Chapter 22

“That was my doing, dear. I gave him the impression that we were set up to help unmarried mothers. I said nothing so specific, just implied that we were women being helped with our ‘situation’. It was easier than telling him we were a multiwife family!”

“But why tell him lies? Doesn’t that make things more difficult later?”

“I didn’t tell him any lies, Isabella. If he draws the wrong conclusion, that is his own fault.”

“Oh. Does that mean we don’t tell anybody that Jimmy is our husband?”

“Not quite. What we do is refer to ourselves individually as ‘Mrs Hargreaves’ as appropriate, but otherwise we stick to forenames and don’t mention our married surname unless the person we are speaking to already knows the facts. Jimmy’s boss, Mr Emerson, knows, as he is our father, and Chairman Yeats knows as he is Lily and Flora’s father, but that is about it.”

“Your fathers are in important jobs?”

“Uh, yeah; so what?”

“Why is he not upset about all three of you being with Jimmy, a more junior employee, and having his babies?”

“Possibly because Jimmy is an up-an-coming junior executive, worth cultivating; but more likely it is that Jimmy got us all pregnant and if we are all ‘married’ to Jimmy, Daddy won’t have illegitimate grandchildren. There is a lot of commonsense in what we did. The fact that all three of us fell in love with Jimmy was a bonus extra.”

“But that was not what happened with Lily and Flora, is it?”

“No, that was their own fault, as they saw us with Jimmy and decided they wanted the same; what we had, for they were having an unhappy time at home then. They wanted something better, and when they saw what we had they wanted the same.

Eventually that is what they got, once we girls had approved them for joining our family. And don’t talk about Marjory; she is a special case. She was looking for a reliable man she could fall for and asked Jimmy if his wives could give her some sage advice. We had a long talk with her, and by the time we had all her relevant facts settled, we told her that her perfect man, the man she described as her ideal, was actually our Jimmy. Once she understood the rules of our family, she went for it, and joined the clan. Jimmy knuckled under, but without needing much persuasion.”

“But me and Mom don’t fit with any of that; not in the slightest.”

“That’s true. At first, you were just a rescue campaign of Jimmy’s wives, after we heard from Priscilla about your and Elizabeth’s abuse, but once we had you here, things began to change. One of the first changes was in Elizabeth. Elizabeth wanted more children, but not with the dolt that she was married to. Seeing that Jimmy was clearly fertile, she first saw him purely as a sperm donor for her, but she also wanted to protect you from your father, and Jimmy was obviously the answer she saw as a protector. You had been sheltered from the normal unacceptable males in society as well as sheltered from practically everybody apart from teachers; but not protected from your own father.

That was why she wanted to marry you off to Jimmy, for your own protection from the many viccissitudes of outside life in a male-orientated nation. I can’t say I blame her for that attitude; we met some of that scum when we were younger and didn’t have the knowledge and experience to know better.”

“But Sharl, that is not how it is now. I want to marry Jimmy for my own selfish reasons. I am falling for him because he is such a nice guy. The problem I had was that being a nice guy he decided he had to treat Mom like one of his wives instead of just fucking a baby into her. He acted like a lover instead of just a male sperm provider. You can see what that did; mom is falling in love with him without ever intending to.

So we get back to my problem.The idea, of him having sex with me and her both, rather upset me for a while, even though me and Mom had discussed it rationally and agreed it was the best practical solution for us.”

“I can see that, girl, but it is all a matter of how your brain perceives the rules of society. Jimmy was a pillar of society when he met us and tried to turn us from stupid sluts into acceptable society ladies. Look what that got him!”

“But you ARE acceptable society ladies, Sharl. I can see that for myself: it is obvious in your behaviour.”

“We are like that now, but we weren’t before, not until after we encountered Jimmy. He acted as the tutor we should have had at school; he forced us to think before taking action. It took him weeks and weeks, but he turned us round. How could a girl not fall for such a man, a real paragon? However, if we stuck to society’s rules, only one of us could get a chance of having him as a spouse, yet all three of us now viewed him as a potential husband. Being loved tends to have that effect on you, Isabella.

Jimmy twisted the rules somewhat, pointing out to us that society viewed families by the hard and fast legal rules, so only one wife per husband, but if there was no legally recorded marriage, you could have as many actual wives in practice as were agreeable to be treated as a wife. That meant married without the formal paperwork; the appearance of being married in the eyes of society. That is the route we took, and I feel like a wife, a loving wife at that. I am pretty sure my sisters feel the same.”

“Gosh,” said Isabella. “Is he that good at sex; every time with all of you?”

“No, that is exaggeration. Lovemaking is not simply a matter of good sex. You are too focussed on the subject of sex. My dear Isabella, being a wife is never all about sex. It is mainly about togetherness, wanting to be together, enjoying being together and wanting to have children together. Wanting to be together with Jimmy and his other wives and having his children helps bind you closer together. I have seldom felt jealous since having Jimmy for my man, our man. None of us do. We all feel so comfortable with him. He doesn’t play favourites, and usually does what we tell him, like a normal decent husband.”

“That makes me feel that I am making the best decision. He made love to me this morning, after Marjory told me to go ahead. He was very gentle with me, and my hymen was not much of an obstruction.”

“I had heard. We were all pleased you had finally decided to join us wives.”

“I won’t actually be married to him, though, by any ceremony. One of the girls told me that you were, when I was agonising over it. Some of you really are married to him, church-wise, even if not legally in civil terms. Is that right?”

“It is. We found a clergy person willing to marry us in the eyes of the church, but there is a limit to how far she can take that without the higher-ups catching on and slapping her down for allowing a polygamous marrage.”

“She? It is a woman clergyman?”

“More or less. She is not formally a cleric, but in her church position she has some power granted to perform religious observances in the absence of the pastor, but she is skating on thin ice, as her pastor is not actually absent in the way that the church intended the rules to be read. Her church sees marriage officially as between two persons, not one man and a bunch of girls. She is operating on the basis that what is not formally forbidden is permissable, and the church authorities are working on the automatic assumption of a legal couple presented for marriage, so they don’t specifically forbid polygamous marriage in their constitution. You can’t fill up a constitution with what is not allowed!”

“So how many of you has she married to Jimmy?”

“Us three plus Lily and Flora. Marjory, Elizabeth and you are the exceptions.”

“Any chance of the three exceptions getting the same treatment?”

“As a group, unlikely. For starters, if we state your and Elizabeth’s names, she will ask if you are related; just a routine question in most instances, but a killer in your case. That would stop her dead.”

“So it is best if Mom – sorry, Elizabeth – if she doesn’t ask to have a marriage ceremony?”

“That would be sensible. Another important factor is that she is still officially married to your father, and seeking a divorce would not be easy, with him secluded in a mental home.”

“But she can regard herself as married to Jimmy, in practical terms?”

“Yes. That was how we started out with Jimmy: married in practice but not legally or theologically. We just assumed our new surnames as being Hargreaves.”

“So do you think we can get this female clergyperson to marry me and Marjory to Jimmy?”

“We can ask, but I cannot promise that she will be able to follow through. It would have to appear as two seperate ceremonies being conducted; preferebly not on the same day. The marriages get recorded in her church’s marriage registers, so someone may have a look though the register at some time and wonder about the number of women getting married to a James Hargreaves. James Hargreaves is not a common name, so not likely to be seen as coincidence.”

“Tricky, eh?”

“Tricky indeed. Can we leave it for now? Perhaps if her church register gets filled up on that page and it gets turned to a new page, there may be a chance that two marriages to a Jimmy Hargreaves may be able to be passed over. Not both on the one recorded date, though, as that would be very suspicious. I think that is what she did with us: wrote them up as subsequent dates. Less noticeable that way. Historically, church registers were erratically kept, though mostly it was omissions rather then additions that were the defect.”

Isabella gave up and changed the subject.

“Sharl, am I really getting to make love with Jimmy tonight, after him taking my virginity this morning? I thought it was only once a day?”

“That is normal practice, but we seem to work it that a new wife gets first shot at him the day she joins us. That means you get to make love with him tonight, if you feel up to it.”

“Oh, yes, please. It was all so new this morning; I didn’t know what to do then, even though I had talked about it with the other girls. The reality, the feelings I had, is not the same as what is talked about among girls; it is much more.”

“Then you can enjoy yourself tonight, Isabella. In future, I cannot guarantee that you will get him every day. It is a fact of life with Jimmy; he is not a satyr, he wears out and needs a break from time to time.”

During the evening, as I sat at my computer checking my email, I got a call from the investigating cop.

“Hello, Captain Thomson. To what do I owe this unexpected phone call?”

“Primarily, it is to confirm that you are person that Mrs Letterman phoned at the Yeats Group today? As far as I am aware, you are the only person there that has any connection with Mrs Letterman.”

“That is correct, as far as I know, sir. There may be some others whose relatives use her salon, but I am not cognizent of that matter. As to her wanting to speak to me personally, she wanted person-to-person privacy about certain female matters of interest to me, so rang me at my office rather than at home. She is a nice lady as well as an excellent hairdresser. Was there anything wrong with her doing that? I thought she had no connection with your case.”

“To repeat what you said, as far as I am aware, that is so. I remain puzzled by the large number of phone calls she makes to her clients, especially to your family. Her call to you was out of the pattern in that regard.”

“By the same token, your call to me is out of the ordinary. However, your statement about her calls implies that you are aware of all the calls she makes. Does that ability not require a judicial authorisation, Captain, needing probable cause to be connected to your active case?”

“To have full details of these calls, that would be so, Mr Hargreaves, but if a friend at the phone company offers the police a list of numbers called each day by a person of interest; no other details supplied, then I have not requested data, and my friend is simply trying to be helpful to me as a police acquaintance; and that help is restricted to a list of numbers.”

“I see. Getting round the restrictions, but completely unofficially and off the record. A clever ploy which I would happily applaud in chasing criminals. In this case I see no criminal being sought through this process, unless you can inform me otherwise, Captain.”

“You are an educated man, Mr Hargreaves, in a responsible position. Do you always act in accordance with the expectations made of you, or do you apply initiative at times?”

“Touché, sir. Can I ask what you are seeking by your present tactics? Perhaps I might be able to help in my own small way. I should perhaps mention that I have switched on the record function on my phone, purely as my own aide memoire, you will appreciate.”

“A wise precaution. Primarily, Mr Hargreaves, I am seeking a solution to the mystery of a couple drug packets that went missing from the possession of the gentleman who is currently in the hands of mental experts of the medical kind.”

“You are seeking these packets for what purpose, captain?”

“Closure. Merely to account for them in my work, Mr Hargreaves; my task of removing addictive drugs from the streets.”

“That is an interesting claim. Do you agree that alcohol is an addictive drug? That therefore alcohol should be treated the same as other addictive drugs such as tobacco; and that certain prescribed medications are also addictive drugs? None of these are banned as dangerous to society.”

“That may be so, Mr Hargreaves, as a fact of life, but I work within the law as it exists, not as you or I might prefer it. Specific drugs are outlawed, and it is my appointed task to remove them from circulation. That is my remit as a policeman and I cannot avoid it.”

“Very well. If we go with that situation, can you state categorically, for the record, that no individual will be apprehended or otherwise pursued by the law as part of the recovery process or afterwards? This is naturally a hypothetical question in a hypothetical case, requiring a hypothetical guarantee, as you will understand.”

“Ah, yes. Clever. In the hypothetical matter which you are addressing, I would have neither intention, desire, nor need to involve anyone further in the matter of the recovery of missing drugs. Recovery would close the matter.”

“So if the two parcels you mentioned were to find their way to you, in pristine condition, that would be the end of your task?”

“I would be perfectly satisfied to leave it at that, Mr Hargreaves.”

“Can you describe to me what these parcels would look like, in case I fortuitously happen to see them somewhere, so that I might be in a position to expedite their delivery to you?”

“I can’t be exact, Mr Hargreaves, as I have not seen these ones myself, but generally I would expect such packets to be a hard compressed block of an unidentified substance, tightly wrapped in plastic film of some kind.”

“Plastic, eh? Does plastic retain fingerprints, captain?”

“On the whole, it does. If I was asked about removing fingerprints, purely hypothically, of course, I would suggest that liquids such as bleach, white vinegar or WD-40, applied with a microfibre cloth and wiped over the entire surface would do the job.”

I did not respond to that useful information, but continued with my proposal.

“An interesting supposition for you, Captain. If such packets were to get to you, would the postal service be a reliable route, or do parcels get examined by the postal service?”

“Only those parcels that arouse suspicion would be so treated, Mr Hargreaves. Normal parcels would arrive without interference, I would suggest. Do you think you might be able to recover a couple such packets?”

“I can try, Captain Thomson; I can but try, with no guarantees. I can put word around those who might have an interest in your target items. If anything comes of it, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you for your interest, Mr Hargreaves. I shall look forward to hopefully hearing something positive from you in the near future.”

After concluding pleasantries and putting the phone down, I remarked to myself, “That was encouraging. He has offered a method of helping him get what he wants without anyone being accused of being in any way involved in assisting their recovery.”

I sat and thought for a while. In principle this should work by a simple handing over at the police station, but if I could work out a convoluted method of getting the drugs to him, it would be all the better; leaving no trail back to us.

How could I do that?

My musings were interrupted by Sharl, who knocked on my open door to attract my attention.

“Jimmy? It is time you called in at your bedroom; Isabella is waiting for you there. Don’t leave her pining, darling.”

“Shit! The time got away from me while I was talking to that cop. Tell you about it later.”

I almost ran to my bedroom, and as I rushed in I found Isabella cosy in my bed, snoring away. I nearly burst out laughing, but instead I undressed and slipped in beside her, carefully staying apart until my body warmed up to match her body temperature. Once I felt warm again, I slid over and against her, slipping an arm over her body.