Chapter 2: Harry The Houseboy

Harry’s life as a Phyllis’s houseboy had turned out to be better than the situation of many of his contemporaries. A sponsored male in New Order Britain wasn’t under the sort of constant surveillance, harassment, and suspicion of subversion that un-sponsored males had to put up with. And besides, Phyllis had turned out to be a reasonable sponsor.

The dream at school had been to be picked out as some girl’s life-partner but, realistically, that didn’t happen to more than a handful of men. Harry knew that most women these days preferred to be able to pick and chose a man when and where they wanted There wasn’t any need to stick with one for longer than they met your needs. There were still some like Marianne Higgs and her strange “marriage” thing but, apart from pensioners and fringe religious believers, hardly anyone did that sort of thing now.

No, he’d been content enough when he finished education at sixteen to be taken into sponsorship by one of the service companies. Inevitably, that gave them a lot of control over his life but it meant the police and the rest of the State didn’t worry about him, as long as he kept his nose clean.

Then, he’d been put on placement with Phyllis. Harry didn’t know what had happened to her last houseboy but sometimes sponsors just got bored with their charges and moved them on.

Harry remembered his first introduction to her. He had been twenty years old, just over four years ago. He’d been called to a meeting in the office. He’d thought that, at least, would make for a quieter morning than usual. His supervisor had been there and so had Mrs Phyllis Dangerfield. His first thought was she’d come to complain about some of the work he’d been assigned to the day before. She was in her early forties, he guessed, smartly dressed in a rather conservative dark suit. Expensive hosiery and shoes, Harry noticed - he tended to spot things like that. She had long blond hair piled up on her head. Darker traces at the nape of her neck suggested to Harry that the blond wasn’t natural. She looked at him without much expression and then flipped over some of the pages in the folder she had on her lap.

“Hmmm,” she’d said to the supervisor, warily “he looks like he’ll do. Assuming the usual ‘return-if-unsatisfactory’ arrangement applies.”

His supervisor nodded. “Up to 3 months, yes. After that, well...” Harry understood. At twenty, he was thought to be more of a problem to manage. Most of the service company sponsorships were kids not long out of school.

“All right then,” Phyllis had said, pushing the file into her bag as she got to her feet. “Come with me, boy.” She had stopped and turned as she got to the door of the office, looking back at his supervisor. “Sorry,” she said, “what was his name again?”

The supervisor looked down at her notes, failing to recall it herself. “Harry,” she said.

“Fine,” Phyllis had replied. “Harry.”

Thinking back, Harry was almost surprised that she had asked. Phyllis rarely used it.

He thought about it afterwards. Should he have resented the impersonal way in which his reallocation had been dealt with? Maybe, but that was just how things were. And Phyllis had turned out to be a better sponsor than the service company. After all, he only had to worry about how she liked things and making sure he did his work to her satisfaction. With the service company, it always seemed he had at least two people on his back: the company and its client.

Still, at the service company he had pretty much developed all the skills he needed as a houseboy. Cleaning and house maintenance, laundry, cooking, everything needed to keep the house going; he could manage all of that. Phyllis’s house wasn’t too big for him to manage on his own. The work load hadn’t been too bad until Fara had come back from boarding school which meant all the mess of a teenage girl to clear up after. Even with Fara around he felt he was on top of his work.