Chapter 2

Fiona was pensive as she considered the abilities of Elizabeth, then delivered her verdict.

“For a girl of her age, and her low self-esteem, if you had asked me when we first found her, I would have had no hesitation is dismissing her chances of success in anything, but she has changed drastically. Her self-confidence has improved, her weight is beginning to drop, and she is discovering that education can be interesting, and at times, fun.

Now, I think she can do it. As long as she has done the preparatory work to know the answers to every possible question, I think she can pull it off. We should bolster her confidence by telling her that if she knows the answers, she can respond appropriately to anything her grandmother has to say to her. Given that, I am fairly sure she will manage.”

Frances gave her own assent to that estimation.

“I believe you are correct, Fiona, so let’s get started on her preparation. Operation Grandmama!”

An intense period of training of Elizabeth got underway. She was asked what questions she thought her grandmother might ask, and the others devised a retaliatory reply to each, and tutored Elizabeth in that response, after checking with Elizabeth that it would sound the way she herself would expect to speak to her grandma.

In her own home, Elizabeth’s grandmother had bought herself some time from questions about Elizabeth’s absence from school. She had phoned the school and told them that Elizabeth had been unwell, so the girl would be absent from school for a while until she was declared fit enough by the doctor. This had satisfied the school, because this was a common occurrence with their pupils, but they also informed grandma that should her illness go into a second week, the school would expect a medical certificate to go in the school records as official recognition of her illness.

This left grandma in a quandary. She didn’t want to admit that Elizabeth was not at home with her, for she was responsible for Elizabeth’s welfare as her guardian and closest relative. At the same time, she needed something to cover for herself; a medical certificate or something similar that might satisfy the school’s demand for bureaucratic records.

She decided she had to speak to Elizabeth or at least the family looking after her, so rang the number she had for the Robertsons.

Frances answered the phone, and when she heard who it was asking for Elizabeth, she decided to stall and said, “Please let me go and see if I can find Elizabeth. I don’t know what she is doing today; sometimes her studies take her outside. Can you hold for a short while till I try to locate her?”

Getting agreement, Frances went to where Elizabeth and Sidra were studying.

“Elizabeth, your grandma is on the phone now. Are you prepared enough to speak with her, and see if you can get her to agree to home schooling here?”

Elizabeth stared at Sidra, looking for guidance, and Sidra nodded, saying, “It is now or never, Elizabeth. It is time for you to show you are a new person, your own woman, able to make your own decisions. Go to it, girl!”

Elizabeth steeled herself, and resolved to stand up for herself. “I’ll speak with grandma, Frances. I remember what you and the others have briefed me on. I can do it.” She was speaking as much to herself as to Frances, and got up to follow Frances to the phone.

Frances picked up the phone. “I have found her. She was working on some studies that we have given her as part of her home schooling. Here she is now.” Frances passed the phone over, with a confident smile on her face, her hand showing the thumbs-up sign of success.

“Hello, grandma; how nice of you to phone. I am doing extremely well here; learning far faster than at school. I am working on history and science today; fascinating stuff. Oh, I should ask what you were calling about.”

“Well, Betty ... Elizabeth, The school were asking for you, so I told them that you were ill, but that cannot go on for long. You may have to come home and resume your schooling.”

“Not quite, grandma. I have found a friend here my own age who is being home schooled, and it seems I can be home schooled too. Of course, the school will have to get a letter informing them that you are now having me home schooled. The family’s lawyer here explained all the legal rules, and drew up a legal letter that goes to the school, informing them of the change to home schooling. Frances – Mrs Robertson – says they can provide a similar letter for you to pass to the school, and that will be that.”

“What? You mean it is as simple as that? A lawyer’s letter to the school?”

“Yes, grandma. Isn’t it wonderful? The letter states the Act of parliament that authorises this, with all the legal jargon, and the school has to remove me from their pupil roll. You don’t even have to say where and how I am being home schooled; just the fact of the change. Do you want me to ask Mrs Robertson to deliver a copy of the letter to you. You just have to sign it as my guardian, and deliver it to the school.”

Grandma had gone from concerned over her educational responsibilities to being all in favour of abandoning Elizabeth to be educated by the Robertsons; and the idea of a lawyer-written letter would imply that she had the money to pay a lawyer! She could include a note to say “My lawyer has provided the wording for me of this letter about home schooling my granddaughter. Please now remove her from your school’s roll of pupils.”

To Elizabeth she said, “That sounds like an excellent solution to your problems, dear. I feel that I have done my duty if I can have you getting a better education than that awful school. Please ask Mrs Robertson to forward that letter to me, and I will do the rest.”

“Great! You are a wonderful grandma to me allowing me to be home schooled like this. Thank you again, grandma.”

She closed down the phone, and as soon as that was done, she gave a noisy sigh of relief; then stuck her hands in the air, with fists clenched. “I did it! I did it!”

Frances opened her arms and swept the tubby Elizabeth into her enfolding welcome. “Well done indeed, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth looked up at her and announced, “I must go and tell Sidra. She said I could do it, and I did!” She rushed off on this excited errand, leaving Frances smiling broadly.

Frances returned to Reg, to report on this development. He was delighted.

“That was great, Frances. You should ask her to come see me, for I want to congratulate her as well. She still needs all the encouragement she can get.”

He got interrupted shortly afterwards, by the appearance of Hermione Robson, trailed by her younger sister Jemima. Neither looked happy. He expected them to welcome him back to his home, but no; their focus was on themselves.

Hermione started, “Reg, when we got here, Frances made us share the one bedroom. That was insufferable! We each have our own bedroom at home, so why stick us together here? It is not as if there is a shortage of rooms. We have discovered that the whole top floor is empty!”

Reg started, “Well...” but was interrupted by Jemima this time.

“When we asked Frances why we should have to share, she just said, ‘I am Chief Wife, and I make the decisions for this household. You will see why, later’; and she also said that you would be in agreement with that decision. I am sure you will see that us girls need our own rooms.”

Reg waited, and this time got his chance to speak.

“Ladies, there are several points arising from Frances’ actions. The first one is a question: why did your parents put you in separate bedrooms?”

Hermione and Jemima both wanted to speak, but the older girl won. “I needed my own room as Jemima kept getting in my way!”

At which response, Jemima jumped in, “It was you who was always making things difficult for me, demanding more of the space for your clothes and stuff.”

Reg took his chance: “You girls were always arguing, so you got your own rooms, right?”

Both replied yes.

“So, can you think about all the other girls who live in our household? How many of them have you seen arguing?”

This made both Robsons stop and think, and they realised that no-one else in the building appeared to be arguing. Once they had realised that, they looked at Reg enquiringly? “So what?” they asked together, surprising themselves.

“Quite simple, ladies. They all have learned that arguing is counterproductive. It is easier and more helpful to calmly discuss any points of disagreement and come to a logical conclusion about how to solve the problem. Why argue when you can simply solve the matter amicably?”

This shut them both up, so Reg continued.

“So to get back to Frances and her decision, I can see what she was getting at. If you can’t get along together, you are an utter disaster as people! She wants you to learn to get along, and the best way of doing that is to throw you together to sort it out. Don’t argue: discuss. Don’t bring your problems to the rest of us. We don’t want to know about them; we want you to solve them. As and when you exhibit evidence that you have learned that lesson, we can see about allocating you different rooms.

This matter also displays another point about your behaviour: it is still self-centred; all about YOU.

I have just arrived home from hospital, and you haven’t seen me since Scarborough, but instead of welcoming me back, you chose to bring your personal disagreements to me.

Shame on you, ladies! No wonder your parents were despairing of you. It is high time you set yourselves goals to improve as individuals.”

The pair were stunned by Reg’s response. Instead of having him side with them, he was doing the opposite. They didn’t know what to say. Seeing this, Reg continued.

“Ladies, now that we all realise that you are here to mend your ways and learn to be useful members of society, I should point out that I had to go through a similar process of learning how to become sociable. I was a failure regarding other members of society, and if I, as an acknowledged failure, can learn to be sociable, so can you ladies learn to not be self-centred and instead give consideration to other people around you, starting with your sister.

Will you have a go at trying to achieve as much as I have done? I can assure you that it results in considerably more happiness in your life.”

Hermione and Jemima turned to stare at each other for a long minute, before they both nodded. Hermione resumed talking to Reg.

“Okay. We will do as you ask. We will try to stop arguing and try to sort things out amicably. How long do you think we have to stay with you until you will allow us to go home?”

Reg gave a short laugh of astonishment.

“Girls, that is up to you. It always was. You have to make the changes to yourselves, and when you have done so, I will acknowledge the fact and send you back to your parents as changed women ready to fit in to decent society. Remember, you are here for retraining, and once you are retrained, you go home.

On the other hand, if you fail to alter your behaviour, I may have to return you as failures of mine. In such a case, I will be the failure for not being able to persuade you to become decent human beings, and I will be really sad about that.

As I said, it is up to you girls to put some effort into changing. I want you to succeed, and will do my best to push you in the right direction, but as with myself, you have to change yourself. No-one else can do it for you.

Now please go away and think about what I have said. I am still not sure you actually desire to change yourselves. Prove to me that you are right and that you can indeed change.”

Reg turned his head away from them, and picked up his book, the discussion over, as far as he was concerned.

The pair said nothing, but slunk away to think about themselves and this weird household they were in.

After his wives got home, Reg had a quiet word with Frances, briefing her on what had transpired with the Robson women. Frances patted Reg on the shoulder. “Well done, darling. That was exactly what I hoped for from you. I knew you would back me up, but giving them a real talking-to like that was just perfect. I have hopes that they will make the necessary changes to themselves.”

“How did the day go at your classes, darling?” Reg wanted to know.

“Pretty routine, actually. It is amazing how easy most subjects become, once you have the basic ideas clear in your mind. Most of the detail that comes later is merely an expansion from the basic concepts. You gave me some great ideas about the history of science, and its ramification into politics, economics, and religion. The life of Galileo, for instance, was not a simple case of man against the church, but a man with a controversial concept going up against a management structure that had painted itself into a corner. Like a cat cornered, it came out fighting, and rather than adopt a softly softly approach, Galileo said and wrote all the wrong words.”

Tell how the church had painted itself into a corner, Frances.”

“Like many large organisations, the Roman church had made a silly decision much earlier: they had adopted the worldview of Thomas Aquinas, who assumed that Aristotle was correct in all his writings, and that view of an Earth-centred universe made it into church doctrine. By the time of Galileo, many in the church could see that Copernicus’ proposals about the Earth and the Sun made more sense, but they kept quiet about it because of this matter of doctrine.

Galileo, for his part, did as much as he could to push the Copernican view and implied that the Aristotlean concept so beloved of Thomas Aquinas was a view only held by simpletons!

Now that was plain stupidity, for the church could only react one way, and he was summoned to the Inquisition. He got off lightly by recanting his advocacy of Copernicus, and he was simply put under house arrest and told not to say or publish anything other than the church’s stance on the matter. He obeyed to some extent, but got his next book published outside of Italy to get round that stricture!”

“A pretty good summary of Galileo, Frances. I agree that he was his own worst enemy, as he could have avoided the clash with Church authorities by wording himself more carefully. He was good at enlisting the help of powerful patrons earlier in his career, but he often pissed them off as well.”

“Anyway,” declared Frances, “My studies are continuing to go well. I wanted to discuss Elizabeth with you, though.”

“And what exactly did you have in mind, my love?”

“She realises that there is a possibility of Jessica joining our family officially before long.”

“Yes, that is so, but what has that to do with Elizabeth?”

“If Jessica joins our marriage, Sidra becomes our step-daughter.”

“I may be a bit thick, Frances, but you are simply stating the obvious. Can you get to the point?”

“It is you who is a bit thick, Reg, for there is a follow-on. If Sidra becomes our daughter, Elizabeth is going to feel left out. She sees things emotionally, and has been viewing Sidra as her big sister. Are getting the picture now?”

“Oh. She will feel let down if that happens; she will be the only ‘nobody’ in our household, and may react badly to the position she finds herself in?”

“Exactly. The only solution I can see is for us to make Elizabeth a permanent part of our family: adopt her as our daughter.”

“Yes. She will be your daughter, and all of us wives will be her mothers. This is my idea, so I have to clear it with the others, but I don’t seriously think there will be a problem over it.”

Reg gazed at his wife. “Have you broached the possibility with Elizabeth yet?”

“No. It is too soon. I had to find if you were happy with the prospect, or at least not averse to it.”

“No, you can take it that I will be fine with it. From what I have observed, Elizabeth has a lot more potential than she realises. All her troubles adversely affected her self-image, so she has failed to notice that she is quite a clever lass underneath it all.”

“So I can go and speak with the others about it?”

“Of course, dear. Go ahead with that plan.”

“Right. I will start on that now, and hopefully get everyone’s approval before dinner.”

Over dinner, Frances passed by Reg and whispered, “All’s well on the daughter front.”

Reg simply said, “Thanks,” and she went on.

After the meal, when the table had been cleared and everyone went on their way to wherever they were aiming for, Frances remained behind. Checking that they were alone, she closed the door and came to sit beside her husband.

“Reg, we have agreement on that idea. Next step is for you to broach the idea to Elizabeth, but do it gently. We don’t want her to feel that either we are pushing her into this, or that she has pushed us into this.”

“I get you. I find myself a bit unnerved by it all. I have not had to have a chat like this with a young teen before now. Do you think it might be better for you to talk to her, girl to girl? It may appear a bit overwhelming for her if I call her in for a fatherly chat.”

Reg Robertson getting cold feet? I didn’t think anything fazed you, my love.”

“It does bother me this time. Elizabeth is a young lady with fears about the future, and such a talk will be quite intimidating.”

“Really? You think she will find it intimidating? Surely you cannot truly imagine that of Elizabeth? She may be still getting over the Fat Betty appellation, but a parental chat should not be too intimidating.”

“It IS rather intimidating – but for me, I meant! Hopefully she will be amenable to what we are suggesting. But warn her, we will insist on her weight dropping drastically over time.”

“I have no problem with that, Reg. Leave it with me to lay out our demand on that front.”

She went off to locate Elizabeth, who was probably with Sidra, studying some textbook. Frances was amazed at how Sidra had persuaded Elizabeth to view studying as fun. The girl now appeared to be lapping it up, it seemed to Frances.

Finding her and Sidra in Sidra’s bedroom, with Sidra reading aloud from a textbook, Frances slipped in quietly. At Sidra’s pause for breath, Frances interrupted, “May I have a word with Elizabeth, Sidra?”

“Sure, Frances. Do you want me to go out to give you privacy?”

“No need, Sidra. You may want to hear this, and perhaps contribute to the discussion.”

Frances turned to face the tubby girl. “Elizabeth, we have a proposition to lay before you, and you might want to take time to consider it before replying.”

Elizabeth looked concerned, surprised, and apprehensive, all at once. Frances nearly giggled, but managed to keep a straight face.

“Elizabeth, we understand that the reason you were with your grandma was that both your parents had died. Correct?”

Elizabeth ventured, “Yes, Frances.”

“Taking that into consideration, we Robertsons, as a family, discussed your situation and came to a conclusion. That conclusion is in regard to your future. To put it bluntly, we would like to offer you the opportunity to become our foster daughter. This would mean, should you accept, that we would act formally as your parents would have, as responsible for your health, education, to love and cherish you as our daughter, and in other ways behave as responsible parents. Please have a think about it; discuss it with Sidra, so that you know all the ways in which your life might change. She knows the trials of having a mother in control!”

Elizabeth’s mouth had dropped open in astonishment. Now her head swivelled towards Sidra, looking for help. Sidra just shrugged, and told her, “I don’t see a downside, Elizabeth. These are nice people.”

Elizabeth returned to stare at Frances. “You would become my Mum?”

Frances nodded.

“And Reg would become my Dad?”

Frances nodded, and told her, “Yes.”

She eyed Frances and added carefully, “What about Reg’s other wives?”

Frances gestured her unconcern. “They would be your other Mums, Elizabeth.”

“I would have one Dad and five Mums?”

“At the moment. We don’t know what Jessica might decide in the future. She would be welcome to become another Mum, if she decided to join our Commitment.”

Sidra jumped in, “If my Mum married you, you and Reg would be my parents too?”

Frances told her, “That would automatically follow, Sidra, but last I heard, Jessica was not intending to get married, just have her baby, your little brother or sister.”

Elizabeth’s brain was churning, and she came out with, “If that happened, that Jessica married you, Sidra would become my sister?”

Frances admitted, “Yes, that would follow, Elizabeth.”

“That would be great! We could be sisters, Sidra! You would be my REAL big sister!” She began to get more excited.

Frances tried to damp down this enthusiasm. “That is all supposing: supposing Elizabeth became our foster daughter and supposing Jessica agreed to join our marriage. It would be bit previous to assume all these things will happen. Jessica may not want to marry at all, as long as she has her child, or children.”

“Children?” Elizabeth squealed. “Sidra’s mum wants more children? Without being married?”

Frances explained, “It happens, Elizabeth; it happens frequently that women have children without being married.”

“But if Reg is going to be the children’s father – am I right, Sidra?”

Sidra agreed, “That’s how I understand it, Liz.”

Elizabeth went on, this time speaking to Frances, “In that case, why not just let Jessica marry you and Reg?”

Frances looked embarrassed. “Jessica is a lovely woman, Elizabeth, and Reg loves her just as he loves me, but she told us she was not looking to marry Reg, just have him father any children she might want.”

“But if I agree to be your daughter, Sidra could be my sister if Reg married Jessica. That would be wonderful; wouldn’t it be, Sidra?”

Sidra replied, “It would indeed, Elizabeth. I have never had a brother or sister, and a baby is not quite the same as a sister of your own age group; someone you can share things with all the time. I like the prospect of Mum marrying Reg.”

Frances gulped and said carefully, “That is a difficult matter that will need proper discussion at an adult level, girls. Can I take it back for discussion among the Robertsons? Please?”

Elizabeth reckoned she had won.

“Yes, Frances, and you can tell them I will be delighted to have parents again.” She turned to Sudra and they exchanged a ‘high five’ hand-slap. “It will be like today has turned into Mothering Sunday!”

Frances frowned at this statement. “Elizabeth, you have that wrong. Historically, Mothering Sunday was the Sunday when you returned to your Mother Church for a service. Your Mother church was the one where you grew up. The modern commercial ‘Mother’s Day’ is actually a corruption of that religious ritual; but I understand what you meant, and I appreciated the feeling expressed. It was a nice idea.”

Frances returned to speak to Reg.

She reported all that had been said, and appealed to him for help over Jessica.

He pondered for little more than a moment before replying, “You are being blackmailed by two clever girls, Frances. They took the situation, extended the premise a little further, and pushed you on it. It is really all down to Jessica, isn’t it?”

“I suppose. Do you think she had any inkling of what these two might be up to?”

“How could that be? You have only today suggested fostering Elizabeth, so they had no time to plot anything. Did you notice that Elizabeth seemed to equate fostering with adoption, and seems happy to consider it seriously?”

Frances accepted this, adding, “I also noticed how closely these two girls have bonded. They really are like sisters, and in so short a time, too. They were apart while you were at Scarborough, but that seems to have improved the bonding process: they missed each other.”

Reg took Frances’ hand. “My darling, can I ask you to discuss with Jessica this demand from Elizabeth and Sidra? Just you and her, for the meantime. I don’t want Jessica to feel I am pressuring her in any way. She’ll listen to you stating it as it is, then you can see what Jessica wants to do. We are already treating Jessica as if she was a wife, but up till now she was adamant at not wanting marriage, or rather our Commitment. I love you and am happy to leave it up to you, when you are talking with her.”

Frances squeezed his hand in return, and kissed him on the cheek, so as not to become passionate. She wanted to stay as rational as possible.

“Very well, Reg love. I’ll do that. If Jessica decides she may change her mind, I’ll bring in the other wives to get their take on it before we do anything. We don’t need you for this, Reg; you will do as we want, won’t you?”

Reg nodded, with a small smile of willing acceptance. “She is acting as a wife in every way, just without any formal acceptance of that status. You should be able to get her to change, to accept reality.

She stood up and left Reg sitting there, in the relative comfort of his cushions. He had anticipated a bit of peace and quiet, but it was not to be, for Fiona entered the dining room to speak to him.

“Reg, I was thinking...”

Reg quipped, “So that was what the noise was?”

She smacked him lightly on the arm. “Stop it, Reg! This is a serious discussion.”

“Oh? What is it, then?”

“I was thinking about us as a family having a pack of children before very long, and the sociological consequences of that.”

“Consequences? A century ago, it was common for a family to have six or seven children. What’s different, apart from the number of mothers?”

“There is a difference: an important one. In a large family, younger children tended to be looked after by older siblings, relieving the pressure on the mother. All our children are going to be around the same age, so no mentoring by older siblings.”

“True, but the mothers here are going to be able to give one-to-one help to their children every evening and early morning.”

“But during the day, they are in the care of a couple of teenagers, so we could do with a nanny who is older and more experienced with children.”

“Well, we already plan to engage a nanny once the children are here, though we hadn’t specified the sort of qualifications we were looking for. I can see what you are seeking, but we don’t just need experience. We need a woman who can start teaching the babies almost at once.”

“Teaching babies? Do you mean that? It sounded weird.”

“Certainly. Your own studies will have shown you that babies can recognise faces at a very early stage. I am sure that they can do much more, given the chance. I have a vague memory of my early childhood, when I was still in a cot. One of these memories was sheer frustration at not being able to speak the words that grown-ups used all the time. I could understand most of what they were saying to me, but could not respond.”

“Oh, yes. I see what you mean. I can recall a similar experience, now that you bring it up. What do you expect to do about it? The babies are still not going to be able to speak.”

Reg was pensive. “That is a fact we have to get over. My problem as a baby was not that I could not speak: it was that I could not communicate! If you can communicate by signs, that will do until your voice develops enough to talk.”

“So you want to have a nanny that can do sign language, do you?”

Reg frowned. “Not as such. I recall reading that sign language is much more complicated than baby signs. What our babies will want is enough signs to convey messages such as ‘I hurt’, and be able to point to where it hurts; or basics such as ‘hungry’ ‘thirsty’ ‘too cold’ or ‘too hot’; ‘more’, and ‘finished’. I am sure there are lots more. Babies don’t need sentences, just basic messages, such as ‘more drink’, or ‘drink too hot’. That will do the job. Chimps and gorillas can manage that, so why not human babies?”

Fiona nodded, taking the notion on board, but told Reg, “We’ll have to be consistent. Everyone will have to learn the same signs, so that the babies don’t get confused. When a baby signs something, whoever sees it has to know what it means, or we are back to square one. In the same way, every baby in the family has to recognise exactly the same signs from the adults.”

Reg asked Fiona, “You have studied some of this, I think, dear. Do you know when we can start teaching these signs to the babies?”

Fiona frowned as she thought about that question.

“I think the general opinion is age six to nine months to start signing, but I think the intention was that this is the age the baby has enough physical dexterity to make the signs for itself. I have no idea of when the baby will start to recognise the signs it sees.”

“So, it would not do any harm to start using these signs in front of the baby right from birth?”

“Gosh, Reg, that is pushing it a bit, isn’t it?”

Reg explained, “If we don’t know when a baby starts recognising signs, why not begin right away? We can say the words as we sign them, thus getting over what the signs mean. Starting at the earliest stage will give us parents time to get into practice using the signs, so that it does not take much thought to use them for the baby. In fact, why don’t we decide on the signs we will use, and practice them between ourselves, then use them in front of the babies once they arrive? If the babies pick up the signs much earlier than assumed, it will be all to the good.”