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? Why would he include her daughter Rosemary? And why would Maureen not say anything to me before sending me up to my Dad’s room? What was she trying to say to me? Surely if she was aware that the photo was there, she would have said something earlier, to mitigate the shock.

This raised another question. If Maureen was my father’s lover, 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. I was all too aware that not only had she lost her daughter, she lost her ... what was he, an old lover or a partner in an affair?

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 very 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 about the photo that she must’ve known I’d seen.

“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 couldn’t help thinking that she looked like she felt at home.

“I think so,” I replied, although not sure if I still 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 home, 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 freshly-cleaned refrigerator, then I took out the green salad and pickles.

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

I wanted to bring up the subject of the photo I had seen in Dad’s bedroom but at the same time 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, was this developing into a like-father like-son situation? My mind was spinning. I turned my attention and conversation to the much safer subject of 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, get you started...”

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 turned 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 must have been in her mid-40s, much older than I had originally estimated at the hospital. Completely unadorned with make-up, her skin was pale but unblemished, though delicately graced with a few freckles, 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 lovely 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 loving 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 his daughter. Also, I never told Rosemary who her real father was. I gave her no reason to believe that 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 even possible.”

She returned her blue eyes to gaze at me again.

“I must see that photo, Roger. Let me up, now, please?”