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

Chapter 18 - Bachelorhood

I am not an expert on how to role a conquered country, so I will refrain from criticising President Patton's policies concerning our Far Eastern Possessions. My dear friend and husband, Dr Jubal Harshaw, tells me (and the histories at Boondock confirm) that on his time line (code Neil Armstrong) the policies were utterly different - supportive rather than harsh to the conquered foe.

But both policies (both time lines) were disastrous for the United States.

In the years from 1952 to 1982 I never had any real occasion to use my study of Japanese language and writing. But twenty-four centuries later my knowledge of Japanese caused Jubal to ask me to accept an odd assignment, after I had shifted from rejuvenation apprentice to the Time Corps. The outcome of the long and bitter war between the United States and the Japanese Empire had been disastrous for both sides on all time lines supervised by the Circle of Ouroboros, both those in which the United States ‘won' and those in which the Japanese Empire ‘won' - such as time Tine seven (code Fairacres) in which the Emperor and the Reichsführer split the continent down the middle along the Mississippi River.

The Time Corps mathematicians, headed by Libby Long, and their bank of computer simulators, supervised by Mycroft Holmes (the computer who led the Lunar Revolution on time line three) attempted to determine whether or not a revised history could be created in which the Japanese-American war of 1941-45 never took place. If so, would that avoid the steady deterioration of planet Earth that had occurred after that war on all explored time lines?

To this end the Corps needed agents before 1941 in Japan and in the United States. Agents for the United States were no problem, as there were lavish records in Boondock of American language, history, and culture in the twentieth century Gregorian as well as residents of Tertius who had actually experienced that culture at or near the target dates: Lazarus Long, Maureen Johnson, Jubal Harshaw, Richard Campbell, Hazel Stone, Zeb Carter, Hilda Mae Burroughs, Deety Carter, Jake Burroughs, and others - most especially Anne, a Fair Witness. I know that she was sent. And probably others.

But residents of Tellus Tertius familiar with Japanese language and culture of the twentieth century Gregorian were between zero and non-existent. There were two residents of Chinese ancestry, Dong Xia and Marcy Choy-Mu, who were physically similar to Japanese norms but neither knew any Japanese or anything of Japanese culture.

I could not possibly pass for Japanese - red-haired Japanese are as common as for on fish - but I could speak and write Japanese, not like a native but like a foreigner who has studied it. So a reasonable decision was made: I would go as a tourist - an exceptional tourist, one who had taken the trouble to learn something of the Language, culture, and history of Nippon before going there.

A tourist who bothers to study these aspects of a country before visiting it will always be welcome, if he is polite by their rules of politeness, It is easy to say, glibly, that every tourist ought to do this, but in fact this is difficult, expensive in time and money. I have a knack for languages and enjoy studying them. So, by the age of seventy, I knew five modern languages including my own.

That left over a thousand languages I did not know and around three billion people with whom I had no common language. The task is too big - a labour of Tantalus.

But I was well equipped to be an inoffensive tourist in Japan for the decade preceding the great war of 1941-45. So I went, and was put down in Macao, a place where bribery is the norm and money will accomplish almost anything. I was armed with lavish amounts of money and three very sincere passports; one said that I was Canadian, another that I was American, and the third that I was British.

I went by ferry to Hong Kong, a place much more nearly honest but where nevertheless money is highly respected. By then I had learned that neither British nor Americans were well thought of in the Far East at that time but that Canadians had not yet inspired any special dislike, so I started using the passport that showed that I was born in British Columbia and lived in Vancouver. A Dutch ship, the MV Ruys, took me from Hong Kong to Yokohama.

I spent a lovely year, 1937-38, tramping around Japan, sleeping in native inns, feeding the tiny deer at Nara, being breathless at the sight of Fuji-San at dawn, cruising the Inland Sea in a dinky little steamer, relishing the beauties of one of the most beautiful countries and cultures in all histories - all the while gathering data that I recorded in an implanted, voice-operated recorder much like the one I am now using.

I was also wearing, internally, a finder such as I am wearing now, and the fact that I haven't been found indicates to me that Time Corps HQ does not know what planet I am on, as the equipment is supposed to be delicate enough to track down an agent who has missed a rendezvous no matter where he is, as long as he is on the planet of drop.

That's the bad news. Here is the good news. During that year in Japan I heard several times of another redheaded English (American Canadian) woman who was touring the Empire, studying Japanese gardens. She speaks Japanese and is said to look like me... although the latter means little; we round-eyes all look alike to them, except that red hair would always be noticed, and speaking Japanese is decidedly noticed.

Have I been (will I be) sent back on another visit to pre-war Japan? Am I time-looped on myself? The paradox does not bother me; Time agents are used to loops - I'm already looped for the gear 1937-38. I spent that year in Kansas City for the first time, except for two weeks in July following the birth of Priscilla and after Brian's bar exams; we celebrated both events with a trip to the Utah Canyons - Bryce, Cedar Breaks, North Rim.

If I am also looped on myself (tripled) in Japan in the year 1937-38, then the tripling will happen on my personal time line after my present now... which means that Pixel will carry the message and I will be rescued. There are no paradoxes in time; all apparent paradoxes can be untangled.

But it is a thin thread on which to hang my hope.

Tuesday, 5 August 1952, time line two, started as a sad day for Maureen... utterly alone for the first time in my life, alone with the tedious chore of cleaning out and closing up our old farmhouse and getting rid of it. But a glad day in one way. My married life had ended when Brian divorced me; my widowhood ended when Susan got married; this chore marked the start of my bachelorhood.

The difference between widowhood and bachelorhood? Please look at it historically. When I married, at the end of the nineteenth century, women were unmistakably second class citizens and everyone took it for granted. In most states a woman could not vote, or sign contracts, or own real estate, or sit on juries, or do any number of other mundane acts without the consent of some man - her father, her husband, or her eldest son. Most professions, trades, and occupations were closed to her. A woman lawyer, a woman doctor, a woman engineer aroused the same surprise as a waltzing bear.

‘The wonder is not how well the bear waitzes but that it waltzes at all.' That is from Dr Samuel Johnson, I believe - a man who regarded women as no better than third-class citizens, lower than Scotsmen or Americans - two groups quite low in his esteem.

All through the twentieth century the legal status of women slowly improved. By 1982 almost all the laws discriminating against women had been repealed.

More subtle but at least as important and beyond repeal was the cultural bias against women. An example:

In the summer of 1940 when we were living on Woodlawn Avenue in Chicago, we were especially loaded with house guests during the mo weeks bridging the Democratic National Convention. One Howard trustee, Rufus Briggs, said to me one morning at breakfast, I left my laundry on that balcony couch where I slept. I need twenty-four-hour service on it and tell them to soft starch the collars - no other starch.'

I said briskly, ‘Tell them yourself' I was not feeling overly sweet-tempered, as I had been up late the night before, arranging shake-downs for late arrivals, such as Briggs himself - he was, one of the cheerful idiots who had arrived in Chicago oblivious to the fact that for this period all hotel space as far away as Gary, Indiana, had been booked solid months earlier. Then I dragged myself out of bed early and ate in the kitchen in order to cook and serve breakfast to a dozen other people.

Briggs looked at me as if he could not believe his ears. ‘Aren't you the housekeeper?'

‘I'm the housekeeper. But I'm not your servant.'

Briggs blinked his eyes, then turned to Brian. ‘Mr Smith?'

Brian said quietly, ‘You have made a mistake, Mr Briggs. This lady is my wife. You met her last night but the lights were dimmed and we were whispering because others were asleep. So apparently you did not recognise her this morning. But I am sure Mrs Smith would be happy to send your laundry out for you as a favour to a guest.'

I said, ‘No, I would not'

It was Briney's turn to look startled. ‘Maureen?'

‘I won't send out his laundry and I will not cook his breakfast tomorrow morning. His only comment this morning was to complain about his eggs; he did not even say thank you when I put his breakfast in front of him. So he can go out for breakfast tomorrow. I imagine he'll find something open on 63^rd Street. But I have this announcement for all of you,' I added, looking around. ‘We have no servants here. I am just as anxious to get to Convention Hall on time as you are. Yesterday I was late because I was making beds and doing dishes. Only one of you made your own bed - thanks, Merle! I'm not going to make beds today; if you don't make your own bed, you will find it still unmade when you get back. Right now I want volunteers to clear the table and do the dishes... and if I don't get them, I am not going to cook breakfast for anyone tomorrow.'

An hour later Brian and I left to go to the Convention.

While we were walking to the El station he said to me, ‘Mo, this is the first time we had a chance to speak to you privately. I really did not appreciate your failure to back me up in dealing with another trustee.'

‘How?' I asked (knowing quite well what he meant).

‘I told Mr Briggs that you would be happy to send out his laundry, and then you flatly refused, contradicting me. My dear, I was humiliated.'

‘Briney, I was humiliated when you attempted to reverse me after I had told him to send out his laundry himself. I simply stuck by my guns.'

‘But he had made a mistake, dear; he thought you were a servant. I tried to smooth it over by saying that of course you were happy to do it as a favour to a guest.'

‘Why didn't you say that you would be happy to send out his laundry?'

‘Eh?' Brian seemed truly puzzled.

‘I can tell you why you didn't offer to do it. Because both you men regard sending out laundry as women's work. And it is, when it's your laundry and I am the woman. But I'm not Rufus Briggs wife and I will not do servant's work for him. He's a clod.'

‘Maureen, sometimes I don't understand you.'

‘You're right; sometimes you don't.'

‘I mean - Take this matter of making beds and washing dishes. When we are at home we never expect house guests to wash the dishes or to make their own beds.'

‘At home, Briney, I always have two or three big girls to help me... and never a dozen house guests at a time. And our women guests usually offer to help and if I need their help, I let them. Nothing like this mob I'm faced with now. They are not friends; they aren't relatives; most are total strangers to me and all act as if we were running a boarding house. But most of them at least say thank-you and please. Mr Briggs does not. Briney, at bottom you and Mr Briggs have the same attitude towards women; you both think of women as servants.'

‘I don't see that. I don't think you are being fair.'

‘So? Then I ask you again: if you wanted to be gracious to a guest, why did you not offer your own services to take tare of his laundry? You can use a telephone and the yellow section quite as well as I can, then you can arrange for or do whatever is necessary. There is nothing about sending out laundry that requires special womanly skills; you can do it as easily as I. Why did you see fit to volunteer my services in the face of my stated opposition?'

‘I thought it was the gracious thing to do.'

‘Gracious to whom, sir? To your wife? Or to the business associate who was rude to her?'

‘Uh - We'll say no more about it.'

That incident was not unusual; it was exceptional only in that I refused to accept the conventional subordinate role under which a woman, any woman, was expected to wait on men. Repealing laws does not change such attitudes because they are learned by example from earliest childhood.

‘These attitudes can't be repealed like laws because they are usually below the level of consciousness. Consider, please, who makes the coffee. You are in a mixed group, business or quasi-business: a company conference, a public interest group, a PTA meeting. As a lubricant for the exchange of ideas, coffee is a good idea, and the means to make it is at hand.

Who makes the coffee? It could be a man. But don't bet on it. Ten to one you would lose.

Let's move forward thirty years from the incident of Rufus Briggs the soft-starched clod, from 1940 to 1970. By 1970 most legal impediments to equality between the sexes were gone. This incident involved a board meeting of Skyblast Freight, a D. D. Harriman enterprise. I was a director and this was not my first meeting. I knew all the directors by sight and they knew me or at least had had opportunity to know me.

However I admit that I was looking younger than the last time they had seen me. I had had my pendulous baby-chewed breasts reshaped, and at the same Beverly Hills hospital I had tucks taken up under the hairline to take the slack out of my face, then I had gone to an Arizona health ranch to get into top condition and lose fifteen pounds. I had gone next to Vegas and splurged on ultra-chic, very feminine, new clothes - not the tailored pantsuits most female executives wore. I was smugly aware that I did not look the eighty-eight years I had lived, nor the fifty-eight I admitted. I think I looked a smart forty.

I was waiting in the foyer outside the boardroom, intending not to go in until called - board meetings are dull rituals... but a crisis is sure to come up if you skip one.

Just as the light outside the boardroom started to blink a man came slamming in from outside, Mr Phineas Morgan, leader of a large minority bloc. He headed straight for the blinking light while shrugging off his overcoat. As he passed me, he chucked it at me. ‘Take care of it!'

I ducked aside, let his coat land on the floor. ‘Hey! Morgan!' He checked himself, looked back. I pointed at the floor. ‘Your coat.'

He looked surprised, amazed, indignant, angry, and vindictive, all in one second. ‘Why, you little bitch! I'll have you fired for that.'

‘Go right ahead.' I moved past him into the boardroom, found my place card, and sat down. A few seconds later he sat down opposite me, at which point his face managed still another expression.

Phineas Morgan had not intentionally tried to use a fellow director as a servant. He saw a female figure who, in his mind, must be hired staff - secretary, receptionist, clerk, whatever. He was late and in a hurry and assumed that this subordinate employee would as a matter of course hang up his coat so that he could go straight to roll call.

The moral? In 1970 on time line two the legal system assumed that a man is innocent until proved guilty; in 1970 on time line two, the cultural system assumed that a female is subordinate until proved otherwise - despite all laws that asserted that the sexes were equal.

I planned to kick that assumption in the teeth.

5 August 1952 marked the beginning of my bachelorhood because that was the day on which I resolved that from that time on I would be treated the way a man is treated with respect to rights and privileges - or I would raise hell about it. I no longer had a family, I was no longer capable of childbearing, I was not looking for a husband, I was financially independent (and then some!), and I was firmly resolved never again ‘to send out the laundry' for some man merely because I use the washroom intended for setters rather than the one set aside for pointers.

I did not plan to be aggressive about it. If a gentleman held a door for me, I would accept the courtesy and thank him. Gentlemen enjoy offering little gallantries; and lady enjoys accepting them graciously, with a smile and a word of thanks.

I mention this because, by the 197=s, there were many females who would snub a man unmercifully if he offered a gallantry, such as holding a chair for a woman, or offering to help per in or out of a car. These women (a minority but a ubiquitous, obnoxious one) treated traditional courtesy as if it w ere an insult. I grew to think of these females as the lesbian Mafia. I don't know that all of them were homosexual (although I'm certain about some of them) but their behaviour caused me to lump them all together.

If some of them were not lesbians, then where did they find heterosexual mates? What sort of wimp would put up with this sort of rudeness in women? I am sorry to say that by 1970 there were plenty of wimps of every sort. The wimps were taking over. Manly men, gallant gentlemen, the sort who do not wait to be drafted, were growing scarce.

The principal problem in closing the house lay in the books; what to store, what to give away, what to take with me. The furniture and the small stuff, from pots and pans to sheets, would mostly be given to Good Will. We had been in that house twenty-three years, 1929 to 1952; most of the furniture was that old, or nearly so, and, after being worked over by a swarm of active children all those years, the market value of these chattels was too low to justify placing them in storage - since I had no intention of setting up a proper household in the foreseeable future.

I hesitated over my old upright piano. It was an old friend; Briney had given it to me in 1909 - second- (third-?) hand even then; it was the first proof that Brian Smith Associates was actually in the black. Brian had paid fourteen dollars for it at an auction.

No! If my plans were to work out, I must travel light. Pianos can be rented anywhere.

Having resolved to give up my piano other decisions were easy, so I decided to start with the books. Move all books from al over the house into the living - no, into the dining room; pile them on the dining-table. Pile them high. Pile the rest on the floor. Who could believe that one house could hold so many books?

Roll in the big utility table; start stacking on it books to be stored. Roll in the little tea-table; place on it books to take with me. Set up card-tables for books to go to Good Will. Or to the Salvation Army? Whichever one will come and get the stuff, soonest, can have the lot - clothes, books, bedclothes, furniture, whatever. But they've got to come and get it.

An hour later I was still telling myself firmly: No! Don't stop to read anything! If you must read it, then put that book in the ‘take with' pile - you can thin it down later.

Then I heard the mewing of a cat.

I said to myself, ‘Oh, that girl! Susan, what have you dope to me?'

Two years earlier, we had become catless through the tragic demise of Captain Blood, grandson of Chargé d'Affaires - sudden death from a hit-and-run driver on Rockhill Boulevard. In the preceding forty-three years I had never tried keeping the house without a cat. I tend to agree with Mr Clemens, who rented three cats when he moved into his home in Connecticut in order to give a new house that lived-in feeling.

But this time I resolved to struggle along without a cat. Patrick was eighteen, Susan was sixteen; each had received his Howard list. It was predictable that each would be leaving the nest in the near future.

Cats have one major shortcoming. Once you adopt one, you are stuck for life. The cat's life, that is. The cat does not speak English; it does not understand broken promises. If you abandon it, it will die and its ghost will haunt your nights.

At dinner the day Captain Blood was killed none of us ate much and we were not talkative. At last Susan said, ‘Mama, do we start watching the want-ads? Or do we go to the Humane Society?'

‘For what, dear?' (I was intentionally obtuse.)

‘For a kitten, of course.'

So I laid it on the Tine: ‘A kitten could live fifteen years, or longer. When you two leave home this house will be sold, as I have no intention of rattling around in a fourteen-room house, alone. Then what happens to the cat?'

‘Nothing. Because there is not going to be a cat.'

About two weeks later Susan was a bit late getting home from school. She came in and said, ‘Mama, I must be gone a couple of hours. An errand.' She was carrying a brown paper sack.

‘Yes, dear. May I ask why and where?'

‘This.' She put the sack on my kitchen table. it tilted and a kitten walked out. A jellicle cat, small and neat and black and white, just as described in Mr Eliot's poem.

I said, ‘Oh, dear!'

Susan said, ‘It's all right, Mama. I've already explained to her that she can't live here.'

The kitten looked at me, wide-eyed, then sat down and started pin-pleating its white jabot. I said, ‘What is her name?'

‘She doesn't have one, Mama. It wouldn't be fair to give her one. I'm taking her down to the Humane Society so that she can be put to sleep without hurting. That's the errand I have to do.'

I was firm with Susan. She must feed the kitten herself. She must clean and refill its sand box as long as it needed one. She must train it to use the cat door. She must see to its shots, taking it back and forth to the veterinary hospital at the Plaza as necessary. The kitten was hers and hers alone, and she must plan on taking it with her when she married and left home.

Kitten and girl listened to this, round-eyed and solemn, and both agreed to the terms. And I attempted not to get friendly with this cat - let her look entirely to Susan, bond only with Susan.

But what do you do when a square ball of black and white fluff sits up on its hind legs, sticks out its little fat belly, waves its three-inch arms beside its ears, and says, plain as anything, ‘Please, Mama. Please come fight with me.'

Nevertheless . Susan remained committed to taking her kitten with her. We did not discuss it but the deal was never renegotiated.

I went to the front door - no cat. Then I went to the back door. ‘Come in, your Highness.'

Her Serene Highness, Princess Polly Ponderosa Penelope Peachfuzz, paraded in, tail high. (‘It's about Time! But thank you anyway and don't let it happen again. What's for lunch?') She sat down, facing the kitchen cupboard where canned food was kept.

She ate a six-ounce can of tuna and liver, demanded more and did equally well on veal in gravy, then ate some crunchies for dessert, stopping from time to time to head-bump my ankles. At last she stopped to clean.

‘Polly, let me see your pads.' She was not her usual immaculate self and I had never seen her so hungry. Where had she been the past three days?

I was certain from examining her paws that she had been on the road. I thought of some grim questions to ask Susan when she telephoned. If she did. But in the mean time the cat was here and this was home and the responsibility was now mine, by derivation. When I moved out of this house, the cat had to go with me. Unavoidable. Susan, I wish you were unmarried just long enough for me to spank you.

I rubbed Vaseline on her paws and got back to work. Princess Polly went to sleep on a pile of books. If she missed Susan, she didn't say so. She seemed willing to pig it with just one servant.

About one in the afternoon I was still sorting books and trying to decide whether to make do with a cold sandwich or go all out and open a can of tomato soup - when the front door chimed. Princess Polly looked up.

I said, ‘You're expecting someone? Susan, maybe?' I went to the door.

Not Susan. Donald and Priscilla.

‘Come in, darlings!' I opened the door wide. ‘Are you hungry? Have you had lunch?' I did not ask them any questions. There is a poem by Robert Frost, well known on that time line in that century, ‘The Death of the Hired Man', which contained this definition: ‘Home is the place that, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.' Two of my children had come home; they would tell me what they wished to tell me when they got around to it. I was simply glad that I had a house to let them into and that I still had bed clothes for them. Cat and children had not changed my plans - but those plans could wait. I was glad that I had not managed to clear out the day before, Monday the fourth - I would have missed all three. Tragic!

I got busy rustling up lunch for them - fancy cooking; I did open Campbell's tomato soup, two cans. ‘Let me see. We have quite a lot of not too stale cake left over from the reception, and a half-gallon of vanilla ice-cream that has not been opened. How much can you two eat?'

‘Plenty!'

‘Priss is right. We haven't eaten anything today.'

‘Oh, my goodness! Sit down. Let's get some soup into you fast, then we'll see what else you want. Or would you rather have breakfast things, seeing that this is breakfast for you? Bacon and eggs? Cereal?'

‘Anything,' answered my son. ‘If it's alive, I'll bite its head off.'

‘Behave yourself, Donnie,' said his sister. ‘We'll start with soup, Mama.'

While we were eating Priscilla said, ‘Why are the books piled all around, Mama?'

I explained that I was getting ready to dose the house, preparatory to selling it. My children exchanged looks; they both looked solemn, almost woebegone. I looked from face to face. ‘Take it easy,' I advised. ‘There is nothing to look sad about. I'm not faced with any deadlines and this is your home. Do you want to fill me in?'

Most of it was fairly obvious from their condition - dirty, tired, hungry, and broke. They had had some sort of trouble with their father and their stepmother and they had left Dallas ‘forever' - ‘But, Mama, this was before we knew that you were planning to sell this house. We'll have to find somewhere else to go... because Donnie and I are not going back there.'

‘Don't be in a hurry,' I said. ‘You are not out on the street.

I'm going to sell this house, yes - but we'll put another roof over our heads. This is the right time to sell this place because I let George Strong - he's in real estate - know that this place would be available once Susan was married. Hmm -‘ I went to the screen and punched up Harriman and Strong.

A woman's face came on screen. ‘Harriman and Strong, Investments. Harriman Enterprises. Allied Industries. How may I help you?'

‘I am Maureen Johnson. I would like to speak to Mr Harriman or to Mr Strong.'

‘Neither is available. You may record a message-scramble and bush are on line if needed. Or our Mr Watkins will speak to you:

‘No. Relay me to George Strong.'

‘I am sorry. Will you speak to Mr Watkins?'

‘No. Just get this message to Mr Strong: George, this is Maureen Johnson speaking. That parcel is now available, and I punched in to offer you first refusal as I promised. I have carried out my promise but I am going to deal today. So now I will call the J. C. Nichols Company.'

‘Will you hold, please?' Her face was replaced by a flower garden, her voice by a syrupy rendition of ‘In an Eighteenth Century Drawing-Room'.

George Strong's face came on. ‘Greetings, Mrs Johnson. Good to see you.'

‘Maureen to you, old dear. I called to say that I am moving. Now is the hour if you want to bid on it. Do you still want it?'

‘I can use it. Do you have a price in mind?'

‘Yes, certainly. Just twice what you are willing to pay.'

‘Well, that's a good start. Now we can dicker.'

‘Just a moment. George, I need another house, a smaller one. Three bedrooms, within walking distance of Southwest High. Got something like that?'

‘Probably. Or across the line and close to Shawnee Mission High. Want to swap?'

‘No, I'm planning to skin you on the deal. I want to lease by the year, automatic renewal unless notice given, ninety days.'

‘All right. Pick you up tomorrow morning? Ten o'clock? I want to look over your parcel, point out to - you its shortcomings and beat your price down.'

‘Ten o'clock, it is. Thank you, George.'

‘Always a pleasure, Maureen.'

Donald said, ‘Dallas phones are all tanks now. How come KC still uses flatties? Why don't they modernise?'

I answered, ‘Money. Donald, any question that starts out "Why don't they - " the answer is always "Money". But in this case I can offer more details. The Dallas try-out turns out not to be cost-effective and the 3-D tanks will be phased out. For the full story see the Wall Street journal. The back issues for the past quarter are stacked in the library. It's a six-part series, front page.'

Tm sorry I brought it up. They can use smoke signals for all of me.'

‘Be glad you brought it up and make use of the opportunity I offered you. Donald, if you intend to cope with the jungle out there, you need to make the Wall Street journal and similar publications such as The Economist your favourite comic books.' I added, ‘Ice-cream and cake?'

I put Priscilla into Susan's room, and Donald into the room Patrick had had, just beyond my bath. We went to bed early. About midnight I woke up, then got up to pee, not bothering with a light, as there was moonlight streaming in. I was about to flush the pot when I heard an unmistakable rhythmic sound - bed squeaks. Suddenly I was goose-flesh all over.

Priss and Donnie had left here almost as babies, two and four years old; they probably didn't realise that this old house was about as well soundproofed as a tent. Oh, dear! Those poor children.

I kept very quiet. The rhythm speeded up. Then I heard Priscilla start to keen and Donald to grunt. Shortly the squeaks stopped and they both sighed. I heard Priscilla say, ‘I needed that. Thanks, Donnie.'

I was proud of her. But it was time for me to hurry - much as I hated to, I must catch them in. the act. Or I couldn't help them.

Seconds later I tapped on Donald's door. ‘Darlings? May I come in?'