The Judas Kiss

THE young clergyman cleared his throat.

"As we are all met together," he began, "I will read you a letter I have received from our father."

"Listen, girls," said Jasper flippantly, "our reverend brother has apparently had a message from On High. It may be important."

"Where is he, Garnie?" enquired Emerald, the older sister.

"Does he say when he will be back?" asked Pearl, the youngest of them all.

Garnet replied to their questions in what they called his parson voice.

"I will read the letter," he repeated. "It will tell you all I know."

Again he cleared his throat, and holding his missive in front of him, he started,

'M
Y
D
EAR
G
ARNET
,

It is nearly three months since I left you, to convalesce after that bout of 'flu. It was good of you all to offer to accompany me, but I thought it best to be alone, especially as I did not know exactly where I meant to go and wished to be free to wander as I felt inclined. I have always tried to make you independent, so that you could carve your own careers. I trust I have in some measure succeeded. It would not have helped for you to be tied to me.

I sincerely hope that no one of you will feel there is any measure of reproach in what I have to tell you. When your Mother died, four years ago, you shared my grief but you imagined that the radio, cross-word puzzles and an occasional game of bowls or golf would satisfy and fill my life for such years as might be left me. But you were wrong! The natural urges of life do not end at fifty!'

"What is he getting at?" Emerald injected. "He is fifty-seven."

Garnet ignored her. He proceeded, 'As my occasional postcards will have shown you, I have wandered far and wide. I have had many interesting experiences and think I can say I am as fit as ever I was. I have now met a lady who I am sure can make me happy. I am about to marry her, '

Jasper whistled.

Emerald echoed, "To marry her!"

Garnet went on:

'I will not attempt to describe her to you, as you will so soon see her for yourselves. We plan to be home in about a fortnight. I will wire the day of our arrival as soon as it is settled. I hope you will love her for my sake and am confident, when you know her, you will love her still better for her own.

Naturally I have told her about you and she is anxious to meet you all. We want you to carry on the home just as in the past, until any of you have other plans. We discussed what you should call her. I fully realise no one can ever be to you what your dear Mother was, and we agreed it would be best for you to call her by her first name, Adelaide.

We send our love, assured that a warm welcome awaits us.

Your affectionate father,

G
EORGE
M
ICHELMORE
.'

The silence that followed the conclusion of the letter lasted for several moments. It was broken by Jasper.

"Oughtn't we to send a telegram of congratulations and good wishes, or something?"

"He gives no address," Garnet said. "The postmark on the envelope is St. Malo."

"Is he married or is he about to be married?" Emerald asked, rather indignantly. "He might have given us the chance to be there. Why not bring her home and marry here?"

"It would be unusual for a man to marry his father," Garnet remarked, "but I would have liked at least to attend the ceremony."

"Poor Daddy!" Pearl murmured. "I had no idea he was so lonely. I often sat with him and watched the TV. I would have done anything he asked, but he never would."

"Perhaps he wanted something a daughter could not give," Jasper said.

"I hope she will make him happy," Pearl replied.

The door of the room opened and a slight figure dressed in black entered.

"I will bring the coffee, if you're ready," she said. "I didn't 'ear the bell."

"We have had rather a shock, Nan," Emerald explained. "Father has just written that he has married again."

Nan was nearing sixty. She had been nurse to all of them and had stayed on as housekeeper. She prided herself on never showing surprise at anything any member of the family might do.

"Indeed. May I ask who to?" Her tone was quite unemotional.

"He does not tell us," Garnet answered. "He wishes it to be a pleasant surprise. We are to expect them in about a fortnight."

"Then p'raps I shall not be wanted no more?"

"Don't say that, Nan!" Pearl cried impetuously. "We can not do without you. We may need you more than ever."

"He says they wish us to carry on as before," Jasper added.

"Then I'll get the coffee."

She left the room and there was silence until she returned with it. Emerald had picked up the letter to read it through again.

They were a good-looking group of young people. Sitting each at one side of a small table, they had just finished their evening meal, though Jasper forked half a tinned peach from the heavily cut glass dish, and poured the last few drops of cream from a silver ewer over it. Garnet, the oldest of them, aged twenty-seven, had dark eyes and well-formed features. He looked earnest and his spare form suggested that he observed all the recognised fasts of the church and enjoyed doing it. Jasper, on his left, had similar dark eyes, but there was a twinkle of mischief in them. Emerald, who faced her elder brother and was next in age to him, would have been beautiful had it not been for a rather hard mouth and a look of discontent. Pearl, the baby of the family, just twenty-two, was definitely pretty, of the Greuze type. She had wide dark-blue eyes but there was more life and laughter in them than that artist generally showed in his charming maidens.

The flat was barely furnished but everything in it was good. The chairs and sideboard were Chippendale, or by an early disciple of his. The well-polished table was of dark mahogany and the lace table mats excellent of their kind. There were few ornaments and the only picture, hanging over the mantelpiece, was of a beautiful woman, the mother of them all.

Garnet wore clerical attire with a short black coat. The girls had light, short-sleeved frocks, but Jasper showed up in a tweed jacket, a coloured shirt and blue corduroy trousers. In the opinion of many he could have done with a hair-cut.

Nan brought the coffee and left it without saying a word.

"It is most extraordinary," Emerald remarked when they were again alone. "That bit about not blaming us looks as though he wanted an excuse. And surely he might have sent a photograph. There is no hint as to whether she is young or old, single or a widow."

"What intrigues me," said Jasper, "is the reference to natural urges. Do you think our venerable parent has thoughts of rearing another family?"

"Heavens, no!" Emerald exclaimed. "It would hardly be decent."

"A baby in the house would be rather fun," Pearl said.

"Or maybe Adelaide already has a family," Jasper suggested.

"He would have said so were that the case," Garnet assured them. "I mean if there were more than themselves to prepare for. I think you can take it she is about his own age."

"How do you get that?" Emerald asked.

"From the name, Adelaide. Names, as the christenings show, have a way of dating people. At present Jacqueline, Jill, Elizabeth and Margaret are most popular. Twenty years or so ago Pamela, Patricia and Phyllis had a great vogue. Before that it was Dorothy or Doris, taken, I believe, from the title of a play. Clarissa, Agnes and Amelia were earlier, but Adelaide probably preceded them. There was once a Queen Adelaide."

"The wife of William the Fourth. She died about a hundred years ago," Emerald said. History was her strong point.

"So you reckon our Adelaide, or rather our parent's Adelaide, is probably fat, fair and forty-to-fiftyish," Jasper observed.

"That is as I see it," Garnet nodded.

"I fear I find the reasoning unconvincing," the younger brother said. "We of course bow to your experience. I believe you have christened six, or is it seven?, muling infants, not all female; but you overlook the fact that many are named after an elderly maiden aunt from whom there are expectations, or even after an aged grandmother. So the generation idea does not hold the baptismal water."

"I have studied the subject," Garnet said loftily.

"But we do not know that she is English," Emerald pointed out. "If he met her in St. Malo she might be French. Queen Adelaide was German."

"And you cannot rule out the possibility that you will have an American stepmother," Jasper added. "Believe it or not a dealer in St. Malo sold one of my pictures to an American."

"What are we to tell people?" Emerald demanded. "We shall look such utter fools if we cannot answer the simplest questions."

"Why tell people anything?" Pearl asked. "We shall know when we see her and can truly say it was a big surprise. He is Daddy and I shall love him just the same."

"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," Jasper murmured. "I think the child is right."

"Thank you, old hoary head," Pearl retorted.

"I agree with that," Garnet said. "You had to tell Nan, as she must prepare for them, but ask her to be silent about it until we know more."

IF the Michelmores were an unusual family, their home was also out of the ordinary. A comparatively small abode when George Michelmore bought it, it had been enlarged by the addition of a wing at either side, projecting at an angle from the main building. As it faced south it thus earned its name, "Sunbay."

Each wing formed two flats and each flat was given up to one of his children, so that all possessed a self-contained home of their own, with a sitting-room, a bedroom, a bath room and a tiny kitchenette. Every flat had its own front door, the upper ones being approached by a narrow staircase.

The dining-room and lounge in the main building were shared by all, when they so chose, but they could entertain their own friends in their own way in their own apartment. They could also work undisturbed in the particular line they elected to adopt. The older son, Garnet, having entered the Church, the arrangement suited him very well. He had a ground floor flat. Jasper, with artistic ambitions, occupied the one over it, his sitting-room or studio boasting a north light.

As for the girls, Emerald had the upper flat on the other side. She was a writer, though so far little of her work had found a publisher. When Pearl became of age, she had been presented with the key of the remaining suite. She was proud of it but, having domestic rather than professional inclinations, she spent much of her time with her father or, when he was away, with Nan, whose real name, if anyone remembered it, was Hannah Wood. Pearl also had a Cairn terrier, Sandy, her faithful guardian and companion.

It was part of the arrangement that each flat owner was responsible for the care and cleanliness of his or her own apartment. That was admirable for the girls, but Garnet and Jasper paid a few shillings occasionally for a "do" by Mrs. Hopkins, the daily helper in the house. Their father had made them all an allowance. As food, light and fuel were provided, it was adequate for their needs but not enough to keep them in perpetual idleness. He wished them to be independent, but wanted them to follow the calling that appealed to them and to make a success of it.