Chapter 7

Monday, Gae and I discussed our overcrowding over lunch, in her clinic. After work, we visited a couple of local building companies, receiving some pro tem prices on some stock standard house plans. The prices were within our ballpark figure and getting a loan would be a 'lay down' Misere with our two incomes and savings. Over a week in all, we obtained about ten quotes from as far afield as Cronulla, Bankstown, Hornsby, Manly and Ryde, and we put them in front of the girls and together went over the differing ideas and prices, from white bread plain vanilla basic, to slightly off the wall extreme. Size-wise, even the smallest was five times this house.

Tammy made the imaginative suggestion to have a house larger than we want because Gae and I have the propensity of collecting unwanted children and they don't seem to leave. Her? We would have to pry her out with a crowbar. She wasn't joking and we took her suggestion very seriously. She may enjoy off-skew lifestyle practices, but she is also wickedly smart.

That Friday afternoon a manila coloured, giant envelope was delivered into our letterbox. Veronica opened it as it had no addressee only my name, no stamp or return address so therefor hand delivered. In it was a full-sized set of official building plans. Included were a bottom-line price and our local council's permission, in writing, to build on both blocks of land. The house was to be built in two halves, so we always had somewhere to live and had enough room for four more people even if each individual had their own room. With the loving propensity of our girls, that was extremely unlikely to be needed but we took what they provided anyway following Tammy's lead.

That I thought odd, but we all agreed it was exactly what we had wanted; even the price was half what we had been given up to now and twice the size. There was only a South Australian building company's letter head saying if acceptable, they could start building preparation within a week and payment was to be in two halves, first half on completion of the initial part of the building. All moneys were guaranteed by, and our payments were to be made to, the Department of Armed Services. Completion would be due in five months from first turn of sod.

No, I don't know, so don't ask me, though I have my suspicions. Gae rang the building company Monday morning asking them for samples of floor coverings and kitchen décor and the girl said we had to find them, order and send the requirements and particulars to the address on the letter head, in South Australia of all places, as they were included in the price. I had seen that written in the contract and had thought it was a typo.

Another Sunday brought another haranguing. Aren't we lucky? I am truly beginning to enjoy our laid-back Sundays complete with entertainment. For their amusement the whole family took their coffees out to the veranda with some outdoor and kitchen chairs; seating is at a premium these days so one or two of us sit on the edge of the veranda with our arms hanging over the central railing. I have been known to make my breakfast - a toasted bacon and egg sandwich - and eat it while watching the comedy routine.

I am not sure what they trying to make happen but it appears to be counter-productive. Six religious nuts, including the aforesaid parents, turned up on our front footpath outside our gate. They were all wearing their eighteenth-century King George III of England garb, all in black suits and stern starched white shirts and blouses, singing rousing hymns for the cheering populace. On a one to ten scale the Salvos do it better, but this lot doesn't pass the hat around.

Unfortunately for them, the third time they also brought with them the last two sisters, who looked downtrodden and obedient until you looked into their eyes. There within was halfway between madness and terror intermingled with dumb unquestioning compliance and obedience. Otherwise, the complete time they stared at the ground in abject humiliation. Ronnie looked like she was going to run rampant over everyone there with the nearest weapon she could lay her hands on.

Kimbo and I had a quick look at each other and I said "Wooden Cross. One, two..." and walked toward the idiots, holding hands. Singing in our usual casual harmony That Old Wooden Cross, we went into Stand By Me, then Tell it to Jesus and as we held a hand of each of the sisters, we returned singing Patsy's version of Just a Closer Walk With Thee as we half-danced back to its swinging rhythm. We arrived back on our veranda with Your Cheating Heart which went well on a Sunday I thought, though had fuck all to do with their bigotry and a lot more to do with Patsy Cline. Just because I don't believe in all that shit - Nam put paid to that - doesn't mean they don't have some passable music.

We held the two new sisters to us, calming their terrified shaking, then their sisters took them inside the house. The idiots looked stunned, then the father and a red-faced, skinny, dried-out looking weasel of a bloke ran into our yard toward me and I said, "Uh, uh, you're on private property without my permission and trespassing. You're threatening me so I'm allowed to defend myself. Leave or this ugly one-legged man will enact his right to remove you. Who would like to make a fool out of me?" They came at me from each side, collaborating in what looked like a well-rehearsed move so this may have been expected or some such; whatever, as they didn't know who they were dealing with.

I swept my blood and guts leg under the father who hit the concrete footpath with his skull, while I swivelled on the peg leg following through with my fingerless stump hitting the skinny bloke in the solar plexus on just the right spot to instantly paralyse his complete nervous system. "Well I did warn you," I told them reasonably. I grabbed dad's foot and dragged his insensible body out of the gate then returned for the weasel, repeating the action. "I'd get the skinny fart to the hospital as he may have trouble breathing for a while. Come back any time; we love music and on a Sunday morning especially. Hooroo."

Marilyn met me at the door, "They're terrified and your newest daughters are working on them. I've got a new song half-finished about how a pair of singers stopped some trespassing hoodlums and protected their women folk. Whatcha reckon we call it Singing Karate Killers Stop the Bigots?" Okay now it was my turn to giggle like a thirteen year old virgin. I gave my daughter a big kiss and cuddle and we went inside with our arms wrapped around each other.

At times, the new girls seemed to want something and had no idea what. They became inconsolable and nothing worked better than an honest cuddle within warm affectionate arms. The cuddler wanted nothing else from them, and they had never experienced that before. It stopped in its tracks tantrums, panic attacks and violent reactions to a heretofore unknown, unkind world.

Next day I learned that they had been enrolled in our school, eight and nine years previously, but there was a note on file from the parents excusing them both due to mental illness, signed as a medical assessment by some doctor in the same handwriting as the parents' note. Whoever accepted that note deserved rooting! Even a Catholic school wouldn't have accepted this kind of duplicity using religion as a weapon against children.

We received the Sunday sermons and hymns by the idiots for about six months; the choir had grown to over twenty at the end or even likely more, as no one was counting. The end came when Weasel and another three were arrested for an attempted kidnapping of Tammy on school property and trespassing on school grounds, amongst other things, which would keep them away for a long time. They were held kicking and screaming by some Year Twelve boys, and the idiots had more than ruffled feathers by the time the cops turned up. No amount of religious sermonising was going to get them out of this one.

I found the father soon after on the same day, crouching between two parked cars in the teacher's car park trying to slash the tyres. One car was of similar make and model as mine but neither were one of ours. I hurt him until the police turned up but I didn't damage him. The others watched from the common room - most of the school heard his screaming - yet not a soul asked me to stop. When the cops finally turned up the pain ceased immediately and there wasn't a mark on him. We learned some amazing things from the Vietnamese while we were there, some of it very useful in the fullness of time.

That was about the last time we heard from them, though I did miss their Sunday serenades. One night someone tried to break into our new place but it wasn't serious and I was fed up by then. He disappeared, and no one knows where he went to, as he had never been here to our knowledge.

The police visited us about ten times due to complaints made by Tammy and Veronica's mother, but we disallowed any knowledge of the idiot. The cops were a bit surprised that the woman admitted collusion in breaking and entering into the house. The non-event break-in has now been filed as someone-else's-problem by the police. They booked her for complicity, on her own admission!

The new concrete slab for the second half of the house was poured very early the next morning, after the supposed break-in, and the cheque handed over for the completed first half. By then we had already well and truly moved into the first half. My old shanty had been pulled down a month ago; the builder worked with us as we did with him. Even this half was ten times the size of my old house, which would, in total, have fitted inside the new lounge room. When it finally gets completed, it will be a culture shock.

It may interest you that I learned that the man who owns the South Aussie building company was one of the Brothers who I took the full force of the grenade from, leaving him completely unharmed except for concussion and shock. Somebody said he offered to pay for the job himself out his own pocket. I wouldn't have accepted it but was most appreciative of the help he did give us.

Marilyn's song writing had become prolific. It's very difficult for a person of her age to create lyrics about lost love and death of loved ones and all that emotional guff, but she wrote for fun not with popularity in mind. She even wrote one about the difference in dick size between her ex-boyfriend and her new temporary boyfriend, adding a cute aside at the end comparing them both to him at home. Nowhere in it was it mentioned that it was about penis size, or me or her boyfriends, but there was no doubt by anyone hearing it. You could have sung it in a church without a sideways glance. The tune we made for it was somewhere between Benny Hill and Blazing Saddles. She named it Between Him and the Others; I think we'll work on that title. It makes the subject sound like God and I'm here to attest that he aint.

I liked My Girls Have Made an Honest Man Out of My Love. She had to have her ashes hauled a number of times during and after that, even if it was to just make sure that she realised that we still loved her. That was the first time she had shared herself with her mum, who was extremely emotionally involved at the time. I shortened the title to To Make an Honest Man of Him. She actually named Kim in it but as White; hey, it rhymed. It also made the gender of the subjects androgynous and the subject more ambiguous.

<My love married my woman White and lover>
<I've lost the place I held tho they say it ain't so>
<my love married my woman White and lover>
<my woman Allen held my pleasure, in her hand to know me>
<my love married my woman White and lover>
<my love ploughed my field and made it grow inside me>
<my love married my woman White and lover>
<their lover held the ploughshare, inside my field to sew me>
<my love married my woman White and lover>
<they were around the table, my love White and their lover for the seed to become>
<the plant, for my love who married my love White and lover>
etc.
etc.

That wasn't as long as Temporary Company but it was up there. With Marilyn, there is no such thing as holding her emotions inside; they are all out there for the world to see. She wrote that one the day after the wedding, taking all of an hour; we really should have taken more notice of her feelings, though the writing was extremely cathartic for her. It took the complete family almost a week to arrange a tune; one of our better early ones.

Tammy and Veronica sat for the HSC, with Tammy making the top one percentile. She absolutely aced English and Maths. She stuffed Science, Physics and Chemistry, only making 99%. It was mentioned in the main newspapers that the markers in those subjects had been told that no one was to be given 100%. Her incentive was to be the family bed towel and urinal for a week, which disgusted Ronnie and made Tammy's mouth water. She had never tried harder for anything previously. Tammy passed out repeatedly with the intensity of her orgasms. My stomach didn't turn, but I wished she would become a little more stable.

She told us all later that she didn't want to play those silly games any more and she wanted to become a more normal individual. Myself, I would have taken her more seriously if she hadn't followed me to the toilet the very next morning for me to fuck her throat. By normal, she meant normal as when she first joined us.