After Forever Ends (26 page)

We had previously spent our weekends at our school lying about with our friends or heading to London and Cardiff to see rock concerts, so it seemed odd how we were now rushing to the cabin on the weekends to lay floors and toss up walls. But the real paradox was that Oliver and I, who now were married and had taken possession of our own home, had to rush from that world of adult behaviour and responsibility and return to school on Sunday before curfew or we faced detention. How ironic that a married couple would be sentenced to spend an evening together polishing trophies in a trophy case for missing curfew, but it happened. We had too much fun doing it as well, so the next time we were late they had us clean the showers. Not nearly as much fun, but we still laughed the whole time.

The gamekeeper’s quarters at Bennington where we stayed those last few weeks of our enrolment were nice enough, not that we had a lot of time to enjoy them. Classes and preparing for final exams took up most every waking moment. Bennington had furnished the little house for us, so we had a sofa, chair and a bed, but we spent the majority of our time studying at the kitchen table. Often, there was little conversation.

Oliver would usually close his books first and yawn. “I am so blooming buggered,” He said the last night before our final exams, as he rubbed his eyes, “I can’t wait until school is done.”

“And then we can start university,” I mumbled, flipping a page in my textbook while I tapped my pen against my bottom lip. “And it the whole thing begins again.”

“Ah, Sil, it’ll be fun!” He grinned and back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest, “We always have fun, yeah?”

“Usually,” I turned another page.

“Look at me,” He tapped the table three times with his fingertips. I looked up, “You’re stressed too much, Sweetie,” He said gently, “You’re not enjoying life.”

“I’ve got to get high marks if I’m going to get into the microbiology programme.”

“You will, Love. You always do,” He stood and came around behind me, “You are Silvia. You are the classic over-achiever, Love. I wish you’d stop working so hard sometimes. If you’d just relax, you’d find out how easily it all comes to you.”

Even though he was standing behind me, massaging the knots out of my shoulders, his words hit me like a stone. Instead of comforting me like he intended, they broke something inside of me instead. “That’s just it!” I told him, “It doesn’t come easily! Everything I’ve done I’ve worked my arse off for!” I was so tired and burned out that it all came bubbling out of me. All the anxiety, all the frustration. Everthing. I sobbed.

Oliver must have felt helpless because he said nothing, which was not much like him. Instead, he just stood behind with his arms around me and let me cry. Finally, he kissed my hair and he spoke, “I wish you could see what I do. You are the most beautiful person who was ever created. In your heart and in your mind, Love.”

“I am not!”

But you are!” He insisted, rocking me gently, “I love the way you smell,” He muttered, kissing me softly behind the ear, “I love your skin. You’re always so soft. And bright! Silvia, you understand things that nobody else does. All that Science rubbish that gives the rest of us headaches, you explain it so we can understand it. Mind, we only understand it for about a femto-second before it all slips out through our ears, but, that’s how good you are. I know what a femto-second is because of you!”

I kept sobbing. No matter what he said, it made me cry harder and I knew why. I was terrified. As much as I loved him, loving him scared the hell out of me. Everybody who was ever supposed to love me had sent me away. My mind was racing. What was I doing married? Why was he saying all these wonderful things about me? When would he leave? When would he tell me to go? When would this whole dream be over and I’d be left standing in a strange place with my bags like I’d always been left before?

I was out of control and vulnerable. How had I let myself get to the point where someone could hold me in his hand and could crush me at any second? How could I ever have let myself feel like I depended on his will for my very breath? How did I ever allow myself to trust him when he could destroy me? Completely and totally obliterate me? I had always been so strong, so focused. But with him, I was lost.

He was quiet for a long time, holding me in that little kitchen. Finally, he spoke.

“I’ll never leave you, Silvia,” He swore. I’ve been told that soul mates can read each other’s minds and Oliver could certainly read mine. He squeezed me tighter, “No matter what happens, no matter what goes wrong. I’ll stay with you forever.”

“I know.” I whispered. I believed him. I felt some of the tears recede, but anxiety burned in my chest.

“Then why are you afraid? I can feel it, Sil. Why are you afraid of me sometimes?”

“Because,” I put my hand back against his face and caressed the beginnings of stubble on his cheek with my fingertips. “Nobody’s ever loved me before.”

“Is it so unbelievable that somebody would?”

It took me a moment to answer. I traced the bones of his face and ran my thumb across his lips. “Nobody ever has,” I repeated.

“That’s the saddest thing I‘ve ever heard,“ He told me softly, “That somebody as incredibly wonderful as you never felt loved. I’m sorry that your life was like that, but it isn’t anymore because I‘m here now,” He warmed my shoulder with his hand, “I love you. You don’t need to be afraid of that, Silvia, or of me. I won’t just stop loving you one day out of the blue. I know your mother died and your father wasn’t there for you. I know you feel they both abandoned you, but I won’t. You are always safe with me. I’ll never hurt you, never on purpose. I’ll never betray you. I’ll always protect you. You have to know that. I have always loved you, Just Silvia. I loved you before I knew you were real and I will love you always in time. I promise. I swear it.”

I suddenly could breathe again, although there was still a bit of post-hysteric gulping going on, “I promise the same, Oliver. I promise, too.”

I stood up and he took me into his arms and held me until I was calm and relaxed. Moments later he walked me to the bed where we lie close, side by side, lost with each other in the place that we could only get to together. It was the only place where either of us felt entirely at peace and knew that we were completely safe and totally loved. We were together. We were home.

We slept, both of us lost in dreams we’d never remember later to share. In the morning, I woke facing him. I sat up and caught myself in the mirror. My hair was a nightmare of frazzled, spidery curls. My eyes looked as if they’d been bleeding and my nose was red like a tomato. I noticed him move and realised he’d caught my reflection as well. Me, looking the worst he’d ever seen. I looked back at him and immediately began pulling at my hair.

He smiled and said, “I have eye drops in my jacket pocket.”

That was when I knew he’d been telling me the truth. He really wasn’t going anywhere.

All of my fear melted away.

I got one hundred percent on my final exam the next day. Instead of rushing back to the cabin, we spent the weekend at school enjoying the year end festivities with our friends. We were all fully aware that this was our final hoorah. It was only a matter of days before life as we knew it would end and each of us would shove off in our different directions and make our own way in the world. It was ever present, this fact, lingering just below the surface, but no one said much about it. No one discussed their anxieties or sadness at the inevitable separation we’d all experience. We just talked and laughed and chased each other about the rugby pitch as usual. Then, the following Wednesday all of us… Alex, Oliver, Sandra, Lance, Merlyn and I, all received our A-Levels and set about preparing to go home.

I kept thinking that this was it. My last and final moment not only as a second form student, but as a child. It was my time of passage, I knew, the moment where I had nobody to answer to but myself. Everything I had worked all my life for, all those tests, all the studying and coursework and worry and aggravation...all of it accumulated into the moment that it all ended. I wouldn’t know if I had been accepted to Cardiff until August, so I pushed it out of my mind and tried to focus on the now, on the excitement that I should be feeling at having completed such a task as finishing secondary school. So many people didn’t make it and I had, with honors.

Then why, I wondered even then, wasn't I excited? Why wasn't I filled with a sense of accomplishment? Why wasn't I bursting with pride? Why did I feel nothing more than relief mixed with sadness, mixed with that horrible sense of regret I always felt, as if I could have done better, as if I should have done something different?

I didn't give myself time to give it any mind. I couldn't feel anything back then, not anything in any depth other than my strange emptiness and occasional bouts of sadness. Nothing but him, nothing but Oliver.

One the last day there, we left one by one. One by one, without truly understanding the magnitude of it at the time, we each left any life we had known before and began a journey from which we could never return.

“I can’t believe you’re all going!” Lucy howled, clinging to Oliver on the quad, “You’re leaving me here all alone!”

“All alone?” Alex asked incredulously, looking about the crowd, “You have a thousand friends at this school! You‘re Queen Bee of your class!”

“Not friends like you!” She choked back her tears and hugged Oliver tighter, “You’re more than friends! You’re my family! I’m going to be all alone! Ollie and Sil have moved away and now you’re leaving me, too, Xander! How am I supposed to come and see you?”

“We are family,” Ollie squished her to him and kissed the top of her head, “Which is why you’ll always see us!”

She howled.

Alex looked at me and shook his head, “Is she serious?”

I nodded. I had been aware that Lucy had been upset for weeks about us leaving Bennington. She hadn't pulled any punches letting me know. When she’d figured out that I wasn’t going to be living in the house with her and Dad anymore and that no one would be travelling one way or the other to visit all the time, she had sank into a deep funk. “It's not fair!” She'd told me in a fit one night, “We've always been together!”

“Lucy,” I tried to remain calm. Part of me really wanted nothing more than to tell her to grow up and remind her that there was a long, long time when we weren’t together, but it seemed cruel so I didn't. Instead, I took the logical route, “We're five years older than you! We had to go before you or we'd be in college until we were twenty-three! Besides, Ollie and I are married now and we have to have our own place. It's not like we won't ever see you.”

“I hate it!” She stomped her foot so hard her hair went in her face, “I absolutely hate it!”

Nothing I had said seemed to comfort her, so that last day on the quad I didn't even try.

“We’ll never leave you forever,” Alexander sounded annoyed, “You know you’ll see us from time to time.”

It only made her cry harder. “From time to time! I’ll be so lonely in Denbigh this summer!”

“Take the bloody train then, yeah?” Alex snapped. He'd had enough of her moaning, “You can come to Welshpool any time you like!”

“Really?” She blinked up at him. Her pale, round face was pure innocence. She was pretty even then, Lucy was. Lucy was always pretty, even when she was a baby, and she was pretty with tears streaming down her cheeks at twelve years old.

“Do you think my mum would turn you out?” Oliver asked gently.

“Would you come and see me?” Her eyes were wide, still fixed on Alex.

“Lucy,” Alexander’s shoulders slumped. The look of annoyance was swept away with another that said he couldn't believe she'd ask such a thing. He shook his head, “If you need me, you call my name and I’ll drop what I’m doing and rush to you. Don’t you know that by now?”

“You always expect people to know things without telling them,” She sniffed.

“Only clever people,” Alex teased.

Lucy giggled.

As much as I had wanted to leave Bennington since our marriage, the thought of walking out of those gates and never returning was very sad for me. After most people had already gone, the six of us Bennington kids gathered in a group on the quad for the last time to say our goodbyes to each other. It was surreal. I looked at the friends I had made since I had gotten there…the ones I had been close with like Sandra, Lance and Merlyn and the ones that had sort of flitted in and out of my life, like Meredith and Josh. Three years I had known all of them, but it seemed a lifetime. I could not even begin to measure the ways that all of us had changed in that time, nor was I able to fathom how we would change once we went our separate ways.

“Take care of yourself and of that giant oaf you married,” Merlyn told me in my ear as he gave me a very firm farewell hug. He was going to his parent’s cottage in France and needed to catch his plane, “I’ll miss seeing you both every day.” He held me at arm’s length and smiled broadly, “Take care of you, too!”

“I’ll miss you, too,” I said sincerely, kissing his cheek, “We'll see you soon!” I turned to Lance, who was standing to my left, grinning, “Goodbye, Lancelot,” I gave him a good squeeze and bent to kiss his cheek as well, “I know you’ll do wonderful at Cambridge. Keep growing like you are and soon you’ll be tall as an oak!”

“Liar Silvia!” He chuckled. I watched the red spread across his cheeks about the kiss, “I’ll miss that about you!”

“I’ll stop the world and melt with you, Oliver Dickinson!” Merlyn wailed out the chorus to the song they were always quoting to each other. It had some private meaning I was never in on. He began walking away, “You see the difference and it’s getting better all the time!”

“There’s nothing you and I won’t do, Merlyn Pierce!” Oliver wailed back as Merlyn gave us all one final wave good bye. Ollie held his hand high above his head and bellowed, “I’ll stop the world and melt with you, Boyo!”

I hugged Sandra, the last to leave the quad, for a very long time. She was the hardest for me to leave. Oliver said nothing about it, but left us alone instead, going over to stand with Alexander.