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Blue-Eyed Nurses

By: Spencerfiction



CHAPTER 1

I never got on with my old man, ever. I blamed him for my parents' break up. It was all his fault. Ma wasn't perfect, of course, and couldn't put up with his obsessive workaholicism and they argued about it constantly. Ma left him briefly a couple of times, she later told me, before she found someone else who lived halfway round the world and walked out of our lives for the very last time. I hated my father for that. The feeling was mutual though, I always disappointed him, whatever I did, it wasn't anywhere good enough. Perhaps I went out of my way to piss him off. I wasn't interested in running the successful garage business that he built up, I wanted to be my own man, do my own thing.

So I joined the Royal Navy as soon as I was old enough, to see the world, or at least the North Atlantic, the Med, and the Indian Ocean. After 18 years of that, I worked on the offshore oil rigs and platforms, mostly North Sea and Alaska early on, more recently warmer climes like Central and South America. Too old for cold nowadays, I guess. Fifty-five is definitely too old to be at the sharp end in the oil and gas game when you don't have the geology degrees; I managed the men, not the science. Most riggers have given it all up for the good life by this age, but then my ex-, that bitch Jeanie, was enjoying what should have been mine. 

Anyway, there it was on a steamy hot Wednesday and I, Roger Bird, was thinking about packing it all in and doing something else, anything different, at the end of the current contract. That was when I got the call from Ma that Dad had suffered a third stroke, and had only a matter of days, hours possibly, left. Damn, I didn't even know he'd had the first and second strokes. Nobody tells me anything, but then I'm not overly communicative either.

Ma's lived in Oz now for over fifty years with her second husband Cliff and are rather frail themselves, both in their eighties. Even if she cared a jot for the old bugger, which she doesn't, there's no-one left to visit and see Dad through what might turn out to be the end. Damn! I hadn't seen him myself for nearly twenty years, that was when I stopped off and thanked him for looking after my kid a couple of months earlier. That's Mummy's boy Bobby, after he got himself in trouble with the law in a bar fight over some girl or other I shouldn't wonder. I was in Honduras for an exploratory bore at the time and couldn't get away immediately. I didn't exactly know where Jeanie was, we informally broke up years before, I guess that runs in the family. I hated to ask Dad for his help, but I had no other choice at the time.

What is it about workaholic dads and freeloader kids? Can we ever coexist? Or is it just my family that can't?

Well, I was on a similar crap job offshore near Chile when I got Ma's call about Dad's stroke. I guess she still had a soft spot for Dad that wasn't a swamp at the bottom of her half-million-hectare sheep station. I was in Chile because I got all the dross jobs going lately, the up and coming young bloods were skimming all the cream. The third of my scheduled five bores was coming up as dry as the previous couple, too, so I put Pedro, or whoever he was, in charge, telling the company I needed a month off to look after my father. I didn't really have any intentions of going back but decided to keep my options open. Then I flew home.

Home! That was a joke. The only home I ever really had was made out of imitation crocodile leather, with a handle and wheels, the wheels being a recent concession to my aching back, old age creeping up on me I guess. 

The last proper home I had was now that bitch Jeanie's, which she rents out. Bobby let that info slip in a recent email, and I got my lawyers looking into it. Apparently she's been cohabiting with an art dealer boyfriend in New York, so not only should I not still be paying her costly monthly spousal support, but the family home could be sold up to release my share of the capital value. Bobby moved to Canada to open a fish restaurant with some guy I regarded as a dodgy business partner in a prairie city a dozen or so years ago. He never stops bleating about his lot since they left Brighton where they had run a similar establishment.

Dad looked awful, lying there, wired up to almost as many sensors as a Samson Patented Initial Test Rig, or Spitter as we call them. The only nurse I could find in the geriatric section was big and black, named Marie according to her crooked badge. She led me to Dad's room when I eventually got through to her who I was and who I wanted to visit. Look, I've been around, I'm fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, Pidgin and Arabic, with a smattering of Inuit, Italian, French and Urdu, but this baby must've Gatling-gunned fifty words back to me and I barely understood a tenth of them.

So I sat in Dad's private little side ward and looked him over critically. He looked sallow, thin and ill, naturally. He looked every one of his 87 birthdays. I always remembered him as huge, wrestling me with those big forearms, his straining muscles built from lifting truck tyres and swinging out engines for rebuilds. When I last saw him, in his mid-sixties, he appeared to be in his prime, hardly changed at since I left home at 17. Now he was skeletal, having shrunk to nothing more than loose yellow skin over brittle bones.

It was as hot as hell in that hospital when I first got in, which I was actually very grateful for. England in April I always remembered as Spring but not this year. A freezing Easterly took my breath away outside the hospital, when I paid off the cabbie. He'd been telling me all the way from the railway station how much snow they'd had last week and joking how I'd never have been able to hail a cab then wearing my thin tropical white suit. 

The evening rush hour had gone on much longer than I remembered from my last rare visit, the cabbie mentioning something about a Theology College coach crash in the middle of town with multiple injuries, including a fatality, which had closed off the main street to through traffic. The time spent in the cab seemed lengthened inordinately by the cabbie's insistent commentary on life in general, when all I really wanted was time alone with my thoughts to prepare for meeting my father once more, perhaps for the last time.

The geriatric section day sister, Maureen Curran, who I spoke with from the airport while I awaited my bag, said I could visit Dad any time day or night. He didn't have any other visitors. Due to his terminal condition, and location in a private side ward, normal visiting hours were waived. Nurse Curran said would leave me a credit card-type pass to that effect, which I collected from the hospital Reception. So, I sat in the chair in Dad's room, him restlessly asleep, before the jet lag eventually got to me and I dozed off. It was about an hour to midnight by then but my body convinced me it felt more like it was four or five in the morning and I'd been up all day and night. 

The alarm going off woke me. It was a gentle alarm as alarms go. On the rigs they were loud enough to wake the dead. This wasjust an insistent annoying beep, accompanied by a flashing red light. I had no idea what it meant but it couldn't have been good. I expected the big black nurse to come in short order to rescue the situation, but she didn't. After a minute or two wait I went looking for her. There was no-one at the nurses' station. 

Eventually, I found a different tall thin, rather pinch-featured nurse, Petra, in the middle of dealing with an old lady who had been both sick and soiled herself. Apparently there was a big flap on in Accident & Emergency, Petra briefly explained, and she would be along as soon as she'd finished. At least she spoke better English than the other nurse, albeit with a heavy eastern European accent.

Now I hate hospitals, I feel so helpless and, well, I guess I prefer to be in charge. I'm the big honcho, the lean mean gringo, the one who was relied on to always get the job done. Here, though, I was a fish out of water and didn't have a clue what to do other than fetch someone who had more expertise. I made my way back through the maze of empty corridors to the side ward. When you are used to finding your way round a rig at night half your life, you develop a sixth sense homing instinct.

I knew I was close, and I started to worry, because I couldn't hear that bloody alarm any more. That wasn't good. They'd also turned the damned central heating off, by the time switch I guessed, because it was freezing cold again. I was imagining the worst of what that ominous silence meant. All this way, halfway around the world, I thought, and I hadn't even spoken to Dad as he quietly faded away.

OK, you need to know right here and now that I really couldn't stand the old coot, never had, all the way back to when I lived with him. But when it boils down to it, he was still my Dad, after all. I hadn't seen him in years, and had never really wanted to, but he had always been there, always, whether I wanted him or not, whether he gave a damn about me or otherwise. I knew there would be regrets on my side that we parted on such bad terms. I was also sure I'd miss him when he'd finally gone. I braced myself for the worst.

She was an angel, there was no doubt about it. A vision of loveliness in her crisp green nurse's uniform. Petite, with golden hair, rather untidily tied into a bun under her little hat, with one long strand hanging down. I imagined that she had dressed hurriedly after leaving her boyfriend's bed, delaying the wrench of departure until the very last millisecond. Well, I certainly wouldn't have kicked her out of bed if I was her boyfriend. 

I watched her from the doorway as she glided gracefully round Dad's bed, tucking him in and smoothing the bed down. This was a proper nurse, the embodiment of perfection: calm, efficient, caring, as well as effortlessly beautiful. As I said, an angel, blissfully occupied in the care of her patient, totally unaware of my presence. I cleared my throat.

She turned and looked at me, her eyebrows arched, her stare enquiring as if to ask what was I doing here at this late hour, stopping her from getting on with her essential life-saving work? 

She looked utterly beautiful. And that nurse looked so familiar, yet different somehow, perhaps an echo of a memory of some Hollywood hospital drama I had seen once? If it was, no doubt it would have been dubbed into Spanish.

"Thank you for attending to my father," I said, putting on my most disarmingly charming voice. I hide it most of the time behind gruff four-lettered barks and snarls and only dusted it off from time to time when it was useful to be at least temporarily engaging. I added my number one smile, too and hoped my teeth were at least a degree cleaner than they felt, "I didn't know what to do when the alarm went off and I tried to find someone."

The nurse smiled back. Her fresh-complexioned face was elfin, a few brown freckles speckled the bridge of her button nose and upper cheeks, her even white teeth brilliant above a slightly pointed chin. Her eyes were as blue as the ocean, deep, unfathomably deep. Cute? Oh yes, cute as a button, reminding me of a Cork barmaid, who took me in hand, must have been almost forty years ago. 

That beautiful Cork barmaid, who came to mind more and more often as I aged, would now be in her early seventies, of course, and her even cuter daughter in her mid-forties, late-forties maybe. That fair-haired, blue-eyed barmaid had been a lot older than me and had a little girl, I remembered, that she carried half asleep from the one double bed in her single-room apartment and put down on the adjacent armchair. I was only a fresh-faced teenager then, accompanied by shipmates who were on a 48-hour pass on a ferry trip to Cork from Plymouth after completing our Navy basic training. I was the only virgin in the crew, reluctantly admitted by me through a tongue loosened by an unaccustomed consumption of alcohol. To the joy of my drunken shipmates I had been ceremoniously delivered to the barmaid, of that last pub we occupied, down by the docks, who willingly agreed to pop my cherry in exchange for a handful of crumpled fivers and a bunch of condoms collected from a whip round of my crew mates. They had paid her to take care of my tender virgin arse for the whole night.

She popped my cherry well and truly, that Cork barmaid. She wouldn't take no for an answer, told me she was a "Pro" for "Professional".

She had patted the bed beside her, "Come sit here, why doncha?"

"Look," I remembered saying nervously, "We don't have to do this, the guys'll never know."

"Oh, I can't do that darlin'," she smiled, "I'm a 'pro', as in 'professional', I've been paid ta provide a service for the night, and that's exactly what I'm goin' ta deliver."

"But ... you are too, well, too beautiful to do this." 

She was stunning, with thick strawberry-blond hair, beautifully face, and a curvaceous female body to die for.

"Oh, you sweet boy," she laughed, "You'll be breakin' hearts one o' t'ese days."

"But not yours?"

"No, darlin', me heart don't break no more. It was broke just the once an's beyond mendin'."

"But what about her, your daughter?" I jerked my thumb towards the little girl, who was sitting in the chair staring at us with her deep blue eyes.

"Don't worry about her, sweet t'hing, she's tired an'll drop off directly," she said, her eyes ablaze and a smile on her luscious lips, "She's not intimidating you, is she, me little girl?"

"Yeah, she does a little, while you scare the pants off me!"

"Ooh, that sounds promising', you know, your pants comin' off!"

She put a hand either side of my face and pulled me into a long breathtaking kiss, one that made my knees go AWOL and I collapsed on the bed. She rolled me on my back and smothered me in kisses as she was unbuttoning my shirt and trousers, then she pulled them off me. Despite all the black beer I had consumed through the night, I was sobering up quickly, every nerve ending in my body afire with passion. My erection was so bloody hard it hurt.

"My," she giggled as she grasped my steel girder, "What do we have here?"

To my embarrassment, I literally exploded all over her hand. Pop! Just like that.

"I'm s-sorry," I stammered in my shame and disappointment.

"Don't worry, my darlin', it's good to get that one out of the way," she said soothingly, "Now we can relax and enjoy this." 

She pushed me onto my back and pulled off my trousers, which were around my ankles by this point. To my amazement, she squeezed my balls and started to lick them with her pink tongue. Soon she was licking my limp cock, which gradually rose upright, like a cobra responding to a fakir's flute. I just hope it wouldn't spit at her again. She tore off the wrapper from the condom and put it on me, rather expertly I thought. Then she mounted me slowly, working my snake into her heavenly basket. She had those blue eyes closed as she eased down until touched bottom. She smiled, opened her eyes and leaned down, kissing and biting my lips.

"Use yer hands ta squeeze me tits, darlin'. Gentle now, that's it. Now yer t'hum an' forefinger on me nipples. Yes, jus' like that."

She worked up and down me, varying the pace and rhythm, fucking me slowly and steadily, until she lost it and fucked me hard until collapsing on me.

Every time I looked over to the chair I saw the little girl's big blue eyes looking at me. Even though there was no night on in the room, there was enough light coming in from a nearby streetlight to give us all the illumination we needed.

The whore, I never knew her name, pulled off the condom and tied it up. As she worked by cock with her mouth she position her fanny over my face and told me to lick her. She directed me this way and that, how long and how deep,until I was rock hard again. The she lay on back while I climbed on and entered her again. She was still in charge though, and directed everything. Soon we were pounding at each other again, my sweat dripping down on her.

Again, at the end, she removed the condom, we cuddled for a while and then she got me hard again while I received instruction in licking her to her satisfaction. After fucking her doggy style, we both collapsed and slept for a while.

I would never forget that night or the little girl with the big round blue eyes. She watched me like a hawk when I left that single room in the morning, my face scarlet to my hair roots. It wasn't simply that I felt guilty, it was more complicated than that. I couldn't believe how beautiful the woman was, why she was what she was when she could surely have had any man of her choosing. It couldn't all have been beer goggles on my part, I thought. 

And the tiny little girl who sat there looking at me with her pretty little blond head cocked to one side as if to ask if that was as much fun as I thought it was going to be? I know my shipmates had paid for the night but I left a couple more banknotes on the table as if to salve my guilty conscience, as the mother slept on in the half-light of the dawn.

Memories, some of them good, some bad, that is all we are left with at the end of the day. That particular memory will stay with me always.

"Frank's resting now," that angelic nurse interrupted my reminiscences in her soft voice with the very slightest hint of an Irish accent. Perhaps I was right about the Cork barmaid? No, forget it, that was not far short of 40 years ago, this nurse was no more than half that age.

She continued, breaking into my continuing thoughts, "He's been waiting for you to come, Roger. Frank doesn't have very long left, you know."

Roger, she called me Roger. Damn it, she had been speaking to Dad and knew exactly who I was. She probably knew our history as well as I did but only from his perspective, his slant on why we couldn't stand being in the same room together. That's why she is being so short with me. 

"I'm here now, Nurse ...?" I said, looking for a nameplate. She knew my name but I was at a disadvantage, I didn't know hers and she didn't appear to be wearing any identification badge.

I held out my hand, she hesitated momentarily before she shook it, her hand was cold. Not surprising really now that the heating had been switched off. It was trying to snow outside as sleet rattled against the window, it was freezing in that unheated hospital and nurses wear such skimpy sleeveless uniforms nowadays.

"Mary," she smiled, "I prefer - just call me Mary. I must go now, I'll be back later if I am needed."

"Thank you." 

She left with a quiet swirl of her green uniform.

I settled down in the chair, Dad was sleeping peacefully and looked like he was set for the night, so I snuggled down under a spare blanket left at the bottom of Dad's bed, and as a result I soon felt snug and warm again and dozed until dawn. If Mary had looked in during the rest of the night, I wasn't aware of it, but the bag of saline drip looked much fuller than it had been, so she must've quietly changed it without disturbing me.

Hospitals are noisy places at the best of times but they are particularly so first thing in the morning. Shifts change, new nurses appear as if by magic, checking charts and seeing who was still about and any new admissions that may have appeared during the night. Then the rounds of washing, changing, feeding and drug administration before the doctors did their rounds. Then it all starts again. I found it exhausting simply sitting watching.

Dad stirred when the bustle started and I arose, stretched out the kinks in my back and we shook hands formally, sword arm to sword arm like old adversaries, which we were. We had barely exchanged a few terse words before I was bustled out of the door while the nursing staff did whatever private functions they were charged to perform.


Blue-Eyed Nurses



I asked to speak to Sister Curran at the nurses' station, but apparently she had come in during the night to help with the emergency in A&E and wouldn't be back in until much later as a consequence. The nurses who were around were therefore short-handed and pre-occupied. I had hoped to thank the Sister for sorting out my pass, but it could wait. 

I visited a bathroom to freshen up and grabbed some breakfast in the hospital coffee bar situated next to the reception area. I didn't really have much of an appetite, I was really washed out and tired. I was weary of the life I was leading and wanting a change but not sure what I wanted to do or even could do. I had been drilling for oil and gas too long and wasn't fit for much else. I was alone and lonely, too. I didn't really have what you could call a life, I existed at best. Coffee, I definitely needed that coffee.

I popped into the nurses' station again on my way back. Both nurses smiled at me, but they were sad smiles. Just then a porter wheeled by a bed with an occupant covered by a sheet. For just a moment I thought the worst, then realised the bed came from the opposite end of the corridor from Dad's side ward. As the bed passed, the younger of the two young nurses suddenly burst into tears and ran off towards presumably the nurses' toilets. I still wanted to thank the day sister for arranging my pass so efficiently, but neither of them were called Maureen, which I remembered from our conversation yesterday. Was it only yesterday?, it seemed longer ago than that. I asked the remaining nurse and she told me Maureen wouldn't be in today or possibly even the rest of the week. It must've been quite a busy night last night. Oh well.

When I returned to his ward, Dad was sitting up and looking comfortable and alert. We danced around one another, neither of us remotely touching the subject of our stunted relationship. He soon wearied of the game and lapsed into a fitful doze. I relegated myself to the chair again and sat there listening to him breathing and the relentless noises and flashing of the instruments. Sleep wouldn't come for me, my body clock was all over the place. 

Eventually I rose and got myself a pretty basic lunch in the café. I sent a text to my mother via my mobile phone, knowing she was asleep and wouldn't read it until tomorrow, or tonight, I couldn't really think what time it was right now in Western Australia. At least she would know that I was with Dad and left it at that. I didn't like to tell her the end was so near but I knew it was. 

Then I sent off another text, this time to my son Bobby, without expecting an answer; our exchanges of emails were few and far between. We didn't get on, never had, Bobby was too much like his mother and I didn't have a clue what I ever saw in her in the first place. Well, OK, I did initially I guess, she was an attractive woman. Whatever the attraction was, her personality was ugly, so any romance wore off pretty damn quick but by the time baby Bobby was in the pipeline and I was trapped like petroleum under an anticline. I was still in the Royal Navy at the time and the long separations did little to maintain my marriage to Jeanie.

Dad was still asleep by the time I got back to his bedside. I sat with him for a few hours until the middle of the afternoon, then got up again and went outside for a walk in the fresh air. It was more than just fresh, it was bitterly cold out, trying hard to snow once more. I wasn't really dressed to be outside in England in late winter, but I couldn't stay cooped up in that depressing hospital one minute longer. Still, the cold made me walk briskly and I did warm up, eventually.

Dad was awake and they were serving up his evening meal when I got back. It actually smelt good. It was a long time since I'd had a traditional British meat-and-two-veg dinner with treacle sponge pudding and custard for afters. I was used to one-pot meals on my current job, usually heavily over-spiced and with ingredients best described as anonymous. 

He needed help with eating the meal, the last stroke had paralysed him down his left side and he needed his meat and veg cut up, just like he used to do for me when I was a toddler. Well, he may have done it once or twice, Mum did it most of the time while he was at work, as usual, but then she was gone for good and I pretty well looked after myself.

He actually smiled, rather lopsidedly due to his stroke, while I cut his food up. Maybe he was thinking the same thoughts as I was but we hardly exchanged a word during his meal. We had nothing we had ready prepared to say to one another, even to make a start to cross those bridges which had kept us apart for so long. To express in words what had been repressed for so many decades would have contained too much invective, inflicting too much agony. So we each lapsed into uneasy silence. 

He didn't eat much, just played with his food. I remembered but didn't say anything about how he used to chide me for playing with my food when I was a kid.

After his meal was removed Dad slept again. Shifts changed and the big black nurse, who could hardly speak a word of English, popped her huge head in and looked at the charts. I tried to engage her in conversation to find out what she thought and asked if Mary was on tonight but couldn't get through to her and she couldn't reciprocate either, so we both gave up the effort. Communicating with women clearly wasn't my forte, I discovered long ago, a spectacularly failed marriage does that to you.

I went off site with my suitcase during the evening and found a pretty basic hotel room within easy walking distance and booked it for a week. I left my light travelling case there and had a shower, changed into clean clothes and enjoyed a half decent meal in their restaurant before heading back to the hospital. It was really bitterly cold and I desperately needed to buy a winter coat, I would do that in the morning when the stores were open again. They knew me in the hospital Reception by now without me waving my temporary pass and welcomed me in with a smile.

Dad was comfortably sleeping. I dozed too in the stifling warmth as the heating hadn't gone off yet. I had bought a hardback book to read from a help-yourself charity bookshelf in the lobby, but it failed to hold my interest for long.

I was awoken from my fitful dozing when I heard the rustle of skirts and there she was again, Mary the beautiful night nurse, quietly ministering to Dad, checking him over. I didn't think she knew I was even there because when she had finished all her checks she stood by the bed looking down on him, a loving smile on her face in profile as she gently stroked his cheek with the tips of her delicate fingers.

I closed my eyes and twitched, then stretched with a groan and opened my eyes, pretending to see Mary for the first time this evening. She had turned her head and was looking at me with a stern look on her face. Bloody hell, I thought as I tossed the blanket to one side and got up, it must be gone midnight and the damn heating's gone off again!

"Hello, Mary," I said, "How is he?"

"As well as could be expected in the circumstances," she said frostily, the temperature in the room had certainly gone down more than a touch and I was certain it wasn't all down to the timing switch. She continued, "You haven't spoken to Frank yet, have you, Roger?"

"No, not yet," I admitted lamely, chastened by her justified criticism, "I was waiting for the right time."

"There is no time to wait for your convenience, Roger, you must talk to him now or it'll be too late for either of you to get the peace of mind that you both need. You owe this to each other. I don't know, you're both so stubborn!"

"I know, I know," I protested. I have never reacted well to criticism, even more so when I knew I was completely in the wrong and she was so correct. Whenever I stayed with Mum and her husband Cliff, she used to tell me off the very same way. I could live with it when I was thousands of miles away from Dad and felt Mum could take her share of the blame for the state of the relationship between my father and I. Here and now, though, with Dad right there and on his last legs and this dedicated angel telling me what I already knew, I was backed into a corner with nowhere else to go.

"Well, it's time you turned that knowledge into action," Mary said firmly.

"As soon as he wakes," I promised. I really meant it.

She actually smiled, beautifully. "I've just given him something to help him sleep, so you might as well go home and get some proper rest yourself. Come back in the morning, Roger, and speak to him, please speak and make a peace between you and your father."

Well, long story short, I did and Dad did. It was after I got back to his ward in the morning after a restful night in the hotel. At least they had the options of air conditioning or heating at the hotel, which I kept on as high a temperature as possible all night. I slept surprisingly soundly. 

We spoke all morning, Dad and me. I apologised to him for being such an argumentative teenager, for blaming him for Mum leaving me behind. And again I was sorry for not being interested in his business as well as my leaving things unsaid for so long because I was so stubborn. 

Dad replied that he was sorry he had been so tied up in his work. He admitted that my face had reminded him, every time he looked at me, of my mother Glynis and felt he had unconsciously pushed me away from him during much of my childhood. I guess I had never taken that point of view into account. So, while I blamed him for my crappy childhood, he was blaming me for ruining his middle years. 

Families! All we needed to say to each other was sorry, and we could have both benefited from being without those last fifty years of heartache.

Dad asked about my son Bobby. My ex-wife Jeanie, he told me, had come to see him about a month earlier and wanted to ask him for more money to help "poor Bobby", whose restaurant needed a fresh injection of cash. I told Daf that his place out in that provincial prairie city needed more than just an injection, it needed life support. I had gone through there two or three years earlier, on a stop-over on my way to troubleshoot an Alaskan rig, and the place was empty of a lunchtime, surrounded as it was by packed burger and sandwich cafés. There was really no market in that city for a seafood restaurant that only stocked and served frozen fish. 

The partner in the business, Jonathan, was the chef, while Bobby was the floor manager. I would be surprised, I said, if the partner was still there. According to Jeanie, Dad said, he was. Dad didn't spare her any shrift, though, Dad had been getting regular financial reports from Bobby and Dad sure knows how to read a balance sheet.

Bobby's just like us, son, Dad told me, too stubborn to give in even when the odds are heavily stacked against him. I said no, we were not all alike, Bobby and I were both failures, Dad's business, the garage, had been the only one that had succeeded. Me?, I was sliding down the oilmen merit table, I had become a sleeves-rolled-up, check-shirt dinosaur in a world of sharp-suited lounge lizards. 

He grinned that lop-sided smile that he had developed and told me that he had gone bankrupt twice before the garage finally took off, and that it was the least likely of the three businesses he started to actually make it. That's why he had to work so hard, he almost lost everything, and certainly lost Glynis and me, for long periods, in the process. Well, I said, I'm back and giving up the oil game for good, although I wasn't sure what I was going to do in the future.

The garage is "Bird & Son Motors", Dad said, it is virtually all yours if you want it. I had to admit that I thought he'd got rid of the place years before, when he retired. No, he'd had a succession of managers in charge but the place had been ticking over for years. It was still a sound business that could do with some fresh blood at the top. Perhaps Bobby will come around to it sometime Dad thought, in the meantime it would keep me as busy as I wanted to be for at least a decade or so. We laughed about that. 

His will was up to date, he said, just a few little surprises for me to deal with, that he didn't want to elaborate on, but nothing major that he thought I would have any problem dealing with. Bobby would get a share of some investments Dad had made, while I would get a majority share of the business. I would also get his house, so there was no point in me piddling about in a bloody hotel, for crying out loud, he added. We laughed about that too. His papers were in his office at home, filed under "Will" in his cabinet. Dad was always well organised.

Dad ate quite a bit of his lunch and actually appeared to enjoy it. His burst of energy was short-lived however and he dozed through the afternoon. I sat there and mulled over what we had spoken about. We had both been pretty silly over the years and all we had needed to say to each other was sorry. Of course, that was the hardest thing for both of us, until now, when we were almost at the very end.

I went out that afternoon while Dad was asleep and bought myself a heavier winter coat. It was overcast and very cold out but at least it wasn't raining, sleeting or snowing, just a fierce cold wind. If they would only keep the heating on in the hospital tonight after midnight, I might have been completely happy.

I showered and changed in the hotel. Dad may have said I could stay in his house, but it wasn't quite as easy as that. I had thrown away my front door key 38 years ago. When I last called on him eighteen years later I remembered having to ring his doorbell. I did doze on the hotel bed for a couple of hours but hardly woke up as refreshed as I had earlier that morning. I got back to the hospital in time to help Dad with his evening meal. He was barely conscious the whole time though and didn't touch his food. He had gone downhill rapidly in those last few hours and I regretted selfishly taking the time off to rest when I could have spent that time with him.

The remnants of the meal were taken away, largely uneaten, although I had cut it all up for him. I hadn't had anything to eat all day either, I just didn't have any kind of appetite at all. I did want a coffee, though, but the hospital restaurant was closed by then and the machine-dispensed instant coffee was not very good. I didn't want to leave the hospital merely to satisfy my thirst though, as I had a sinking feeling that Dad wasn't going to be with us for very much longer. I poured a glass of room temperature water from the jug left for him and made do with that.

The nursing shifts changed, Nurse Petra popped her head in and glanced at the chart but didn't actually do anything. The big black nurse, Maria, I saw walk past a couple of times on her way to other tasks, leaving Dad basically in my sole charge. Dad just dozed fitfully through it all, the instruments beeping with a boring consistency, hardly even hinting that he was drifting away. I didn't need the instruments, it was becoming obvious. 

At some point in the evening I noticed that the saline drip looked to be running low. Petra had checked his chart earlier but hadn't looked at Dad at all during her brief visit. It seemed to me like a new bag was required and I needed to press the red button to call the nurse. I had my new coat draped over me as a blanket and, as I got up, it fell to the floor, the air felt very cool without its protective layer. Before I could reach that red button, though, I heard a rustle behind me and there was Mary, as pristine as ever in her crisp uniform, only her long fair hair still seemed to have a life all of its own, trying to break free of the knotted bun behind her head. In her hand was a fresh bag of saline solution.

I smiled warmly at her and she returned with her own sweet smile. 

"Have you spoken to Frank yet, Roger?" she asked, still maintaining her pretty smile. What made me think she already knew the answer to that question?

"I have," I grinned, "But what makes me think you already know that?"

"A little birdie told me," was her only reply. 

I no longer felt guilty as I had been at our two previous meetings so I was able to fully enjoy her sweet smile this time. She was young enough, just, to be my granddaughter. If she were I would have been very proud of her, she was nothing short of absolutely perfect. My Dad was fortunate indeed to have such an angel looking over him at this time.

Mary fitted up the new drip and sat down on the opposite side of the bed to me, holding Dad's hand. She looked as though she was settling in for the duration.

"No other patients to look after at the moment?" I asked.

"No, not tonight." Mary looked at me so intensely with her blue eyes, it was like she was looking through me. "Have you resolved all of your issues with your father?"

"I believe so. We have been both pretty set in our ways all our lives. It has made things difficult between us. But now we have, peace, I suppose."

"Frank told me that he had followed you all your career, Roger. Did you know he invested in the companies you worked for so he could keep track of where you were working and somehow he managed to get copies of all your reports? I am not sure how legal some of the methods he used were, Frank tapped his nose when he said he had ways and means," Mary smiled serenely. "I think you now need to talk to your own son. You've also been estranged for too long, haven't you?"

"I can't argue with that, Mary, it sounds as though you have had some long conversations with my father while I was waiting for connecting flights on my long journey home."

She nodded, "Frank's a lovely person, Roger, you should be proud of him. He was very proud of you."

"I think I get that now."

"Now you need to prepare yourself, Roger, I think that Frank is leaving us tonight, very soon in fact. Will you allow me to call a priest to administer the last rites?"

"I don't think that Dad's very religious, Mary."

"I don't believe he is either, nor am I particularly, but I have a ... a friend who is a priest and he has asked me especially if he can do this one last thing for Frank, for the three of us. I don't see what harm it can possibly do."

"No," I said, "I can't either. Go ahead if you want to. I don't know if you will have time to fetch him, though."

Mary smiled as she got to her feet, giving Dad's hand a squeeze before putting it down carefully on the bed.

"Thank you, Roger, he's waiting outside," Mary said as she walked to the door. "Father Patrick", she called softly into the darkness. Then she turned back to the bed and an elderly priest complete with dog collar and purple shirt worn under a dark suit, entered the side ward behind her. We nodded to each other without exchanging a word, nor did he make any move to involve me in the process.

The priest ran through his rituals solemnly, in a dignified manner and left after he had anointed my father and completed his ministrations.

Dad was failing fast now, with me holding his right hand on one side of the bed and Mary holding his left on the opposite side. Soon he slipped completely away, quietly and painlessly, and Mary switched off the monitors and covered Dad with the bed sheet after kissing him gently on the forehead. Mary wiped tears from her eyes and said goodbye to us both. 

I pulled her to me and kissed her thick blond hair on the top of her head. Mary had spent a lot of her night shift with us and I told her I appreciated her efforts and hoped she wouldn't be in trouble with the other nurses or her boss Maureen. She smiled and left then, I guessed she had gone well beyond the bounds of her duty and therefore would have a lot of work to catch up on during what remained of her shift.




Blue-Eyed Nurses



I sat in the room with the body, I really didn't think of it as being Dad any more, I felt he had gone and that he was indeed at peace. I am not a religious person, never have been, but I got the distinct feeling that he had departed to a better place. 

Perhaps Mary had realised that the priest was there more for my spiritual wellbeing than for Dad. I did feel a certain ease of mind. I had regrets that we had carried our little differences for far too long, but that we were finally father and son again, at least briefly at the end when it really counted for something. Maybe having the priest perform that ancient rite was part of it but mainly I realised it was Mary. The perfect nurse, caring enough for my father that she was prepared to devote her time to make his transition painless and quite beautiful. Mary was really wonderful. I felt there was something more than simply nurse-patient relationship here between her and my father, but a kind of love that transcended the sixty years plus that separated them, an impossible relationship but wonderful nonetheless.

I rang Mum, at that time of night it was daylight in Australia and she received the news of my father's passing tearfully. In fact Cliff answered the phone in the first instance and spoke to me for a moment before calling Mum to the phone. He had never met my Dad, but he knew the love that my parents once had for each other. It was tempestuous relationship, but love was ever-present. Cliff landed the love of my mother only because of perfect timing and placing, he told me. 

When Mum came onto the line she had heard most of what Cliff had said and she added her explanation. It was while their marriage was in trouble that she met Cliff, who was in England studying for an agricultural degree. Although she divorced Dad and subsequently married Cliff, that didn't mean she ever completely stopped loving Dad, just the same as she never stopped loving me after leaving me behind. Cliff was also in his 80s and currently rather unwell, so he couldn't travel but Ma felt compelled to come over. She said she would make sure that Bobby and his partner would come over from Canada for the funeral too.

I expressed surprise that Bobby had a partner, I thought he was a confirmed bachelor and commented so. She tut-tutted and said Bobby and I had to have a talk, and not before time. Bobby was 38 and had been living with his partner and lover, Jonathan, for over twenty years, ever since they were both beaten up together by homophobes who raided and attacked the occupants of a gay bar in the capital city. Dad knew all about the relationship, Mum informed me. Apparently the couple had stayed with Frank during their recovery and the subsequent court case and had helped financially to set them up in business together. Families, I am such a loosely-fitting member of mine that nobody ever tells me anything.

I didn't want to leave Dad's body all alone in the dark, so I sat back in the chair and pulled my coat up to my throat and dozed the remaining few hours until dawn and the usual noisy daily bustle and business began. One of the day shift nurses came through, sympathised with me for my loss and said she would sort out my father's effects and have them ready at the nurses' station in fifteen to twenty minutes. It only occurred to me then that I needed Dad's keys if I was going to check out of the hotel and move back into my old home.



CHAPTER 2

It was with surprisingly mixed feelings that I left that side ward, which had become my little world for the last three days. I thought I would make my way down towards the hospital café for a much-needed coffee before coming back to collect Dad's effects and then walk down to the hotel. I planned to check out immediately and move into Dad's house, to start sorting out what to keep and what to clear. I wanted to be kept busy until Mum, Bobby and probably his partner Jonathan showed up for the funeral. I wasn't sure if Dad still had a car at home. If he had, I would need to sort out the insurance and change of ownership, unless of course it was owned by the garage. That was another job to do: let the garage staff know about Dad's passing. I hadn't seen anyone from the business visiting him in hospital, so I assumed they weren't even aware he was so ill.

As I approached the nurses' station I noticed that the day staff had completely taken over from the night nurses, who had already left, to sleep in the comfort of their homes, while I had dozed in the chair. 

There was another nurse there I hadn't seen before, an older one, in her late-thirties, early-forties I guessed. All the nurses I had seen so far appeared to be in their twenties. She had her coat over her arm, the straps of her bag over her shoulder and a carrier bag in one hand, so she looked like she was either just coming in or just going out. The other two nurses were embracing her in turn, whispering and looking tearful. 

I was going to speak to them about my father and to pass on my thanks but didn't want to interrupt them, after all it could wait until I came back after my coffee. As I passed them by, they hadn't really noticed me as they were so engrossed in their own conversation. I was trying to ignore them, until I heard one nurse beg the older one to "Go home, Maureen" in a slightly more forceful tone than the rest of the conversation. That pricked up my ears.

I turned back to face them over the counter and cleared my throat. The nurses turned as one to attend to me in their usual professional manner.

"Sorry to hear about your loss, Mr Bird," said one young nurse, sympathetically, before I could speak, "Your father was a real gentleman. We are going to miss him around here."

"Thank you, thank you for comforting him through these last few weeks and days, I know he appreciated you all as I do very much."

All three clucked like mother hens, their mutual sadness pushed to the background as they switched their caring towards me in my own moment of grief.

"I wanted to have a quiet word with you, Maureen, if that is alright?" I said to the older nurse.

"Er, yes of course," she said, looking at the other two, "It looks like I am not needed here today, anyway."

"Would you care to join me for a tea or coffee?"

"I t'hink I could really do wit'h a cup o' tea, Mr Bird," she agreed, smiling at me for the first time. Another nurse with a charming Irish accent, I thought, much more pronounced than Mary's hinted undertones.

"Call me Roger, please," I said, "My father was always Mr Bird."

"Not while he was here, Roger, he was just Frank to us, a wonderful old gentleman. We all loved him. That's why we kept him here with us until the end," she lowered her voice as we walked through the door exiting her section, "Some of the other wards are less, well, just less prepared to look after their own, even unto the end."

"That's one of the reasons I wanted to speak to you particularly about."

She looked up sharply. 

"No criticism," I assured her, "I have nothing but praise for your wonderful staff. And I also need to thank you for allowing me day and night access, it has meant everything both to me and my father." 

Maureen smiled again. I thought she looked a very handsome woman, now that she allowed a smile to decorate her face. She had one of those faces that had a natural propensity to be cheerful, with large clear blue eyes, a fresh face with rosy cheeks and subtle freckles. She was quite short about five-two or -three, to my five-eleven, and equally petite in build. Her thick hair was fair, with subtle hints of grey in it and kept quite short and neat. She was a very natural and beautiful rose. I lost track of my thoughts somewhat and I think I repeated myself nervously.

"I just wanted to thank you for the visitor's pass and what I think of your marvellous nurses," I gushed as we walked down two flights of stairs to the reception area wher the café was situated. 

I wasn't used to speaking to pretty nurses that weren't young enough to be granddaughters. I couldn't fail to notice that Maureen wore a set of wedding and engagement rings, so she was clearly spoken for, not that I had any intentions in that direction, despite the increasing awareness of my loneliness. I certainly didn't wish to complicate my life at this transitional point. Right now I was a stranger in a strange land. If I was going to stay here and work at my father's business, I would have a considerable amount of adjusting to do, long before I could even think about introducing anything more important into my life.

Just as we reached the final few steps of the stairs, I checked with Maureen what type of tea she preferred. A breakfast tea would be perfect, she replied and pointed out the far corner of the restaurant where she would find a seat for us. I grabbed a tray and got in line. I glanced over in her direction while I was waiting to be served and one of the doctors, who I had seen on the morning rounds a day or so earlier, was cuddling Maureen. They sure were really friendly in this hospital.

I took the tray of drinks to the table in the corner. It was right next to a small garden. I was amazed it was sunny out and ... actually warm in the sun shining through the window, Spring was here at last. I might finally start to feel comfortable back in my native environment.

She was holding and reading a nameplate in her hand as I approached the table. She looked up and smiled when I sat down and she popped the nameplate into the carrier bag resting in her lap and put it on the floor, before she helped empty the tray contents onto our table.

"It is very nice over this side of the restaurant, overlooking the garden, I hadn't ventured this far over before," I commented as I sat down, "I hope you don't mind me asking, but I was wondering why everyone keeps coming up and comforting you."

"My daughter Rosemary died just three nights ago," she replied slowly. "it was a shock and I am still coming to terms with it."

She looked up from her cup to look me in the eye, her eyes were watery. I held her hands across the table.

"I'm so sorry, Maureen, I knew that something really terrible must've happened. Would you rather I leave or do you want to talk about it?"

"I'm supposed to be comforting you, you know, for your loss, not the other way around," she smiled wanly, a tear escaped and ran down her cheek. I took a paper tissue out of my pocket and handed it to her.

"It is a lot easier for me," I said, "My father was 87 and had a full and relatively successful life, also I've had some time to prepare for this eventuality. No parent can be prepared for losing a child. Was this a sudden loss?"

"You're right, you can't, you just can't prepare, even with all the training we get. It was so sudden, an accident."

"Will it help to talk to mevabout her?" I asked, "About Rosemary?"

"She was all I had, Roger, she was everyt'hing to me. Rosemary was still single and had lived with me all of her young life. She was so full of life, too. You have a family don't you? Sorry, I am prying, but Frank did mention he had a grandson."

I nodded. "I understand. I don't have a normal joined-up family, no. My son lives in Canada, we exchange the odd email from time to time; my ex-wife lives in New York and I only contact her through lawyers." We both smiled at that. "My mother lives in Australia, and that is about that. She's coming back in the next few days for the funeral, as is my son and his partner."

"We lost Rosemary's father to cancer, ten years ago, so there's just me on my own now. He was a policeman, a Scot originally but worked around here for over twenty years. He never could stop smoking, although he tried time and time again. Rosemary used to get on his back too, and she took it very badly when he died. She was such a great kid and I am going to miss her."

I reached across and squeezed her hand, she thanked me with a mouthed "thank you". We sat in comfortable silence for a while, sipping our tea or coffee.

"Maureen, you remember I mentioned earlier that I thought your staff were absolutely brilliant with my father?"

"Even the night staff?" she smiled.

"Especially the night staff, although of course I have no complaints about the day shift either. In your absence they were a great help and comfort. Last night, though, one of the nurses dedicated herself to stay with my father for more than half the night as he slipped away. She was perfectly wonderful and I wanted to make sure she didn't get into trouble over it."

"No, of course not, I am sure she would have been freed up by her partners to help you both through the ordeal. Was it Petra, by any chance?"

"No, it was Mary. She was absolutely marvellous. She went way beyond the call, not just last night but the previous two nights, too. I missed seeing her to thank her again before she left this morning. Could you please pass on my sincerest thanks?"

"Oh!" Maureen's eyebrows had shot up early in my statement, as if surprised, Mary was very young and perhaps not considered as comfortably assured and experienced as she appeared to me to be, "Well, I am very glad she came through for you."

"She was simply wonderful and we are both very grateful for her gracious, caring presence."

"I'll make sure she hears from me how grateful you are."

We lapsed into silence again while we finished our drinks, then we rose together and made our way to Reception.

"What are you going to do now, Roger?"

"I have to collect my father's effects from one of the nurses upstairs. She undertook to put them together for me. For one thing I need his door key to get into the house. Then I have to find an undertaker. I suppose I am going to have to organise a car to get about in, as well," I smiled.

"Do you need a lift?" Maureen asked, "I'm at a loose end at the moment and I would like to help. In fact I need to keep myself busy and I really don't want to be alone either. If you don't mind my company, of course."

"Yes, I would like that very much," I said, "I need to find an undertaker, too, have you arranged anything for Rosemary yet?"

"Yes, there is a good one in Smiths Street, who have already got Rosemary in their care. I'll come upstairs to the ward with you and we can arrange for your father to be collected by them, if you wish."

We collected a plastic carrier bag of my father's belongings, which included his keys. Maureen arranged everything with the undertakers, which I was grateful for. 

Maureen then drove me the short hop to the hotel in her little car, where she helped me to pack. It didn't take us long. Then we drove to Dad's house via a small supermarket where we picked up sufficient groceries to tide us over for lunch and tea. Maureen suggested buying some cleaning fluids and disinfectant, as they were probably required, and a roll of bin bags. I agreed. It was so long since I had driven in my home town that I would have found it difficult to find the house without Maureen leading the way. 

She knew her way round the town, having lived there the whole time since she moved from Southern Ireland twenty years ago, after she qualified as a nurse in Dublin, she told me, filling the car with cheerful chatter as she drove.

Dad's house had been closed up for about a month, ever since Dad was admitted to hospital with the stroke. He had been in hospital for a week or so before his grave prognosis led to Mum's call through to me. She was still down as next of kin as I was usually more difficult to get hold of. 

I opened the fridge and nearly gagged. Maureen matter-of-factly pushed me out of the way and shooed me out of the kitchen. She would deal with it and suggested I go up to Frank's bedroom and look out a suit that the undertakers said they needed.

The bedroom curtains were pulled shut, so I opened them up and released the catch on a window to let some air in. I hadn't been in that bedroom for nigh on 40 years. I don't really know what I expected to see in there but I can guarantee that it was the very last object I would have anticipated.

There on his bedside table, was a photograph of a pretty young woman with a georgeous little girl aged maybe two or three at the most. 

There was only one person that the young woman could possibly be, a much younger-looking Maureen. And the little girl with her must have been her Rosemary.



CHAPTER 3

I sat on the bed for a few minutes, my mind in absolute turmoil. My Dad must have once been in love with Maureen. Why else would he have her photo by his bedside? So why would Maureen not say anything to me before sending me up to the room? What was she trying to hide? Surely if she was aware that the photo was there, she would have said something earlier. 

This raised another question. Was Rosemary my half-sister? I had always considered myself an only son of my father, despite the fact that my mother had three boys with Cliff, giving me three half-brothers. I had never really considered them part of my family in the same way. Now did I have a half-sister as well?

I pulled the sheets and pillowcases off the bed. I found fresh linen in the airing cupboard on the landing and remade the bed, using hospital corners I noted with amusement. Then I looked through Dad's wardrobe and found a smart but sombre-looking suit and took that downstairs, wondering how to go about asking Maureen about her photograph while avoiding upsetting her over it. 

Maureen had the washing machine going in the utility room next to the kitchen, dealing with whatever clothes she had found in a linen basket, which looked as though it was the same one that had resided in the downstairs cloakroom for as long as I could remember. She looked up from mopping the kitchen floor and smiled when I came through with the old sheets and pillowcases. No hint of any embarrassment on her part.

"Just leave them in the whites pile on the floor through there, I'll put them in the next wash batch. You ready for lunch, yet, Roger?" she asked, clearly happy being occupied with something to do.

"I think so," not sure if I had an appetite or not, "Anything you want me to do?"

"You could lay the dining room table, or we could eat outside, it is really nice and warm out at long last."

The weather was certainly vastly different to the first couple of days I was back home. I could scarcely believe that only two days ago it had been trying to snow. I had seen from Dad's bedroom that he had installed a deck with a table and chairs under a folded and sleeve-covered sun umbrella.

"Outside, I think," I grinned, "This weather may only last a day or two before we get back to normal English spring weather, with showers and hailstorms."

I opened up the French doors from the dining room through a nice conservatory, another addition since I had left, and through to the deck. The conservatory was very hot all shut up, so I left both the doors open. I made myself a mental note to open windows to the sitting room and all the bedrooms immediately after we had lunched to let the fresh air blow through them. 

I checked out the table and chairs, they just needed a quick wipe over, although one chair had some heavy birds' dropping deposits on it that would need extra attention, so I put that particular chair over to one side. I collected one of the spray bottles of cleaning fluid from the kitchen plus a couple of cloths and wiped everything else down before fetching crockery, cutlery and napkins to set the table. When I got back to the kitchen I poured us both glasses of cold wine and iced water, which we had included in our groceries and were chilling in the now-cleaned refrigerator, then I took out the green salad and pickles.

Maureen brought out our plates of baked potatoes with grated cheese, slices of ham and baked beans. We delighted in our simple lunch, soaking up the pleasant midday sun. 




Blue-Eyed Nurses



I wanted to bring up the subject of the photo I had seen in Dad's bedroom but I didn't want to spoil the mood at that point. It had been a long time since I had sat down with a handsome and respectable woman for a very pleasant meal, despite the circumstances leading to our meeting together. Where there are highly-paid oilmen with lots of ready cash and a long ways from home, there were lots of disreputable women, women I had always steered well clear of. I was interested in Maureen, though, she was attractive and pleasant company. I just wasn't quite sure how respectable Maureen was, bearing in mind the photo and its location. Secrets have a way of poisoning relationships and there were clearly secrets here.

I had so many questions in my head: clearly she was or had been my father's lover. Was this in the last ten years since her husband died? Or was Maureen seeing Dad while she was still married? Why was her daughter Rosemary in the picture, too? The photo wasn't recent, judging by Maureen's appearance as a young woman, how old had Rosemary been when she died? Less than twenty, as she mentioned being over here twenty years and at least a bit older than ten years when Maureen's husband died?

We finished our meal and, before we cleared the things away, I asked her to accompany me as I looked around the garden. She smiled and tucked her arm in mine. Oh boy! I thought, is this a like-father like-son situation? My mind was spinning. I turned my attention and conversation to the garden.

The lawn badly needed cutting, daisies were already poking their cheerful little faces up at the sunshine above the long grass. I could see the odd defiant dandelion, too. Daffodils were in full bloom in the borders with crocus and snowdrops fading away. A couple of early tulips also brightened the scene with a splash of pink. 

"Never had a garden before," I said. 

"I've got a small one," Maureen said, "I could lend you a hand...." 

She continued walking but cut the sentence off short, before saying too much. Where were we going with this I wondered? Now was the time to say something, I thought.

"Maureen," I asked, our arms still comfortably linked, "I would like to show you something upstairs."

She stopped walking and pulled her arm out from mine and looking shocked at my suggestion, her face suddenly pale.

"I'm sorry," I apologised hastily, "That came out very badly and certainly not at all what I meant. There ... there is a photograph in my father's bedroom that I would like you to see."

There was even more alarm on her face at that than before.

"A ... a photograph?" she was very pale, now.

"Yes, a photo of you-"

She fainted. I was close enough and was already reaching out to her, so I caught her limp body before she hit the ground. I picked her up, she was light as a feather, and carried her into the conservatory and laid her on a cane settee, fitted with a flowery upholstery in pastel shades. I placed cushions under her head and made sure she was still breathing. I fetched a tea towel and hand towel from the pile that Maureen had freshly laundered and dried in the kitchen. I quickly doused the tea towel in cold water and grabbed a glass and filled that with cold water too. I knelt by her side, pressing the cooling towel to her forehead.

She laid there, still as anything, for what was probably just a few seconds, maybe a minute, it just seemed to me a much longer period. I stared at her as I gently pressed the cold wet towel to her head. Her face in repose was open and beautiful, considering she mist have been in her mid-40s, much older than I originally estimated. Completely unadorned with make-up, her skin was pale but unblemished, her hair eyebrows natural and un-plucked, her fair eyelashes long and curving up gracefully. All of the sorrows of losing her daughter, alongside her nervousness of my discovery of her relationship with my father, had drained from her relaxed face. I had thought of her as handsome and attractive before, now I could only think she was lovely, adorable even.

Soon, in her own good time, she stirred, fluttered and opened her eyes and tried to sit up. I pressed gently down on her shoulders.

"Maureen," I said softly, holding her still, "You've had a bit of a shock, please lie quietly, breathe slowly and deeply, calm down, you are perfectly safe. There is nothing you could say that would make me think any less of you, my love, than I do now."

She stopped struggling to get up, looking up at me, her eyes filling up with tears, which ran down her cheeks before her shoulders started shaking as she cried. I moved my arms from her shoulders to behind her back, pulling her up to press her head into my chest. Her hands lifted from her side and wrapped themselves around my back, clinging to me as if her very life depended on it, her whole body wracked with big heavy sobs.

"Let it all out Maureen, please don't bottle it up, my dear sweet heart," I kissed the top of her head, "You are not alone in this, you never need to be alone again. We are family, you and I, we can both share our sorrow. There's no more need for secrets between us."

"No more secrets," she sobbed, "What must you t'hink of me?"

"I think you are a beautiful woman that my Dad must've loved very much," I said, "He kept a picture of you and your daughter by his bed. It would have been the very last thing he saw when he went to sleep and the very first sight to wake up to at the start of every day."

"I must go look."

"No, sweetheart, lay here for a few moments," I reached across and picked up the glass of water from the coffee table and offered it to her, "Sip this and I will fetch it down for you."

"No," she insisted, "I want to see where it is for myself, Roger."

She took the glass with one hand and sipped some water, her other hand still wound around my back, holding a handful of my shirt, stopping me from leaving her. For some reason the gesture warmed me and made me smile happily. Maureen regarded my gentle smile over the glass's rim, hopefully taking heart herself from it.

"No more secrets," she whispered, "This is going to be difficult, you look so much like Frank, Roger, and he looked so much like you."

"There's no rush, Maureen. I think it will help us both to look at the photo and talk. You need to come to terms with your loss, both our losses, me too. Was - I'm sorry to have to ask this - was Rosemary my sister?"

She looked at me with those baleful eyes, focusing from one eye to the other as she thought of what to reply. There was only one reply, we both knew that now, but voicing it still took courage, on both sides.

"Yes, she was, but I never told Frank about Rosemary. I never wanted him to find out about her and never imagined for a moment that he knew that she was. Also, I never told Rosemary who her real father was. I gave her no reason to believe Bob wasn't her natural dad." She bit her lip and looked away. "I can't understand how Frank had a picture of both Rosemary and me together. I cannot see how it is possible."

She returned her blue eyes to gaze at me again.

"I must see that photo, Roger. Let me up, please?"

I kissed her on the forehead and released her, got up off my knees and relieved her of the glass. She swung her legs around and I helped her up. She was still wobbly on her feet. I decided there and then to just pick her up in my arms, laughing at the sheer pleasure of doing so. She returned with her tinkling laugh and put her arms around my neck. I carried her through the dining room and into the hallway and carefully up the stairs. 

We were still laughing when she pressed her lips to mine and we started kissing, slowly at first and then more passionately as our tongues fought to outdo each other. Her hands were behind my head pulling me into her face with an urgency that had become so unfamiliar to me for so long.

I carried on climbing, my eyes closed, relying on memory, counting the steps, ten, feeling for the angled turn, then three more steps to the top. I reached the landing and kicked open Dad's bedroom door.

"No, please," she said, breaking off our kiss, insisting, "Your room."

I turned and headed down the corridor, past the bathroom and spare bedroom until I reached my old room at the end. I fumbled with the handle as Maureen giggled, and we entered the room. The curtains were open and we both looked around. It appeared to be exactly as it had when I was just 17 and left this room, I had thought then, for good. I looked at Maureen.

"Have you been in this room before?"

She nodded, her smile now a little uncertain, wondering what I was thinking as she looked into my eyes, "I peeked, a long time ago, nearly twenty years. I was only here in this house half a dozen times, Roger, and never while Bobby was here."

I nodded this time. Then I kissed her again, my eyes half open. She returned the kiss and held me tight, her shoulder started their up and down movements again as she cried silently and I felt the wetness on her cheek. I gently laid her on my old single bed. Maintaining our delicious mouth to mouth contact, I leaned over her but with one knee on the bed and one foot on the floor.

I still had my arms around her but broke off the kiss for a moment.

"Sweetheart, we don't have to do this," I said, kissing her again, "I remember everything now, I think I've been waiting for you for a long time."

"You remember ... everyt'hing?"

"I think so, not necessarily all the details, I was very drunk, if you remember."

"You were not that drunk that night you spent with my Momma! I have loved you, Roger, since that night, I've loved you for 38 years. I thought I had lost you and would never find you." She sobbed again, "I gave up on you honey, almost as soon as I started looking for you. I am so sorry, I-"

"Hush, sweetheart," I interrupted, "I'm here now. You've found me and I've found you. I will always be here as long as you want me to be, sweetheart. I wasn't actively looking for you, Maureen, but I have been sort of waiting for you all this time. I think I have loved you for ever, too!"

"Oh, honey," she pulled me down onto her and we kissed and started pulling our clothes off each other and making a right hash of it, our hands getting in the way. We both started giggling. Then I stood up and pulled off my shirt, she sat up and undid her green blouse and bra, throwing them on the floor. I dropped my trousers and boxer shorts, sat beside her on the bed and pulled off my shoes and socks and kicked off my trousers and pants. Maureen was lying on her back by then, wriggling off her skirt and panties, kicking them off the bottom of the bed. She smiled at me.

"I do love you Roger," she breathed.

"You were just a little girl, a beautiful angel. You are still a girl to me, still beautiful, and still an angel. I thought that you were the prettiest thing in the whole wide world but I hadn't seen much of the world back then, we were both innocent kids. I've seen much of the world since and I have not viewed anything that comes even close to the magic image of you that I have always carried within my memory."

I picked up her right foot and kissed the soft skin of her sole as I stroked and squeezed her calf and knee. I licked her toes and sucked her big toe into my mouth, teasing it with my tongue, still sitting naked on the side of the bed. She giggled and grasped my right forearm and pulled herself up, bending her lovely knee, her right hand playing with the hairs on my chest, tweaking my nipples, making me chuckle as I sucked each toe in turn, licking the sweet spaces in between. She moved her hand up to stroke my neck, running her thumb along the line of my jaw, then stroking my cheek, a delicious smile on her gorgeous face.

"You were so sweet and gentle," she said, "When Momma woke me and led me to the armchair, so you could use the bed, you asked Momma to put me back in bed to sleep. You said that you could just sit and talk, and your friends wouldn't know. But Momma said she was a professional, she'd been paid to pop your cherry and she was damn well going to pop it!" Maureen giggled, "She could be quite determined, my mother."

"And how determined were you, my love?"

"I came here looking for you, didn't I? I came when I could, I was that determined."

"And I never came back, until now." I was nibbling her ankle, then kissing the back of her calf.

"You did come back, briefly, Roger, I saw you t'hrough the crack in the door, I was in here, hiding from you."

"When I last visited Dad?" I asked, "Did he know that you were looking for me?"

"No, of course not," she breathed, "By then I knew I was pregnant but hadn't quite summoned up the courage to tell Frank. I overheard you say you were going, and I knew from the way you said it, you were never going to return. How could I say anything to Frank? How could I destroy him? How could I justify myself to you or to your father? You were still married with a son and lost to me and I was just as lost to Frank in my love with you. I couldn't do that to Frank, have him waiting, hoping you'd never come back. I had to leave him too, no matter how painful it was."

I couldn't stop kissing her, her breathing deep, punctuated by a groan and then delightful squeals as I put her foot down on the bed and started to lick and kiss and nip the inside of her milky white thighs, working my way up to her untidy triangle of tangled fair fur covering her sex. 

"You were so gentle at Momma's, tucking the spare blanket, that was always there on the chair, around me and you stroked my cheek and kissed me on the forehead and told me not to be frightened. You assured me that no-one was going to be hurt, that everyt'hing would be all right and I was to go back to sleep. When you touched my cheek it was like an electric shock."

"I remember that touch, I also felt something magical between us but you were so young. I don't kiss little girls as a rule," I chuckled, "I don't even remember going so far as kissing you at the time, I was drunk, I think."

"You probably were, but that didn't stop you being who you are, honey, a warm, gentle, caring, loving man, even then so mature beyond your years."

"I remembered my own home life all too clearly, having a single parent to whom I was an inconvenience. I couldn't bear the thought of supplanting you in your mother's temporary affections."

"So you tried to deflect her by making me the centre of attention for a few moments."

"I was terrified, too, darling," I owned up between our kisses, "if you remember, that it was my first time. I had never even seen a woman as beautiful as your mother before, nor ever been intimate with a woman before. I couldn't believe that someone so beautiful was prepared to sleep with me. I was a complete beginner."

"Didn't you have girlfriends ... before?" Maureen took in a short intake of breath as I skirted around her aroused and headily-scented sex and kissed and nibbled her softly rounded belly, dipping my tongue into her belly button.

"I was lanky, uncoordinated, angry at my father and the world at large, I didn't make any friends easily. I lived in my own little bubble of rage, no-one could touch me. I had no friends, no girlfriends. The Navy beat the anger out of me very quickly, though."

I licked around her soft flattened breasts, sucking first on one nipple, then the other. Resting on one elbow I softly stroked her thighs with the tips of my fingers up as far as the edge of her fur, then down again. 

"I didn't sleep at all that night," Maureen said, "I listened to every word, every sound you made. Momma asked you about yourself, your name and your home town. You spoke of your Mam leaving, your Dad's successful garage that he wanted you to join him in the business, but you opted for the Navy. I soaked up everyt'hing like a sponge. At other times, when Momma entertained men, I always kept my hands over my ears, shutting out the sounds, filling my head with songs and music, my eyes screwed shut, tensing for the violence towards Momma that happened so often." 

I kissed her collarbones and nibbled her neck, she buried her fingers of one hand into my short-cut hair and pulled my head towards her waiting lips and kissed me deeply.

"Momma called you beautiful, marvelling at how you were so hard and yet so soft." Maureen caressed my engorged cock with her other hand, "Just as you are now," as our lips met again.

She guided me into her wet place and I pushed in gently at her inviting opening. 

"Gently, my love, it's been a long time for me."

"A long time for me too."

She was tight, so tight, but slick, I couldn't tell how far I was in, perhaps halfway, but she was too tight to go any further, I started to pull out.

"No, no, deeper," she said.

I pushed again, a little harder. Maureen sighed, "You are so big."

"I don't want to hurt you, sweetheart," I said.

"You aren't honey," she assured me, sucking in my tongue and releasing it, "You are wonderful, sweet and gentle, so loving. Just don't stop, please don't stop."

I grinned, looking down on her and chuckled, "I will never hurt you, Maureen, my love."

"I know."

I started stroking my cock in and out slowly, Maureen rising her hips to meet me. I was only using shallow strokes and looked down between her breasts to see how I was doing and was amazed to see I was virtually fully in. I pressed in just a little harder and our pelvises ground together. I looked back up to her face. Maureen's eyes were closed, a smile on her parted lips, her breathing heavy. I mashed myself to her a little harder, she matched my thrust upwards just as hard, a grimace appeared on her face.

"OK?"

"Very OK," she opened her eyes, they were round and shiny, the deepest blue, like the ocean off Honduras, "Don't stop, whatever you do, don't stop."

"I don't think I'm going to last very long, sweetheart."

"Nor me honey, just go for it. Then we can always go again, can't we, please?"

"You can bet on it, sweetheart," I laughed, "I love you so much, Maureen."

"I love you too, Roger, I always have."



CHAPTER 4

We laid there sated for a while, her on top of me. Not dozing exactly, but certainly relaxed, and we talked. I wanted to talk to her about my father but I thought she would probably prefer to talk about her daughter.

"Tell me about Rosemary," I opened.

Maureen lifted her head off my breast where I had felt the pleasure of her breathing on my chest hairs and she looked at me with those lovely blue eyes.

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

"Well, Rosemary was born at eleven minutes past two in the morning, she weighed six pounds ten ounces, it wasn't a difficult birth but the air was pretty blue ..." her voice trailed off as she looked at me with both her eyebrows lifted.

"Alright," I chuckled, "I'll go with the short version, first."

Maureen settled back down on my chest again. That felt so good, as good as the sex had been. All right, almost as good, nice.

"She was a lovely girl, no mother could ever wish for a better daughter." 

She paused for a moment, thinking, I felt more of her tears drip onto my chest. I already had my arms around her and I squeezed her tightly and gently kissed the top of her head. Her hand resting on my chest clenched, pulling at my chest hairs. I don't think she realised how hard she was pulling them, I had tears in my eyes, too.

I changed tack.

"Tell me how you met my Dad, Frank."

"I need to go back a bit, sweetheart, to put it in context. I was really looking for you ... and found Frank along the way."

"OK, start at the beginning. We have all the time in the world."

"I lived with my Aunt Rose for as long as I remember. She told me that when Momma fell pregnant, from her first boyfriend, who had gone to England to find work, and never came back. Her family just kicked her out. She moved to Cork to have me. Aunt Rose was much older, by about fifteen years, and helped Momma with a little money but it was never enough. She worked in a bar and was amenable to earn a little more on the side. Momma kept me for a while until I became too much of a handful, so Aunt Rose took me on. I never knew any of my other Aunts and Uncles. Rose kept me hidden from them all, knowing they would have not'hing to do with me or Momma. Then Rose fell ill when I was about ten and Momma had to fetch me. So I lived with her for a couple of months or so. That was when you came to call. After a while, Rose was better and I went back home to live with her, and care for her as she was never quite as well again."




Blue-Eyed Nurses



"So when did you come over here?"

"I'm coming to that," she playfully slapped me on the shoulder, so I used my finger and thumb to show I was zipping up my mouth. She reached up and nipped my chin with her even white teeth.

"Momma died. Nobody but Rose and I attended her funeral. I was still in school. Then Rose rapidly went into decline, she had never really recovered from her earlier illness."

"Did Rose ever marry?" forgetting that I was supposed to let her tell the story.

"No," she smiled at my interruption, "I t'hink she preferred females to men but was too repressed to even try women. I got the impression she remained a frustrated virgin all her life. She was very uptight."

"Did she ever try anything on with you?"

"With me? Oh, no! She was far too repressed to entertain any kind of relationship with me. I don't think she ever showed me a moment's love or appreciation for the care I gave her all the time I was there. I suspect in truth she loved Momma and never got over that Momma never returned that love in the same way."

"My poor angel, I think I'll have to make up what you have been missing, love-wise."

"You are already Roger, just being here for me now is such a comfort. These last three days, since losing Rosemary, I have been lost."

"So what happened to Rose?"

"She was very ill for several years. Did I tell you she was a nurse? No? Well she was and I became a student nurse just as she became terminally ill and I nursed her as well as studied. She died, I graduated and came here looking for you."

"And then we missed each other."

"Yes. Firstly, I applied for and got a job at the district hospital and shared a room with t'hree other nurses. I found out where I could find a garage called Bird & Son, so I checked it out. As soon as I saw your father I knew who he was, you two looked so alike."

"So you fell for him, then?"

"No, not then. Let me tell this story, will you, hon?"

"OK, sweetheart," I chuckled, "But I will have get up shortly to use the toilet."

"I'll give you the quick version then," she laughed. "Frank was charming, handsome and as I said he looked a lot like you do now. I called into his garage late on in the day, after my shift finished, and found him on his own, about to lock up."

"He always was first in and last out."

"I was very nervous but knew I was at the right place. Above the name of the company inside the showroom, there were photos of Frank and you. I told him a lie, that I was interested in buying a car but wasn't sure if my Irish driving licence was valid here. I also said I wanted an idea of how much a suitable car would cost me. He was very patient and sat me down, saying I could use my Irish licence for twelve months but would then have to get a British licence if I intended staying and that I could the form from a post office. Then he showed me the sort of car he would recommend and actually took me out for a test drive in it. He was very charming, not pushy or anyt'hing, just very nice. Then he offered to take me out to dinner."

"Oh yes?"

"Yes, but only because it was late and neither of us had eaten or had anyone at home to feed us or to get back to. I offered to go Dutch, but he was very persuasive. I wanted to get our conversation around to the subject of you. I really hadn't considered anything else, or read more into it. I was still very innocent in those days. Still am, although here were are in bed together so soon!"

"And I'm certainly not knocking that, honey! I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. So, what did Frank have to say about me?"

"He was so very proud of you. I got the conversation around to the photos I saw in the showroom. He told me how well respected you were in the Navy and then told me about your career in oil exploration. Then he broke my heart, saying that you were happily married and had a fine son."

"Well, that's a surprise to me! Because I never spoke to my father, he probably never knew of the problems that Jeanie and I had."

"He told me how you and he were estranged, and that he hadn't seen you since you were 17, which was only a little longer than since I had seen you last. As far as he was concerned he t'hought you were still happily married and with a teenage son."

"Jeanie and me, well we split up before Bobby was even born. We remained married on paper for a long time, because she didn't actually petition for divorce and apply for maintenance until about five years ago and I was still sending an allowance home as she has never done a day's work in her life. Those payments have all stopped very recently, when I heard she had moved to New York with her boyfriend and was renting our house out."

"Well, at that time I lost hope that I would ever see you again, Roger. Of course, all along I t'hought you might have been married with a family, but I hoped you would be single. Frank was very attentive and realised that something in me had changed, and that I had become upset. He took me home to the flat I shared with other nurses and said he had enjoyed my company so much and would I join him for dinner again? I was lonely too, not knowing anyone, so we started going out as friends. One evening, and it was several months later, we made love, it wasn't planned, and neither of us took precautions that first time. By then I had fallen in love with Frank, he was a wonderful man and I stayed here a few times after that. When I realised I was pregnant, I think I must have conceived on what was probably the very first time we slept together, because after then we did take precautions."

"Too late then, though."

"Yes, much too late." She paused for a few moments, before continuing. "I was t'hinking of telling him about the baby when you called him right out of the blue."

"Bobby!"

"Yes, I went with Frank down to London to deal with the police and bring Bobby and Jonat'han back here."

"Both of them?"

"Roger, before we even went down there it was made very clear by the police exactly what had happened to Bobby and his friend. A gay bar had been targeted by a large gang of skinhead youths who smashed up the bar and beat up as many of the guys in the pub as they could get hold off. Bobby and Jonat'han were beaten quite severely. Jonat'han spent three days in hospital, having been kicked in the head. 

"We brought them home here and I treated their wounds and changed their dressings over the next few days. Frank was really marvellous, he treated them like he would any loving couple, allowing them to be together in the second bedroom. Then when they had recovered he helped them get back on their feet even as far as financing their first restaurant venture, which they launched successfully in Brighton. You would have been so proud of Frank."

"Yet he hid that information from me, right to the very end."

"As did your Mam, as you said earlier. Perhaps they both t'hought it better you not know."

"What does that make me, uncaring? Ultra conservative? Unsophisticated?"

"No, sweetheart, they loved you and t'hought you had enough on your plate without this as well. Bobby told me that you and Jean were separated. I knew then that I had not only lost you, I couldn't t'hink of continuing my relationship with Frank, he would eventually have found out how I felt about you. I loved him too much to hurt him but not quite enough to hide my feelings for you in the long term. I broke up wit'h him, quite amiably, citing the difference in age and then kept out of his way while I grew larger with Rosemary inside me."

"So how did your husband Bob come on the scene?"

"Bob was a police sergeant, who kept finding excuses to come into A&E, where I was working at the time, every opportunity he had. He watched me all the time and noticed my condition as soon as I started showing. He knew I was unmarried and unattached. He was married before, up in Scotland. Bob and his wife had been trying for a baby for ten years without success and eventually went for tests. She was fertile, his sperm was not. His wife desperately wanted children and she took the drastic step to sleep around until she fell pregnant. Then she divorced Bob so she could marry the father. Bob had to leave Scotland, he couldn't stay up there and risk seeing her with the baby, so he transferred forces and came down here. He spoke to me, very frankly which was his way, explaining his circumstances, that he felt he was already in love with me and would happily bring up the child as his own, hoping in time that I would learn to love him in return. I never told him who the father was, he never asked, nor did he ever let on that he knew. I thought it would be easier to keep our daughter secret from Frank if I had another man on the scene, and so I married Bob."

She squeezed my hand. "He was a lovely man, Bob, generous and kind, a great father to Rosemary ... and I did learn in time to love him very much."

"He sounds like a great man, sweetheart," I said, squeezing her back and kissing her on the forehead.

"He was, but right now, this is ... perfect."

"OK, sweetheart, but I really do have get up now to use the toilet. Do you want a drink?"

"Yes, but I think we both need showers first."

"I'll get the shower warmed up."

Before we showered, I showed her the framed photo where it was on Dad's dresser, it was an innocent joyful photo of mother and young daughter taken, Maureen thought, by Bob on holiday at Skegness when Rosemary was about 30 months old. She had no idea how Frank could possibly have got hold of it.

While she continued to feed the washing machine and commenced preparation of our evening meal, I went through to Da's office armed with a strong cup of coffee and looked in his filing cabinet under "W". There was the copy of his Will, as he had said, the original being filed with a local law firm. The copy was in an envelope addressed to me and I opened it. The envelope contained just two pages of the Will plus another four pages listing his investments, with the last valuation about eight months previous. Finally, there was a note of what funeral and burial arrangements he would like, and the location of the family plot, with a key sellotaped to it.

From the Will I noted that I would get the house completely and three-quarters of the garage business, plus half the value of the investments. Bobby would get one-quarter of the investments only but not have any obligation to pay back his earlier outstanding loans. His daughter Rosemary, described as Rosemary Frances Roberta Curran, was to have had one-eighth of the business and one-eighth of the investments. The two women in his life that he loved, my mother and Maureen, were to get one-eighth each of the investments. In addition Maureen would get a one-eighth share of the business. This meant that Maureen would inherit Rosemary's share and total a quarter of the business plus a quarter of the investments, the last element alone adding up to a cool half million or so. My lover Maureen was going to be a wealthy woman, provided the business was in a good state.

But what had really surprised me as soon as I entered the study were the number of framed photos on the desk and all around the walls of Maureen with Rosemary, or Rosemary on her own and a grown-up Rosemary in a number of poses with her real father Frank.

Attached to that funeral arrangement note was a key to his desk with a note to look at a photograph album in the bottom righthand drawer. I followed his instructions and pulled out a thick folder. There were photos of Rosemary from an early age through to the beautiful woman who had so recently emerged from her teens. There were pictures from school, holiday outings, some photos including Maureen and a solidly-built gentleman who was presumably her "father" Bob, clearly taken from distance by Frank. 

Below the photo album was a thick folder of letters, Christmas and birthday cards, all addressed to "Daddy". Clearly Frank had been aware of his child from the beginning and she had been aware of him for what appeared to be about a dozen years. The only thing I could deduce from this discovery was that in the last couple of years of his life, Bob must have become aware of his terminal illness and had noticed Frank watching them from a distance. 

Bob the policeman had put two and two together, before actually putting the two of them together, the real father and his real daughter. Somehow, they kept their mutual acquaintance a secret from her mother, knowing that Bob was living on borrowed time. Maureen said that Bob was a very good man, I had to agree with her, I wished I had gotten a chance to know him as well as my father clearly had, too.

I was going to have to collect Maureen after she reached a convenient break in the kitchen and bring her through here to the study. I would have to hold her tight while I showed her the photos and the copy of the Will, while she learned that Frank and Bob and Rosemary had been aware of each other for so long. A joint funeral and interment in Dad's family plot would, I hope be most appropriate resting place for her Rosemary and our father.

Then I would have hold my beloved Maureen tightly again as I told her how I now knew that Rosemary was named after her Great Aunt and Grandmother, who she was even now meeting and getting to know. I will tell my beloved that my Dad and her Rosemary were together again in spirit for eternity, their paths to paradise smoothed by the Jesuit priest who died in his coach, which unfortunately hit a nurse hurrying to work in her uniform but with her nameplate secured in her locker.

I would have to squeeze Maureen to me as I tell her how I did indeed meet her lovely daughter, my half-sister and discover how much both her fathers loved her. 

Then I would show her the lovingly-made photo album documenting Frank's love for them both. 

Finally I would give Maureen that thick folder of letters, Christmas and birthday cards, all lovingly inscribed to "My Daddy" from "your loving daughter, Mary, XXX".

Then I will declare that I will love her always and want Maureen to share my life as my wife from this point forward.

The end.