The Ante-Natal clinic pronounced mother and baby in perfect health, and confirmed the probable sex to us; we were having a boy (in the considered opinion of the Radiologist administering the scan), poor Lena trying not to show her momentary disappointment after she’d set her heart on a girl.
“Never mind, baby, the next one will be a girl, and at least she’ll have a big brother to look out for her, just like I did!” she grinned, consoling herself as we left the hospital.
That evening I got a call from Emma, asking if I was free for a couple of hours in the morning, there was someone she wanted me to meet. I was intrigued when she wouldn’t say who, as was Lena.
The following morning Emma picked us up; Lena wanted to come along too, and we drove through Bristol, down through the Centre, past Temple Meads and along the Bath Road, finally turning into Arnos Grove Cemetery. I guessed where we were going, and Emma led us to a marble memorial, a cross with an inverted rifle carved into the upright, and a badge carved in high relief, a laurel chaplet surrounding a map of the world, surmounted by a pennon with ‘Gibraltar’ carved on it, supporting the Queen’s State Crown bearing a rampant crowned lion and the words ‘Per Mare, Per Terram’; the crest of the Royal Marines. At the juncture of the upright and the crosspiece of the monument was an inset picture of a smiling young man in the full dress blues of a Royal Marine. He was holding his white Wolseley Topee helmet under his arm, and Lena gasped as she looked closely.
“Oh my God, Dar, he looks just like you, look!”
I already knew who it was; the inscription gave his name. I felt oddly affected by seeing this; I had no connection to this man, and yet I literally owed my existence to him. I read the inscription further.
Robert Darryl Fraser, Lance-Corporal,
Company K, 42 Commando, Royal Marines
Taken from us 31st May, 1982 while on patrol on Mount Kent, East Falkland, Falkland Islands.
“PARUI REQUIEM MIHI ET HONORE”
It took me a moment to recall enough Latin to translate the inscription;
“I have served with honour and earned my rest”
Lena had tears in her eyes as she read the inscription, and knelt down to right the wreath of poppies placed there last November 11th, Remembrance Day. Emma knelt beside her and brushed away the wind-blown debris that had sifted over the base of the monument then placed a single poppy and a white rose there. Lena exchanged glances with her, then once more brushed her hand lightly over the poppy wreath.
“So young, look at him, he was just a boy…!” she murmured, a tear rolling down her cheek, “He was just a boy, Dar, he had his whole life ahead of him…”
Emma brushed her fingertips over the picture, her eyes distant, sad.
“A lot of boys lost their lives there, on both sides; some of them died the same day, and when I come up here I try and think of all of them too, of what their mothers and families must be doing now, and it’s probably not very much different to what we’re doing here and now. This is the real consequence of war, not the drums and trumpets and victory parades and medals; instead there’s the empty seats at the family gatherings, the lost promise of lives not lived, and the grandchildren who will never be. I don’t celebrate the victory in the Falklands; those boys who were killed by our troops, they may have been enemy soldiers, but they were also somebody’s babies, somebody’s brothers, too.”
She stood up and helped Lena up, wordlessly handing her a tissue so she could wipe her eyes and blow her nose, before linking arms with both of us as we walked back to the car. As we walked, she told us of the reason for our visit.
“I come here every year on Lizzie’s birthday because Robbie used to give her a white rose on her birthday; it was like his special gift to her. Today’s her birthday, but she’s never been here, I don’t think she ever will; she can’t face his loss, and this would just be too much for her. So I do it, I give him a rose from her, just to let him know she hasn’t forgotten him.”
We drove back in silence, busy with our thoughts, but feeling strangely up-beat; at least I was; now I had a real connection to my past, to the other side of the story mum and dad had tried to tell me all those months ago.
The next few months flew past; subsequent Ultrasound scans confirmed we were indeed having a boy, and Lena busied herself getting the house baby-friendly while work continued apace for me. Lena quickly acclimatized herself to my sometimes erratic work schedule, she understood that as the junior member of the team I was still in training; the Senior Registrar was very hot on all team members keeping their training and techniques up to date, so I was handed more, and more varied, surgical cases than my more senior colleagues. This was my ‘make or break’ time; if I caved in under the pressure, I’d fail my surgical elective and have to either revert to General Practice or leave medicine.
Lena was my tower of strength during this difficult period, keeping me going when I stressed out, and leaving me to sleep when I dragged in after marathon sixteen hour sessions in the Operating Theatre. I think if I’d shown the slightest hint that I was contemplating chucking it all in and becoming a GP she’d have supported me, but she would also have been disappointed with me that I’d given up, and I couldn’t live with knowing I’d let her down in any way. This period was when most of my real growing-up happened, as my mind finally wrapped itself around the choices I’d made and showed me the real consequences of failure; I had a baby on the way, and a partner who depended on me, so there was no way I could allow myself to falter or fail.
As her pregnancy progressed, and her belly swelled, she became almost irresistible; her usual expression was serene, almost angelic; she looked like a Madonna from a Raphael painting, with her sweet expression and calm, unruffled manner; I couldn’t get enough of her, and she felt the same way about me; night after night, when I should have been resting in preparation for another long day in the Operating Theatre, we would instead be pounding and straining against each other, everything about her drawing me in, pulling me closer, making me hot and her irresistible; I spent the last trimester with an almost permanent erection, and Lena was always wet and receptive, ever ready with her slippery, succulent pussy or hot demanding mouth.
My days passed in a whirl of surgery, diagnosis and surgical training reviews, and my nights an endless round of hot, sweaty, slippery sex. When she got too large for us to safely make love in the missionary position, she would instead have me take her from behind, her fingers strumming and rubbing her ever erect clitoris while I pounded into her as I rubbed and squeezed her swollen breasts and highly sensitive nipples.
However we did it, though, the sex was unforgettable, mind-blowing, incredible, and a whole lot of other superlatives. Lena and I couldn’t stop; the things we felt for each other and that connection we shared was always the keystone of our lovemaking, the one thing that stood out for both of us; we really were a family, in all the important, subtle, and not so subtle ways there are to measure that connection we shared, and we felt an almost overwhelming compulsion to renew and explore that connection at every possible opportunity.
Lizzie was always there for us, and Emma, and Allie, surprisingly; she’d moved to the Catholic school in Lawrence Weston, not too far from either Clifton or Portishead, and had gotten into the habit of appearing on Friday afternoon after school and staying for the weekend, with either Lena or me taking her home on Sunday evening; I was pleased she’d attached herself to us, as it gave Lena some company when I was working through the night at weekends; I got used to coming in at 6 or 7 in the moring and finding Allie and Lena fast asleep in our bed, thumbs corked in their mouths, the TV still on and the debris of pizza and microwave popcorn scattered everywhere; when I wasn’t working, having her there gave us a flavour of what it would probably be like to have a child sharing the house with us.
The day I was informed I had been put forward to sit the Intercollegiate Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons examination was the crown of my career to date, and a resounding slap on the back from the University Hospital. From then on my life became even more hectic, cramming time to study in between my surgical caseload and trying (and succeeding, somehow!) to have a family life with Lena. When I took the examination, Lena was serenely confident I would pass and be awarded my membership diploma and the right to carry the letters MRCS after my name; Dr. Darryl Morgan, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons; it had a certain ring to it!
And then one day in late May I got a panicked call from Lizzie. Lena was on her way to the hospital. They’d been out shopping in Broadmead, one last spree before she popped, and her waters had broken in one of the department stores. Luckily Broadmead is only a short way from The Bristol Royal Infirmary and I was already in the A & E when she was brought in by the ambulance, having broken most of the hospital Health and Safety rules in my mad dash to be there for her when she arrived.