The further adventures of Stan -1

September 16, 2015

I've never written a story before, and really have no idea how to start, but my friend Stan says, “just put your thoughts down on paper” so that is what I am going to do.

I suppose a story usually starts by telling something about the main character – and as this is a story about me, I must be the main character. So here goes. My names is Elizabeth Raynard and I am old enough to not want to say how old I am. But everyone says I look at least ten years younger, and I feel like I am too. My husband was a lot older than me, and he died five years ago now. We had three children, two girls and a boy, and they have all left home now and set up in homes of their own.

I don't know what to say next. It is all so boring so far, and nobody is going to want to read this. I suppose I could tell a bit more about my background because that is not all that usual. I am an American, and came to England to live when I got married. I met my husband, who was called John, when he was living in the Chicago area, where I also worked. He didn't like living there much, so that when we started dating, he said that he would only continue with the relationship if I agreed to move to England. I loved him, so I agreed, having no idea what I was getting in to. However, I was old fashioned enough to insist that he marry me first. I wasn't going to change my entire life, and then have him leave me high and dry in a strange place. Not that I expected he would do that.

My family were sad and surprised when I told them I was moving to England – and they did their best to try to get John to change his mind. They couldn't believe that anyone would honestly prefer living in what they considered a much less affluent country. But I was determined to have him, and I was sure I could cope with anything.

So we moved here, and our lives were hard at times, but John was good at his profession, and our life style improved to where we were quite well off. We bought this lovely house in Marple, overlooking the Pennine Hills, with a huge garden. Our children went to the best schools, and
universities, and everything seemed very rosy. I could go into all the details, but that isn't what I want to write about.

I will just skip now to what happened more recently. When John died within a few months of being diagnosed with cancer, it was a huge shock, which I thought I would never recover from. I had always had a strong faith, but even that seemed not to help me through the ordeal of living without the person who had steered me through life over the last thirty years or so. In the end, it was getting on the church committee, and forcing myself to help the community that made all the difference. It was hard at first, as I don't make friends easily, but gradually I got into the way of making decisions which I had not had to do on my own for many years.

This story really started when I took on the job of organising the buying of a manse for our new United Reformed Churh minister and his family. The previous incumbant had been unmarried, and was happy to live in a small terraced house near the Church. But this new man had a wife and four children. He was coming from the far north of Scotland, and didn't want to take the time and effort to be involved in the process himself, although I kept him informed of our search, and he approved of our final decision. The house I found was large – four double bedrooms with three good sized reception rooms, and a pleasant garden. The policy of our church is that the members, and especially the elders of the church, which I have recently been made, are responsible for the upkeep of the minister and his family. But the building then belongs to the church, and not to him.

I spent many weeks visiting the various options, and in the end chose a house which was owned by a divorced woman, who had had four sons – and so it obviously was the right size for a big family. But they must have been a very unusual family, as the living room was painted in the most garish colour imaginable – bright orange, and I do mean bright – sort of luminiscent. But I knew that with sufficient paint of the right colour, that could be changed and what had no doubt put off many of the previous lookers, as the house had been on the market for almost a year, meant that I could bargain down the price with the owner. I was quite pleased with myself in the end, but I also know that before the new minister and his family arrived, I had to make the house less of an eyesore.

So this now comes to the part where my friend Stan enters into my story. Because he was the young man who I employed to get rid of the orange paint, and eventually to redo the whole house.

Shall I tell you about our first meeting?  He had advertised his interest in getting painting jobs on the local post office board, so I rang him and arranged for him to meet me at the house. He arrived on time, looking nervous and unsure of himself. He is a tall man, about six feet, and lanky, with quite long blond hair, which he hadn't had cut for some time. His voice is deep and pleasant, despite somewhat spoiled by his local accent which I sometimes find a bit hard to understand. Even with having lived in England for all these years, I still find some local accents very problematic.

He produced his estimate, and I was very disappointed to see that it would make the paint job well out of my planned budget. So after discussing the matter with the other elders, we decided to refuse his offer, and I wrote him a note to that effect. But within half an hour of me delivering the note to him, he was on the phone, with a much reduced price, one within our planned budget, and I found myself with a huge grin on my face when I told him that we would accept his revised estimate.

I suppose if I was honest with myself, I wanted him to do the job. I had not only liked him from my first encounter, and I wanted to see more of him – to get to know him better.

I had several meetings with him over the course of his painting job, and he did make a fine job of the work, transforming the room into one which looked pleasant and inviting. I paid him, and told him that if the elders agreed, we would be happy to get an estimate from him for doing the rest of the
painting. It took ages before we had our meeting, and the others agreed to keep him on for the rest of the job. I was beginning to worry that he would have found other work – that he might not be available to do our job – and what I really thought – that I would have no excuse to keep seeing him and getting to know him better.

Now most people reading this, will find my attraction to a man young enough to be my son disgusting, and perhaps they are right. In those first days, I didn't think of Stan as a potential partner, only as a person who made me feel alive and attractive and interesting. When he looked at me, it was like he was seeing into my very soul. When he smiled, it lit up the room. My one thought was that no matter what anyone might think, I wanted this young man to be part of my life.

So when I called him to ask him to quote for the rest of the painting, and he told me in a very depressed voice that he probably wouldn't even be in the area. His current job was over, and had ended on bad terms. He had no place to live, and would have to go back to Hyde to live with his parents and he felt that was too far to commute for a painting job. But with me giving him as much encouragement as I possibly could – and trying to build up his ego on how wonderful we thought his previous paint job had been – I did manage to get him to agree to measure up for the rest of the house.

We met the following day, and he told me the whole story – about how he had made a bad mistake and eventually it had been found out, and he was being ousted from his house, and would not get some of the the money he had been promised. I suggested he could leave his painting equipment at the house, and find someplace local to live. He did seem to get a bit enthused about the idea, so I decided that I needed to make sure he didn't leave. I had to provide him with a home myself. But I had to do it so it didn't look like I was taking advantage of him. I invited him to a meal, and made my suggestion afterwards that he come and have room and board with me starting on the weekend after he had finished up at his old job. And he said Yes, making us both feel that we were about to embark on a new chapter of our lives.