Min disappeared after a while, and I came upon her crying in the upstairs sitting room, weeping for her baby brother, my dad; of course, this really was the end for her, she would never see him again; she was too old, and her heart was too frail for her to fly, so today had been the final farewell for her, something I’d forgotten or never considered, I was so wrapped up in my own loss. Now it was my turn to hold Min and to comfort her. Eventually she stopped crying, but I could see the loss in her eyes, the pain of the permanent separation she’d undergone as well, and it helped to put my own loss and loneliness in perspective.
We chatted, haltingly, at first, about their lives when dad was a small boy, how she and Doreen, teenagers themselves, had brought him up after their mother had died when dad was still just a toddler; his father had died in Korea just before dad was born, killed in the action at Imjin, Hill 235, during the valiant but doomed stand of the Gloucester Battalion, ‘The Glorious Glosters’, encircled, vastly outnumbered and eventually decimated. Dad’s father was one of the thousand men killed or missing in action in just one night of fierce hand to hand fighting against the Chinese; of such last stands legend is made. I never knew this, and I felt a burst of pride that my family had played a part in such a famous and evocative battle…
She told me how, after she’d married my late Uncle Alfie, they had become dad’s surrogate parents, and how she and Doreen had been so angry with him when he joined the Royal Air Force and had been posted to Cyprus, because they both thought he was far too young to be separated from his family like that. I was fascinated, hearing family history for the first time, about dad and Elizabeth’s mother, my grandmother, how she’d disappeared, and then turned-up one day with the baby girl and just left her with him, and disappeared again, never to be seen or heard of again; how he’d struggled to bring her up, a young man barely out of his teens, then meeting mum when Elizabeth was a teenager, and finally, how it had taken me, and then Lena, to heal the rift and bring them back together again.
At last I felt I understood the close bond between dad and his older sisters. With all the talk about family, Min had decided it was time she went home to her son and grandchildren; being surrounded by reminders of dad was too much for her, so she asked me to get hold of her son to come collect her, but I told her I’d take her back to Croydon; it wasn’t as though I was busy, or anything…
I called the number in Kolossi, mum and dad’s new home, to see if Lena had arrived yet and Lena answered, telling me about the flight and the car journey from Paphos to Kolossi, which is about 60 km. We chatted about what had happened, and once again she told me that she’d be back soon, that she just needed a little more time to get used to the idea of them not being there. She told me she loved me, and when I told her I loved and missed her, she started crying. Mum rescued the phone and promised she’d calm Lena down. I gave her my love to give to dad, and rang off.
The interview the following morning was almost a formality; the Senior Registrar, a Mr. Barclay, reviewed my credentials and my references, some of whom were old friends and former colleagues of his, told me what the pay was, outlined the extent of the surgical calendar, and basically asked when I could start, so I was in! I asked for a few days to get settled in properly, and agreed that I would start the following Monday, five days away.
I drove home, collected Min and her luggage, and headed back down the M4 to London. She asked me to stay a couple of days but I had to decline; I had to collect my clothes and personal papers, and make arrangements for my stuff to be packed and shipped from my flat, collect my security deposit, and drop off the keys, all of which took time.
Work was just about what I expected; the local National Health Service Hospitals Trust in Bristol had a lot of surgical patients backlogged, so I ended up as fill-in surgeon on the Cardio-vascular surgical team, clearing the night calendar along with the other night-owls, misfits and insomniacs, which suited me fine, and freed-up my more gregarious colleagues from having to rotate through the night surgery rota.
It meant I could work all night, and then call Lena in the late morning from home, before having dinner and going to bed. I usually worked all week, including weekends, which gave me less time to sit at home alone and mope; I didn’t need spare time alone, I wasn’t in any kind of mood to go out socialising, not without my Lena, so work gave me a good refuge, plus I did earn a lot of overtime!
I must have made a good impression, because after just a few weeks my Locum contract was cancelled and I was made a substantive member of staff, on a staff salary, which was less than Locum, but carried pension and holiday benefits.
And so my routine was established; work through the night, drive home and call Lena while dinner was being nuked in the microwave, watch some dire daytime TV, go for a run, have a short work-out and go to bed, to be back at work by 10 p. m. This worked fine for me, until at last, one day about six weeks after she’d left, I got the call I wanted so much to hear.
“Darryl? Baby, I’m coming home! My flight’s booked for tomorrow, arriving at Bristol at three o’clock, can you pick me up please baby? And baby… I had a bout of morning sickness today, my first one; Dar, we’re pregnant!”
She giggled at my suddenly incoherent babbling.
“Oh Dar, you are so sweet, listen to you, you sound like an expectant father! I have to go now, baby, I think you need to sit down, and this is daddy’s phone bill, so can’t chit-chat! Don’t forget to come and get me! Love you more than much, baby!”
She hung up and I stared at the phone. Morning Sickness! We were having a baby! I grinned at the phone, feeling foolish, happy, weird, a welter of emotions, but the overriding one was sheer gladness that my baby was coming home, and she was having my baby! I couldn’t sleep that afternoon, I kept seeing Lena, with a big belly, with a pushchair, carrying a toddler, holding hands with a small child, and all the while I was exulting that it was my baby, my child in those visions or daydreams or whatever.
I dropped off to sleep and dreamed of Lena and me, and our children, our babies growing-up here in this house where love had never been in short supply.
I was at the airport an hour early, just so I didn’t miss her through some mischance, but her flight touched down on schedule, and I paced while I waited for her to clear customs and get her luggage, and then suddenly, there she was, heartstoppingly beautiful, in a tight tank-top and a short, short skirt of the ‘you’re under arrest for being indecently dressed’ variety, what my fellow medical students used to call a “pussy pelmet”!
As she saw me she shrieked and abandoned her luggage trolley to run full-tilt at me, smothering me with kisses as she hugged me until I thought my neck would break. I held her close to me, unable to believe I had her back, the gaping wound I was carrying around closing at her touch. Then she did something that nearly collapsed me in tears; she leaned back, and then gently kissed me once on each cheek, and once on my forehead.
“That was from mum and daddy, to let you know how much they love you!”
Lena grinned and thumbed my eyes dry.
“Don’t do that, Darryl, big boys don’t cry!” which made me laugh out loud, and spin her around in sheer delight for having her back with me.
“Let me look at you!” I told her, holding her at arm’s length and whistling. “Yep, still gorgeous; oh, and pregnant as well! Wonder how that happened…?”
Lena reached down and surreptitiously tweaked my manhood.
“What have you done to me, you dirty, dirty man, my daddy warned me about people like you!” she grinned, and I was so happy to see her back to her old self; her time with mum and dad had obviously given her the closure she needed so desperately. Now she was back, and ready to go forward.
I returned the favour, squeezing her lovely firm little bum, re-acquainting myself with the curve of those ripe buttocks, and she grinned, leaning close to whisper in my ear;
“Take me home and fuck me, Darryl! Six weeks without you, I was nearly climbing the fucking walls! I have three holes, I want them all filled, you’ve got a dirty mind, let yourself go! Who knows, maybe you can put a little sister in there to keep our baby company!”
I had to grin.
“That’s not actually possible, you do know that, right?” I whispered back, and grinned even wider at her cheeky smile.
“Just try, for my sake; call it medical curiosity! I want you to do things to me, I want to soak the bed, I want to drip spunk from every hole, I want you to make me scream like a banshee in an echo canyon, I want to fuck like a baboon on Meth! I’ve had six fucking weeks with no you, I’m knocked-up and too randy for words, what the hell are you waiting for, a gilt-edged invitation?”
Like I said before, when she’s in full flow, there’s no-one quite like Lena…
She ducked into the Ladies restroom, then walked down to the car park with her arm around my waist while I pushed her luggage trolley.
We piled her luggage into the car and drove out of the car park, heading along the Bridgewater Road to pick up the A370 and the A4 back to Clifton, a 20 minute drive in the middle of the afternoon, but Lena soon discovered how to make it seem ever so much longer.
I was driving quite happily, casting the occasional glance at her lovely thighs as her short skirt rode up, when I noticed she was gradually pulling it up even higher, until I saw she had no panties on; that was why she’d ducked out back at the airport!