After Forever Ends (63 page)

“It’s such a big, beautiful, fascinating world out there, Auntie Silvia,” She told me once over a quick lunch in London, “I want to go everywhere and see everything! I wish Annie would go with me sometimes, but her feet are glued here in Britain.”

“Do you miss her?” I asked, remembering how many years the two of them had spent fighting like cats in a bag.

“Terribly.” Tears sprang into her eyes, “I love my life, you know? I love to travel, but sometimes I just want to go home. Annie is my home and she’s usually so far away. It’s hard…”

Annie had decided that she wanted to settle on studying business at King’s College in London, and was working three jobs to boot. She wasn’t much to be seen as of late. She and Carolena had rented a flat together with another girl, who disappeared a few months later in the middle of the night with most of their clothes. Shortly after that, Warren decided he didn’t like living where he was in London and he took up residence with the girls. Annie liked that quite a bit, she said, because his presence deterred boys from inviting themselves in. Annie had many suitors and none she was interested in dating more than casually.

By the time Warren moved in, Carolena was in love with the older brother of a friend she worked with. He was a tall, light haired, handsome bloke named Adam Moldovan. They’d met at a costume party and had been joined at the hip since. Oliver and I liked Adam quite a lot as he had a quick sense of humour and a kindly disposition. It was a bonus that, according to both Warren and Annie, he respected and adored Carolena as well. It was the only thing, Warren said, that kept him from exercising brotherly protection.

“Adam’s all right,” He told Oliver and I one evening as we were all having dinner. “He calls before he comes over and he leaves when he ought to. It’s Annie’s dates I don’t like being in the house.”

“At least her dates don’t giggle like fools,” Caro told him.

“Or scream ‘Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!’ at the top of their lungs all night long while people are trying to sleep,” Annie added bravely.

Warren turned deep crimson and stared at the tablecloth.

There was an awkward silence where several of us could not look at each other without laughing.

Lucy cleared her throat, “So, Warren, have you auditioned for the symphony yet?”

Warren was still reading at the London College of Music. Of course, he shined there. The competition was thick and he occasionally felt overwhelmed and insecure, but his dedication and talent carried him through the rough spots. He’d call Oliver and me up just bursting with news of who he’d met and what he was doing. We were often lost in translation, but we were excited because he was. He stayed in London for two years before he graduated and was asked to audition for an orchestra in Berlin. From Berlin he played his French horn and then he was invited to play piano in concert in the Czech Republic. He stayed on there for about six weeks before he was subsequently asked to play the piano for an opera in Vienna. He rang often to tell us how unbelievably cold it was in the city and how unbelievably blessed he felt to be doing what he was doing.

“Life’s fantastic, Mum!” He told me breathlessly. “Really! Who would have ever thought a boy from the wood would be walking in the footsteps of Mozart?”

“Yes, Renny,” I smiled into the phone, “It is fantastic. I‘m so happy for you.”

Finally in his element, our baby boy had done what I told him. He’d spread his wings and he had flown away. So far away. I missed him. I missed them all.

I must admit, I went a little crazy with all of them gone. Actually, I went a lot crazy. I found myself being clingy and needy with Oliver when he was home. When he was gone, I was lonely and bored. I had no interest in any of my chores or hobbies. I found myself easily brought to tears and not sleeping well. I spent most of my days hanging about in the garden, talking to my trees.

“I want them!” I shouted at least ten times a day to the winds, “Send them home! Make them little again! I want my muffins little again!”

The goat was cute and funny, but she wasn’t enough to fill my void. I thought about getting another dog, but I couldn’t stand the idea of the heartbreak it would bring when he crossed the veil. I was not willing to go through that again. The pain of losing Duncan had left me shy. I could get a cat, I supposed, but a cat was likely to just be wild in the wood. The other’s had all gotten that way. I knew I needed to just get used to the idea that I would see the children at Christmases and when I was lucky enough to make or receive a visit. It just seemed so horribly dismal. I still had my need to mother something and no one to look after.

Seven muffins, seven empty beds. Three rooms upstairs and a nursery downstairs that we had put on just for our children, all sitting quietly where there used to be so much noise and so much action. And me, who’d given up a career and all self-interest to raise a family, had no idea of what to do with myself.

Oliver came home from work one night with a bag of sweets for the circle and a faerie cake. He took off his office jacket and walked to the stove where I was standing. “I’ve been thinking, Just Silvia, that I know what your problem is.”

“I have a problem, do I?” I asked inoffensively as I turned my chicken in the pan.

“Well, it’s not a problem, perhaps,” He tossed his jacket over the back of a chair, “It’s more of a predicament.”

“And what is my predicament, pray thee?” I stuck my face into his, “Are you forgetting something?”

“Not at all, Love!” He gave me a kiss, “I’ve thought of everything.”

“And what is everything?”

“Your problem is simple. You’re bored.”

“I am,” I agreed.

“Yes, you are! You’ve been bored since the moment you waved goodbye to Warren as he got on that plane, you have. I think you need a little something to occupy your energy,” He rolled the faerie cake in his fingers and then licked icing from his thumb.

“What do you suggest?” I asked as I turned off the stove.

“Well…is supper finished, Love?”

“It is. Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“Well, wash your hands then. I’ll have it for you in a second.”

“I don’t want to eat right now.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d rather do this,” I should have known when I saw the smile curve in the corners of his mouth he was up to something, but, being out of practice, he caught me off my guard. In a flash he took that faerie cake and he smashed it right into my face.

I stood there with my mouth gaping, cake and icing up my nose and sticking to my eyelids.

Oliver was standing in front of me now with his hands on his knees, that old, insane smile on his face, “Are you bored now, Love?”

“I’m…going to…do…you for that!”

“Ha! You have to catch me first!” He shouted and made a dash for the door, calling, “You are way too slow, Silvia! You’ll never get me!”

I grabbed a bread roll from the counter top being as it was the nearest thing I could smash into his face in return and jetted out that door hot on his heels. I couldn’t see for a moment through the cake in my eyes, but I could hear him laughing and shouting from the lawn.

We were seventeen again. I gave him a good chase across the garden and down the path, but he was still much quicker than I was. “Run! Run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me!” He called as he leaped over something in the way, “I’m the bloody Gingerbread--” It was at that moment his foot caught on something and he fell flat on his chest.

I had to stop running I was laughing so hard. “Are you hurt?” I called out to him. I kept forward, but I was bent sideways with laughter.

“I think I’ve ruptured my spleen!” He rolled on to his back and flopped his arms out wide. “I’ve been meaning to fix that hole!”

It was my turn to cackle and taunt him, “Can’t catch you, you’re the bloody gingerbread man? Did your break your biscuit when you hit the ground?”

He laid there and laughed.

I plopped down beside him out of breath, but smiling. “Here,” I handed him the roll, “You must be hungry.”

He drew me to him and sucked icing off my cheek, “I’d rather eat cake. Oh, that was a good. I should have bought a batch.”

“It’d have been all out war if you had. And anyway, all you ever eat is the icing.”

He was quiet. He played with my plait for a while, still smiling, “I love you, Sil.”

“I love you, too, Oliver.”

“You know, having them all gone doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We can snog on the couch again in peace.”

“True.”

“We can snog all over, in fact. We’ve never done it on the path.”

“Ha-ha!” I slapped his leg, “Imagine that! On all these stones? I get the top!”

“Yeah, on second thought, that’s probably not the best idea.” He pulled himself up and helped me to my feet, “I’m starving. Let’s go eat some of your supper, Love. And when we’re done I’ll give you a right good snogging. Test the waters, you know, see if I still got it.”

“Oh, you still got it,” I assured him.

We walked back to the house hand in hand.

After getting cake smashed in my face, Oliver and I were back to our old ways again; pawing each other on the couch, swimming naked in the pond, throwing dirt at each other. We made love on the lawn and slept in the sun when we were through. We stayed up late at night wrapped in that old woollen blanket watching the sky. Oliver kept up his medical practice and I tended the garden. We both went together and talked to the winds and the trees and left sweets for the Lord and the Lady and their boon, of which they now had many more.

I got used to the cabin being quiet again and fell back into being who I was before the children came along, Just Silvia, Oliver Dickinson’s wife. And, as we always had been, we were happy once more.

Once of the tricks about life is that it’s always changing. Sometimes the changes are good. Sometimes you think they’re good and you end up disappointed. Other times you think life has handed you a lemon and it turns out to be a diamond. And there are other times when it just is what it is. It’s not what you wanted, but there’s nothing you can do about it, so you just have to accept what’s happened and go on. Those are the toughest times in my book, the times when you simply have no choice and life just does what it wants without even asking what anybody thinks.

There had always been a hole in my heart, a space that my mother had left when she died. Most of my life I’d kept so busy that I didn’t take the time to know it. I recognized that there was a disconnection inside of me when it came to my family. By the time I was a teenager I’d become so engrossed in Oliver and his family and in ingraining myself into it that that I’d left my own blood far behind as if it never mattered. But the truth was that it did matter and as I got older, I began to feel a nagging inside. I was a Scot, born in the Highlands, and living in Wales. I missed my homeland. I began to think more and more about my ancestors, the men and women who had come before me, who had fought and died on the same soil that their father’s had. The same soil under which my mother now rested. The same soil I had left behind.

Sharon Mariana Nettles. My mother. Born twenty years before me. Married my father. That was all I knew of the woman who had given me life.

It haunted me more and more that I couldn’t remember her. Sometimes when I was home alone and it was very, very quiet, I’d try. I’d sit with my eyes closed and allow my mind to wander. I had flashes, bits of impressions and snapshot-like memories. Blurbs of a woman standing at the side of a bed with her cool hand pressed against my hot cheek or a woman in a red jacket walking briskly down the street pushing a pram. I could almost hear her, “Come along, Silvia! Faster, Darling! Quit splashing in puddles! Your baby sister can’t get wet like we can!”

It always left me with a sigh. Was it even her? I couldn’t be sure. No matter what I did, I couldn’t see her face. I knew what she looked like in photos, so I knew I‘d recognize her if I could only just see her.

I’d talk myself all together out of thinking it was her I remembered. It may not have been. It may have been Gran, whom I did remember. Gran had taken care of Lucy and me so much after Mummy died. The truth was that I would probably never even know. I had only blurry images and ideas, but nothing concrete. I remembered some of the things I did after she was gone. I remember being told that she was with the angels. I didn’t really know what an angel was, so I several times a day I’d go to the window and sit, watching for a car to pull up and have the angels leave her off. I remembered writing a letter and sticking it in the letter box at Gran’s. It was addressed to heaven and I had asked for God to send my mother home. If he couldn’t, I asked for him to give her a drawing that I had enclosed.

I had no one I could ask about her other than my father. My mother had been an only child. I knew of no cousins on her side, or of any great aunts or uncles who still lived. It was apparent that I was going to have to speak to my father if I wanted to know anything, but I was afraid to do it. The thought of breeching that gap with him, of actually inspiring a response, sent me into convulsions.

He had never reacted to anything. Not when I did something bad as a child, not when I succeeded in school, not when I ran away and got married under-age or graduated university or had babies. He’d made the required phone calls, shown up for the required visits, given the appropriate congratulations and simply left. But the subject of my mother had been very different. I remembered him after she died. Him, sitting in the living room with his head between his knees, sobbing. I remembered him sinking to his bottom in the grass at the cemetery on a rare visit. I remembered creeping out of my bedroom one night, very late, to find him in the kitchen with a female friend of my mother‘s, a thick glass of brandy in his hand, and I’d asked in a whisper if Mummy was ever coming home.

He looked at me and made a hard face. His eyes narrowed and he glared. He looked at me as if he hated me, like he’d have slapped my teeth out of my mouth if I had been standing any closer. Then he turned from me and gave the same look to the refrigerator.