again emphasise the necessity of never calling attention to our peculiarity. We must
try to avoid having anyone notice that we are in any way different.’
He sighed, then went on: ‘So I am forced to say that I am sorry to see you five
ladies all in one room at one time, and to add that I hope that it will never happen
again. And I shiver at the idea that you are being photographed together. If that
photograph wound up in the society section of next Sunday’s Journal-Post, it could
ruin the careful efforts of all our cousins to avoid calling attention to ourselves.
Ken, don’t you think it would be well to kill that picture?’
Ken Barstow was outgunned; I could see that he was about to let the Foundation’s
chief officer have his own way.
But I was not outgunned. `Hey! Justin, you stop that! You’re chairman of the board,
surely. But nobody appointed you God. Those photos were taken for me and my kids.
You kill them, or get Ken to, and I’m going to beat you over the head with his
camera.’
‘Now, Maureen – ‘
` “Now Maureen” my tired feet! We’ll keep it out of the papers, certainly. But I
want five copies of Ken’s best shot, one for each of us. And Ken is entitled to a
copy for his own files, if he wants it.’
We agreed on that and Justin asked for one to place in the Archives.
I thought at the time that Justin was being unnecessarily cautious. I was wrong.
Justin, in instituting and stubbomly pressing the policy later known as the
Masquerade, caused our cousins to enter the Interregnum of the Prophets with eighty
per cent having public ages under forty, only three per cent with public ages over
fifty. Once the Prophet’s thought police were active it became both difficult and
dangerous to switch backgrounds and change identities; Justin’s foresight made it
usually unnecessary to attempt it.
According to the Archives Brian died in 1998 at the age of 119 – a newsworthy age in
the twentieth century. But his public age at that time was eighty-two, which is not
newsworthy at all. Justin’s policies allowed almost all Howard clients to enter the
Interregnum (2012) with reduced public ages that let them live and die without
conspicuously living too long.
Thank God I didn’t have to cope with it! No, not `Thank God’ – Thank Hilda Mae, Zeb,
Deety, Jake, and a wonderful, lovable machine named `Gay Deceiver’. I would like to
see all five of them right now; Mama Maureen needs rescuing again.
Maybe Pixel will find them. I think he understood me.
Several out-of-towners stayed over the weekend, but by Tuesday morning 5 August I
was alone – truly alone for the first time in my seventy years of life. My two
youngest – Donald, sixteen, and Priscilla, fourteen – were still unmarried. But they
were no longer mine. In the divorce settlement, they had elected to stay with the
children they had been living with as brothers and sisters – and who were now
legally their brothers and sisters as Marian had adopted them.
Susan was the youngest of the four who had lived with Betty Lou and Nelson during
the War, and the last to marry.
Alice Virginia had married Ralph Sperling right after the War ended; Doris Jean
married Roderick Briggs the following year; and Patrick Henry, my son by Justin, had
married Charlotte Schmidt in 1951.
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Betty Lou and Nelson moved to Tampa shortly after I returned home, taking with them
their three who were still at home. Her parents and Nelson’s mother Aunt Carole were
in Florida; Betty Lou wanted to look after all of them. (How old was Aunt Carole in
1946? She was the widow of Father’s elder brother, so she – Goodness! In 1946 she
must have been on or near her century mark. Yet she looked the same as ever the last
time I had seen her, uh – shortly before Japan’s sneak attack in ’41. Did she dye
her hair?)
On Saturday I had been triste not only because my last chick was getting married and