I thank my LadyCibelle and Techsan for their patience, proof reading, editing skills and of course encouragement. I'd also like to add that we don't always see eye to eye, we do have some disagreements sometimes - well quite often really, - I can be an obstinate old bugger when I want to be. Anyway I take full responsibility for the content and any cock-ups in this story.
Notes for the uninitiated: Cor = slang expressing surprise, excitement, etc. Palaver = a prolonged or tiresome act. Throw a wobbly = Have a fit of nerves or temper. On a loosing wicket = in a no win situation.
Someone to Watch Over Me.
Damn it, I really should have seen it coming. You know with a bit of foresight it should have been obvious to me, like two trains racing towards each other on the same track. But maybe I wasn't looking hard enough; well, at least I wasn't thinking things out that well. And I suppose I could use the excuse that one train was hiding in a tunnel. But all the warning signs were there if I'd only looked hard enough for them. But I was kinda besotted with the girl so when that other train came roaring out of that bleeding tunnel, I just had no idea what was coming.
Okay, enough of the bleeding metaphors; let's get down to brass tacks. All through my school life they must have been there. Well, they were there but you kinda didn't notice that there was two of them. Them - that's it! They weren't two people really; they were a single entity. Mercedes Clough and Porticia Rowan; two girls, one personality.
As I remember, all through school they were referred to as 'the twins'. They dressed alike and spoke alike. Their hair was styled the same. Shit, they were like a pair of twins, but they were not related. But they might as well have been joined at the hip.
Now don't get the idea that they were stand-offish or anything. Once they were in their teens, they dated boys all the time. The only problem there was that they only double dated. If a guy fancied one of them, he not only had to get her attention; he had to find a suitable date for the other one.
I must admit I liked the look of both of them. But I never did get to know either of them well; I couldn't be bothered to play the silly double date game. Shit, a guy would be running around for weeks trying to find the suitable candidate that the girls would find acceptable to make up the foursome. I learnt at a young age that the girls could be bloody choosy when they wanted to be and from what I heard the girls wanted to be. It was probably all a game to them.
Anyway, the problem never came up for me really, because when I was sixteen, my old man talked my Uncle Harry into taking me as an apprentice builder. That was my old man all over, "Get yourself an apprenticeship boy; you'll have a job for life." The only problem with that bloody apprenticeship was that I had to go and live with my Uncle Harry and Auntie Mavis in London.
Cor London, the big city and bright lights! Like fuck! We lived in the suburbs and most of my Uncle Harry's and my work was out in the suburbs as well. I had one day and one evening a week at a technical college, also in the suburbs. Uncle Harry wanted blood for his money so by the time I got home at night, I was so knackered; travelling up into town wasn't an option.
Add to that, Uncle Harry was a bleeding workaholic. Hold on, a correction there. He was under the impression I was a bleeding workaholic. He always had little jobs laid on for the weekends. "You missed a day's work during the week to go to college; you can make it up on the weekends, boy." So my planned monthly weekend trips home soon became bi-monthly then tri-monthly. You get the idea; I got home three times the first year, and besides Christmas once the second year. By the end of the third year my dog had started growling at the stranger when I walked in the door of my parents' home. And there was a bloody lodger sleeping in my room. I had to share my little brother's room.
Apprenticeship over, I decided I'd had enough of working for Uncle Harry. I really don't think he was too pleased when I took my leave. Bollocks to him, the old bugger had got his money's worth out of me.
Home wasn't home anymore for me, if you get my drift. I'd managed to save a lot of the meagre salary Uncle Harry had paid me over the years; so I had enough in the bank to allow me to put a security deposit down and rent a little flat of my own back in my home town.
Work wasn't a problem either; I had my papers, and I was soon on the books of one of the local firms. The work was hard, but at least the money was spectacular after what Uncle Harry had been paying me. Builders who really knew what they were doing were not exactly rare, but were a bit thin on the ground back then. Well, young ones were.
Before I realised what was happening I was working on a site of about fifty new houses. Once that site was finished, I was offered job by a smaller builder, on a barn conversion. It was a small job, only about six of us on the site and the owner was around most days.
The boss and I were studying the plans one day over a cup of tea and I just happened to mention that the way the architect had planned things, there was going to be a bleeding great blank area of wall on the front of the building. I just said that if it was my place I'd make some changes that I thought would make the place look better.
The boss pushed the artist's impression drawing of the finished house at me and said show me. So I roughly sketched in the changes I thought would be improvements. Later that day I was called into the little shed we were using as a site office. There I found the Boss, the owner of the house and the architect. After some strong words were exchanged between the architect and the owner my changes were added to the plan.
It was on the day we handed the newly converted house over, that the architect came over to me. "Son, you're in the wrong business. You should have been a bloody architect or a ruddy designer at least. You've got an eye for design."
A couple of weeks later I signed up on a part time college course, learning to be an architect. I still worked on the building sites to earn the money to support my studies but I was heading into the design side of the business.
It was in the college library that I first saw her. I'd just sat down at one of the large tables, to look up some references in a book, when a young lady the other side of the table looked up from the book she was reading and our eyes found each other's for a brief moment. She gave me a wonderful smile and returned to reading her book. The face was familiar but I couldn't place it.
I kinda sat there confused and stared at her. Well, she was a very good-looking young woman. Some minutes later she looked over at me again. I quickly looked down at the book I was studying. Trying to pretend I hadn't been staring at her.
Out of the corner of my eye, I was aware of her getting up from the table and walking around it until she was standing beside me. Embarrassed that she'd seen me watching her, I didn't raise my head and pretended to be lost in the book before me. The young lady reached out and, rotating my book through 180 degrees she said, "You'll find it easier to read, Roger, if it is the right way up!"
I looked up at her.
"You don't recognise me, do you, Roger? -- Mercedes, Mercedes Clough!"
