After Forever Ends (59 page)

Having not come from a true and right family, it was amazing to me how much to heart the children took that sentiment. With Carolena in school, it was just me and my two boys most of the time in the wood, except for the days when Lucy would come by with her three girls. Annie and Bess were still babies and spent most of their time toddling about and having kips, but Natalie was growing by leaps and bounds. She was small for her age, but her mind was keen, and she was curious about everything everyone did. Natalie was not afraid of anything large or small and she was full of a million questions. She had this special way of caring about the people she loved as well, almost an over-caring where she noticed little things and set about fixing them.

“Teach me to cook!” She told Lucy and I one afternoon when she was four, “The children all want eggs!“ and then there was the day she came in with the little ones after playing in the snow. She plopped down beside me on the sofa and said quite seriously, “Auntie Sil, show me how to make mittens! I want to knit so my sisters never have cold hands! They‘re freezing!“ She was quite the little nanny, taking on responsibility with them that worried Lucy a bit.

“I want her to be a child, but she acts like she’s twenty!” Lucy shook her head, watching Nattie pass out dry cereal in handfuls to the children, “I can’t get her to sit and play a game!”

“It’s just her way,” I told her, “She’s a bit serious minded, but she still giggles.”

And she did giggle, especially when she was with her dad and Oliver. Oh, she adored them both and they loved her back with gorgeous abandon. Oliver would pick her up and swing her around like she was nothing. Toss her up over his shoulder, catch her, swing her around his back, catch her, then send her flying at Alex, who would do the same. They’d hold her by her arms and let her walk upside down across the ceiling until her little face would turn bright red. Having been so betrayed as a child, it amazed me the trust she had in them. There was no question in her mind that they’d never hurt her, no thought that they could just let her go and she might come crashing to the floor. It was perfect trust, never let down.

Alex had said the first time he held her that she was the girl who would teach him what love was all about and it had been the truth. Natalie brought out gentleness in him that I don’t think he ever knew he had. I never saw Alexander become cross with Nattie, not cross enough to ever say more than something like, “Not now, Nattie! Quiet down!" and he certainly never raised a hand to her. Alexander was a wonderful, patient father and he adored all of his children, but Natalie was his little angel.

“Nattie, my love," He’d say, “You’re so pretty. Pretty like your Mummy, but you’re mine through and through, yeah? “He’d hold her close, “I don’t know what I did to deserve a daughter like you, but I got you and I love you to bits! “

She adored him as well and she took any opportunity she could find to steal a moment with him, especially if it was away from the older children. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, Natalie at five years old, sitting with Alexander in the garden, yellow balls of yarn lying in the grass, instructing him on how to knit.

“Oh, blimey!” Alexander held his work out in front of him, “Is it knit one, purl two? Or the other way around?”

“It’s knit one, purl one for three rows, Daddy. You’re working on a ribbing.”

“Oh, bugger it all to hell!” He dropped his project to his lap, “I’m doing it all wrong!”

“Don’t give up! You can do this!”

“You think so?”

“I know so!”

“OK, if you say so! Let me start over then. Knit one, purl one…for three rows…”

They were fascinating, every single one of them. Nigel, the oldest, was always the first and usually the best at everything. He had the restless nature and good looks of his father as well as Alex‘s zeal for having a good time. He was a bit more sociable than his dad, however, and found himself from an early age the centre of attention most everywhere he went. I have to admit that it did go to his head at times, but the other Dickinson’s made it a point to bring him back to Earth. Nigel, through all his hot headedness and tantrums, in the core of his being, was a good soul. He was clever and needed occupied, however, or he could be borderline evil. He did stupid things as well, though, like trying to take his bicycle down a slide at the city park and breaking his leg in three places. He drove Lucy up the wall with his antics, but I realized early on that Nigel was as easily entertained as he was bored. The trick with him was to keep him busy. Clever as he was, if left to his own devices all he could usually come up with to do was to make something explode or beat up his mates. Thus, we were always looking for something to keep him busy and over the years we found many, many things.

Nigel lacked his father’s artistic genius, so paints and modelling were out, but he had a knack for athletics. Ollie and Alex coached him in football and rugby, but he was too much a roughneck for the junior rugby teams. Perhaps the twins shouldn’t have shown him so young how to tackle, I suggested, but both of them looked at me like I was mad and said, “You can’t play properly if you don’t tackle!”

“He’s only eight! Does he need to be slamming his mates down so hard?”

“Bunch of pansies!” Oliver huffed.

“They need to grow a pair,” Alex looked away, “Babies!”

I just shook my head.

For his birthday when he turned ten, we bought him a weight bag and had Oliver hang it from a tree. Alexander did the same in his own yard. What we ended up with was a more relaxed lad who discovered that, aside from punching things and slamming other boys to the ground, he enjoyed reading books. It connected him with his father, this love of reading, and the two, who had been at odds more than not, were suddenly trading stories between them and, as Nigel grew, discussing philosophy and literature.

The physical and mental exercise didn’t stop him completely from having outbursts, mind you. Nigel had a temper that wouldn’t yield. I’d be tempted to say that it was even worse that Alexander’s. Like his father before him, Nigel wouldn’t say a word as he grew angrier and angrier with somebody. He’d remain quiet; perhaps begin the argument, but not usually. No, usually he’d just stand there with a blank expression on his face and when his opponent least expected it, he’d blast him square in the face. Needless to say, he didn’t lose often. Punching people was a bit of a hobby for him, but he loved to tease and torment Carolena more than anything. I’m sure that it was his favourite pastime, but it certainly was not his most productive. Caro was by far his most even match.

I understood the rivalry between them. Nigel and Carolena were so close in age that they were always nose to nose. They shared the same form at school, sometimes even the same classroom. Caro was intensely competitive by nature, something she inherited from me, no doubt, especially when it came to her marks. After they were eight or so years old, she couldn’t fight with Nigel physically as he was much larger and stronger than her, but she gave him a run for his money with everything else. Carolena was an excellent footballer, although she didn’t take to rugby, and she’d show him up at matches. He’d retaliate by tripping her as often as he was able. She’d usually respond by punching him, at which he would laugh, and the two of them would be expelled from the game and sit on the side, arsing off. But by both of them striving to outdo the other, both managed to achieve excellence in academics, at athletics…at everything really. They drove each other mad, but they made each other better, too. And no one…and I mean NO ONE…messed with either of them without having to deal with the other.

As Carolena matured into her teenage years, she took on more physical traits of her father. Facially, she looked like me, except I always thought that she was prettier. But, like Oliver she was unusually tall and slender with long arms and legs. Her hair was the colour of shiny copper, hanging in curls to the middle of her back and her eyes were glittery dark chocolate. Llike her dad, too, everyone for miles around seemed to know who Carolena Dickinson was. Still, being so popular didn’t make her interested in many of the boys. Carolena had a serious mind and dreams of leaving Wales for a posh life in London. My daughter had her eyes on the stars and paid little attention to the comings and goings of people who were not like minded. Thus, she had adopted a reputation for being a snob.

She wasn’t. Caro was kind and considerate. She always took time for people. She’d learned it from her father, how to listen and care. It was only the ones that were jealous that called her names. When she was fifteen, she was pursued by the star of the local rugby team. Caro found him boorish and brainless and it was only three dates before she put an end to his courtship. It didn’t sit well with him and within a week he gone on a mission of slander, making claims against her virginity.

Oliver and I were doing our best to comfort her.

“Carolena,” I told her gently, “You can’t control what anyone says about you. The people who know you know you. They know it’s all lies. And the others who choose to believe it without knowing you…well, who cares? They don’t matter.”

“Your mum should know,” Oliver added, “People said a lot of foul things about her. Especially when she married me.”

“Why is it that just because I don’t want to marry a local rugger bugger and live my whole life within twenty miles of the municipality I was born in people think I have a problem?” Caro was literally in tears. “Connor Stuart is a mega-fuck brain and I wouldn’t be caught dead naked with him!” Oliver and I almost laughed out loud. Carolena had no idea she had slipped and used a curse in front of us. We choked back our smiles and allowed her to continue uninterrupted, “He’s dirt, he is! And if that makes me a bitch for saying it, than I am a bitch!”

“You are not a bitch and I don’t ever want to hear you call yourself a name like that again! Listen to me now, Carolena.” Oliver moved her chin with his hand so she was looking right into his face, “There is nothing wrong in this world with a woman setting levels of acceptability for herself. If some mega-fuck brain rugger bugger does not live up to those ideals that is entirely his problem. Girls who lower their standards or have none at all, for that matter, marry boys who abuse and misuse them. You are my child and you are worthy of respect. Don’t request it. Expect it. Demand it. Always.”

Caro’s dark eyes were glittering in the afternoon sun as she stared into her father’s face. “I love you, Dad!” She hugged him around his neck. “Why can’t I meet a boy like you?”

“I love you, too, Muffin.” He patted the back of her head. “And maybe one day you’ll meet a boy who’s even better than me. But don’t ever have one that’s any worse, yeah?”

About three days later Nigel wound up in Oliver’s office after he clothes-lined Connor Stuart during rugby practice. “He kept getting in my way!” Nigel proclaimed as Oliver wrapped his shoulder in ice, “He slammed right into me, causing me to nut him the first time!”

“He’s got a hump the size of a walnut right in the middle of his forehead,” Oliver mumbled, weaving the bandage to hold the ice under Nigel’s arm.

“Well, yeah! Our head’s collided! As far as the alleged clothes-lining, well…I dunno how that happened. It was an accident!”

“Yes, Nigel, and you accidentally kicked him in the ribs and accidentally stepped on his face as well as he lay in the grass gasping for air, right? Put down your arm now.”

“Well, yes,” Nigel grimaced as he lowered his arm, “Exactly.”

Subsequently, he was not so accidentally suspended from the team for his lack of control.

“I was in control!” He argued, “I was in perfect control! He’s alive, ain’t he?”

It was not the first time that they’d shown that when they’d take the time to quit bickering, Carolena and Nigel were the best of friends. The most obvious example I can remember of this was when they were eleven and they both ended up sitting after hours in Oliver’s office bleeding after Caro jumped in on a fight that Nigel was coming out on the bad end of.

“I’ll do him again!” Caro told us as she sat on the examination table.

“Sit still!” Oliver demanded, gently prodding her face, “That’s a whopper of a bruise! Hitting a girl! That boy should be ashamed!”

“She was pounding the sense out of him, she was!” Nigel said proudly from his seat off to the side, “He got me down, so’s I couldn’t get up and here comes Carolena just a blaze of red hair and flying fists! Bloody magnificent she was, Uncle Ollie!”

Caro grinned, “It was fun. Is he still here?”

“No, no. I sent him off with his mother.” Oliver turned her face in his hand, “It was fun, yeah? You two shouldn’t fight!” He scolded them responsibly, and then added, “But I’m right proud you both for taking up for Natalie. Your dad’ll be having words with his father, I‘m sure…two on one, he said. Well, who came and put our little Nattie into a bin? She’s got bruises all over her!” He turned, “Lucy, is Nigel’s numb enough for stitching yet? I’m through here. Take Caro for an x-ray of this cheek. It looks like it’s all swollen tissue, but I want to make sure there’s nothing broken to be safe. ”

After the twins were born, Lucy had found her calling in life. She went back to school and became a nurse. Oliver hired her straight away, of course, and she helped him run the office. I did the accounting and managed the labs, but mostly I just looked after Oliver and the children, as I always had. Me, with all my degrees, knowing all I knew, and all I ever wanted to be was a mum! But Lucy could juggle a career and her home life with me taking care of the kids. I was very proud of my sister, little Lucy Cotton, who’d grown up to be a dedicated mother, a wonderful wife who was adored by her husband and a damned good nurse to boot.

Little Nattie was sitting quietly outside the door in the hallway. I really did not want to see my Nigel getting stitched, so I came and sat beside her. “You all right, Muffin? That was a right nasty thing that boy did. I’m sorry it happened to you.”

“I was just walking and he picked me up and tossed me in the rubbish bin,” She said softly. Natalie often got the brunt of bullies because she was so unusually small, “I didn’t mean for all of this to happen. Are they hurt?”