To Sail Beyond The Sunset: The Life and Loves of Maureen Johnson

Chapter 11 - A Dude in a Derby

They took me out of my cell today and led me, cuffed and hoodwinked, into what was probably a courtroom. There they removed the hoodwink and the cuffs... which left me the only one out of step; my guards were hooded and so were the three who (I think) were judges. Bishops, maybe, they were wearing fancy robes with that sacerdotal look.

Other flunkies here and there were also hooded - put me in mind of a Ku-Klux-Klan meeting, so I tried to check their shoes-Father had pointed out to me during the recrudescence of the Man in the twenties that those hooded ‘knights' showed under their sheets the cracked, scuffed, cheap, and worn-out shoes of the social bottom layer who could manage to feel superior to somebody only by joining a racist secret society.

I could not use that test on these jokers. The three ‘judges' were behind a high bench. The court clerk (?) had his recording equipment on a desk, his feet under it. My guards were behind me.

They kept me there about two hours, I think. All I gave them was ‘name, rank, and serial number' -‘I am Maureen Johnson Long, of Boondock, Tellus Tertius. I am a distressed traveller, here by misadventure. To all those silly charges: not guilty! I demand to see a lawyer.'

From time to time, I repeated ‘Not guilty' or stood mote.

After about two hours, judged by hunger and bladder pressure, we had an interruption: Pixel.

I didn't see him come in. Apparently he had come to my cell as usual, failed to find me, and went looking - found me.

I heard behind me this ‘Cheerlup!' with which he usually announces his arrival; I turned and he jumped into my arms, started head bumping and purring, while demanding to know why I wasn't where I was supposed to be.

I petted him and assured him that he was a fine cat, a good boy, da kine!

The middle ghost behind the bench ordered: ‘Remove that animal:

One of the guards attempted to comply by grabbing Pixel.

Pixel has absolutely no patience with people who do not observe correct protocol. He bit the guard in the fleshy pare of his left thumb, and got him here and there with his claws. The guard tried to drop him; Pixel did not let go.

The other guard tried to help - now two wounded. But not Pixel.

That middle judge used some quite colourful language, got down and carne around, saying: ‘Don't you know how to grab a cat?' - and proved at once that he did not. Now three wounded. Pixel hit the deck, running.

I then saw something that had been known to me only through inference, something that none of my friends and family claimed to have seen. (Correction: Athene has seen it, but Athene has eyes everywhere. I mean meat-and-bone people.)

Pixel headed straight for a blank wall at emergency full speed - and just as he seemed to be about to crash headlong into it, a round cat door opened in front of him, he streaked through it, and it dosed instantly behind him.

After a bit, I was returned to my cell.

In 1912: Brian bought an automobile, a car - somewhere during that decade ‘automobile carriage' changed to- ‘automobile', and then to ‘auto', and then to ‘motor car, or ‘car' - the ultimate name for the horseless carriage, as it could not get any shorter.

Brian bought a Reo. Nelson's little Reo runabout had proved most durable and satisfactory; after five years of hard wear it was still a good vehicle. The firm used it for many things, including dusty drives to Galena and Joplin and other towns in the white metals area, and records were kept and Nelson was paid mileage and wear-and-tear.

So when Brian decided to buy a car for his family he bought another Reo, but a family car, a five-passenger touring car - a beauty and one that I could see was safe for children, as it had doors and a top - the runabout had neither. Mr R.E. Olds called the 1912 Reo his ‘Farewell Car', claiming that it was the best car that he could design with his twenty-five years of experience, and the best that could be built, in materials and workmanship.

I believed him, and (far more important) Brian believed him. It may Nave been the ‘farewell' Reo but, when I left Earth in 1982, Mr Olds' name was still famous in autos, in ‘Oldsmobile'.

Our luxury car was quite expensive - more than $1200. Brian did not tell me what he had paid, but the Reo was widely advertised and I can read. But we got a lot for our money; it was not only a handsome, roomy touring car but also it had a powerful engine (35 horsepower) and a top speed of 45 miles per hour. It was never driven at that speed, I think - the speed limit in the city was 17 miles per hour, and the rutted dirt roads outside the city were quite unsuited to such high speed. Oh, Brian and Nelson may have tried it - opened the throttle wide on some freshly graded, level road out in Kansas somewhere; neither of them believed in bothering ladies with things that might worry them. (Betty Lou and I did not believe in worrying our husbands unnecessarily, either; it evens out.)

Brian fitted out the basic car with all sorts of luxuries that would make it pleasant for his wife and family - a windshield, a self-starter, a set of side curtains, a speedometer, a spare tyre, an emergency gas tank, etc. The tyres had demountable rims and only rarely did Brian have to patch a tyre beside the road.

It did have one oddity; its top could predict the weather. Put the top down; it rained. Put the top up; the sun came out.

It was a one-man top, just as the ads claimed. That one man was Briney - assisted by his wife, two half-grown girls, and two small boys, all of us straining and sweating and Brian nobly repressing the language he wanted to use. But eventually Brian figured out how to outsmart that top: leave it up all the time. This ensured good weather for motoring. We surely did enjoy that car. Nancy and Carol named it ‘Ei Reo Grande'. (Brian and I had lately taken up Spanish; as usual our children were trying to outwit us. Pig Latin never did work; they cracked the code at once. Alfalfa speech did not last much longer.) We had established early in our marriage that some occasions were for the entire family... and some were for Mama and Papa alone - children would stay home and not whine about it, lest the middle justice be invoked. (Mother had used a peach switch; I found that one from an apricot tree worked just as well.)

By 1912, with Nancy a responsible twelve-gear-old girl, it was possible to leave the youngsters at home in her charge for a couple of hours or more in the daytime. (This was before Woodrow was born. Once he was big enough to walk, controlling him called for an Oregon boot and a morningstar.) This let Briney and me have some precious outings alone - and one of them got me Woodrow, as I have mentioned. Briney delighted in making love outdoors, and so did I; it gave a spice of danger to what was otherwise a sweet but lawful occasion.

But when the whole family went for a joy ride, we piled Nancy and Carol, Brian junior and George, into the roomy tonneau... with Nancy charged with seeing that no one stood up on the back seat (not to save the leather upholstery but to protect the child); I sat up front with Marie, and Brian drove.

The picnic basket and the lemonade jug were carried, in the tonneau, Carol being charged with keeping her brothers out of the picnic. We would drive out to Swope Park, picnic there, and see the zoo animals, then joy ride again after the picnic, perhaps clear out to Raytown or even Hickman Mills... then home with the children falling asleep, to a supper of picnic remains and cups of hot soup.

1912 was a good year, despite a blizzard touted as the ‘worst since'86' (it may have been; I don't remember the ‘86 blizzard too clearly). It was a campaign year, with a noisy three-sided race, Mr Taft running for re-election, Teddy Roosevelt at outs with his former protégé Mr Taft and running on his own ‘Bull Moose' (Progressive Republican) ticket, and Professor Wilson of Princeton, now Governor of his state, running on the Democratic ticket.

That last was a surprise outcome to an unbelievable month-long convention in which it seemed for days that Missouri's favourite son, Mr Champ Clark, Speaker of the House, would be nominated. Mr Clark led for twenty-seven ballots and had a clear majority on several but not the two thirds majority the Democrats required. Then Mr Wilham Jennings Bryan made a bargain with Dr Wilson, to be named Secretary of State, and Governor Wilson was nominated on the forty-sixth ballot after many of the delegates had gone home.

I followed all this in the Star with deep interest as I had read Dr Wilson's monumental (eighteen volumes!) History of the American People, borrowing it a volume at a time from the Kansas City Public Library. But I did not mention my interest to my husband as I suspected that he favoured Colonel Roosevelt.

The election day was on the fifth but we did not learn the outcome at once - three days I think it was. Woodrow was born Monday afternoon the eleventh at 3.0 p.m., and arrived squalling. Betty Lou midwifed me; as usual I was too fast for my doctor and this time Briney was at work, as I had told him that it couldn't be sooner than the end of that week.

Betty Lou said, ‘Have you picked a name for this one?'

I said, ‘Yes. Ethel.'

She held the baby up. ‘Take another look; that name doesn't match this tassel; better cave it. Why don't you name him after our new President? That should give him a running start.'

I don't remember what I said as Brian arrived about then, Betty Lou having telephoned him. She greeted him at the door with, ‘Come meet Woodrow Wilson Smith, President of , the United States in 1952.'

Sounds good.' Brian marched into our bedroom, imitating a brass band. The name stuck; we registered it with the Foundation and with the County.

When I thought it over, the name pleased me. I wrote a note to Dr Wilson, telling him of his namesake and saying that I was praying for the success of his administration. I received back, first, a note from Mr Patrick Tumulty, acknowledging my letter and saying that it was being brought to the attention of the President Elect ‘but you will understand, Madam, that recent events have flooded him with mail. It will be several weeks before all of it can be answered personally.'

Shortly after Christmas I did receive a letter from Dr Wilson, thanking me for having honoured him in the naming of my son. I framed it and had it for years. I wonder if it is still in existence somewhere on time line two?

The 1912 Presidential campaign had been fought on the issue of the high cost of living. The Smith family was not suffering but prices, food prices especially, were indeed rising - while as usual the farmers were complaining that they were not receiving even cost-of-production prices for what they grew. This may well have been so - I recall that wheat was less than a dollar a bushel.

But I did not buy wheat by the bushel; I bought food at a local grocery store and from my huckster and milkman and so forth. Again Brian asked me if I needed a raise in household allowance.

‘Possibly,' I answered. ‘We are getting by, but prices are going up. A dozen freshly-gathered eggs cost five cents now, and so does a quart of grade A. The Holsum Bread Company is talking about changing from two sizes at a nickel and a dime to two sizes at ten cents and fifteen cents. Want to bet that this does not mean a raise in price by the pound - I repeat, by the pound, not by the loaf - of at least twenty per cent?'

‘Find yourself another sucker, sister; I already bet on the election. I was thinking about meat prices.'

‘Up. Oh, just a penny or two a pound, but it goes on. But I've noticed something else. Mr Schontz used to include a soup bone without being asked. And some liver for Random. Suet for birds in the winter. Now those things happen only if I ask for them and, when I do, he doesn't smile. Just this week he said that he was going to have to start charging for liver as people were beginning to eat it, not just cats. I don't know how I'm going to explain this to Random.'

‘Let's keep first things first, my love; my wedding present must be fed. How you behave towards cats here below determines your status in Heaven.'

‘Really?'

‘That's straight out of the Bible; you can look it up. Have you talked to Nelson about cat food?'

‘It would not occur to me to do so. Betty Lou, yes; Nelson, no.'

‘Just remember that he is a professional economist concerning the growing and marketing of foodstuffs and he has a handsome sheepskin to prove it. Nel tells me that, starting any time now, cats and dogs are going to have their own food industry - fresh food, packaged food, canned food, special stores or special departments in stores, and national advertising. Big business. Millions of dollars. Even hundreds of millions:

‘Are you sure he wasn't joking? Nelson will joke about anything.'

‘I don't think he was. He was quite serious and he had figures to back his remarks. You have seen how gasoline powered machinery has been displacing horses, not just here in the city, but on farms - slowly but more each year. So we have out-of-work horses. Nelson says not to worry about those horses; the cats will eat them.'

‘What a horrid thought!'

At Brian's urging I worked up a chart that told me how grocery prices were rising. Fortunately I had thirteen years of exact records of what I had spent on food, what items, how much per pack, or pound, or dozen, etc. Briney had never required me to do it but it matched what my mother had done and it truly was a great help to me during those years of pinching every penny to know just what return I had received in food for each cent I had spent.

So I worked up this big chart, then figured out what a year's ration was, per person, as if I were feeding an army - so many ounces of flour, so many ounces of butter, sugar, meat, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits - not much for canned goods as I had learned, early on, that the only economical way to get canned goods was by canning stuff myself.

Eventually I produced a curve, the cost of a ration for one adult, 1899-1913.

It was a fairly smooth curve, trending steadily up, and with inflexure upwards. There were minor discontinuities but, on the whole, it was a smooth first-order curve.

I looked at that curve and it tempted me. I got down my old text for analytical geometry, from Thebes High School, measured some ordinates, abscissas, and slopes - plugged in the figures and wrote down the equation.

And stared at it. Had I actually derived a formula by which food prices could be predicted? Something the big brains with Ph.D.s and endowed chairs could not agree on?

No, no, Maureen! There is not a crop failure on there, not a war, not any major disaster. Not enough facts. Figures don't lie, but liars figure. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Don't make too much stew from one oyster.

I put my analytical work away where no one would find it. But I kept that chart. I did not use it for prediction but I did keep plotting that curve because it let me go to Briney and show him exactly why I needed a larger allowance, whenever I did - instead of waiting until it reached the fried mush situation. I did not hesitate to ask because Brian Smith Associates were prosperous.

I was no longer secretary-bookkeeper of our family firm; I had relinquished that status when Nelson, Betty Lou, and our business office had all moved out of the house together, two years earlier. No friction between us, not at all, and I had urged them to stay. But they wanted to be on their own and I understood that. Brian Smith Associates took an office near 31 st and Paseo, second floor, over a haberdashery, a location near the Troost Avenue Bank and the PO substation. It was a good neighbourhood for an office outside the downtown financial district. The Nelson Johnsons had their first home of their own about a hundred yards south on a side street, South Paseo Place.

This meant that Betty Lou could handle the records and go to the bank and pick up the mail, while still taking care of her two children, i.e., the back room of the company's ‘palatial suite' was converted into a day nursery.

Yet I was only twenty minutes away and could relieve her if she needed me, straight down 3ist by trolley car, good neighbourhoods st both ends, where I need not feel timid even after dark.

We continued this way until 1915, when Brian and Nelson hired a downy duckling fresh out of Spaulding's Commercial College, Anita Boles. Betty Lou and I continued to keep an eye on the books and one of us would be in the office if both men were out of town, as this child still believed in Santa Claus. But her typing was fast and accurate. (We had a new Remington now. I kept my old Oliver at home - a loyal friend, grown feeble.)

So I continued to know our financial position. It was good and got steadily better. Brian accepted points in lieu of full fee several times in the years 1906-1913; five of these enterprises had made money and three had paid quite well: a reopened zinc mine near Joplin, a silver mine near Denver, and a gold mine in Montana... and Briney was just cynical enough that he paid freely under the table to keep a close check on both the silver mine and the gold mine. He told me once, ‘You can't stop high-grading. Even your dear old grandmother can be tempted when gold ore gets so heavy that you can simply pick it up and know that it is loaded. But you can making stealing difficult if you are willing to pay for service.'

By 1911 there was plenty of money coming in, but I could not tell where much of it was going - and I would not ask Briney. It came in, it showed in the books; Nelson drew out some of it, Brian drew out more of it. Some of it wound up in my and in Betty Lou's hands to support our two households. But that did not account for all of it. The firm's cheque account was simply an aid to bookkeeping, a means to pay Anita and to pay by cheque other expenses; it was never allowed to grow larger than was needed for those purposes.

It was many years before I learned more than that.

On 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo, Serbia, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated. He was Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an otherwise useless piece of royalty, and to this day I have never been able to understand why this event could cause Germany to invade Belgium a month later. I read carefully all the newspapers at the time; I studied all the books I could lay hands on since, and I still can't see it. Sheer folly. I can see why, by a sort of insane logic, the Kaiser would attack his first cousin in St Petersburg - a network of ‘suicide-compact' alliances.

But why invade Belgium?

Yes, yes, to get at France. But why get at France at all? Why go out of your way to start wars on two fronts? And why do it through Belgium when that would drag in the one nation on Earth with a navy big enough to bottle up the German High Seas Fleet and deny it the high seas?

I heard my father and my husband talking about these matters on 4 August 1914. Father had come over for dinner but it was not a merry occasion - it was the day of the invasion of Belgium and there had been extras out on the streets.

Brian asked, ‘Beau-père, what do you think about it?'

Father was slow to answer. ‘If Germany can conquer France in two weeks, Great Britain will drop out.'

‘Well?'

‘Germany can't win that fast. So England will come in. So it will be a long, long war. Write the ending yourself.'

‘You mean we will be in it.'

‘Be a pessimist and you will hardly ever be wrong. Brian, I know little or nothing about your business. But it is time for all businesses to get on a war footing. What do you deal in that is bound to get involved?'

Briney said nothing for several moments. ‘All metals are war materials. But... Beau-père, if you have some money you want to risk, let me point out that mercury is indispensable for munitions. And scarce. Mostly they mine it in Spain. A place called Almaden.'

‘Where else?'

‘California. Some in Texas. Want to go out to California?'

‘No. Been there. Not my taste. I think Ml go back to my digs and get a letter off to Leonard Wood. Damn it, he made the switch from medical corps to line officer- he ought to be able to tell me how I can do it.'

Briney looked thoughtful. ‘I don't want to be in the engineers again, either. I don't belong there.'

‘You'll be a pick-and-shovel soldier again if you wait and join up here.'

‘How's that?'

‘The old Third Missouri is going to be reorganised as an engineer regiment. Wait around long enough and they'll hand you a shovel:

I kept my best unworried mask on, and kept on knitting. It felt like the end of April, 1898.

The European War dragged along, horribly, with stories of atrocities in Belgium and of ships being sunk by German submarine boats. One could feel a division building up in America; the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 brought the dichotomy sharply to the fore. Mother wrote from St Louis about the strong sentiment there for the Central Powers. Her parents, my Grandpa and Grandma Pfeiffer, apparently took it for granted that all decent people supported ‘the Old Country' in this struggle - this, despite the fact that Grossvater's parents had come to America in 1848 to get away from Prussian Imperialism, along with their son, who was just the right age to be conscripted if they had not emigrated. (Grandpa was born in 1830.)

But now it was ‘Deutschland Über Alies' and everybody knew that the Jews owned France and ran everything there, and if those American passengers had minded their own business and stayed home where they belonged, out of the war zone, they wouldn't have been on the Lusitania - after all, the Emperor had warned them. It was their own fault.

My brother Edward in Chicago reported much the same sentiment there. He did not sound pro-German himself, but he did express a fervent hope that we would stay out of a war that wasn't any of our business.

This was not what I heard at home. When President Wilson made his famous (infamous?) speech about the sinking of the Lusitania, the ‘too proud to fight' speech, Father carne over to see Brian and sat there, smouldering like a volcano, until all the children were in bed or elsewhere out of earshot. Then he used language that I pretended not to hear. He applied it mainly to the cowardly tactics of the Huns but he saved a plentiful portion for that ‘pusillanimous Presbyterian parson' in the White House. ‘Too proud to fight! What sort of talk is that? It requires pride in order to fight. A coward slinks away with his tail between his legs. Brian, we need Teddy Roosevelt back in there!'

My husband agreed.

In the spring of 1916 my husband went to Plattsburg, New York, where the previous summer General Leonard Wood had instituted a citizens training camp for officer candidates - Brian had been disappointed not to be able to attend it in ages, and planned ahead not to miss it in 1916. Ethel was born while Brian was away, through some careful planning of my own. When he returned at the end of August, I had the property back in shape and ready to welcome him, i.b.a.w.m.l.o., so that he could w.m.t.b.w. - and ‘Mrs Gillyhooley' did her best to be worth more than five dollars.

I suspect that I was, as my biological pressure was far up past the danger line.

It was the longest dry spell of my married life, in part because I was thoroughly chaperoned at home. At Brian's request Father lived with us while Brian was away. No harem guard ever took his duties more seriously than Father did. Brian had often chaperoned me as a shut-eye sentry; protecting me from the neighbours, not from my own libidinous nature.

Father included protecting me from himself. Yes, I tested the water. I had known way back when I was still virgo intacta how thoroughly incestuous were my feelings toward my father. Furthermore I was certain that he was just as moved by me.

So about ten days after Brian drove away, when my animal nature was crawling up on me, I arranged it so that I missed saying goodnight to Father, then came into his room right after he had gone to bed, dressed in a low-cut nightgown and a not too opaque peignoir-freshly bathed and smelling good (‘April Showers', a euphemism) - and said that I had come in to say goodnight, which he echoed. So I leaned over to kiss him, exposing my breasts and producing a wave of that sinful scent.

He pulled his face back. ‘Daughter, get out of here. And don't come around me again half naked.'

‘All naked, perhaps? Mon cher papa, je t'adore.'

‘You shut t'door... behind you.'

‘Oh, papa, don't be mean to me. I need to be cuddled. I need to be hugged.'

‘I know what you need but you are not going to get it from me. Now get out.'

‘What if I won't? I'm too big to spank.'

He sighed. ‘So you are. Daughter, you are an enticing and amoral bitch, we both know it, we have always known it. Since I can't spank you, I must warn you. Get out this instant... or I will telephone your husband right now, tonight, and tell him that he must come home at once as I am unable to carry out my responsibilities to him and to his family. Understand me?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Now get out.'

‘Yes, sir. May I make a short statement first?'

‘Well - make it march.'

‘I did not ask you to couple with me but if you had - if we had dope so, it would have done no harm; I am pregnant.'

‘Irrelevant ‘

‘Let me finish, please, sir. Ages ago, back when you were requiring me to work out my own personal commandments, you defined for me the parameters of prudent adultery. I have conformed meticulously to your definition, for it turned out that my husband's values in this matter match yours exactly.'

‘I am pleased to know that... but, possibly, not pleased that you told me. Did your husband specifically authorise you to tell me that?'

‘Uh... No, sir. Not specifically.'

‘Then you have told me a bedroom secret without the consent of the other person affected by the secret. Materially affected, as it is his reputation at risk as well as yours. Maureen; you have no right to place another person at risk without his knowledge and consent and you know it.'

I kept quiet a long, cold moment. ‘Yes. I was wrong. Goodnight, sir.'

‘Goodnight, my darling daughter. I love you.' .

When Brian returned, he told us that he would be going back to Plattsburg again in 1917 - if we were not already at war by then. ‘They want some of us to get there early and turn instructor to help train the new ones with no military experience... and if I will, I go from second to first lieutenant in a hurry. No promise in writing. But that's the policy. Beau-père, can you be here next year? Why don't you just stay on? No point in your opening up your flat again, and I'll bet that Mo's cooking is better than the restaurant cooking at that Greek joint under your flat. Isn't it? Careful how you answer.'

‘It's somewhat better.'

‘"Somewhat!" I'll burn your toast!'

We had a small war on our southern border in 1916; ‘General' Pancho Villa raided across the border again and again, killing and burning. ‘Black Jack' Pershing, of Mindanao fame, who had been jumped by President Roosevelt from captain to brigadier-general, was sent by President Wilson to find and seize Villa. Father had known Pershing when they were both captains in the fight against the Moros; Father thought well of him and was delighted with his meteoric rise (with more to come).

Father pacified a small war at home, for he did stay on with us, and largely took Woodrow out of my hands, with full authority to exercise on Woodrow the low, the middle, and the high justice without consulting either of his parents. Both Brian and I were relieved.

Father took a shine to my sixth child, and that left me free to hold Woodrow as favourite in my heart, with no need or temptation to let it show. (My children were all different, and I liked each one of them differently, just as with other people... but I did my utter best to treat them all with even justice, without any favouritism in act or manner. I tried. Truly I tried.)

At this great distance, more than a century, I think I at last know why my least likeable son was my favourite: because he was most like my father, both in his good points and his bad. My father was by no means a saint... but he was ‘my kind of a scoundrel'... and my son Woodrow was almost his replica, sixty years younger, the same faults, the same virtues - and the two most stubborn males I have ever met.

Perhaps an unbiased judge might think that we three were ‘triplets' - aside from the unimportant fact that we were father, daughter, and daughter's son... and that they each were as emphatically male as I am female (I am so totally every minute a set of female glands and organs, that I can cope with it only by carefully simulating the sort of ‘lady' approved by Mrs Grundy and Queen Victoria).

But those two males were stubborn. Me? Me stubborn? How could you think such a thing?

Father clobbered Woodrow as necessary (frequently), took over his education as he had taken over mine, taught him to play chess at four, did not need to teach him to read - like Nancy, Woodrow taught himself. It left me free to rear my other, civilised, well-behaved children with no difficulty and with no need to raise my voice. (Woodrow could have pushed me into being the sort of screaming scold I despise.)

Father's ‘adoption' of Woodrow left me more time with my lovely and loving and lovable husband. All too soon it was time for him to leave again for Plattsburg. Then I settled down for a truly dry spell. Nelson had been in town part of the time the year before. But now Brian Smith Associates had moved its physical location to Galena where Nelson was supervising a new mine that Brian had bought into, when his survey showed its worth but its developer needed more capital. Anita Boles had married and left us; our KC office was now just a post office box number, a telephone number transferred back to our house, and a little clerical work I could handle with ease, as my biggest boy, Brian junior, now twelve, picked up the mail from the box on his bicycle each day on his way home from school.

So Nelson, my only utterly safe ‘relief husband' was too far away... and my father, the puritanical shikepoke, was watching me closely... so Maureen resigned herself to four, five, possibly six months in a nunnery.

Father often spent a couple of hours in the evening at a pool hall he called his ‘chess club'. On a rainy night at the end of February he surprised me by bringing a stranger home with him.

He thereby subjected me to the greatest emotional shock of my life.

I found myself offering my hand and greeting a young man who matched in every way (even to his body odour, which I caught quite clearly - clean mate, in fresh rut) - a man who was my father as my earliest memory recalled him.

While I smiled and made small talk, I said to myself, ‘Don't faint. Maureen, you must not faint.'

For I had immediately gone into high readiness to receive a male. This male. This male who looked like my father, thirty years younger. I forced myself not to tremble, to keep my voice low, to treat him exactly like any other welcome guest brought to my house by husband or father or child.

Father introduced him as Mr Theodore Bronson. I heard Father say that he had promised Mr Bronson a cup of coffee, which gave me the respire I needed. I smiled and said, ‘Yes indeed! For a cold and rainy night. Gentlemen, do be seated' - and fled into the kitchen.

The time I spent in the kitchen, slicing pound cake, dishing up mints, setting out coffee service, cream and sugar, transferring coffee from the kitchen-range coffee-pot into a silver ‘company' serving-pot - this busy-ness gave me time to pull myself together, not expose my own rut and (I hoped) cover some of my body odour simply by the odours of food and the fact that female clothing in those days was all-encompassing. I hoped that Father would not notice what I had been sure of, that Mr Bronson felt the same way about me.

I carried in the tray; Mr Bronson jumped up and helped me with it. We had coffee and cake and small talk. I need not have worried about Father; he was busy with an idea of his own. He too had seen the family resemblance... and had formed a theory: Mr Bronson was a by-blow of his brother Edward, killed in a train wreck not long after I was born: Father had us stand up, side by side, then look in the mirror over the mantelpiece together.

Father trotted out this possible theory of Mr Bronson's ‘orphan' origin. It was many months before he admitted to me that he suspected that Mr Bronson was not my cousin through my rakehell Uncle Edward, but my half-brother through Father himself.

The talk that night let me, with all propriety and right under my father's nose, tell Mr Bronson that I looked forward to seeing him at church on Sunday and that my husband expected to be home for my birthday and we would expect him for dinner... since it was Mr Bronson's birthday, too!

He left soon after that. I bade Father goodnight and went up to my lonely room.

First I took a bath. I had bathed before supper but I needed another one - I reeked of rut. I masturbated in the tub and my breasts stopped hurting. I dried down and put on a nightgown and went to bed.

And got up and locked my bedroom door and took off my gown and got naked back into bed, and masturbated again, violently, thinking about Mr Bronson, how he looked, the way he smelled, the timbre of his voice.

I did it again and again, until I could sleep.