Chapter 9

The Palmer Legacy

Gregory James Palmer is part of my legacy, thanks to Gae and lots of injected male hormones; that's our story, and we're sticking to it. Eight months later came Edward John Palmer; ta Veronica, as she's a woman of her word. Twelve months on and Marilyn Veronica and Kimberly Jennifer came from Tammy, who had completed the oral defence of her doctorate just in time to have identical twins. Valery Yvonne was Gae's last hurrah as she then pulled the plug by having her tubes tied, and then went pre-menopausal to boot. She had her first way too young, and her last worryingly late in life.

Two years after finishing their degrees, and writing five hundred odd songs; Kim and Marilyn created a daughter each, with one month between them. Neither asked for mine or Gae's permission; they were adults and wanted my babies. Kim's was named Krystal Marilyn, and Marilyn's was named Candice Kim.

I don't care what any one of them says; when you're in your fifties, you deserve to slow down some! I'd come out saying "I'm too old anymore for more young kids!" and the reply was, "Okay, and the point you're trying to make, is... ? Sometimes you talk such shit, old man." I kept threatening them that I'd cut off those education benefits. Ronnie just nodded, and had her ninetieth orgasm as she bit Kimbo on the clit, hard, causing Mount Vesuvius to erupt.

Tammy still refused to sleep anywhere but the end of our bed, where the twin's cot was right within her arm's reach. Veronica and Kimbo competed for Gae's and my body. She who fucked one automatically fucked the other. Threesomes were de rigueur, and Gae was still my horny little slut. I blamed Gae, because she refused to say 'no' to any of the girls, ever. That left me in the position of taking my rightful place inside whichever girl happened to be bending between her legs at that point in time. Please note that Gae, unlike me, had not aged a day since we met, and I thought there was something deeply suspicious about that.

Marilyn was the easy one as she came into our bedroom late at night, halfway through a song's lyric. She said to Kim "I'll be back in a bit," and rode me 'til she was happy. That's not rape ... is it? "Just blowing out the cobwebs," she told my one eye, which was staring at her in confusion at three o'clock in the morning. It was also what they named one of their songs. Just Blowing out the Cobwebs was huge in the States and Great Britain, neither of which 'got' the connotations; but they liked my arrangement.

Just some minor whinges:

Because of her sleeping position, Tammy was Master (Mistress?) of Ceremonies and informed everyone whose turn it was next to get their end off. "Just put it in the hole Pop, don't worry about a condom. She'll tell you if she wants to get pregnant when her mouth isn't full." Or, "Just lay there, Pop. Marilyn's not heavy. Okay Kimbo, being pregnant is an excellent time for Pop to eat you out. Hang on Mum, I'm coming; just getting the twins settled." Or, "Mum's feeling a bit horny, a little sluttish, so while she takes care of Ronnie, fuck me until I come and then I'll get mum off. I'll come in seconds, and you can fuck her without coming in me. Bags the clean up!"

I thought it was a conspiracy, but someone bought me a big coffee mug with an ugly old man's face shaped into the pottery and "Grumblebum" written on it, and another one for Gae with a beautiful woman's young face saying "Grumblebum's wife"; at least the face was pretty. There were another five saying "Piggy in the Middle", featuring vaguely obscene portraits of the girls in question.

Amy and Jess have a mug each saying "Professional Virgin" and "Assistant Professional Virgin". Their sisters sometimes get a bit sarky saying that they're not taking up the slack. I just think Jess 'plays for the other team', and Amy still thinks it's just for pissing out of. I can see their sisters holding them down one night and Gae and me will have to referee the fight between Jess and the rest of them. I'll have to back Jess and someone will say to Amy, "You put that thing which is called a penis, inside that thing you call a vagina." Then you get the fuck out of the way, as she's likely to become a raving nympho. She hadn't put all the facts together yet, but if someone pointed the way...

The famous Palmer Twins writing team became almost as famous as Lennon and McCartney in their heyday, and brought more money in than anything I ever did; the residuals alone were astronomical.

No money that is earned by Gae or me is placed anywhere in our names; all of it is banked under family trust funds. When we die all money in the Palmer family name was to be shared between all the kids equally, and that was the moneybag's (Marilyn and Kim) idea, not their parents.

Our front door was still never locked, and we did as they did in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. We placed a glass bowl near the front door and filled it with money. Everyone took what they needed and returned what they had in their pocket, and we had to keep taking excessive cash out when it overflowed and get rid of it somewhere or other. The only time someone ever broke into either of our homes, nothing was taken. Mind you, he was never seen again either. May he have carried his blessings to his Lord in his namesake, arsehole. Sorry, I mean 'Amen'.

These days, Gae and I dedicate ourselves to educating the kids and nurturing the babies.

The Future, Same as the Past

I was called to the clinic over the new PA system. It used to be if the office wanted you to co-sign something or other, someone had to come out and find you, and that could be as easy or as hard as you wanted to make it. The clinic was Gae's domain, and she never called my name in vain. I was on a rare hour between classes and had been searching for a kid, a girl, who had been seen in school grounds this morning and not seen in class since.

I got the whiff of some dope smoke and spied someone in a shallow dugout, under one of the back-end classrooms not far from the back neighbours' fences. There had been a boy with her, but he had scrambled from under the opposite side to me. To find him would be easy enough as she had freshly dug dirt all over her bare bum, and he pissed her off by laughing at her and taking her panties with him. Like I've often said before, there was many a complimentary thing to be said about that 'woman scorned' cliché. I was on the way into the office anyway.

I placed her in George's outer office, pointed at her with my nose scratcher (fingerless left hand) and said, "Don't move!"

In the emotional state she was in, she would be a skeleton before she left that seat.

The clinic was crowded. I had wondered where George was; Gabrielle was walking back and forward like an expectant father, and a female uniformed cop was taking a note of whatever Gae was telling her. Some woman with far too much hairspray in her bouffant-style hairdo was standing over a Year Seven girl the size that Marilyn would have been at that same level, possibly even a little smaller. I know she's Year Seven because that's the one year I'm not responsible for in maths, and I didn't recognise her. I knew by sight every kid in every one of my classes, even if I didn't remember all their names.

I told George and Gabby the story about the girl in his office, and the name of the boy who had to be found as well, to get her underpants back from him and give him a similar punishment to the lass. Possibly even worse for doing a runner, but then again, who wouldn't have if given the opportunity?

Gabby explained, "This Year Seven girl has gone into shock of some kind. Her first period had started mid-class and she had no idea what caused the bleeding. It's not that unusual an occurrence and is usually put down to stupid, ignorant parents. Gae had taken her into the clinic to tell her she wasn't bleeding to death, and she gave her a quick medical while she was at it.

"Everywhere that you can see clothing, underneath is bruising, both old and some horrible looking recent livid ones. There are many symptoms of old bone breakages, often not knitted cleanly, and some are almost poking through her skin, especially one of her ribs where the skin is ulcerated because a bone has almost broken through. The lady is Welfare Services and will take her to hospital.

"Ah, there he is. This is police detective ... um Thomas, I think. I'll tell Gae to fill him in; the lady cop has inspected most of the injuries so will verify for him their extent." George listened to Gab fill me in for a short time and then left to talk to my apprehended girl first, saying "Gae says you have had had some experience with things like this, and she wants you to see if you can get some kind of reaction from the girl. Be gentle." I gave Gabby an old-fashioned look, and as I walked past Gae she gave me a neutral look then cast her eyes at the girl. She squinted painfully. The most recent direction from the education department's legal advisors is to never touch a child, as we would leave ourselves open to threats of assault and child molestation. I walked over to her, bent down so we were facing each other, and used my pointer finger under her chin to raise her eyes to look into mine.

I could see that horrible look which I had seen in Amy and Jess, plus here was a person who no longer cared. The next move from her I would expect would be into a life - probably a short one - on the street, or the death wish I could see being self-fulfilled. I put my hands under her arms and lifted her to standing position. She winced with the pain as I put my arms around her, and I just held her to my chest and brushed her hair with my good hand.

The two cops and the bouffant looked at me with horror; Gabby had already walked away because she didn't want to know, even though this is what she had expected and what the child needed. Gae just fondly smiled at me. I heard a sniffle and felt warm spots striking my shirt, then a softly horrific heartfelt moan, and the girl was shaking my whole body with her wracking sobs. Her arms wrapped around my waist and the wracking, almost painful sobs ebbed and flowed for more than an hour, leading into howls of misery.

I was no longer interested in the PC elements in the room; this girl needed this more than she needed the hospital. I sat on the chair and she became a tiny folded figure on my lap holding on to me, like one would hold an oxygen line underwater. An ambulance man arrived at the door, and Gae softly filled him in. With Gae holding her other side, we walked her out to the ambulance.

She wouldn't let me go. She even tore my shirt when someone, the policewoman I think, tried to force the issue, so we climbed in the back of the ambulance together. "What's your name Angel?"

"Irma. You know don't you?"

"Yes little one, I know." "Sometimes the pain is horrible. No one would listen to me. I've tried to tell people and they didn't care."

"Well Irma, I care. The nurse in the clinic is my wife and she cares."

The ambulance left through the school gates as a small green Mazda entered. "That's them. What's going to happen to them?"

"To be honest Angel, I don't know, but you're not going back to them even if I have to sue them myself." Irma began to shake and her face turned pale. The medic put a blanket around her shoulders as I held her to me.

"What will happen to me?"

"Well, to start with they will keep you in hospital for quite a long time." I talked to the medic at the same time as her. "Since you have a lot of broken bones which haven't healed right, I can see some operations to repair them." The ambo nodded. "Then that lady with too much makeup on will want to put you somewhere to live. Will you trust me on that one? I've got six daughters, all adults now, and four of them were physically and mentally abused before I took them in. They wanted to take them off me because they think I'm an obnoxious mongrel, which is true, but with all that history goes some trust. Leave it to me. How are you feeling now?"

"As long as I'm holding you, I'm perfect."

"In the hospital, you'll have to let me go as they'll have doctors all over you, like those bruises. And you know what they're like with strange old men seeing pretty young girls undressing. I'd be arrested in a moment, as much as it would be a thrill to me." She giggled and hugged me tighter then winced from the resulting pain.

As I said, I wasn't allowed to see her while they diagnosed her injuries and as they x-rayed her broken bones. After the x-rays, I re-joined her and held her hand in Admissions. Gae joined me and I realised the day had gone and it was after five. "I rang Tammy and she is coming in." Irma needed all the reliable family she could get, even if it wasn't her own.

There was shouting, glass breaking and what sounded like metal furniture overturning outside in Emergency. An irate, flustered and overweight middle-aged man, wearing a rumpled grey business suit and a skewed bright red tie, slammed through the swinging ward double doors.

He began shouting, "There you are, you bitch! You'd better not tell them any lies. I'll make you regret every one of them, and it will be more than a bruise or two, I'll tell you. They can't take you away from us, because you're our daughter!"

He had almost reached us, so I stood in front of him. I raised my right hand and placed my fingers around his wattled neck. He suddenly began choking.

"You just said that in front of everyone in this ward as witnesses. In gaol they don't like people like you." I spoke succinctly but very quietly, "If it was up to me you would die, right now. Want me to show you how?"

He was violently shaking his head as he tried to get loose by hitting my gripping right arm with both of his, when a wardsman and two uniformed cops took custody of him out of my single hand. As he was dragged away, he didn't take his terrified eyes off me. I asked the cop ... who wasn't putting the handcuffs on him ... to take statements from everyone within the ward. He had made some nasty admissions when he came in and threatened his daughter. Everyone in the ward gave almost identical statements. Not a one heard what I had said, except Gae and Irma.