We had only moved into the house 4 years before, and had barely got to know the strange couple four houses down, although everyone else in the street was friendly. The house which was rather run down was lived in by an elderly man and his daughter, a slim but frumpy looking spinster in her early forties who looked after her frail father, and had apparently looked after him for twenty years since the death of her mother. It was after the death of the mother that they had moved to the house. No-one really knew where they had come from.
The Father was pretty elderly when we moved in, and while he would smile and say hello, he said little more to anyone, and over the four years had become more and more housebound. The Daughter was equally withdrawn, occasionally going shopping, sometimes doing a bit of gardening, but generally keeping herself to herself, although she would respond if she was spoken to.
Judy, my wife, and I had tried to be friendly and had offered any help we could, though most others in the street avoided the two of them, whom they nicknamed the grim reaper and the witch. We knew their surname was Fletcher because of one of two mis-delivered letters, but no-one knew their first names - they were never used.
It was a surprise to us therefore, when there was a ring on the door and the daughter was stood there when we opened it. "Please help" It was the first time she had ever initiated any conversation with anyone that we were aware of. "Please help. Father has collapsed," she said breathlessly. "Please help - you have a car - can you take him to the hospital?"
Of course we could - we rushed around to the house and without noticing anything more than the darkness of the house, the furniture, I picked him up in my arms - he was so small and thin, carried him to the car and drove him and his daughter to the hospital as fast as I could. Normally I would have called an ambulance, but I knew he was dead already - he had simply died in his chair in front of his fire and television.
I stayed in the waiting room at the hospital with the daughter who was distraught, then went with her to see her father whom she knew now was dead. I stayed as the hospital staff carried out all the formalities, before taking the daughter to an undertaker and help sort out the funeral. We gave her as much support as we could, and though she was quiet we found she was a sweet lady, and perhaps under the dowdy hair and clothes could perhaps be quite attractive. At the funeral there was only the daughter - whom we knew now was called Julie - myself and Judy my wife. We both wondered how Julie would cope.
A few days later she called again - we were surprised - we thought she would disappear into being a recluse again. She was clearing out, or at least wanting to clear out all the junk in the house that her parents had accumulated over many years, but couldn't decide where to start. Could we help her to take some things to the tip and help clear some of the stuff in the house? We had a free day and it sounded different, so we agreed.
It was the first time we had really had a good chance to look at the house - and it was grim. Old furniture, a lot of clutter, everything brown and gloomy, though spotlessly clean. "As my Father wanted it," Julie said as I winced at the gloom.
"Please come this way". She led me up the stairs and into her Father's bedroom. "This is the room I find hardest to clear, I wonder if you could sort it out, and decide what is valuable and what isn't."
There was very little of any value at all in the room - perhaps the old furniture had some value - but I easily managed to fill eight black bags with old clothes to be thrown away - not even worth giving to the charity shop. It was as I opened the lowest drawer in a chest of drawer that I noticed something different - a drawer of magazines and photos. Not just any photos - they were many years old, but the photos were very explicit. The old fox!!! There were a lot of one particular woman in many erotic poses, with the name "Audrey" written on the back. I put it together - the minister at the funeral mentioned that his wife was called Audrey - the old fox - taking pornographic pictures of his wife! I looked through a few - many of his wife who was a stunner, others showing couples having sex.
In the end I decided this was none of my business, closed the drawer again and finished clearing the rest of the room. As I emerged from the room I bumped into Judy on the landing who whispered "Come and see what I have seen in the spare room."
She took me in and pointed to a large rocking horse in the corner of the room.
"What about it?" I was puzzled.
Judy led me over, then push a small pedal on the side - out of the top of the rocking horse came an ivory phallus shaped object, perhaps six inches long. "And look at these!" she said with glee. There was a cardboard box next to the horse with several of phalluses of different sizes.
"Perhaps we should leave them" I said quietly, but we giggled at the thought of what they had being doing.
We spent the rest of the day clearing, taking a few car loads to the tip. At the end of the day Julie thanked us profusely and offered to pay us, which we refused. She insisted we take a box of things she had found - old videos, a camera which she said she had never used and had no use for in the future. Again, it looked like old tat but we took it for her sake - she had been quiet but very sweet all through the day.
We left the box in the hall for several days and saw little more of Julie through that time. In the end we had a spare hour and Judy said "Why don't we see what the old man watched on the telly before we clear some of those videos.
We put the first on the video player, and saw a number of old nature programmes - after five minutes we fast-forwarded the video all the way through.
The second one had a mix of comedy programmes and documentaries - we fast-forwarded that as well. The third and fourth had nothing of interest either. The fifth we weren't going to bother with, but there was something written on the case - it said "Horse Riding, and General Riding."
"Shall we bother" I asked Judy.
