Chapter 31

“Certainly not! I was merely speculating about what someone in possession of such a device might do to protect themselves and the machine. That protection might be taken to an extreme, but if no-one ever talked about a time machine, nothing would come of it, would it?

All speculation, Fergus; all speculation and nothing else.”

He stared at me, mouth open, and then a new light came into his eyes.

“I see. What doesn’t exist can’t be talked about; and if someone talks about something that doesn’t exist, they may be regarded as mentally unstable...?”

“As you say, Fergus, talking about non-existant devices can get you into trouble of all kinds. Life is simpler if you don’t get odd ideas into your head.

On the other hand, if life for your girlfriend has improved, why should you complain about it, and how it might have happened. She should have no trouble qualifying as a solicitor, and so should you, and you may get together and fall in love. You wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of that happy outcome. I know I wouldn’t.”

Fergus was now very quiet and pensive. He now spoke softly.

“One shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say, Bob. I think I will look upon what has happened to her as a gift to me, and just say ‘thank-you’ to you, or rather to Sandy, for whatever it was she did.”

“I will pass on that message to her, Fergus. I am sure she will be well pleased that it is turning out well for you and the lady, whoever she is.”

I finished it off like that to imply that I did not know who she was; and also muddy the waters a little! It was enough to dissuade Fergus from loose talk about a time machine, and that was what mattered.

My day was also affected by a phone call from our architect.

“Hello, Mr Thorogood. What can I do for you?”

“An advance on your extension plan, Mr McIntyre. I have received three quotes for the job, and I wanted to report to you.”

“Is that the same as estimates?” I asked.

“No. Estimates are variables which might come in more expensive if some costs go up for the firm. Quotes are fixed prices, which might be a trifle higher on the face of it, but at least you know what you will be paying. Now, the lowest quote is from a firm I have less confidence in, as regards quality of build, so I suggest going for the second lowest, whose quality of work I am sure of.”

“What is the difference in price, Mr Thorogood?”

“It is less than five hundred pounds, but I can guarantee a top quality build from them.”

“I am willing to follow your recommendation, sir. Go ahead and accept that second one.”

“Thank you, Mr McIntyre. They will be able to start next week, but they will warn you if it will affect your living conditions in the house.”

“Good. Keep me posted on progress, Mr Thorogood. I want to spend as little time as possible living in an hotel during the build.”

“I can understand. It is not just the cost but the inconvenience. I will get the builder to work round that requirement.”

When Sandy got home from university, I briefed her on the extension costs, and asked if she wanted to use any special financial asset to pay for it.

“Funnily enough, one of the companies you have a considerable stake in has just been involved in a takeover bid by a multinational, and your shares have doubled in value. This might be a good time to sell, and have enough cash to pay for the extension. You are still using that solicitor as your broker, aren’t you?”

“Yes, it seemed sensible to continue that arrangement. If you get me the details, I can instruct him to sell and put the proceeds in our bank account.”

“Fine. That means we will have the cash to pay that bill. I presume the architect will have it as a staged payment, so that each stage has to be satisfactorily completed before payment for that is made.”

She changed tack.

“Georgie tells me that Carol wants to talk to us – me and Georgie – about her relationships with men, so you must stay out of it. Georgie asked her to have dinner with us tonight, and then you can go and hide or something while we have our discussion with Carol.”

“Dinner?” I immediately queried, knowing Sandy’s limited culinary abilities.

She reassured me, “Supplied by our local Chinese restaurant again. You enjoy practically all of their offerings I think.”

“True. Go ahead and make the choices then darling. You don’t want me or Janet there, so perhaps Janet and I can find some way of passing the time.”

Sandy harrumphed, “That should probably mean fucking her again. You can’t make her any more pregnant, you know.”

“I know, but I like the practice, just as I do with you and with Georgie. God, but I love fucking you every time, Sandy. I love you, woman!”

She accepted this as her due, and continued, “Well, we shall see what Carol has to say. You might get a chance of fucking her, if my guess is right about tonight’s discussion.”

“Maybe so, but we don’t have a spare bedroom for another woman in this family; not until the extension is built.”

Sandy shrugged. “To begin with, she might not fancy living here, fucking or not fucking. If, like her, you spend most of your time alone, living with a family group might be a daunting prospect for that girl.”

I was sympathetic.

“I can live with that. Carol deserves to be the girl she wants to be. She cannot spend her life bemoaning her rape and letting it impair her enjoyment of life into the future. Even if she can simply get over that, it would be a success. She doesn’t have to be part of our family, after all. That would be fine if it came to pass, but if she feels happy without that family support, that is her own decision. We can’t push her; you know that, Sandy, and so do I. It must be her own choice of her future.”

Sandy was agreeable to that summation, but added, “I still believe that in the long term, linking to us would be to her advantage.” She paused to look me in the eye. “I know it sounds odd, but if she joined us and had some of your children I am of the opinion that it would be good for her, and also for us.”

I laughed, “Can you imagine your father’s reaction? You saying, ‘Daddy, me and Bob are having extra children by three more wives’, giving a shock to his system that only another child of his own might ameliorate. I hope Julie can start a baby before we have to tell him of our situation.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions too early, darling. Carol remains only a ‘possible’ addition. She has to make a major adjustment to her thinking if that is to come about, and I have no idea which way she will go. Start from the premise that she will decline the offer, and that way you will not be disappointed if she so decides.”

I grudgingly accepted her infallible logic.

“That is probably the best way to approach her possible decision, Sandy. If she concludes that she is now more able to cope with life without any further assistance from us, then we should congratulate her and let her move on. A happy woman is a good result for us and her. We have enough on our plate to keep us busy for the foreseeable future. This extension will be a massive disruption to our lives until it is completed. Have you started looking at where we will stay while we have to evacuate the house?”

“That has occupied much of my time during my train journeys to and from Glasgow, Bob. At first I thought of a hotel suite – we can afford it, you know – but then I started to worry about what is inside our house, both the time machine and our gold and paper assets stored in the ‘technical room’, despite the strong padlock we have on it. That made me think that we should stay close enough so that one of us can make daily checks on the house to ensure that our security measures are still secure. The other day I asked Georgina to have a look in her books for the houses in this street or the ones above and below this one. If there are any for sale in such locations I want her to approach the owners about a short-term let of a few weeks if the house is otherwise going to be empty.”

“Ah, clever thinking,” I said, seeing her commonsense approach to the problem. “Do we intend to move our furniture and pictures if the sale house is empty? That would save us having to worry about our valuable artefacts in the rooms. The contractors may want to use these rooms for their daily tea and lunch breaks to eat their sandwiches and so on. I don’t want our Howard upholstery stained or damaged, and these pictures cannot be left on the walls, nor the books on the shelves.”

“A wise precautionary thought, Bob. Right, we either move the furnishings to the temporary home, or we put them in secure storage while we are out of the house.”

Two days later, Georgina reported that she had an offer of an empty house in the next street that we could move into for a few weeks, provided the owners left it on sale and we promised to show potential buyers around. The sale entry particulars would stipulate entry being placed back to a date after we returned to our home. Both I and Sandy thought it a good deal, and more so when the rental price was revealed to us. It was a lot less than I expected, but the owner had our presence giving extra protection of the house from any vandalism, and a free viewing system at almost any hours as well. It was a good arrangement on both sides.

“We don’t have a date we have to move yet, do we?” I asked Sandy. She smiled pleasantly, and I knew what was coming.

“I spoke to the architect using Daddy’s phone yesterday before I caught the train. I told him we wanted an exact date when the contractor needed into our house to start his operations there. He promised me that a senior man would call in here to arrange the date at least a week ahead, as we would need time to get the removal men to shift our stuff to the rental place.”

I grabbed her face and gave her a long kiss to show my thanks. She smiled hungrily and asked if I was tied up with Georgie or Janet tonight. I assured her I had no fixed appointment with either of them, and that if she felt like being well and truly fucked she would find me entirely willing.

“I’ll let them know I have you booked for tonight, then. They get enough sex from you as it is, you must admit.”

“That’s so, but Georgie insists that pregnancy boosts the libido of a woman. I had no way of gainsaying that. Do you?”

“No. It seems to be true. Probably it reinforces the pregnancy by doubling up on efforts to make certain that the baby is on the way; at least that is what I understand it must be. No-one seems to be certain about the evolutionary reason for it.”

I left Sandy to finalise these arrangements, including booking the removal firm. She informed me that the removal firm would be from Greenock as Gourock was too small to be a base for such a company.

Janet must have met Carol somewhere, as she had news to pass on. It seems that Carol, emboldened by her visits with us and her experience with me, had asked the other hairdressing staff about their interactions with men, in particular with boyfriends and husbands where married. The responses she got were so varied that she was puzzled and wondered if Janet knew why this should be. Janet had explained that just as all women were different, so all men were different, so you could not lump all men together in any significant way. Most men would not rape a girl, for instance, though many men were unreliable as boyfriends or husbands, which is why you end up with so many divorces caused by men being unfaithful to their wives.

Carol had burst out, “But then isn’t Bob being unfaithful to Sandy with you?”

Janet had patiently explained that unfaithful was having sex with a woman who is not your wife, and without the wife’s knowledge. Under that definition, Janet and Georgie were wives to me, just as Sandy was, so sex with them was not being unfaithful. It was the law imposing rules that ended up with people breaking the rules, she said.

“I am Bob’s wife in reality, as much as Sandy is and Georgie is, so being unfaithful doesn’t come into it. In fact, the idea of Bob looking to be with another woman is silly, as he gets all the sex he ever wants, between the three of us.”

This statement upset Carol, as she immediately assumed that Bob wouldn’t want to have sex with her as that would be an unfaithful act. Janet burst into laughter and told Carol that part of the idea of unfaithful was that of being with another woman for sex and love in preference to your wife.

“When Bob had sex with Georgie and later with me, that was before we became his wives, but Sandy had approved of us for sex in advance, with the general intention of us becoming wives if we fitted in to the family ethos. The sex was mostly a test of compatibility with Bob. The love and marriage came later. Many couples have sex before marriage. Some live together for years before getting around to marrying.”

This settled Carol down somewhat, but Janet had to cuddle her and tell her that all of this kerfuffle was simply life as it happened. Carol had another question, “So you think I should get some experience of sex with someone beforehand, so that I would be more compatible with Bob?”

Janet blinked at this misunderstanding, and swiftly told her, “No, not at all. I was a virgin when I first had sex with Bob, so prior knowledge and experience is not required. Bob enjoyed teaching me what he had learned from Sandy and from Georgina. He knew how to start sex with a virgin, or in your case a virgin in everything that matters; lack of knowledge of real lovemaking. The hymen or lack of one is a red herring about virginity. Many girls lose their hymen while doing gymnastics or horse riding, so have no hymen while still being a virgin. You come into that category.”

Janet concluded her story about Carol and told us that she now believed Carol was more prepared for sex with Bob, and more integration if it came to that; she simply had to think more about it before ultimately deciding.

I asked Janet, “Are you girls still meeting with her on Saturdays?”

Janet admitted, “She missed two Saturdays through her troubled thinking, but she wants to be there this Saturday, she said. I invited her, if that is okay with you, Sandy?”

Sandy was fine with that.

“She can come along and we can interrogate her about her current views. I don’t want her to visit, and in particular see herself joining us, unless she is very definite about it. We can’t spend weeks and months with her while she dithers. I am going to tell her that if she is serious, it is time she had sex with Bob and have done with that question. If she is not serious, then she should start looking in other directions if she has recovered and wants a man she can be happy with, and children as well.”

Georgie was at our home having a quick lunch when a man from the building firm appeared at the door. When he had introduced himself as Michael Finnegan, she invited him in. He explained, “Sorry to bother you, Mrs McIntyre, but I need to have a gander at the inside rooms of this building, so we know what we are letting ourselves in for. Are you going to strip everything out, including floor coverings, in the two bedrooms that have to be converted into a dining room; or do we have to complete that ourselves before we start?”

Georgie said, “Come through and look at the rooms so you will see. We will get the removal men to shift all the furnishings and pictures. We hadn’t thought about curtains and carpets, but the curtains are new, so we’ll take them down and put them in storage, assuming there is no change to the window sizes. What is your opinion of the carpeting? It was here when we moved in.”

The man got down on his knees and peered closely before suggesting, “I think you should have the carpet lifted and stored, Mrs McIntyre, for it looks to me like a high quality silk carpet, probably imported from Turkey or somewhere in that general area. It may be old and valuable, so I would advise taking it up for that reason. You might want to get a professional clean done of it too. Is the other room much the same?”