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 at Aunt Rose’s tiny flat. Aunt Rose was much older, by about fifteen years, and helped Momma with a little money but it was never enough. Momma 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 then 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 on Momma. I suppose I must’ve cramped her style while I was with her. After a while, Aunt Rose was better and I went back home to live with her, and care for her as she was never quite as well again.”

“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 gently 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, strict.”

“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 with her. 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, well, 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 then a lot like you do now. I called into his garage late on in the day, after my hospital 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 get the form easily 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 we are in bed together so soon after being reacquainted!”

“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 the 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!”