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.