Quake
Copyright© 2025 by Gordon Johnson
Chapter 7
She nodded thoughtfully as she took this in. “You are right at that, Paul. Can I call you Paul, now? You seem very much on the ball for a quake victim. Know about markets, do you?”
“You could say that, in spades. I am a businessman, so I can judge what the market wants and needs, and what it doesn’t need. The same applies here, with news.”
“Care to give me a hint about what the news market doesn’t need?”
“I can’t say anything at all that I would confirm later, ever. IF, and I repeat IF, I found a small boy orphaned by the quake and decided to adopt him, that would be a personal and private matter, and also impossible to confirm to anyone at this time as it might affect the adoption process adversely. You get the idea?”
“Oh, my God! What a story, but as you say, not for public consumption. I agree with your decision, and will not enquire further. To my mind, that is more the action of a hero than any rescue story. Taking on an orphan is tough.”
“Thank you,” I approved. “The girls are doing their bit to help, as well, so I am in no rush to get shot of them! I have no idea how long they will stay here, but the longer the better, for they have mothered him from the start.”
“Good grief, yes. The boy has just lost his parents; he will need to grieve for them, won’t he?”
“That is my own opinion. We are working on the basis of what Mummy might want her boy to do if she is not around to help him. That makes him think well of her, and he wants to do his best for her memory in the days and weeks ahead. That is my aim too. It is a tricky situation and not one where the media can assist. They can only make things more difficult, so he does not come into the tale at all; full stop.”
“I understand. You are a nice man, Paul. Pat said you are single. If one of these girls catches your fancy, such as Pat, and I think that is what I see, she can’t do better, in my humble opinion.”
“Thanks for the advice. You may be right, so I’ll keep it in mind.”
A short while later, the crew drove away in their cars, with Ms Mitchell giving us a cheery wave as she departed in her own car. Some interviewers are simply nice people, despite all the runours to the contrary, I decided.
Over lunch, I broached the subject of employment: who did what up to now, and what they might do later. “I think you two said you were on holiday from your work,” I told Pat and Sylvia, “and Tracy we know about. What about the future? The future with me, if it happens?”
Pat and Sylvia looked at each other guiltily, and Patricia gave a small cough to grab my attention. “Paul,” she said quietly. “I may have misled you a little when I said we were both on holiday from our jobs. Sylvia is indeed on official summer break from school, but my situation is somewhat different. I had a management job; however my male boss imagined that his position gave him opportunities to handle – or mishandle - female staff, but I was not cooperative and didn’t want other females to suffer, so I handed in my notice, along with a report on the reason to the company CEO, so that his misbehaviour with female staff could be investigated without me being a distraction.”
“Wow. That was brave. Could you afford to just dump your job, Pat?” I asked gently.
“Not really”, she admitted, “but I have standards as a woman, and I was not willing to give in to his assumptions of male abuse of power being acceptable.”
“Astonishingly brave of you, Pat.” I repeated. “You behaved and reacted as I would like all our management staff to behave, so I will suggest to my father that we find you a management job in our group. We have a preponderance of female staff, so your experience would be valuable. I am certain that the group would benefit from your input.”
I now switched my gaze to Sylvia, admiring her interesting curves as I did so. She had more prominent curves than Pat; not better, just different. Both had my attention. “Sylvia, if you are not averse to moving your place of work, may I put you forward for a teaching job locally, preferably at James’ own primary school?”
“I would be happy to see if I can find a post where I could fit in, certainly, Paul my dear. Having a prominent member of the community on my side would not go amiss with my job application, but as I understand it, there is a shortage of trained primary teachers in this part of the country, so obtaining a post here is very probable.”
My eyes switched to the youngest of the trio, andTracy looked at me with expectation in her eyes, but said, “I don’t think the recommendation of a man helps with a ladies dress shop position!” she commented with a cheeky little smile on her lips.
I regarded her with additional interest at her comment, tinged as it was with a dash of humour. Tracy was more with it mentally than almost all assistants I had encountered. It made me wonder.
“Tracy, why did you go for a job in a dress shop?”
“My mother knew one of their managers, and saw it as an opportunity for me to run a shop eventually. She thought I had ability in that line, as a sales person.”
“So working in a dress shop was not your first choice?”
“No. I didn’t really have a first choice. I just wanted to get a job helping people.”
“Good. How about working in a grocery store? We prefer to advance good, reliable and competent staff to senior positions as soon as they prove themselves up to it. Fancy doing that?”
She regarded me with interest, but asked with her brand of humour, “As opposed to raising our children at home?”
I smiled widely at this blatant offer, but answered her truthfully.
“I see you as starting as a shop assistant, then a joint store manager, with the occasional period off to have a baby. You might then decide to work part-time, and spend some time at home looking after our children, possibly our children from all three of you. Or you might want to share that domestic task with the others, if they fancied such an arrangement.”
She smiled back, saying, “Sounds like we have a deal, Paul.”
She ended by coming over to me and giving me an extremely positive kiss that promised a lot. Sylvia gave a short whistle as she observed this, and said, “Wow. Tracy means it, Paul. My feeling is that you are going to have a fair number of kids to call you Daddy. James is going to be big brother to a pack of siblings if I am not wrong.”
My night with Tracy indeed developed into loving sex, and by the mornng she wanted more. “I need plenty of your sperm to make me pregnant, so let’s try again, darling.”
The next night, Sylvia proved that she was willing to accept me wholeheartedly, and showed it by her wanting to adopt the cowgirl position and ride me entusiastically. I was shortly convinced that she was here for the duration, and probably for more than one baby.
When Pat finally got me for a first night of sex, she was quite muted in her responses, concentrating on loving rather than romping. I was quite taken by her attempt to be a loving wife instead of a demonstration of happy sex.
The TV interview appealed to a number of TV stations, and we ended up getting appearance fees over several months. Some stations were quick to pay you, and others extremely slow. The amounts were small individually, but they mounted up. One station even asked for an interview with the three girls, to examine their rescue of Tracy in detail. It was an interesting story and went well, so they started to get appearance fees.
Tracy took on a shop assistant post with our largest store, to learn the job. If she performed well, she could soon be promoted to a deputy store manager, which basically meant filling in for the manager for holidays and illness as well as learning all the administrative work that running a shop entailed. When she finally started the job, she phoned her parents and informed them that she had secured another shop assistant post, with accommodation provided by the store group, and she was loving the work. Maddeningly vague, with no detail at all; I liked it. Tracy was being smart.
Back at the start of our family unit, I took Pat along with James, and we visited the nearest primary school to meet Mrs Shawfield, the head teacher. She was quite delightful, treating James as a valuable member of the school community.
“How old are you, young man?” she asked him, and he stood up straight as he answered confidently, “Six and a half, ma’am!”
“Excellent! Not a beginner, then?”
“No, ma’am. I helped Paul during the earthquake, and he said I did well.”
She raised her eyebrows. “The earthquake, you say? You called him Paul, not Daddy, so why is that?” She said it in a light tone, so that it did not sound like an interrogation, just an enquiry. James took it in the right way and replied, “Paul, now my Daddy, said that if we were to work together to help people, we should use first names as we were partners. It was what Mummy would have wanted, but she went to heaven and Paul said I should do what she would have wanted, so we helped people. I found water for drinking and washing, and bottles to collect the water in. The ladies were pleased with my helping too.”
“My goodness, a brave young man and quite rightly so. You seem to be advanced for your age, James. Did you not have a Daddy to go to?”
I jumped in with, “James never knew his father, who went away to do something important and never got back. Then his Mummy ended up under the building while James was outside. She had ‘gone to Heaven’ as I explained to him, and James was on his own. I met James shortly after I survived the disaster and we decided to work together, just like Mummy had told him. As James does not have any other relatives that he knows of, I have become his new Daddy, and Patricia is his new Mummy, and you are the closest primary school to our home, so we would like to enrol James here if you have space. We will go through formal adoption procedures, but wanted to get James into his new school as soon as possible.”
As I told our story, the head teacher picked up all the clues I offered, and nodded as she took it in.
“I see. Admirable attitude all round. We should be able to offer James a place in the appropriate class, considering what a helpful young man he is. He is clearly intelligent, and should be an asset to this school. Do you have a birth certificate for him?”
“Not yet. I would prefer if we began right away with him using our surname, Pursell, with an s in the middle, if that is all right with you.”
“We can do that, Mr and Mrs Pursell, until you produce his new birth certificate. James, do you know when your birthday is?”
“Yes, ma’am: Third of January, just after the New Year.”
“Then we shall put that down as your date of birth, James, along with the year if you are six. Daddy will make sure your date of birth is right on your new birth certificate. While you are at school, James, you should call him Daddy, not Paul. This lets the other children know he is your daddy, you see?”
“Oh, yes. I can do that, ma’am, if Paul wants me to.”
I advised him, “James, it is one of these formalities we have to live with, so please do as Mrs Shawfield suggests. She knows about these things, far more than I do. She probably also knows that birds have come from dinosaurs, assuming she keeps up with science.”
This made her glance sharply at me, then adjust her assumptions before asking James, “You know about the origin of birds, James?”
“Yes, ma’am. Paul explained about that the other day. It was great fun, learning something special like that, but Daddy is someone special, isn’t he?”
“He certainly is, if he is teaching you advanced knowledge while you are as young as you are.”
I interfered again, “I also understand that young people find it easy to learn foreign languages much better than when they are older. Might it be possible to have a French speaker come in and teach the children some French, and perhaps a Spanish or German speaker to teach these languages to the youngsters? It can be surprising how similar some words are in different languages, though some are from Latin (pope, papa, padre and the Germanic ones are father, fader, vater, and so on)?”
Mrs Shawfield looked at me again and said, “You are a continual source of surprises, Mr Pursell. Have you ever thought of the teaching profession yourself?”
“No, not at all. My father runs a grocery store, a chain of them, and I have joined him in running it. Pat also has a management degree, so she will be joining our group soon.”
Mrs Shawfield nodded her approval.”Well done. I will look into the language question, even if we have to invite volunteers to assist at the start. I can see that James will not lack for stimulation at home.”
I looked at James who was fidgeting, so I indicated that he should speak, and he said slowly, “I asked Paul, sorry, Daddy, if he could teach me at home but he said that the law says I have to go to school.”
“He is correct there, but the law also allows for home schooling under strict rules, so you might have a change in the future.”