Chapter 25

“Your uncle Kevin made a bad decision, girls. He more or less held Maeve captive, forcing your Dad to bring him here. While he kept Maeve securely held, he sent your Dad to meet you and take you to the car, where we presume he intend to kidnap you by driving off with you inside.”

She gulped and said, “But he failed, for we are here safe with you and the other girls.”

“That is so. He got out of the car on the far side, but Marjory spotted him and asked me what was going on. I went to the car and found Maeve tied to the car door, then while I was freeing her, Kevin tried to punch my head from behind. Maeve noticed him, and her eye movement alerted me. I moved my head round to look, so instead of me, he hit the car with his fist, damaging his hand. I got his other arm behind his back to hold him while he was in shock, but I was stuck for what to do next.

Then Sharl appeared and bashed Kevin on the head, knocking him out. Maeve took off her tights and handed them to me to tie his hands together. Sharl offered her own tights to secure his legs, and that is what we did. Your Dad phoned the police, and they have now taken Kevin into custody. He will be charged with a number of offences, including attempted kidnapping of yourselves.”

Lily sighed with relief, after that parade of shocking news. “So we no longer have to worry about him?”

“Not for a long while, I guess. Your Dad is furious at him threatening Maeve, and intends to have his pound of flesh!”

“Pound of flesh? Oh, a quote from The Merchant of Venice?”

“That’s it. Nice to know you are aware of Shakespeare’s plays. The bard has a lot of good lines.”

“Dad told us about that one, years ago when we were small. It just sounded good; I didn’t know it was Shakespeare until later.”

I told her, “You ought to read the whole play sometime, or go to watch a performance at a theatre. It is a fascinating story, well written too, even though he probably knew little about Venice and its legal system. That happens to be the same source for the well-known quotation, ‘The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven upon the place beneath.’”

“Oh. You sound like a teacher, Jimmy.”

Charlotte had been listening, and chipped in, “He is a good teacher, Lily. He spent weeks with us hidden away somewhere, teaching us all manner of things. We learned a lot from him, including how to love him.”

“You mean physical loving, Charlotte?”

“Yes and no, Lily. We knew plenty about the basics of fucking, but that was just a physical activity to us. Jimmy taught us about treating your partner with respect, so that fucking becomes love-making, and that is SO different. We learned that lovemaking meant much more than fucking; it was showing love to your partner.

You two started with Jimmy as your first partner, so you learned properly from the start. We had to unlearn what we thought we knew, and learn again all about sharing love with someone you respect.

That soon developed into falling in love with Jimmy, and when it came to the stage where he could deliver us home, we didn’t want to leave him. We all wanted to stay with him for the rest of our lives, even if we couldn’t marry him legally.”

Lily gasped out, “I knew you three had decided to be Jimmy’s wives, but Flora and I were never told the details of why and how it came about. I thought you all met him and just fell in love with him.”

“If only it was that simple, Lily. We three had got out of hand, and Daddy despaired of us ever becoming decent women. It was his idea to recruit Jimmy to work on us to gain some improvement, however slight, but Jimmy took the job seriously, pushed it to its full extent, and got us secreted away in a locked apartment. We had no idea where we were, and we were stuck in a well-appointed luxury flat for weeks on end, with only Jimmy to pay attention to, as our jailor and teacher.”

“My God! That must have been terrible!”

“Terrible in one way, amazing in another. Jimmy went one step further, in bringing us down from the spoiled brats that we were. We were stripped of all our clothes, every last stitch, including bra and panties while we were unconscious, and Jimmy hid them all away. We were left naked and barefoot, which was a real shock to the system and demeaning at the time, but at least he placed himself in the same position; he agreed to be just as naked, but he was our teacher from then on. I was glad we had plush carpets to walk on and decent heat levels in the apartment!

We had no cosmetics either, for our purses had been removed on the way to the hideout, and even worse, we were without our birth control pills. Jimmy dismissed such worries as a genuine problem, telling us that all we had to do was to forget about sex for a while. You can imagine how we felt about that, considering how used we had been to regular sex.”

Lily’s brow furrowed as she took this in.

“You and other men? I hope you were protected at the time. But you are pregnant now, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but that was our own choice in the end. After a while of no sex, we all begged Jimmy to fuck us, for as long as the contraceptive chemical was still in our bodies, as we felt deprived. He agreed, but only until our contraceptive medication wore off, then we were back to learning abstinence.

It took a couple of weeks for the drugs to leave us; but by then he had shown us what sex could be like if you treated your partner with respect. The difference was telling, and we now understood what we were missing; a man who cared for us when he fucked us, a man we could respect.

We asked him if we could continue with the lovemaking after that time – we assumed he would get us some more contraceptive pills – but no; instead he gave us an ultimatum: Have unprotected sex with the possibility of pregnancy, or no more sex. It was up to us to make a mature decision about our future, to reflect what he had been teaching us.

By this time he had rammed into us the theme of respect for other people, so it was never about him forcing us to do anything. He made sure it was always up to us girls to make a rational decision about our future. He pointed out the drawbacks of pregnancy; what having a baby would mean in terms of having responsibility for our own child in the years to come, and left it to us to make up our minds. Sharl and I were quick to accept that having a child was a choice we could live with, but Cherry took a lot longer to worry about it before joining us. We accepted that we would probably get pregnant and become mothers.

You can see that Jimmy was a good teacher, for by now we had become mature enough to envisage ourselves as possible mothers with babies to look after; no more good-time girls with not a care for the future. With the same new maturity, we realised that we, all three of us, now loved Jimmy enough to want to stay with him permanently, and we let him know that. He agreed that we could become his wives, but without any formal ceremony as only one could legally marry him; the other two would not like that, he reminded us. He also pointed out that Daddy would be more accepting of that unusual arrangement, and more likely to let us stay with him if we were all expecting Jimmy’s babies. We agreed we would be able to accept that inevitable conclusion.

Thus it was that we accepted him as our husband without any legal documentation, nor any religious ceremony until Maeve hit us with her bombshell about being able to marry us. By that time we were all several months into our pregnancies, so getting married as well was a bonus; even if it is not legal.”

Lily was gobsmacked.

“Damn! What a story, Charlotte. No wonder you asked Maeve to marry you to Jimmy.”

“I just want you to realise what a fine man he is; able to convert a trio of useless women into loving and competent wives and mothers-to-be.”

Lily responded, “I think I already knew he was worth it, but the details you have given me proves I was right.”

Mr Yeats finally left the police officers and came to join the group.

He told the group, “Our testimony was the most comprehensive; mine and Maeve’s between us. They recorded it on their phones as we spoke, so that should be enough for now. We may have to sign a transcript for the legal requirements of a court case, but that should be it. We may or may not be called in person, but I expect that Kevin will not want to see us again, especially not in court where our disgust at him would be evident.”

He stopped and looked at Flora and Lily before saying, “I think it is best if I go in and give your mother a synopsis of what has occurred out here. She is not going to have Kevin visiting for a long long while, if ever. I hope it won’t be more than a couple of weeks extra before she can be released.”

Flora volunteered, “Dad, we told her we were married, and both to the one man; and that we are happy with our man. That might help you when you see her. We also told her that she was not able to get involved in our decision to get married because she was an alcoholic, not fit to be given that responsibility. We didn’t mention being married by Maeve!”

Their Dad chuckled, “Wise decision, that.”

He left us to go to the door and seek admission. He was already known to the staff as the bill payer, so was readily shown in and taken to his first wife.

I heard the rest later. This is how it went, in short.

“My dear, did you enjoy the visit by our girls?”

“Yes, it was nice of them to come. Did you know that they are married now?”

“Yes, I was informed by them when they had made their decision, but not present at the ceremony.”

“But, Bob, they say they are both married to the same man.”

“Yes. That was their decision. Jimmy is a very nice guy; a hard worker who wants to do his best for his wives and future children.”

“You know the man?”

“Yes, he is an employee of our company; a valuable employee, working his way quite effectively up the executive ladder.”

“Oh. How did he coerce our girls into marrying him?”

“He didn’t. It came from them. They were the ones who asked to marry him. They saw what kind of man he was and decided they wanted a piece of the action, you could say.”

She was silent for a bit, then said slowly, “I never imagined that two sisters could get along being married to the one man.”

“Well, my dear, they thought it was possible, wanted to go ahead with it, and are determined to make it work. They are girls that I am proud of.”

“Bob?”

“Yes, dear?”

She hesitated a long while before asking, “What made you fall for Maeve? I never asked you that; I was too angry.”

“I don’t really know. She was always around with you, and then she gradually became more than just my sister-in-law. I think maybe she seduced me, but perhaps I had something to do with it as well; I am not fully clear about the how and why, and it was many years ago. It just developed that way, I think. I found that I loved her the same as I loved you. It happened. That was all there was to it. I was tentatively thinking of a menage a trois once you told me you were pregnant too, and we might have been happy together, but you stopped that prospect dead in its tracks with your strong reaction.

I wanted to talk it over with you, as I felt terrible, but you blasted off, right from the start, blaming Maeve for seducing me and getting pregnant, then blaming me for cheating on you, then saying so many other nasty things that I couldn’t take it any more, and went off to join Maeve and her welcoming arms.

I have tried repeatedly to make it up with you, but you had closed off your mind as well as your legs, and I ended up with Maeve being known as my wife where we live. She is known in our community as Mrs Yeats, and our children all have the Yeats surname. It is as if you never existed once you cut me off. Maeve and I are part of the local community and fit in well.”

“At some point, Bob, you said you had more than one child with her, but I wasn’t in a listening mood then. I took up alcohol to stop all these bad memories from washing over me. I was lucky that Kevin came and helped me in my depressions.”

“Ahh. Kevin ... I don’t think you know much about Kevin and his behaviour.”

“What do you mean? He was always there for me, when I needed help and encouragement, except that the twins said they were unhappy with him around.”

“Unfortunately Kevin has a thing about young girls, an unhealthy tendency to touch them and more.”

“Not my young brother! He was a handful when he was a teenager, but he is fine now.”

“I am afraid it is true, and he remains the same. The twins complained about him spying on them and trying to touch them, and when I arranged for you to come here for medical help, they refused to live in the same house as him. I had to evict him and tell him to stop causing a nuisance to my daughters.

Since then, he has been caught approaching female twins of around the right age around town in the hope that they were our girls. Today he even tried to kidnap our girls. The police now have him and say he will be charged with attempted kidnap of them, and earlier kidnapping Maeve, until Jimmy released her.”

A suddenly tearful Jess had nothing redeeming she could say about Kevin, so switched to her twins.

“So the girls have been with you at home.”

“Not when I also have to be with my other family. The twins were afraid he might return to the house, for he had a key, and they wanted a safe place to hide from him. I asked a colleague for help, and he recommended Jimmy to look after them for a while, keeping them hidden away from Kevin.”

“You sent them to be with this man Jimmy, on his own? Wasn’t that dangerous for my girls?”

“Not in the slightest. Jimmy had his own family with him, so we knew the girls would be safe.”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose if Jimmy was living with his family, there would be enough people around to act as protection, as chaperones.”

“That is a good way of putting it. The twins got to see Jimmy when he was at home with his family, and they liked what they saw. It slowly developed from there. Jimmy did nothing to encourage them, I am assured by the girls. In fact, he tried to put them off, warning them about the responsibilities that marriage brings.”

“Then it seems he is a good man. You have helped him advance in the company?”

“Jess, all I had to do was reward his efforts, for he has turned out to be an extremely useful, mentally agile and productive member of the company staff, and has saved us a lot of money already. Due to a suggestion he made, I have bought over another firm and added it to our group. Jimmy is currently seconded to that company to bring it up to half-decent standards, for he found it was needing an upgrade in so many ways. Our son-in-law is a great addition to our family.”

“I am glad to hear it. Can you do something about bringing Maeve to see me? I think I need to speak with her about both our families.”

Bob’s eyebrows shot up, but he kept his voice calm and measured.

“I can do that now, if you really want to talk with her; actually talk. She is outside in the Rolls I think, recovering from Kevin’s actions before the police took him away.”

“If she is upset, perhaps we can put off her visiting. She may be afraid of me. Please tell her I will not be nasty to her.”

“Let me go out to her and see how she feels at the moment. She can decide for herself; she is a mature lady these days, looking to become a grandmother eventually. She is no longer the teenager you remember her as.”

Chairman Yeats left her in the garden sunning herself, and told the staff that he was going out to speak to someone, and would be back shortly. He exited and found that all the women and Jimmy were by the two cars parked near the doors, standing in the pleasant sunshine. They were chatting away, and Maeve was among them, looking chirpy. He approached her.

“Maeve my love, do you feel like going in to have a chat with your sister? She asked me if you would mind. I told her how I saw our split all these years ago, and that it had been her own decision to cause that. I suspect she is in a more conciliatory frame of mind, but I can’t be certain. Do you feel up to speaking with her? If it gets fractious, you can just come back out immediately and we will leave.”

“Bob darling, I would love to see her again. We are both twenty years older, but not necessarily wiser. I can find out.”

She told the other ladies that she and her husband were going in to visit, but would not be very long.

They entered and were escorted to the garden. There the encounter took place, with Bob hanging back to leave it to the two sisters.