MORE THAN BEING NEIGHBOURLY
Ben sat in a battered, but comfortable, deck chair and gazed with little interest at last weekend's newspaper. He rarely bought one but had chosen to do so on the Saturday just gone. It was a weekend rag with its magazine that also had the TV listings for the coming week.
He would make do with that and look at all the photos, scenic and otherwise, but concentrate on some scantily clad model trying to make a name for herself. During his working life, as a fitter for a Richmond, VA, engineering company, he had also dabbled in photography, something that his late wife had encouraged in her younger and most beautiful years.
All of that was over now, his Marilyn dying three years ago and he had been lonely ever since. Still, he owned the house with its tended garden, and he had kept on hoping that his new neighbours would take better care of the place that they rented. He had kept on hoping someone would move in next door who would have an interest in transforming the neglected garden.
He had met, all too briefly Gillian and Ted Jackson, Gill soon engaging his attention as she was the sociable one, talkative and only too easy on his ageing eyes.
She was slender, had bony shoulders and thin arms, a nicely oval face with a graceful nose, and her straw-blonde hair, or was it sandy brown with highlights -- he could not make his mind up about that -- was unruly and tied back in a loose bun at the back of her head. Invariably, he saw her in jeans, worn with a T-shirt or cotton vest, both failing to lessen the shapely curve of her large breasts. If Gill, as she liked to be called, was modest, she sure did not show that side of her character when out in the garden.
She did not have a full-time job, he could only assume, as she was regularly to be seen working outside and tending untidy flower beds and the grass often left to grow until her husband, Ted, something of a wastrel and mouthy with it, had to cut it with a clapped-out mower.
It was when that contraption finally broke down that Gill came round, not only to introduce herself properly but also to beg a favour. He welcomed the opportunity to talk to the young woman before him and wondering, far from idly, if she might pose for him as his wife had once been extremely willing to do.
Looking at her, a young woman who came up to his shoulder and he was lanky and nearly six foot tall, he would need more than one Viagra pill to get his old tool to stand to attention. There had been no problems in that department when his Marilyn had been alive, the often-times pin-up he photographed and for a select few to see, but who kept herself only for him.
"Hello, Ben, morning," she said in her sing-song voice. "I've come to ask a favour."
"Morning, Gill," he smiled and beckoned for her to come in. "Remembering my name's a good start. What can I do for you?"
"Your place sure is neat," she observed after looking around the hallway and then the kitchen. "You have a lot of pictures everywhere and they're...," she hesitated as what she gazed at registered. She blushed. "They're all the same person and...and she's not dressed."
He came to stand by her side as she pointed at one photo in particular. "That is Marilyn, my late wife. I took that over forty years ago and in the style of the time...a slim and shapely woman kneeling and with her hands resting on her knees. It was, and still is, a favourite of mine."
She looked at the picture, then at him, and then looked away.
"Should you be telling me all of this?"
"Why not? You will have to take me for whom I am. I'm no perv. I miss my wife...and I am not ashamed of what I've got hanging on the walls of our home."
"No...no," she answered hurriedly and met his look upon her. "Are, or were you, a photographer?"
"Only in my spare time. I sold a few when people asked me to take pictures of some beauty queen or at a fashion contest. It went from there." He handed her a small cup of strong coffee and pushed a jug of creamer over the worktop. "Well, now, what favour is it you're asking?"
"I need to use your phone, please. Ted's been trying to get the place reconnected ever since we moved in, but now we're going to try some other company to help."
"Use this," he said and held out his mobile phone. "Go ahead, I'll get us some more coffee."
"Thanks, you make a great cup." She saw his gaze travel over her and smiled coyly. "No, I won't pose for you, so don't keep looking at me like that."
He shrugged. "An old habit, I guess, when an attractive woman comes into view."
Fresh coffee was made as he heard Gill talking, her voice rising as she told someone that she could not afford what was being asked. She closed the call and there were tears in her eyes when he came to her in the hallway.
"Here's your coffee..."
"Thanks. You must have more pictures of your wife?"
"Yeah, they're in my part of the house, where I slept most nights. I...we both snored. She told me and I told her, so we chose to sleep in separate rooms. We visited..."
She smiled on hearing his choice of words and did not doubt that the man with his rugged appearance and leanness of build would have been only too keen to claim the woman she had seen posing in the pictures. And the man before her had wandering eyes and was acting just a little flirty with her, even at his age which she put on close to seventy.
"Tell me if you need any help. I live tight and don't splash the cash around, so I could help out."
"In exchange for what?" she asked and gazing at him provocatively.
"I still get asked for pictures, though it's been a while, Gill. People still like some of the pictures I took of Marilyn, s my name is still out there."
Gill nodded and sipped n her coffee.
"Ben would go apeshit crazy if he knew I'd posed for you. No, I can't go there even if money's tight...no, sorry."
"Just keep it in mind." He saw her frown. "I don't go around just asking anyone, in case...in case you're wondering."
"I was beginning to, but you've put my mind at ease. Thanks for letting me use your phone...and the coffee."
"The problem with the phone remains, so use mine when you need to."
Gill nodded and on a soft, wonderful smile, she left him.
He watched her go and knew again how he loved the female form and Gill was no exception, dressed as she was in baggy jeans, down at the heel shoes, and a T-shirt that flattered her figure. He settled in his favourite chair, by the fire that was banked up with dry logs and was a focal point of the spotlessly tidy room, and resumed flicking through the weekend paper, but his mind kept spooling back to a young woman who had called on him.
He would help her out whenever, and however he could, he decided. Favours would, in the end, have an exchange cost.
♥
A few days later he saw her waving over the garden fence as he made ready to cut his grass. Recent rain, over a couple of days, had kept him from doing that. He could no longer put off cutting it and raking up fallen leaves that had blown in on the rainstorms.
"Hi," she called out, "it's me again."
