My great grandfather was quite elderly when he died. Ninety eight, to be precise. I used to visit him weekly, playing chess with him. He was a grand-master when he was in his prime and he taught me a lot about the game. Just because I was only twenty and not very experienced was no reason, in his opinion, to give me a break. If I wanted to win I had to really work at my game.
His other passion was his garden. He had a large house and a very large yard. Once he reached an age where his grandchildren didn't come to play in the yard he converted both front and back yards into gardens. The front yard had a number of different flower beds, some flowers in blossom all the year round. It's quite surprising the number of plants that blossom in winter.
His back yard he took a different tack. He planted bushes all over the place, carefully clipping them for topiary. Quite an interesting sight, those bushes.
He personally maintained both yards until he was well into his eighties, the work finally getting too much for him. After that he hired a gardening service to just maintain the place. He could afford it so why not?
His death came as a sudden surprise. He didn't drive anymore so I'd taken him to his doctor for a regular check-up. His doctor checked him over and assured him he didn't look a day over ninety and would live to be a hundred. He proved the doctor wrong by dropping dead as he walked out of the clinic. Sudden massive heart failure.
To my dismay I was named executor of his estate. I just naturally reached for my phone and called my lawyer, dumping the whole schmozzle on him. This didn't get me out of all the work. One thing I had to do was go through the house and itemise everything that was in it. That was going to be a long and tedious job.
So there I was on a Saturday afternoon going through the house when I heard the sound of music playing. This puzzled me a little as I shouldn't have been hearing music. There was nothing playing in the house and no neighbours were close enough for me to hear music coming from their places. It was just gentle music, classical from what I could tell.
Seeing that I had windows open I strolled over to one to see if I could detect the source of the music. I was in one of the upstairs rooms that overlooked the back yard. I spotted the source of the music and it was rather a surprising source.
There was a bit of a clear area in the middle of the yard and I was assuming that the source was the radio I could see sitting there. The radio wasn't the surprise as I'd already assumed that some device was making the noise. The surprise was the reason the radio was playing.
There was a young lady in the yard, dancing to the music. I estimated her age as about the same as mine, twentyish. The really surprising thing was her attire, or lack thereof. I was prepared to swear that she was dancing nude.
You'll understand that I had to check this out. I was the executor, after all, and if young women were dancing naked in the yard I'm sure it fell within my purview.
I headed out into the back yard and immediately encountered a problem. I could spot the girl from upstairs but at ground level she could have been anywhere. There was all that topiary, with no straight lines of sight anywhere. I headed into the yard, wandering amongst the bushes, searching.
I came around a lion and there she was. My eyes had not deceived me as she was also gloriously naked. Not nude, which indicates artistically nude, but naked, an open invitation to lust. I took a deep breath and counted to ten. I then took an even deeper breath and counted to ten again. It didn't help.
"Good afternoon," I said.
She continued with the pirouette. Let me tell you now, doing a nude pirouette with one leg outstretched puts everything you've got on display. It was obvious that I should have had my camera out and running.
"Good morning," I said for a second time, speaking louder this time.
"What the hell? Who are you and what are you doing here?" she demanded, sounding indignant. Not embarrassed, just indignant.
"More to the point, who are you?" I asked. "I wasn't exactly expecting to find a ballet dancer in the old man's back yard."
"I have permission to be here," she said huffily. "The old man, as you call him, lets me practice out here. It's the only place I can get both privacy and peace to do my practice. Please note the word privacy."
"You're saying that he knew you practised out in the altogether?"
That was a bit of a shocker. I always thought the old man was a bit of a puritan.
Apparently pointing it out suddenly reminded her of the state of her attire. She blushed, her hands fluttering as she started to cover herself, then she got a look of defiance and her hands dropped away. Understandable. I'd already seen everything so why bother hiding it?
"He wouldn't care what I wear," she said, a touch defiantly. "It's not as though he's going to come out here and his eyesight is too bad to make out anything from the windows. You still haven't said why you're here."
"I could hear the music and came to see what was going on."
"Well, now you know. Feel free to leave. Unlike some, I have permission."
