself up to seeing what I could achieve with this new bit of kit.
I obviously had no memory of her sex life but could only approach it with my old ideas.
Part 8 Knowing Me, Knowing You
There lay the crux of my problems, something that no-one had considered when the concept had been discussed. I knew everything now about a dead guy but nothing about the living girl I had become.
Her memories had died with her and there was no-one who could tell me about her childhood or parents.
All I had was the contents of the back-pack she had with her when she died, as well as the few items the police had recovered from the friends she had dossed with. I asked for, and got, a room with a big table where I could lay everything out and examine it.
There was a small pile of clothing, including what she had been wearing when she died, by the blood stains on one of the tee-shirts.
I had inherited a few plain bras and panties, a couple of pairs of jeans, a few tee’s and better tops, some shoes and socks, a jumper and a winter coat. Not a lot for a teenager but just enough for someone travelling light.
I had met many homeless with less who had existed on the streets when I was working. The only thing with any writing had been a library card made out to Samantha Saunders and a purse with S.S. on it and a little money.
One thing of note was a Yale key with ‘Home’ scratched on it. The police had tracked the number and it was one that had been made in some quantity and distributed with a few in each area across the country.
She had owned a tiny radio with earbuds and a small player that the buds also fitted. I spent several hours with that listening to her musical tastes which ranged from rap to punk with a lot of folk thrown in.
That I could relate to as it had been the staple of Sammy’s repertoire. Another set of music that I could also relate to was a bunch of Knoffler and Dire Straits numbers as they had still been played on the radio when I was a teenager myself.
That made me look at the small items that were found and I saw that she had plectrums and a set of finger-picking picks. I went and got the guitar, put on the picks and sat, wondering if magic did exist.
I put in the buds, found ‘Sultans of Swing’. I had watched Sammy work on this and, if one didn’t have the dexterity that Mark had, picks were a help.
I put it on repeat and listened, letting my body do whatever it wanted. By the third play I was starting to find the right strings, by the fifth I was getting it mostly right and also singing along. By the tenth play I had taken off the buds and was playing and singing on my own.
Magic had, indeed, prevailed. It wasn’t perfect but, damn, it felt good. When I stopped there was a smattering of applause from the door and I looked up to see some of the staff smiling at me, including my psychiatrist who also looked very interested at this development.
I was sure she was starting to write a book about muscle memory. On that I was right. She tried working with dementia patients but only had slight success because old age also brings arthritis. She then went on to work with trauma patients that were a bit younger and had played before. Her book changed the way things were done, but that was some years away.
By then I had a small apartment at the clinic, one that had been used for visiting specialists. They wanted me to stay with them for at least six months as they had to make sure there were no rejection problems.
With all of the compatibility tests that had been done I was sure everything was all right but was happy staying there because, when it came down to it, where could I go? My old life was over, my new was yet to be written and I was already a person ‘with no fixed abode’ or even an official existence, my fingerprints not coming up with any matches and my DNA being vague, to say the least.
It was a partial match with almost everyone living in the midlands that had roots in that area. Things were in train to give me an official existence but I think that they were waiting to make sure I carried on living before they got serious.
In the meantime I grew into my new self, helping out around the wards and spending a lot of time listening to her music and learning the tunes. I concentrated on the folk ones and, for a test, got one of the staff to get me a track that they liked and tried learning that one as well; being likely that Samantha had never played it.
It took a little longer but I finally got it down, so teaching my muscles a new variation of activity. I began to wander the clinic and give little recitals to cheer the patients up and created quite a repertoire with a lot of songs that the older ones could sing along to.
Of course, most of the songs were very old as it’s difficult to sing along to rap music. It was odd to be asked about Beatles songs, seeing that it was now a hundred years since their time.
As my time in the clinic carried on, I also started going out and about, firstly with a staff member to make sure I was all right, and then flying solo.
I had got sick of getting about in jeans so my first port of call was the bank where I got a credit card issued linked to my account. That, incidentally, made the teller blink when she looked me up.
That caused me to stop and think so, while I was there, I got a new, low fee – better interest account set up and put a big lump into that to sit for a while.
When I got my new credit card I hammered it by buying dresses, skirts, good underwear, hosiery and some jewellery. I had come to the conclusion that Samantha had either been not interested in sex or else had been a lesbian.
I was, I must say, neither. I had experimented and enjoyed it but it was only men in my thoughts as I did so.
So, the girl who now helped and sang around the clinic had become far more feminine than before and loving it. As my hair grew and hid the scars I got more and more into being Samantha.
In my last couple of months I was going out with a few of the single males to the pictures or a meal and had even spent happy times cuddling and kissing in the back of a few different cars.
I had not gone all the way, though, and I was sure that there would be a memo out there telling all the males in the place that I was a case study and not to spoil the results by getting me pregnant.
What was interesting was that I loved dancing. The younger guys sometimes took me to a dance club where I really got into it and, as an experiment, one of the older ones took me to a dinner/dance where it didn’t take me long to be dancing the waltz, foxtrot, you name it I was there.
Now, if there was one thing that had never featured in my old life, dancing would be top of the list. I wore big skirted dresses, twirled with the best of them and my partner and I would get some smattering of applause at times.
It was very intriguing that I was still a teenager but with good dance knowledge and good memory of guitar playing, both being muscle memory more than anything else. I also absorbed song lyrics like a sponge which was my own brain working to match the other muscles and augment them.
It made the staff work harder to get the details of my recovery into the records and, finally, they were able to put together a serious article for Lancet which had the whole medical fraternity jumping.
Even though my time was coming towards the end, they got me to stay on as we had a never-ending stream of medicos’ wanting to see me, talk to me, examine me and also talk to the surgeons who had worked on me.
The clinic went up several notches in the ranks of specialist lists and they started to get more interesting operations that had normally gone to the bigger places. They were also getting a fair bit of interest from aging tycoons who wanted the chance of a second life, just because they could afford it.
I had to laugh because my surfer surgeon told me one day that he had trebled the donation required and most of the tycoons had decided that they would rather keep their money. It was, he said, a mistake to do the operation on the wealthy and well-known because the consequences of failure were too high. Failure still being a big factor, even after my own success.
Just before I left the clinic they took on another customer. He was a confined to a wheelchair after a motorcycle accident but had won the lottery. He thought that the chance of mobility outweighed the wheelchair for the rest of his life.
I spent some time with him telling him my own story and the sensations I had when I woke in this body. He was still waiting for a body when I moved out of the clinic into a rental cottage not far away. I was almost staff and was donating my time two days a week helping out.
They finally got me all the official paperwork to say that I existed as Samantha Saunders so I went and did the exam to get a learners permit. I had to have this for three months before I could take the test so spent that time getting lessons a couple of days a week.
My driving, I thought, had suffered and then realised that Samantha had probably never driven so the lessons were necessary. Road rules; those I remembered.
The biker eventually got his match and had the operation, coming out of it well. His body donor had been fit and hearty right up to the day of his stroke. It turned out quite a good match, both in age and lifestyle and I would talk to the biker a lot when I went in.
Of course, he now took up all of the attention of the staff who, with the experience they had gained looking after me, were far more slick with what they did for him. His recuperation was quicker. It was a case of success breeding more success but I had a little pride in thinking I was the first.
It was the biker who came up with the idea and I fully agreed. The two of us would put on a Christmas party for the staff and our other contacts, all paid for by the two of us.
I hired a hall and arranged the catering and the biker organised a band. It would be by invitation only and we sat together to organise a list. It ended up as pretty long, over thirty surgeons, about fifty from the staff, his old friends who had come in to see his new look and, in my case the police that had worked so swiftly to get me here after I had been shot. Then worked so hard trying to find my history.
Then, of course, there were their partners. It ended up as quite an expensive affair but neither of us begrudged the money because it was these people who had allowed us to live.
The night of the party was cool but clear and inside the hall it was warm and cosy. I made sure that my dress was absolutely fabulous and I had bought some good jewellery to wear.
The meal was great and the band was good and I got to sing along with them before I was on the dancefloor being partnered by a lot of guys. The biker had a bunch of good looking ladies looking after him and everyone was having a wonderful time.
Then there was the sound of scuffling at the doors and a loud voice shouting “Let me in! Let me in! I have to see my daughter!”
Marianne Gregory © 2022
Part 9 Money, Money, Money
The band stopped playing and the police in the hall went to see what the noise was all about.
One of them came back to me, “He claims that you’re his long lost daughter and he says he wants to make up for what he did. I suggest you have a little chat with him because he won’t go away unless he sees you.”
I motioned for the band to start playing and followed the policeman, the surfer surgeon joining us. Out in the foyer two burly guys were standing next to a chap sitting on a chair with his face in his hands.
I went up to him and said “You wanted to speak to me, sir?”
He looked at me with his face going white. Luckily for him there were almost a hundred doctors in the house and he was laid on the ground until he regained his colour.
Back on the seat he sobbed, “Susan, Oh, Susan. I’m so sorry that you thought you had to leave home. I’ve been searching for you for two years and, only yesterday a friend showed me an article in Lancet which had your picture in it. I just had to come and say I was sorry for everything.”
“I’m sorry sir, but I don’t know you from Adam. If you had read the article you would have seen that the person who inhabited this body was shot in a robbery attempt. There are policemen here tonight who saw it happen.”
“There are also many doctors here that transferred my brain into the body you now say was your daughter. I’m happy to undergo tests to see if we are related by blood but your daughter, and all her memories, died that day.”
He took a few moments. “But you look like her, you sound like her and you even move in that dancers way that she had. Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble but I must gaze on you some more before I go and I’m happy to follow any rules you lay down.”
I made a decision, “All right, come and join us in the hall, have some drink, have some food and talk to the ones who can tell you the truth that I am truly your daughter in body, if not in spirit. My friend here can guide you.”
The surfer stepped forward, “Come in, sir, I’ll introduce you to the ones you need to talk to and then Samantha may even dance with you once you know the facts.”
We went back in and the biker came up to me and asked if things were good.
I said that it all depended on the chap settling down enough and, if I was indeed his daughter, I may learn all of the history I didn’t know; good or bad. I told him that I suspected that he threw his daughter out because she had outed herself as a lesbian.
He laughed, “But you aren’t now, are you?”
I smiled, “Definitely not, if you were twenty years younger I would have bedded you already.”
We danced together for a while and I noted that my surgeon was taking the guy around to all the ones who had something to add.
Around midnight I was standing at the drinks table getting a soft drink so that I could last a lot longer when a voice beside me said, “Excuse me, Samantha. I have to apologise for the outburst earlier. It wasn’t something I’ll remember with pride. I’ve been given the same story from a dozen different, well-educated and eminent men and I’ve to come to the conclusion that my daughter, as I knew her, died that day and it’s only her body I see before me. I want to say that you, whoever you were, fit her so well even her mother would have been fooled, God rest her soul.”
“I’m happy that you’ve seen the light. I ask that you give me my history in a reasonable manner. You have nothing to apologise to me for. Am I right that it may have been her sexuality that caused the problems?”
He hung his head, “Yes, you’re right. She brought home a girlfriend and I caught them having sex in the games room and there was an argument, well, it was quite a fight. She left with her friend that day and that was the last I saw of her. She even left her guitars, her pride and joy. She was a very talented girl, even at an early age, and we all had big hopes for her. Alas that has all gone with her death.”
I smiled, “Not all got lost; how about we have a dance and you can critique how her body remembers. I’ll say now that the brain that lives in this head never danced in its life.”
We danced together through the entire set and then the band leader said that there would be a break with just one more set before they finish. I took my partner by the hand and led him to where the biker was sitting.
“This fine looking gentleman was a cripple in a wheelchair until he came to the clinic. He has had the same operation I had. Perhaps if we show you our crown of thorns you will fully understand what we have gone through.”
I lifted my now long hair so he could see the scars and then said, “The small circle is where the bullet that killed her went in.”
The biker lifted his wig to just expose the similar scar ring on his own head, somewhat newer than mine and still healing.
We sat and introductions were made. I then learned that my ‘father’ was Albert Schurbert.
“So, your daughter was Susan Schurbert?”
He nodded so I carried on, “Does your family line go back to an Albert Schurbert in the nineteen fifties?”
He looked startled and nodded again.
I said “Just a moment” and I went to find the surfer surgeon and asked him to join us.
When he sat at the table I said, “This gentleman has just said that Samantha, no, Susan, his daughter, was a descendant of a gentleman called Albert Schurbert who lived in the nineteen fifties. Now, I had a grandfather of that name who I called Gramps BB and he had been one of the old time dustmen.”
The guy again went white and gasped, “You weren’t the brother that disappeared, were you, I got to speak to your sisters while I was trying to find Susan.” I nodded.
The surgeon nodded wisely, “That explains all of the good results. We were lucky to have the two of you come together. This will be added to the case notes, a pair of patients that were actually related, you wouldn’t read about it.”
He went off to speak to his fellow medicos and the three of us sat in silence for a while.
My ‘father’ then said “That would make the brain in that head about sixty or so?”
I smiled, “You’d better believe it.”
He then asked “Don’t you find it odd to be a sixty year old man in the body of a teenage girl?”
“That’s one of the things I need to know. We could only guess the age of your daughter when she was shot. It would be nice to know my actual birthday.”
He smiled, “Actually, it’s in about two weeks, would you mind if I organise a party?”
I laughed, “Party, party, lead me to it.”
I then asked him, “Did you have a song that Susan played that was your favourite?”
He smiled, “It was a very old Carole King song from ‘71, ‘You’ve got a friend’ which had been revived early in the century.”
I had this one in my repertoire, “Look, the old me could not play guitar but your daughters’ body retained a lot of muscle memory. How about I see if the band will let me open the last set and it may bring you good thoughts.”
I went to see the band and they were happy to loan me a guitar and already knew the song so the first number of the set was me out front.
I sang ‘You’ve got a Friend’ and I looked over to see Albert crying his eyes out and being comforted by the biker. I stayed on stage for a little while doing other numbers that we all knew and then left them to end the night.
Back at the table I was enveloped in his arms and he cried again, “You sounded just like here and you played it even better than she ever did. If you really are not my daughter, can we be friends?”
I told him that I would be happy to be his friend.
He then shook me, “That’s good, because you are a far better person than she ever was.”
At the end of the night I waved off the last of the guests, the biker having left already with one of his dance partners. I turned to Albert and asked him if he had a car outside because he was in no fit state to drive.
He shook his head and said that he had got a taxi from the railway station.
“Look, I live not far away, it may be cold but it’s dry. I have a spare room at my place and I can drive you home tomorrow. It would be nice to see where Susan grew up.”
We said our goodnights to the hall staff, now starting to clear the place. I got my coat and we strolled back to my cottage.
I let us in, showed him the spare room and where the toilet and bathroom were and then took myself to the master bedroom, undressed and got into bed. It had been a long and very exciting day.
Next morning I dressed in a denim skirt and woolly jumper with flats for driving and got us both breakfast. He seemed subdued after last night and I asked if he was all right.
He told me that he was just coming to grips with the person I was, being so diametrically opposite of Susan, almost a twin sister. He said that she would have never have been able to get him a breakfast without complaining.
“The police who tried to track her history said that in the two years she had been in the district where she was killed, her friends reported her as being generally an angry girl, upset at her previous life and even a little selfish.”
He smiled, “They got her down to a tee. She had been brought up in a good home with almost everything she wanted granted by her mother. I was just there to provide the cash and she was going off the rails from her early teens, no doubt because she was not sure about her sexuality. I can see now that I didn’t do much wrong except keep giving in to her wishes. I think that she had set up the lesbian scene so that I would find them and allow her to carry on. She was mistaken but I think that the fight was a bit over the top.”
After we tidied up we got my car warmed up and set off towards the Lake District. On the way I asked if he knew the history of my grandfather and he told me that the original Albert had gone south to get work and had done well for himself.
He had eight children, which I already knew, and three of his sons had gone back north to find something for themselves. He said that his grandfather was one of the sons and they had seen a very early article on solar power generation.
They set up a small factory concentrating on developing solar panels and it grew into the company it was now, mainly importing until the covid years and then going back into production of locally made products.
He and his family were now running the show with him as the Managing Director.
I asked him how my sisters were when he saw them because I had not seen them since I got out of hospital. He told me that they were both harridans of the first order.
“In fact” he smiled “I saw a little of what Susan may have become in them.”
As we got further north and more into countryside he gave me directions and eventually we entered the property through a pair of big gateposts and into a glorious park.
If Georgina’s place was big, this one was humungous! I guessed at least ten acres, it reeked of new money. When I gazed out over the vista I saw red deer munching in the grasslands.
The house was neo-Georgian and we pulled up at the front door. We got out and he rummaged for his key.
I said “Please, hold on; let me see if this one works?” I had the Yale key with ‘home’ scratched on it and went up to the front door and the key opened it.
I turned to him, “I think that although Susan had been angry, I rather think that keeping this shows that she was also sorry that she had acted so stubbornly.”
Part 10 Home, Home on the Range
We went into the house and a woman came out of the back rooms to welcome us and stopped dead in her tracks, her face going white.
Albert caught her before she could fall and led her to a chair to sit with her head down on her knees. If everyone I met here had that reaction I should have bought a box of smelling salts on the way!
I said, “Look, if this is going to happen every time I meet a new person it will probably be best if you get the household together and explain that I am not Susan before I show myself.”
He nodded and the ushered me into a parlour and then going back to get the woman to get everyone together. I looked around the room I was in.
There were pictures of the family and I saw several with Susan in, generally looking surly. I could see that he had taken after his father but his father was a lot smaller than his father who was, in turn, nowhere as big as the original Albert.
I wondered if it may be some sort of evolution, the more money you made the smaller you got.
He came to get me and led me into the kitchen where six people waited to see me. The woman who had fainted was a better colour but she still looked pasty.
There were gasps from the others when they saw me.
I smiled, “Look, I know I look like Susan because this was her body. However, it is not her brain in this head so I have absolutely no knowledge of who you are and what experiences you had with her. Her memories died with her brain and I‘m a blank canvas waiting to be filled in. Please treat me as someone totally new because that is exactly what I am.”
I noticed two of the maids looking more comfortable as I spoke so I gathered that Susan had played around at home for a while. They had questions which I answered and I had to show them the scars around my head.
There was an older guy who I expected was the butler and he went a bit green when he saw my crown of thorns and had to sit down.
Albert then said, “Any more questions later and I am sure that Samantha will answer you fully. She’s that kind of girl and a world away from Susan in her soul. Now; back to work.”
After that I had the tour of the house which ended in her old rooms, and I mean rooms – plural. She had a lounge room, a bedroom with walk-through robe with sliding doors both sides, a big bathroom and a music room, complete with several very expensive guitars in racks.
It was not a girl’s room at all, heavy metal posters and soccer stars in a neutral grey room does not scream girl. The only odd thing was a large plush teddy bear sitting on top of the vanity. I wondered if it may have been a childhood favourite that was too big to take.
Albert said, “I haven’t touched it since she went, only getting the maid to clean once a week. You can use the rooms if you want to stay.”
I thought about that and had the idea that if I changed a few things it may help him move on.
“Thank you, I would love to stay here. I’ll need to if you throw that party.”
He beamed for the first time, “Ah, the party, I promise you that it will be a humdinger.”
That being decided we went back to the biggest room on the ground floor. In older days it would have been a ball-room but was now set up with exercise machines, a table-tennis table, snooker table and Juke box.
It did have big windows that would open up to the large patio in summer. I thought it was a glorious room and said so.
We decided that we would need to fold up the table-tennis and put a cover on the snooker table to use as a somewhere to lay out the food.
I said that we could play the juke-box and he had other ideas, showing me an area where there was a heap of power points that he said was where a band could set up.
I had to ask, “Which band?”
He smiled broadly, “Why, the one you used to play in, that’s all. Why don’t you stay now until after the party? It will help you get used to the place. You are family, after all and I think you have every right to be here. You are lighting up my life again and I think that it may be better to just forget that Susan lived. You taking her place here is so much better.”
I queried that I had not brought any clothes or other stuff with me and he laughed, “Her mother bought her heaps of nice things that remain untouched in her wardrobe. They cry for you to let them see the light.”
He told me to go and have a look and, maybe, put on something for lunch which will be in about an hour. I went back up to her – my - room and opened drawers and wardrobes.
What I found was amazing. There were heaps of lovely dresses that must have cost the earth, along with drawers of nice underwear and a whole rack of shoes. All in my size, of course, I did have the body they were bought for.
I stripped off and took a shower, using the products in the bathroom that were at the back of the cabinet, not the macho ones on the front. I then redressed in a lovely pink bra and pant set, stockings and garter belt; topping it with a pink chiffon number from a good label and two-inch sling-backs, also in the same shade.
I redid my make-up from an unopened case, the items all new if now out of date. When I went down for lunch he gasped, “Samantha, you make that dress sing. You are lovely. If only….”
He stopped himself from completing the sentence as he knew that it was now impossible -- but the possible alternative was standing in front of him.
There were extra guests for lunch as he must have been on the phone. I met his sister and two brothers, with their partners, as well as their father and mother – ‘my’ grandparents.
They were all a little overawed with me; perhaps the pink outfit really was over the top. The lunch was very cheerful and I eventually realised that they were treating me as a twin sister.
Everyone called me Samantha and did talk about Susan as no longer around, a train of thought started by Albert when he described the party last night and his realisation that his daughter had really died from a gunshot in the head.
By the time they left I was at hugging and kissing status and being told that they were looking forward to my birthday party.
“That went well” Albert said as the door closed on the last one. “Tonight will be a little different, I’m afraid. My two sons will be joining us for dinner and they did not have a particularly good relationship with Susan, the eldest being ten years her senior. It will take a bit to win them over.”
“Their wives are also fiercely protective of them and used to row with Susan a lot. I will have a long talk with the four of them but it would be nice if you made an extra effort to look good with one of the evening dresses. Maisie can help you; she used to help my wife before she died.”
I spent the afternoon checking out the ‘apartment’, trying out the guitars and playing with the effects boxes and amplifiers. I was in seventh heaven.
Back in the bathroom I put all of the ‘macho’ stuff in the back of the cupboard and replaced it with the new bottles and creams that had been ignored.
In the bedroom I made a thorough search and came up with a few odd things.
On the top shelf of one of her wardrobes, behind a shoe box; I found a small selection of lesbian magazines and a bundle of letters which I put aside for a later read.
The plush teddy was the repository of several vials of testosterone boosters stuffed up its bum, as well as a couple of credit cards in the name of Susan Schurbert that were close to being out of date. These I put aside to ask Albert about.
Around six there was a knock on the door and it was Maisie to help me get ready for a formal dinner with ‘my’ siblings. Once we had broken the ice she was very chatty as she looked in the wardrobes for a suitable dress, knowing roughly what the other ladies may be wearing.
She commented that she had wished that Susan had worn some of the better things but that the girl was too stubborn to bend to her mother’s will. That’s when I learned that the mother had gone downhill very quickly once her daughter left home.
We got me kitted out in a ‘label’ evening dress with spaghetti straps worn over a strapless bra. It was in black, of course, and I had a slight problem with the high heels at first, having not worn them so high with this body.
She did some things to my hair and opened a compartment in the vanity that I had not found. It contained a selection of very good jewellery, some of which adorned me when I left the room. I thanked Maisie for her help and she said that it was a thrill to outfit me as a proper woman at last.
I went down the main stairs at exactly the right time, our guests arriving and having their coats taken from them.
They saw me as I made my descent and the looks on their faces was something to see.
One brother smiled broadly and started up the stairs to give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, the other brother scowling as if someone had taken away his favourite toy. The two women just stood there, slack-jawed.
The dinner went pretty well; the spouse of the friendly brother warming to me as the time passed, while the other brother started to come out of his shell once he realised that I was not his lost sister and that anything that had transpired between them in the past was never going to come out.
By the time they left I was Samantha to them as well and the two men hugged me and kissed my cheek when they left, with both women giving me a light hug and air-kiss.
Albert was over the moon, thinking that family rifts had been healed, rather than just cemented over.
We sat chatting in the parlour and he filled me in on a little more of the family history. He did declare that he had no idea of why one of his sons had been so negative at first.
I found out the next day when I read the letters. Susan and the brother had experimented when Susan was about twelve and it was the brother who had taken her virginity.
The letters ranged from undying love to threats of what he would do if she blabbed.
Part 11 They Say It’s You’re Birthday!
The next day I wore a pair of designer jeans, brand new and neglected, no doubt, because of the exquisite embroidery on them. There were boots and a good shirt to go with them. I put aside a cashmere jumper to go outside in, because today I wanted to see the garden.
When I went down for breakfast I took the credit cards I had found and gave them to Albert. He looked at the numbers and went into his office to rummage around in a filing drawer.
When he came back he said that they were duplicate cards linked to two of his wifes’ bank accounts and that Susan had obviously been given them by her mother.
I suggested that she probably didn’t take them because she could have been tracked if she used them. He went and got some scissors and cut them up, saying that the accounts had been closed.
I told him that I wanted to wander the grounds and he happily went off to his office to catch up with his work commitments.
I went and put the jumper on and added a scarf I had found to go down through the kitchen and out into the rear yard. I noted the garages, now opened, with ride-on mowers and small tractors standing alongside a couple of vintage Range Rovers up on blocks and then went out into the vegetable garden.
There was a big greenhouse to one side and a sizeable shed to the other. Outside the shed was what I was looking for, a brazier with a pile of offcuts beside it. I went over and, making sure no-one was in sight, quietly burned the incriminating letters, one by one – from ‘Sweetest Suzi’ to ‘conniving blackmailing bitch’.
I then had a look inside the shed which had potting up tables on one side and a pretty well-equipped workspace on the other. Going out of the vegetable garden I stood and gazed over the grassland and woodland beyond.
It was really beautiful and I could see a couple of guys lopping branches with a herd of deer watching them intently. I moved around the house to the front which had the formal gardens and flower beds where I came across a couple of chaps I had not met before. One saw me and looked startled before going and nudging his companion.
I walked over to them and wished them good morning; to have them both say “Good morning Miss Susan, welcome back.”
I held my hand up, “Right, stop now. I’m not Miss Susan, my name is Samantha and it’s a long story which, no doubt, the other staff will tell you. I don’t know who you are so you had better tell me your names and also tell me what you have planned for these beds in the spring.”
They introduced themselves and then, haltingly as if I was ignorant, started to tell me what they had in mind. When I starting speaking from my own gardening experience they opened up more and we had a good discussion about what did well in this climate for late winter and into spring. I made suggestions that made then think seriously and, by the time I moved on, we were all gardening buddies.
I moved around the other side of the house where there was a nice orchard, bare at the moment, of course. Behind it was the garage for cars where mine now sat at its own charger.
Back at the rear of the house I could see the guys still working in the trees so I looked up at the sky to make sure it would be dry for a while longer and strolled over towards them.
As I got close the deer looked at me and I went slowly and carefully until I was near them and then stopped, speaking to the deer softly; telling them that I was a friend.
It took some time but eventually one came closer and then came up to me to give me a sniff. A half an hour later I was in the middle of the herd, able to touch, stroke and talk to them like an old pal. The guys lopping wood were looking at me like I was some kind of goddess with my babies around me.
I left the deer happily grazing and continued to the tree-line.
One of the guys, who had been in the group when I was first introduced, said, “That proves that you’re not Susan come back, miss, she would never have had the patience to do that. She hated the deer with a passion, the only things she hated more were the pheasants and they used to see her off whenever they could. Welcome, Samantha, you really are a breath of fresh air around here.”
I chatted with the woodworkers for a half an hour as they worked, learning more about trees as we talked. Trees were not something I had a great deal of experience with, especially not woodland.
Back in the warm house I stripped off and put on a simple shift and slippers to go for lunch. Albert told me that he had called the other members of the old band and had found out that they still played sometimes but had moved on to further their careers.
I was then told that they would be over this afternoon and would be bringing their instruments. The set-up, he said, could remain in the games room until after the party.
I now needed to go back and change again so that I could meet another bunch of folks who knew Susan. I knew that it had to be a feminine look to enshrine the fact that it could never be Susan in front of them.
While I looked in the wardrobe for something suitable I had to have a giggle. Here I was, looking for my third outfit of the day and it wasn’t even one. There was a time that a suit would last all week if I didn’t spill anything on it!
I was in a sparkly top, pleated black skirt, stockings and three inch heels when they arrived. Her mother had impeccable taste and Susan had missed out on being beautiful with her stubbornness.
The band was a mixed crowd; two guys and two girls. They had been warned what to expect but I think that they too would have fainted to have seen Susan dressed the way I was.
They took it in their stride and I helped them carry their things into the games room. One of the guys, Barry, was the drummer and he had one of those new electronic kits.
The other guy, Jerry (a hunk if ever I saw one,) played guitar.
The two girls were sisters and Mary played keyboard while Miranda was the bass and backing singer.
I found out that the amplifiers in my room were the ones everyone used when they played at the house so Jerry and Barry went up to the room with me to help bring them down.
On the way they said that they had never been in Susan’s rooms because she had always got the staff to carry the amps down before any session.
I had not taken too much notice but when we got to the music room Jerry pointed out the different amps we would need.
One was for the ‘drummer’, one for the keyboard and two were proper guitar amps with all the effects built in. Together we carried the first three down and then went up for the last one and a guitar that I could use.
I asked Jerry what Susan would normally play and he pointed to an Epiphone in the corner but then went and picked up a Gibson, handing it to me.
“Susan always boasted that she played this only in private because it’s rare and very expensive. An instrument like this truly needs to be heard, a bit like a rare violin, or else it loses heart and sounds flat. Are you game to try it?”
I smiled and took it from him. I was warming to this man with every passing minute, his easy-going manner was lovely.
Back in the games room the others had set up and were tuning. Jerry and I joined them and we all got in tune before there was a bit of an embarrassed silence.
Jerry turned to me, “Samantha, we’ve been doing all this on the assumption that you can play. Whenever we played here, she would lead off and was always out front. We defer to you to start us. It will be interesting as the last time we played with her she was so angry when she fumbled that she broke the guitar she was playing over the juke box.”
I smiled and started with the opening notes of a folk song I was sure they had played and they all grinned and joined in.
We played, almost non-stop, until dinner time with everyone getting to sing. If she had stopped them singing she was missing out as everyone had a good voice and Jerry and I swapped lead and rhythm as we went along.
When we stopped there were most of the staff in the room with us, bopping along, and Albert stood by the juke box with a silly grin on his face.
We had gone through most of what she had on her player and the only times I had to bail out of a song was when it was something they had learned post-Susan but I was able to pick them up before the last verses.
At the end we all were grinning and I said, “Just one more, she had this on her player but I don’t know if you’d played it,” and hit the opening notes of ‘Sultans of Swing’ after adjusting the amp I was using to give a bit of a steel twang sound.
We played it through with Jerry singing and were having so much fun we kept going from the second verse again, so giving me two solos which worked better the second time around.
When we finally stopped and the three of us leaned our guitars against the amps, Jerry took me in his arms and hugged me before planting a kiss on my lips.
He whispered, “I think I’m in love” and smiled as he let me go.
We all had dinner and the mood was buoyant. When they left Jerry held back and I went out to the front steps with him and he pulled me to one side where it was darker and we kissed again, this time I was ready for him and had my arms around his neck as we played with the others’ tongues until we broke apart.
“See you in a couple of days, Samantha. It’s going to be one hell of a birthday bash.”
When I went back inside I was in a world of my own and went to bed to pleasure myself, now with someone I could imagine making love to me.
We had a few more sessions of practice, both on the instruments and on our lips, before the day of my birthday came around.
The games room was almost looking like a ball-room and the staff had been augmented with some hired help. There were sofas along the back wall if anyone got tired but it was generally a stand up do.
I had finally found out that my body was now nineteen and I had been down to the biggest town nearby to get myself something to wear from a party dress shop.
In an earlier life I had wondered how a girl could have the nerve to wear a very wide belt and nothing else but now I was one I revelled in a similar dress. It was red, strapless and only came to just below my crotch. No bra and just black patterned tights with red heels; my hair up and fresh nails with evening make-up.
Even Maisie went, “Wow.” A gold chain, hoop earrings and a couple of plain gold rings and I just needed to walk through a scent mist to be ready to be the birthday girl.
There was a big crowd, family and friends (most of them I didn’t know), the band and their spouses. No partner with Jerry of course. Barry had whispered to me that Jerry had always had a crush on Susan since they had been to school together and had been rebuffed by her on more than one occasion.
I was told that he was now walking on air after meeting me, the image of his love with the presence that she never had. The party was a blast, we ate, drank, talked, laughed and danced to the juke box until Jerry got us on stage and announced that the rest of the night we would be playing for the guests until everyone dropped.
We played until about two in the morning and they were, by then, dropping like flies so we packed up and said goodnight to those guests who had completed the distance.
I took Jerry up to my room to show him that I definitely wasn’t a lesbian.
Marianne Gregory © 2022
Part 12 Here comes the Sun
The next morning I woke with a man cuddling me for the first time. I took advantage of his readiness one more time before we went and showered; then dressing before going down for breakfast.
He dressed quickly in his outfit from last night and sat on the bed and watched me as I selected a top and skirt to wear.
When I sat at the vanity to brush my hair he came and stood behind me with us looking at our reflection in the mirror.
He put his hands on my shoulders, “I suppose Barry told you I had a crush on Susan at school?”
I nodded and he went on “Well, she was the prettiest girl around when she was eleven or twelve and bright with it. All that changed when she was about thirteen and she became the moody and angry girl we now all remember. I don’t have that crush now; it disappeared when I met you and is now replaced by love instead.”
“That’s lovely, darling man, I fell for you as soon as I saw you just a couple of weeks ago.”
I stood up and we kissed for a while.
As we went to leave the room he said, “This room is her as she became; my father is a painter, maybe you can pick a colour which is more you and we can redo these rooms.”
I just nodded as that would be in Alberts’ hands in the future. He had wanted to give me a birthday party which, I think, blew away all the old cobwebs left by Susan but whether he wanted me to stay for a while would have to be discovered.
When we got down to breakfast we found the rest of the band and their partners already tucking in. There was a general round of hugs and kisses before we were allowed to sit down.
Mary said “That was some bash last night. We were awesome.”
Barry smiled, “I don’t think we’d ever played so well and for so long. I was on a cloud all the time.”
Albert laughed, “If you think you did well, just how good will you play at our Christmas party next week. I will get it catered so all the staff can come along and I’ll even pay you for the entertainment if you insist. You’ll stay on, won’t you, Samantha?”
“As long as you’re happy to put up with me. It’s been a lot of fun, so far.”
He grinned, “Samantha, I can put up with you as long as you want to call this place home. The house has been sad for too long and you being here has brought it to life again. The gardeners want you to advise them with the plantings and the yards-men think you are some sort of deer whisperer. Everyone, especially me, loves you to bits.”
“I have to go back to the clinic from time to time to get my check-ups to make sure there’s no rejection and I’ll have to move my stuff from the cottage.”
Barry said, “Not a problem, I can get a van.”
Jerry laughed “We’d better get her rooms repainted, those dull colours are not our Samantha at all.” Albert told him that he can arrange it with his father when he goes home to get some extra clothes and his shaving kit.
I blushed and everyone laughed.
Albert then warned, “Be careful, I don’t think we could manage the sound of little feet for a while.”
“That’s not a worry; one of the things that I have to do is to take regular birth control pills, mainly to make sure that my periods were regular so that any changes could be checked up.”
It was the guys turn to blush and all we girls giggled. After breakfast the others went off, Jerry giving me a kiss and saying “I’ll be back!” in a robot voice.
Albert and I sat there in silence for a while and then he said, “Samantha, you’re every bit a daughter as you can be. I didn’t lie when I said that everyone loves you. You have brought me back my little girl even if you do insist that you aren’t her. Your movements and your manner are her as she was once but you are more than her. You are kind, considerate, knowledgeable and caring.”
“If you would allow me, I’ll see if you can be brought in as part of this family. Susan has never been declared dead because there was nothing to bury as you are using her body. We can talk to the lawyers about just changing your surname to Schurbert or Susans’ first name to Samantha. It will be a can of worms but I’m happy to open that can if you’ll live here with us.”
I got up and went and hugged him, tears in my eyes.
“Albert Schurbert, you’re such a good man. I don’t want to be thought of as a money-grabber as I’m not; I’ve a considerable bank balance of my own so will never ask you for anything.”
He laughed, “Maybe I can borrow some off you when things are tight.”
I kissed his cheek, “Anytime – Daddy” and we both had a little cry.
I then went into the games room where the staff had been tidying up. There were a bunch of presents and cards on the snooker table, some wishing Susan a happy birthday. I suppose not everyone got the message.
I had not opened anything. I had thanked all those who brought things and that I would open everything once we had finished having fun.
When I had finished having fun it was about four in the morning and I was in no state to go opening presents after opening my legs for a couple of hours.
When I did open the presents I found a beautiful pendant from Jerry so I’d better thank him properly tonight.
There was a necklace and ear-ring set from Albert which I recall seeing on his wife in one of the pictures in the parlour. I went and found him in the office and thanked him with a hug.
He told me that it had, indeed, been his wifes and that there was more that would be coming my way as I had more birthdays.
It was if the weather gods had been listening as that week before Christmas the sun shone and it stayed in the teens during the day.
Jerry came back with a suitcase and put his things away, his father turned up, gave me a hug and a kiss, looked at the rooms and left us a colour book to choose from.
We made a plan that would kick in after New Year, doing the music room first and then the bedroom. The wet rooms were white so could stay and she had not done anything with the wardrobes, which were a nice light pink inside. I gathered that, with the doors shut, they didn’t worry her.
The two weeks to Christmas and beyond went into my memory as some of the happiest times I had ever had in my two lifetimes. I had a purpose, a man and a future and nothing happened to spoil anything.
Jerry got his thanks for the pendant and I wore it most of the time. We went into the closest town and I bought gifts for everyone. Maisie helped me choose for the house staff and outside guys.
I bought Albert a Mont Blanc pen, not really knowing him well enough for something more personal. Jerry and I went to a jeweller and bought matching gold rings, mine with a ring of tiny diamonds around it and his with a similar ring of emeralds which looked very nice on his finger.
We split the cost after I had quietly spoken to the jeweller on the pretence of checking my size. He put my card through for half the real cost before coming out with the account for the other half.
I found out that my man had to go back to university in January so we would be apart unless I went to visit him on weekends.
He was studying electrical engineering so I thought that there may be a place for him in our business when he graduated.
Barry was working with his father in the transport business while the girls were married to guys with good jobs. Although I didn’t really need to do anything I always had the garden to keep my mind occupied.
Christmas morning was great; we sat around and opened our gifts. Everyone chipped in to get a light lunch and the evening started with the caterers coming with the food for the party that night.
They were on a special rate and had been invited, along with their families, so didn’t mind working on Christmas Day. We had a marquee erected outside the games room with portable heaters in it so we could open up a couple of the big windows and move between the two rooms.
It all went off well, the place was packed that night, all the food in the marquee and the games room now cleared for dancing; and dance we did!
All of the family were there, as well as the band and all of their family, the staff and their families as well as those friends who had enjoyed themselves at the birthday party.
We had the juke box on for a while and I had several dances with several men, as well as a couple of slower ones with Jerry. After we had eaten our fill, the band got set up and we started playing, the dance floor soon filling.
When people tired and went back out to the marquee for a snack or a drink, others came in to take their place. We did half hour sets so we could have our own breaks and we went through to the early hours again.
Jerry was almost too tired to give me my special Christmas present but I managed to get it unwrapped.
In the morning I was laying in his arms and dreaming about having a rest from playing for a while when Jerry said “Did you hear what Albert announced last night, about ten?”
I thought a bit, “No, I think that was the time I needed to make room for more drink.”
“He, the bugger, announced that he was having so much fun he was keeping the marquee in place and invited everyone to a New Year party and everyone cheered.”
“I did hear some cheers in the loo but thought someone may have downed a yard or something. Does that mean we have to play again?”
He grinned, “I can play with you any time you want. It’s wonderful – and the music’s good too; and, I think, getting better the more we play.”
I moved my hand down and took hold of his dick, “Oh, love, I just found a flute” and moved my head to his crotch to play a little sonata on it.
So the mess from Christmas was cleared up and preparations were made for another bash on New Year. Every time we played I was getting better on the guitar and the others were picking up as well.
This was good but the upshot was that a few of our guests were on local committees and we started getting enquiries about playing at local events. As long as Jerry could get back from university we could do it so Mary put her hand up to be our manager, bought a diary and cash book, registered the band as ‘Sammi and the Samoyeds’ and started taking bookings. It would be fun to do and a good cash income for the others.
Between Christmas and New Year Albert took Jerry and me to the factory the family owned. It was huge and quiet at the time of our visit but I could imagine it as a hive of activity on normal working days. Jerry was quite excited with the place and especially with the R&D section where they were working on new ways to harness the sun.
I saw Albert take note of his insightful questions, especially the ones he couldn’t answer.
We had another bash for New Year but managed to call a halt just after midnight so everyone could go home to their beds and celebrate the coming twelve months.
The playing must have energised Jerry as he had no problems celebrating by coming himself.
Part 13 Life in the Fast Lane
After the New Year party I had to take myself back to the cottage and arrange my move north. I was also overdue for a check-up.
We moved everything in the music room into the middle of the room so Jerrys’ father could repaint the walls in the darkish yellow that we had chosen to make it bright and cheerful.
We decided to move everything in the bedroom away from the walls as well so he could do it in the sky blue which would also pick up the ambience.
We chose the colours together as it had become an unwritten wish that we would live here.
When we moved the vanity I found an envelope behind it. I took it aside and opened it to read all of Susans’ pain in what I thought may have been the first draft of a suicide note.
She had been hurt by her brother and her mother had known all about it. The lesbianism was a result of that abuse because she could not consider being with another man in her life.
I could understand her as well as understanding why her mother went downhill so quickly after Susan had left. Her world had stopped without her daughter.
I felt sorry for both of them and went down to the parlour where I fed the note into the fire without telling anyone else of its contents.
The day I went back to the cottage I left with just my handbag, following Jerry in his car to his house.
I waited until he put together all the things he would need when he went back to university and then we drove south to the cottage. He was entranced by it, even though it was freezing cold inside when I opened the door. I put the heat on, unloaded his bags and took him out to the clinic.
“Where I was born,” I told him.
There I was welcomed like a long lost traveller, they having a vested interest in me. I introduced Jerry to everyone and he ended up getting a potted history of how I was created and also pointers on what to look out for in case I had rejection problems.
I don’t think that it had occurred to him just what a fine line I was walking after the operation.
He met the biker, now living in the apartment I had used, with his girlfriend; soon, he said, to be his wife. He and Jerry got on like a house on fire as the biker had been, before his crash, an electrical engineer himself.
Oddly, as I watched them chat while in conversation with the girlfriend, I had the impression that something was not quite right.
Jerry stayed with me in the cottage for a week before I drove him and his luggage to the station so he could get a train to the university. We held each other close before he boarded and promised to keep in touch.
I had a tear in my eyes as the train left the station with him leaning out of the window and waving until it was out of sight. Back in the car I went into the clinic for my check-up.
As they were drawing blood I asked about the biker and described what I thought I had seen. The nurse looked sad and told me that he was on extra medications to stop rejection but the prognosis didn’t look good at the moment.
I had been back two weeks and was slowly putting everything together for my final move north when the doorbell rang and I opened the door to see the biker standing there.
I gave him a cuppa and he asked me if I could do him a favour. He gave me a bit of paper with a name and address on it and asked me if I could go and see the owner of the shop, an old friend of his former self, and ask him if he could supply a sports motorbike ‘suitable for winding roads’.
“If you can buy whatever he supplies and get it delivered here with a set of XL racing leathers and a helmet, I‘ll pay you back later. I really want to ride again.”
That week I went to see the guy at the motorcycle shop and mentioned that I was a friend of his friend. His friend wanted to have a ride in the country but didn’t want to let his medicos know.
He suggested a very powerful looking bike and I paid for it to be registered in my name and delivered to my cottage along with the leathers and helmet. I am sure the guy thought that his pal will be strapped to the rider for his trip out.
A couple of days later a van turned up and the bike unloaded next to the house. I was given the helmet and leathers and told that the fuel tank was full, gave the delivery man a tip and I was now the proud owner of a very powerful bit of kit that I had no idea how to ride.
Next time I went to the clinic the biker raised his eyebrow at me and I nodded, which gave him a smile that lit up the room.
The following Saturday he got married and I was at the wedding. The Saturday afternoon after that he turned up at my door and I showed him the bike. He tried the leathers on and declared them perfect.
Two weeks later he turned up with his wife and put the leathers and helmet on after giving his wife the longest hug and kiss. I could see his arms quivering as he held her.
He then came over to me and hugged me, whispering “Thank you for everything, dear friend” and my blood ran cold.
The two of us watched him get on the bike, start it up and ride away quietly. We held each other and cried together.
She stayed with me for some hours until the police came by to ask why my motorcycle was being ridden by a madman who had died by riding into a bridge abutment at a very high speed.
He had no licence, insurance or any reason to be on the bike in his new name and we said that he had borrowed it to see what it was like to ride.
The fact that it was his wife with me raised eyebrows and led to searching questions down at the station. It was awkward but the lawyer I engaged for the two of us made certain that we were not complicit in his death.
You can legally supply a machine that someone could use to die with these days and the motor-bike did not come with vial of poison, so there wasn’t much they could do other than tell me off.
The clinic was not happy but his passing was not considered a loss as we all knew that he was going through rejection and that he had no consideration of becoming a vegetable again.
He had gone, no doubt with a smile on his face, doing what he loved and what had been taken from him once before. In his will he left me with enough to cover my costs and there was plenty left over from his lottery win for his wife to get on with the rest of her life.
Was it a suitable closure, of course not, but it was a closure of sorts. It made me doubly certain to make my own way so rang Barry after the funeral to come and get my stuff.
When he turned up he stayed in the spare room that night and we loaded the van the next day. I told him that I intended to take a week to get up to the house and make sure no-one worried about me.
I watched my goods and chattels head north and went into the house to make sure everything was turned off. I had a suitcase in the car with enough for ten days so locked the cottage for the last time and took the keys to the real estate office, handing them over and getting a cheque for my bond.
I then went to a florist and bought a bunch of flowers which I went and put next to a similar bunch on the bikers grave. I wished him well in Valhalla and then went south again, back to the place of my earlier childhood.
I took my time and spent a small fortune on flowers for the graves of my parents and my poor brother. I would have put some on Georgina’s grave if I had known where it was.
Then I went back to where Sammy was buried and put more on his headstone, having a little cry as I did. He had been a rock in my earlier world and I hoped, with all my heart, that Jerry would be a similar rock in my new world.
My last task was harder than anything I had ever done before. I had a last bunch of flowers which I laid at my own gravestone.
There I did indeed cry, only to have a hand on my shoulder from an elderly gent who said “It’s good to see someone cry for him. He did so much good in this town with his expertise and empathy. A lot of good folk miss him terribly.”
I thanked him for his kind words and walked slowly away in wonder.
It had been hard but cathartic and I got back to the Lake District in a mind to take on the world. The apartment was really bright and Albert told me that Jerrys’ mother had come over to do the redecorating to suit the new colours.
I must say it looked bright and cheerful, just what I needed after the few weeks I had been through. We had kept in touch by phone and, that evening I rang Jerry and told him that I really loved him.
I also told him that my new bedroom, with its brighter look, was waiting for him. He told me not to hang around but come and visit him on the weekend, he would organise a room for me on the Friday night and told me what hotel to go to.
I drove down to the city on Friday with a small bag which contained a couple of changes of outfits and two very sexy nighties. I checked in and was sitting in the hotel lounge when he arrived.
I half expected something to eat before we retired but he held me close and said “Your room, now, please” and we went up, undressed and made mad, passionate love. About nine we rang for room service and, after a meal, we went back to bed.
Next morning I was too sore to take any more so we showered and dressed and went down for breakfast. I asked him to show me around the university so we walked around all the places that were open on that Saturday.
We were sitting at a little café having a break when I told him about the biker, his marriage and his passing.
He was sad but then nodded, “A Viking death, way to go.”
That afternoon, as we continued the inspection tour, we bumped into one of his tutors and I was introduced as “Samantha Schurbert, my fiancée” which I thought was a bit rich as he had not properly asked me yet.
The tutor asked, “Not one from Schurbert Solar?” and I nodded.
He then looked at Jerry and said “That, my boy; is good news because I was going to see if they could take you on during the summer for your work experience. Excellent!”
As we walked away I took my hand away from his and walked a bit to one side, pretending to be miffed.
He asked, “What did I do?”
I stopped and looked at him, “It isn’t what you did, my boy, it’s what you haven’t done!”
His face was a moving picture while he tried to figure it out and then I laughed, “If you want to introduce me to people as your fiancée you’d better propose first!”
He then dropped to one knee and cried, “Samantha, my darling, will you marry me?”
To which I answered “Of course I will, doofus, now get up and take me back to bed.”
Marianne Gregory © 2022
Part 14 Teenager In Love
On the way back to the hotel I pulled him into a jeweller where we chose an engagement ring. It wasn’t flashy but I could see the worried look on his face at the price.
I chuckled, “I’ll get it today and get the boss to take it out of your wages during the summer.”
That done he put it on my finger and I kissed him before paying the account and we went back to the hotel.
On the way in I asked, “Tonight, I want to eat before bed, those late night snacks are no good for my stomach,” so we had a drink until the restaurant opened and then ate our dinner before going up to bed.
I think the waiting did him good because he was extra full when he finally came and I had to get out of bed carefully and go and clean up afterwards.
We stayed in bed until mid-morning Sunday and then showered, dressed and went out to find somewhere for brunch. After I had paid the account I put my suitcase in my car. His clothes were getting a bit whiffy by now so he took me back to his rooms where I waited until he changed, there being a ‘No Sex’ rule in the quarters.
We then strolled around the city sights and had a good lunch before he went back to studies. I went and got in my car to drive home, arriving late in the afternoon.
During my time down at the cottage Albert had been busy. I now had papers to change Susan’s name to Samantha that I signed and they got put through.
We worked with the clinic and they were able to re-issue the paperwork for Samantha Saunders with an unknown date of birth, to Samantha Schurbert with the birthday in December 2043.
Thus, I became genuinely Samantha Schurbert, daughter of Albert, and he couldn’t be more pleased. When the brothers were told there was a mixed reaction; the nice one giving me a hug and a kiss and saying “Hello, little sister” while the other just gave me a hug and said nothing.
Albert asked me what I would like to do in the company and I said I would like to work in HR.
I started in March and really enjoyed having a purpose to wake up to. With my wide experience of being both male and female and sometimes in-between I was able to work with everyone who came to see me and soon got a nickname of “Auntie Samantha”.
There was an underground LGTB group in the factory and I was able to commandeer a room for them to use for their meetings and they appointed me as their ‘Honorary Woman in Charge’ so I got a badge made with that which I wore whenever one of them made an appointment for a visit to HR.
Albert saw the badge one day and had a big laugh as I told him how it came about. He got one made for himself that had ‘Honorary Man behind the Woman in Charge’ and came to a couple of meetings of the group in their room.
This was taken as a token of acceptance by the group and their attitude towards the company changed for the better with them all trying to help the guy who helped them. When the brothers found out about it one laughed; and the other didn’t.
I made regular weekend trips to visit Jerry and sometimes we would have Sunday lunch with his tutor before I left.
I came to realise that they were working on something totally new, involving making electricity from the change of temperature.
It was all over my head but Jerry explained that like harnessing a different element, the system they were working on acted with temperature differences.
They had already made a tiny amount of current with a temperature change of twenty degrees and it showed that the idea was good.
When I was alone with Albert one day, I spoke to him about the concept and he got excited. He said that this would work in places where there is little sunshine and would even work everywhere at night, when normal solar panels were useless.
Next time we had lunch, not long before the summer break, I put it to Jerry and his tutor that Schurbert Solar would fund a three month study in their R&D section to see if the idea really had wings.
I told them that, as Jerry would be living at the house, the tutor and his family could stay with us as well. I also told Jerry that his very first weekend home would include playing at a dance for the local service club.
During that summer we had five gigs playing at local halls and it was a lot of fun. The tutor had brought his wife and two daughters to stay with us and they came along to every show and all had a good time.
During the week we were all at the factory, me in HR and them building the first test rig of household size. The wife and girls spent their days touring the district and generally relaxing.
One gig we had was a bit different from the others. Jerry was up for his twentieth birthday and Albert said we would have a party for him.
We set up the games room as a dance floor again, the big doors could be opened and, because it was summer, we just had an awning outside in the patio to shelter from the sun.
We had it catered so that everyone could enjoy themselves and the usual crowd was invited. It was a lot of fun, us playing for a while in the afternoon, food being served, some dancing to the juke box and then us playing in the evening again.
The only low point in the day was when the surly brother got me alone outside and accused me of ‘wriggling my pretty ass into the company and spending his inheritance on trivial parties.’ I told him he was stupid on so many levels it wasn’t even funny.
By the time Jerry and his tutor needed to be back at the university they had managed to develop a five watt output from a twenty degree temperature change and were both over the moon, as were the rest of R&D.
From then on we worked in conjunction with the university to perfect the system. I was very happy having Jerry in my bed every night and I was looking forward to the day he and I would get married. I was very much a teenager in love and my joy infected the rest of the house.
At the end of July Barry and his father tendered for the company transport business and won it fair and square. This brought one of the brothers into an incandescent rage and he called for a board meeting to air his grievances.
The company board had Albert as the Managing Director, the older brother as CEO, four eminent local dignitaries as Treasurer, Secretary and two board members, plus the surly one and a member of the staff as a staff representative.
I wasn’t there when I was accused of providing inside information to my friends in the tender process and he demanded that I be dismissed immediately.
The board took a break while I was summonsed and I arrived with the guy who had overseen the tender.
I refuted any idea that I had been involved and the guy explained that the tender papers showed that Barry and his father had put in a better figure well before any other companies. There was no way I could have assisted them, not knowing what they were up against.
I supported him and the board agreed that the accusation was purely supposition without substance.
The staff representative said that my time in HR had improved the atmosphere in the factory and that productivity had lifted by five percent since I started. Then one of the board members said that he was considering full retirement and nominated me to take his place.
I looked at Albert and the brothers and could see that they were totally surprised at this development. The surly one turned bright red and then accused me of being a gold-digger ring-in who was no more a member of the family than the ceremonial ash-tray in the middle of the board-room table.
I spoke up, “Look, I’m as much part of this family as you. I can prove it beyond a shadow of doubt. I’m happy to take a DNA test if you’ll take one as well. If I’m not better than ninety-five percent a match with you I’ll pack my bags and leave. Nominate someone to oversee the test from the non-family board members and let’s sort this out once and for all.”
The Company Secretary was the one to oversee the test and then I and my ‘brother’ were booked at a local GP who would take the samples.
Two weeks later the results were read out to another meeting of the board and I was shown to be close to ninety-nine percent a Schurbert, as I and Albert had expected.
That board meeting was given the note from the retiring member and I was nominated and elected as the replacement ordinary board member. I did hear that my ‘brother’ stormed out of the room muttering oaths.
The following evening I heard shouting from downstairs and looked down to see him having an argument with Albert, still saying that I had no right to be in the house.
I went down and asked Albert to go and get himself a drink because I wanted to say something to my ‘brother’ in private.
He went off to the kitchen and I took my ‘brother’ into the parlour.
He refused to sit down and snarled, “What do want to say, bitch. You’re stealing my inheritance. I can see it now, my father leaving you and your hippy boyfriend the house when it should be mine, I tell you, mine!”
I said quietly, “I may have no memory of you abusing my body when I was twelve but I have photographic proof of the scars around my vagina which must have come from that time.”
His went red and snarled “This is a wind-up, you’re just saying that. It’s a total fabrication!”
“OK” I said, “When we were clearing my bedroom for painting we found an envelope behind the vanity. Ask Jerry, he was there. It looked like the first draft of a suicide letter where Susan laid it all on the line. Your request for sexual experimentation. Her idea that it may be interesting and then your savage abuse of her when she was helpless under you.”
“It was hard reading for me because it had happened to this body. I’m just lucky to not have those memories. Your mother took her ‘on holiday’ when she had the tears stitched and it scarred her mind for the rest of her short life.”
He shouted, “You could have forged that note.”
“What about the letters you wrote to her? What about the one that starts ‘Sweetest Suzi’, or the last one that called her a ‘conniving blackmailing bitch.’ They were even harder to read.”
His face went white and he snarled, “You wanted it as much as me, bitch. You led me on, telling me that I was your man. It wasn’t my fault you couldn’t take a real man!”
He turned on his heel and went to the door that would take him to the hallway. I stood trembling until I heard the roar of his car heading down the drive.
As I stood I felt arms around me and was enveloped in a hug from a crying Albert.
“Oh, my baby” he sobbed “I thought that something had happened but I didn’t know it was his fault.”
“You heard, then?” and he held me tighter.
“Yes I heard it all. I find it difficult to think that he’s a son of mine. Do you still have those papers?”
“No, I burned them all but he doesn’t know that.”
He kissed my forehead, “Good!”
Part 15 I Walk the Line
We went into the kitchen where a glass and a bottle stood. He must have just stopped and come to listen.
He put the bottle and glass away and filled a kettle, pulling a couple of mugs from the shelf.
“Nice cup of coffee, I think,” he said, “Good for thinking with.”
While the water was coming to the boil he called the eldest son and asked him to come to the house as soon as he could and bring his wife with him.
We were just sitting with our empty mugs in front of us when they arrived, having not said a word in that time. You could almost see his brain working.
When his son and wife arrived we all went into the parlour where he poured a stiff drink and put it in his son’s hand, “Have this ready, you’re going to need it.”
He then related what had transpired and was able to remember the discussion almost verbatim.
The older son was getting madder as he heard what his sibling had done and I could see his wife weeping.
I just sat and looked at the floor; I had started this by just wanting to warn the younger brother off, not expecting that he would hang himself on his own words.
At the end of Alberts’ speech my nice brother came over to me and knelt by my chair to hold me in his arms, “I apologise, Samantha, for not being there when my sister needed me. I was in university at the time and was preoccupied with exams. Nothing was said to me at the time but I remember my mother going away with Susan for a while because she sent me a postcard. I remember the card particularly because she put, ‘Wish you were there’ instead if ‘Wish you were here’ and it looked odd.”
Albert then announced, “I’ve been thinking since I heard his little tirade. He always wanted this house and he’ll not get it, not now. I’m going to see my lawyers tomorrow and take him out of my will. My estate will go to the two of you with Samantha getting the house and you getting extra cash to even it out. I know that you’re happy where you now are so that shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”
My brother looked at me, “As long as I’m welcome here, it will be perfect.”
The discussion then turned to the business and the decision was to wait until we knew what his actions would be after tonight and then react in an appropriate manner without bringing the family issue into it.
We all then had a stiff drink to settle our nerves before everyone headed for their own beds. Next day there was a letter addressed to the MD and CEO at reception which was the resignation letter, effective immediately.
The only thing, some weeks after that, was a card in an envelope addressed to me that was delivered to the factory. It was a picture of a secluded beach in South Africa and on the back were three words asking me to do something that I had not been able to do since my experience with the water feature.
Next time my nice brother, Arthur, and his wife Eunice came to the house I showed him the card and he snorted, “Typical!”
He then told me that we had a company that monitored patents and name registrations for us and his brother had turned up in Durban and was trying to patent some of our older designs in South Africa under the Schurbert SA company name, not being successful as our patents were world-wide.
“The silly sod never bothered to keep up with what we were developing and had no knowledge of what your Jerry and the R&D boys are doing. His main job, other than being on the board, was almost ceremonial in the distribution area which is why he was so mad at Barry getting the contract. He was taking cut-backs from his own mates with trucks to deliver our products.”
Things were almost normal in the run up to the year’s end, if you didn’t factor in my twentieth birthday.
I spent a bit of time with the gardeners planning our autumn flowers and the beds did look good.
Whenever Jerry was back he was immersed in the work he was doing but we did get our nights together. He had, by now moved all of his stuff to the house, his clothes not taking up much room in the big wardrobes and his music gear in the music room along with mine.
Arthur had already organised patents for the new process with Jerry included in the owners so, even if it didn’t work as hoped, Jerry would get some returns if someone else perfected it. That was something we hoped wouldn’t happen.
In those months between going onto the board and my birthday, I made it a project to learn as much as I could about our products. I put on an assistant in HR who could contact me in an emergency and spent a lot of time down on the shop floor, walking the line and talking to anyone who wanted to talk to me.
Some days Arthur and I did the walk together and we got on first name terms with an awful lot of our employees. It did help that they had overalls or dust coats with their names embroidered on the pocket. There were ones that we got fairly friendly with, mainly the supervisors and inspectors.
We generally finished at R&D where we kept abreast of the new idea. One day we walked in and everyone was high-fiving.
The supervisor told us that the university had sent an upgrade for the computer programme and they had got five watts out of a ten degree temperature change. The thing about this system was that it was becoming clear that a typical unit would be about the size of a loaf of bread in the first version, much of the internals being a small computer powered by a NiCad battery that monitored the temperature change and modulated the power output. All we needed to get to was about a hundred watts per degree and we could put together a viable package.
I asked them if it would be possible to create a product that used a similar method but utilised wind or temperature effects on a thin screen and the power generated by the differences in tension across the screen, sort of like harvesting the strain in a tree trunk in a wind. The supervisor looked interested and I forgot about it once I went home.
Home, yes, the house was home to me and my family. I was becoming Samantha, the twin sister without the hang-ups and now called Albert Daddy without thinking about it.
I was his baby girl and he made sure no-one forgot it. I never asked for anything and tried to pay my way, even taking over the salary of Maisie as my personal secretary as well as maid.
In November I went back to the clinic for tests and was passed with flying colours. They had not operated on anyone in a year but had been busy looking through the records to see where things had gone wrong for the biker.
The decision was that both patients needed to be as close as they could be, my family link with Susan proving that. They were not giving up but, by the same token, they would not operate on anyone who did not meet the requirements. Everyone now who applied were getting their family tree looked at closely to find any relative with brain problems.
My birthday bash was as frantic as the one last year. We ate, drank, danced and we in the band played for the last part of the evening.
One of the things a bit different was how I was accepted. Those who had put Susan on the cards before now put Samantha or even Sammi. I made sure I opened up all the cards and gifts in front of the givers and lined them up on the snooker table, down the centre so you could look at them when you went for food.
The shock for me was when I opened the card from my grand-parents. Inside was a multiple share certificate in the company and I gasped, “Thank you, but surely I can’t take this, it’s far too much.”
My grandfather said “You deserve it as someone keeping our grand-daughters body alive but, more than that, you deserve it for being the grand-daughter we thought we had lost.”
I hugged and kissed the two of them and took the certificate to put it safe in my guitar case near the instruments. I was playing the Gibson full time now and was very careful with its transportation, even around the house.
I did get another item from my mothers’ collection and Jerry gave me a very sexy nightie which he told me was his present to himself. I told him he should wear it himself then.
I got to wear it that night but only for about ten minutes.
After that it was a short madness up to Christmas and New Year again. We did a lot of partying and playing and there was no-one this time to look unhappy at our antics. In fact, Arthur and Eunice really had a good time and Albert spoke to everyone and danced with a lot of older ladies, some of whom were single at the moment! It was now close to three years since his wife had passed away.
In the New Year I kept up my time with HR as well as getting down onto the shop floor. I had a wealth of knowledge now and there were times when Arthur, me and the staff representative on the board could steer them clear of dangerous decisions and point them towards new ways of working.
As such, the company output improved as efficiency went up. Jerry was in his last year at the university and we had a meeting in June; the board to be given the results of our project so far.
The R&D had been tight and very few people had knowledge of what was going on and that day was the one where the board was to authorise further funding.
The board-room was full with the extra bodies and the head of R&D was there to give his report with a small test unit, set up with various gauges.
It didn’t look much but a new feature was a foot long flat mast that stuck out of the box. He set up a fan and a small heater and gave me a wink as he did so.
When the presentation took place, it floored everyone not in on the experiments. The box was turned on, using the internal battery and there was a zero power output. He then switched the heater on with a timer that shut it off again after thirty seconds then back on again after another thirty seconds.
There were gasps as the output gauge showed twenty watts with every change of the heating cycle. The R&D then passed over to Jerry who explained how the power was being generated.
He then said “Now I’m going to add another factor, a slight breeze. This is not turning a blade but is just going to play on this mast. It was invented by Samantha about six months ago.”
He turned the fan on with the unit set to swing from side to side. Every time the breeze passed over the unit, the power output doubled!
“It’s such a simple but brilliant concept I would ask her to marry me if I hadn’t already done so.”
Albert made sure that everyone realised that this was just the start of development and must remain secret, though patents had been applied for with the mast concept being put in my name.
During that summer a unit was put in the safest place possible, on top of the house. It was a lot bigger, about the size of a bar fridge with a row of masts that looked like the teeth of a comb. It was actually a bank of twenty smaller units packed inside.
Jerry would monitor it with a computer before he went into the factory with me. It put out about as much output as a one kilowatt solar set-up but did this at night as well as long as the temperature changed or there was a breeze.
Jerry graduated with Honours and was asked to stay and complete his doctorate course with his thesis being based on the generator unit.
It would be another couple of years but we had another event at the end of that summer that had a profound effect on my life.
After we had Jerrys’ twenty-first bash Jerry and I got married and I walked the aisle on the arm of a beaming Albert to join Jerry at the altar, standing there with Barry as Best Man.
I coerced Miranda into being my Maid of Honour and I must say we made a good looking wedding party. The reception was at one of the hotels in town and we had a band there to play for us. My dancing the bridal waltz with my man was one of the greatest moments of my life.
We had our wedding night in the hotel, making gentle love while we could hear the band still playing downstairs.
After that we flew down to the West Country just to relax and calm down. I had stopped taking the pills and was now enjoying the sex with the added chance of getting pregnant.
By the time my twenty-second came around I was, indeed, pregnant.
Little James Boyer came into the world in time for his father’s twenty-third birthday. Jerry and Samantha Boyer were ecstatic and so was his grandfather, Albert.
The music room was now also a nursery and the yellow colour still worked for that.
Marianne Gregory © 2022
Part 16 And The Beat Goes On
So here I was, a twenty-three year old mother with a great job, a loving family and a very good bank balance. It couldn’t get much better than that.
Actually, in one respect it did. It was my time with little James that was transforming me as I wondered at the life I had created (with a little help from Jerry).
I found myself in the nursery / music room often, gently playing my much loved Sammy guitar and singing to my son.
One day I was doing just this and Jerry was home at the time. He sat in the corner, watching me. He recorded me on his phone in full video and, the idiot, posted it on-line.
Inside three days we were being inundated with messages asking for more Sammi Boyer music and he had been contacted by an agent.
All the time we had been playing as a group we had not had that much response and here I was, just playing a lullaby to my baby and everyone wanted a piece of the action.
I thought it was just too much and told him that I was not going to let him in to the nursery if this is what happens but he and Albert teamed up to convince me that I should do it.
The telling argument was that any money could go into a trust fund for James when he was older. Well! What else could I do but cave in after that.
We organised a contract with the agent who would set up a Sammi Boyer web-site and sell either single clips or a block of songs on-line. So I now found myself singing to my son for money.
The agent wanted more so Jerry sent him a video of us playing at one of our parties and that took off like wildfire.
So ‘Sammi and the Samoyeds’ became Twit-Tube hits. We got a lot of requests to play all over the country but restricted our appearances to our own locality so that anyone who wanted to see us play had to come to us.
None of us really needed the money. Like the song we now always played says, “Got a day time job, doing all right”.
We were coming up to my twenty-fourth birthday and we all decided that the games room was too small so we hired a reception venue in the closest city and had it catered.
We put out messages to our usual crowd to be there or be square and bring their friends but we didn’t expect to get more than a thousand turn up for the party, many bearing cards and gifts.
We managed to get through the night without anyone getting hurt or upset and played our stuff to a heaving mass of dancers. Our usual crowd thought it was a hoot but the older ones left early, not able to stand the heat.
When the agent heard about it he was incensed, he thought we should have had someone on the door, taking money.
The big problem with that evening was that Mary and Miranda, and to a lesser extent, Barry, had got the ‘fame bug’ and wanted us to accept what the agent wanted and do a tour.
Jerry and I relented so plans were made to have the tour that summer, just playing weekends so that we could all get home and be ourselves during the week.
In the meantime Jerry had to get on with his research and I, now on extended maternity leave, had to look after my baby. Actually, Albert had a chat to me and the upshot was that I let my assistant take over the HR seat as she had been doing it well while I had been away. So I was a full-time mum except for board meeting days.
The other thing that happened before the summer was that we now had a pretty good working experiment and a meeting was called to decide what to call it and how to get it into the marketplace.
The result of that meeting was that the Boyer Booster was christened and the board decided that a subsidiary company be set up, in its own premises, to make it. All we needed to do now was to decide on sizes, shapes and pricing.
Jerry suggested that, because the new, smaller and more efficient panels the company had now developed did not fit standardised frames, we could make a surround to the new panels so adding the booster to normal installations. That was heartily agreed to so that was how the first Boosters went out.
By this time they had been miniaturised and the old stalk sticking up had become a brush-like forest of plastic tubes with a thin copper wire in them that created much more output.
The new product looked like a smaller panel with a frame of broom-bristles but could put out a hundred watts during the night as the temperature cooled in a breeze and the same in the morning as it warmed up, even before the sun shone on the panel.
While we waited for the new factory to be built, we sent some of the new panels out to our biggest installers to put up as a test over summer.
The Boyer Boost Limited factory was not very big and was ready to be moved into by the end of that summer. The naming ceremony took place mid-week as we had our tour gigs on the weekends. The family was there and a plaque was unveiled by our local MP.
We had all agreed that it would be called the ‘Susan Schurbert Building’ and both Albert and Arthur had tears in their eyes as the ceremony ended.
It took until Christmas to get all of the equipment in and recruit suitable fabrication and electronics specialists to get the process going. By that time our installers were clamouring for the finished product with the results from their test installations blowing their minds.
The big power generation guys got wind of it as well and weren’t happy. A think-tank that Albert had spoken to had predicted that with the output of our first generation of panels, plus use of a battery, more than a third of houses in the country would have enough power to go off-grid. If we were able to up the output by twenty percent with the second generation they predicted that half the country would be off-grid soon after.
My next birthday was a very quiet affair, at home, with only a few guests. The band had found that fame wasn’t everything over the summer months. Being mobbed is one thing, being trolled is another and there were some very jealous people out there on the social media.
That summer tour was the first, last and only one that we did and we kept any further shows local and limited. Another reason for a quiet time was that I was pregnant again.
James was two and I was again three months expecting on my birthday. This time, however, I was expecting twins, or so the ultrasound said.
The last three months weren’t an easy carry and I was sorry that I had to miss Jerry getting his Doctorate but I just couldn’t get away to the ceremony.
He had it filmed for me so I saw it later. My twin girls were born just before his birthday, just a week away from both James on one side and Jerry on the other.
The birth wasn’t easy and I had a hysterectomy before I left the hospital.
I knew that following summers were going to be a riot of birthday parties and started to think how I could get them to have one big one. No more children for me but I was sure that James, Belinda and Brianna would fill my future well enough.
Jerry had to take me back to the clinic for an unscheduled check-up a month or so later. I spent three days there while a nanny looked after my little ones.
The biggest problem was that although I had lactated for James, I was dry this time and this was a bad sign. My tests all came back in the correct zone but Jerry and I were warned to watch out in future.
With my original operation, anything could go wrong to trigger a rejection. While we were in the area we put flowers on the bikers’ grave and met his wife coming into the cemetery carrying her own bunch.
We chatted for a while. She seemed to have moved on and told me a little about the problems her husband had been having.
She said that he had suffered periods when he thought his brain and his body were fighting each other but the worst part, she said, was that he had times when he would lose all feeling in digits or even a whole limb, for hours at a time.
That information made my blood run cold; because since the twins, I had been losing feeling in the odd toe but had put it down to being a slave to fashion when it came to shoes.
The following two years were full of highs and lows. The Schurbert Boosted range of solar panels was released on the market and took off like a rocket. The Schurbert factory was flat out making the panels and adding the surrounds that we supplied.
There were a couple of odd moments though; the energy generation people tried to say that the Booster was merely a phony, having no use whatsoever. They had obviously taken one apart and found that there were no moving parts and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
When inspectors came to us to see if the energy guys were right we showed them a unit on its own, putting out power with just a heater and fan. We would not divulge the science behind it but they went away convinced.
Another group of bottom feeders who didn’t discover the secret were the copy makers. There were several that hit the market cheaper than us but none of them had any effect on the power output.
Every one that we pulled apart was exactly the same as ours in physical components but our software had been hidden away in a chip that looked like a second NiCad battery.
When we were pushed for our production we just bought in some of the best looking units cheap and replaced the useless NiCad battery with our chip and they worked perfectly. They just needed our sticker to replace the shonky one and we were good to go.
The sad part of those couple of years was losing my grand-parents, just three months apart. They had been hit with covid forty years earlier but recovered.
Doctors had said that it didn’t affect the younger people at the time but both of them had breathing difficulties in later life. It was strokes that brought them both down, something that doctors now admitted could be part of a ‘long covid’ problem.
It had an effect on Albert, now the patriarch of the family, who got a bit morose after both loses. He, however, was so happy that he now had four grand-children to carry on the family he managed to weather the bad days of the funerals.
I said four grand-children; my twins seemed to have brought on a wave of pregnancies.
Arthur was now a proud father of his first born son, Albert (what else), who would eventually inherit the Schurbert business, Barry and his wife had their own, as did both Mary and Miranda.
It was a very joyous time for all and our little get-togethers at the house were a sight to see, five mothers nursing seven children while five fathers and one grandfather chewed the fat.
Part 17 When I See You Smile
We had a get-together one weekend and it was decided that the band was no more, everyone happy to let it go.
A deciding factor was that we were being ‘sampled’ and there was even an ongoing ‘Rock’n’Roll Life with the Samoyeds'’ show on Twit-Tube that some bright sparks had produced where avatars of us did crazy things.
The funny part was that they had us as a pack of Samoyeds who could turn into a rock band at appropriate times.
It was actually very well done and quite funny. The opening theme music was “And the Beasts go on”. It was very popular and had generated a whole world of merchandise.
I had collected three sets of plush toys and three sets of posters for my babies which we all signed. They would, maybe, be a collectors’ item one day in the next century.
The show also brought about one very happy time that led to an awful moment. Jerry and I were down south at a popular show and the producers of the ‘Samoyeds’ were there and bailed us up in the foyer at half time.
They wanted me to do a guest spot on the show, singing a song which we had never done on stage or on video. They had chosen ‘When I see you Smile’ and I agreed to do it if they gave a donation to charity.
When we filmed it I took down my Sammy guitar and, kitted out in motion capture kit, sat on a stool and sang the song in front of a green screen.
It was fun and the episode that it appeared in, now with a singing Sammi Samoyed, was extremely popular. The only problem for me was that I when I had to play bar chords my index finger on my left hand was totally without feeling much of the time and I had to fudge so I didn’t use that finger.
Both companies were doing well now; we had a board meeting and the board decided to amalgamate the two factories. Jerry and I sold our controlling interest in Boyer for a reasonable, but substantial, amount. My life became a round of being mother, lover and business woman. As my children grew so did my interests. The gardens became a must-see place during the Open Garden days and we started to host small fairs and charity festivals.
I would take my children out into the grassland and we would talk to the deer. There were a few new babies there as well, just the right size for my three to pat and stroke. We were out there in the sunshine in the lead up to James ninth birthday when I simply blacked out.
When I came around again I was in the clinic with Jerry looking down at me with relief that I had woken up again. I had been out for four days and it was only the quick thinking of James, who had grabbed my phone and hit the speed dial for his father that allowed me to be looked at so quickly.
I had given everyone a fright, including me, but was able to be up and about in a couple more days. The clinic had been doing a lot of research into anti-rejection drugs and my surfer surgeon, now looking quite statesmanlike, told me that having me in their MRI machine had allowed them to generate comparison data against the early data they already had.
He assured me that if I took the medication he suggested, I would be good for a lot longer. The only thing he did say that was upsetting was that my brain was over eighty years old now and to keep a look out for the problems that afflict most old people.
Some of the things he spoke about I had seen recently, in Albert. When I got back home I asked him if we could have a little meeting with him, Arthur and his wife, me and Jerry.
I made sure we had tea and coffee and a choice of cake and started, “The clinic has told me that I’ll be good for some years yet and it got me to thinking about the future. We have all been successful and Jerry and I now have enough behind us to make you an offer on this house, Albert, with the proviso that you can live here afterwards.”
He looked surprised and then saw the logic. “That would be all right as long as we retain the status quo; if you buy it I’ll rejig my will; that’s something I’ve been thinking about anyway. What do you think, Arthur?”
Arthur said that it sounded good and would ensure that the house would remain in the family. We discussed values and the upshot was that Jerry and I became the owners of the house and grounds, with Albert as our guest for the rest of his life.
When all the paperwork was completed and the money transferred we planned a little party. Jerry and I had a little idea that would be our house-warming theme.
We got a name board made for the house (which never had a name of its own) and, at the end of that summer we set up the band outside the garage next to the orchard, moved the cars around the back and set up tables for the food and drink.
We invited all of our usual family and friends as well as all of our workforce and their families.
The morning of the party started with the unveiling of our new house name.
‘The Samoyeds’ made everyone laugh but it was income from the band that helped us buy it.
The rest of the day was a stream of well-wishers who danced as the band played for the last time together, there in the sunshine in front of the garages. I don’t know how many came to join us but the dancing went into the evening and still new faces were appearing.
It was a lovely day, made even better that the children of the band members were now old enough to appreciate that their parents really were Twit-Tube stars in their day. We all had a good time and there were a lot of smiles on a lot of faces so it must have been a success.
James was in High School and the girls were doing their end of primary exams when Albert started getting hazy.
He started calling me Susan and tended to forget things immediately he heard them. It wasn’t unusual; he was now past seventy five and had lived a full life.
His whole body was almost the same age as my brain and it was sad to see.
We carried on for another five years before he was confined to his bed and we had a live-in nurse. One day I was sitting by his bed, having a chat, and he got a short burst of lucidity.
“Samantha” he said, cutting through my mindless ramble, “I’m so happy you came into my life, bringing my daughter back to me and even giving me three wonderful grand-children that I love. I don’t think I’ve long to go but I want you to know that you’ve been more than a daughter to me, you have been a true friend and for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love you, my daughter,” and then dozed off, never to be lucid again in the two weeks he lived beyond that day.
His funeral was a big affair, seeing his position in the local business world and all of the charities he had supported. The service was set down for a Friday with the factories closing for the day.
The church was full and there were many outside. There were even people lining the road to the cemetery, the men with doffed hats and the women all dressed in black. It was harrowing but we managed to get through it.
James was now close to twenty and the girls were both starting university so everyone in the house was mature enough to know that in the midst of life, death sometimes becomes a factor.
Arthur took over as Chairman as a permanent position, although he had been doing it for some time already.
When we met with the lawyer we found out that Albert had totally rewritten his will some time before. Instead of his estate being split evenly between Arthur and me it was now split with the two of us sharing half of it with the other half being split evenly between his four grand-children and his favourite charity.
After all the taxes, and seeing that he owned no property, the amount that each of the children got was significant. His shares in Schurbert Solar were split between me and Arthur so the family control remained.
As Jerry and I moved into our forties and fifties we became doyens of the local social scene. ‘Samoyeds’ was even more the place to be seen, whether it was an open garden day, a charity function or a party as we entertained all and sundry. James had a big bash for his twenty-first with all of his university mates and it took a week to find all the bottles and bits of food they had spread all over the garden.
He had asked for a popular band that played a weird mixture of punk-rap-goth music that was the in-thing and I didn’t consider it real music but the kids all had fun.
Two years later the girls wanted a debutante ball in a big venue and that was like something from a Bronte novel. I dressed to suit and they all called me ‘Mother, Dear’ and giggled.
Three years after that James and his bride walked up the aisle to start their new life together. He had, like his father, graduated with honours and was on the path to a huge career in Astrophysics. His wife was a talented pianist who had been tickled pink to be marrying into the family of the Samoyeds, a show that she had grown up watching.
Once again the girls went their own way after another two years. It was a crazy double wedding, my twins marrying another set of twins who came from a very well connected family and had definitely never followed the Samoyeds. It was, however, a very lavish and well-reported event.
We passed into a new century and I had a small, intimate birthday party on the next December. I say small, it was just family and the family had grown. It gave me a chance to cuddle my grandchildren.
It was partly to celebrate my fifty seventh birthday as Susan / Samantha and also (privately) to celebrate my original birth date, a hundred years before, in 2001.
The house now seemed far too big for Jerry and me once the children were away doing their own thing. They didn’t want to live in a big rambling mansion; it just was not the modern way.
Arthur didn’t need it so we talked about what we could do with the house and decided that we would talk to the clinic to see if they had a use.
They came out and saw it as a potential new clinic, with some renovations, that would be a second centre of research. I was happy, seeing it was them who gave me my second life.
Well, I say ‘them.’ The staff and administration were all new faces, the original ones being retired or dead. I came to realise that this was an unwanted factor when you live two lives; you end up among a lot of strangers.
Jerry and I found a nice place, not far away, which was about one tenth the size of ‘Samoyeds’ but easy to look after and far more cosy. We moved in and the paperwork was completed to gift the old place to a charity that worked with the clinic. It made our tax position look really good.
We both retired from our different boards and charity committees and just enjoyed our own company. Taking trips to all the places we had never been to; as well as visiting our children (for very short periods, you don’t want to overstay your welcome.)
I was a few years older than I was when I had the original operation when I collapsed again.
I was taken to the ‘Samoyeds Clinic’ and woke up with a view out of the window that I remembered from Alberts’ old room, the room where he died. The prognosis was that I had suffered another stroke and had developed swelling on the brain.
I had organised my last will and testament years ago so everything was in place should I drop off the mortal coil. I was visited by all of my extended family as I lay in my bed.
They all had tears in their eyes when they left, not sure if they would see me again. I loved them all, my Jerry being the rock that Sammy had been but so much more beside. I told him that I really loved him and on top of that, he was my best friend forever.
I have my journal and I’m writing this as they talk about another operation which may, or may not; relieve the pressure on my very old brain. I’ve asked them to give it to Jerry, unopened, so that he could do with it as he sees fit if I don’t come through and the doctor had nodded. I was sure he knew this one was the make or break time.
When I looked through my journal I noticed just how apt the words were before I had the big operation, so I will put them here, again. Maybe I’ll be able to start with a new chapter in a few days or weeks. If not, I’ve lived a good life. Make that two lives.
“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 I’m able to carry on with my life”.
“It’s all in the lap of the Gods, or so they say.”
I have loved being Samantha. It has been a truly uplifting experience. I look out of this window and watch the deer and realise that I have been bles…….
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Self-published by Jerry Boyer. In loving memory of his wonderful wife.
Taken by a massive stroke while awaiting surgery.
Loved mother of three; grandmother of seven.
She lived longer than most and brought joy to many.
Marianne Gregory © 2022