Headmistress Pennyweather burst through the doors and rushed toward Alex, waving her arms in the air, “Mister Dickinson!” She shouted, “Mister Dickinson!” She held up her hands to stop him. “That is enough!”
“I’m not through!”
“Yes, Mister Dickinson, you are through!”
“No, Ma’am, I am not! I have a lot more to say!”
“No, Mister Dickinson, you do not!” She stopped where she was and squared herself. “Anything you have left to say is better left unsaid! Do you understand me, Alexander?”
Alex glared at her and she glared right back. After a moment, he sat down, but his face was still a deep purplish red. I could hear his breath rattling in his chest like he’d just run a marathon at a sprint.
Our headmistress glanced around the room quickly, “Go back to you meals!” She shouted. “All of you!” She turned back to us and lowered her voice, “I see the gossip running amuck at Bennington has the lot of you very upset. I was afraid of that. Rumours and ignorance are unfortunately unavoidable when people do something unexpected.” She looked over her shoulder and then back, “Oliver, I want you to take your missus to the boardroom in the great hall. She does not need to be subjected to further examination. Alexander, you, Mister Crosby and Mister Pierce may join them there if they wish.”
“Thank you, Ma’am,” Each boy mumbled in turn as they stood and gathered their trays.
Madame Pennyweather glanced around again and then shooed us with the back of her hand, “Away! All of you! Clear off! It’ll give you an hour or two to cool your heads! I want you in your common room by curfew!”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Oliver answered mildly, taking my hand to help me stand, “Thank you.”
She nodded at him.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” I said quietly as Oliver and I passed her on our way out.
She looked at me with the sort of kindness I always tried to show Lucy, “You’re welcome, Silvia. Oliver, take care of your missus and have a quiet supper. Make sure she eats. She’s looking peaky.”
“I will, Ma’am. Thank you for everything.”
She winked at us and then turned quickly on her heel and sped away.
After Alexander’s outburst, people were at least less quick to be rude to Oliver and me. Whether it was out of guilt or because they were terrified of Alexander pointing a finger at them I can only speculate, but they treated both of us with much more respect. I even got an apology out of Meredith in the library a few days later.
“I didn’t mean to start any rumours,” Her blue eyes were wide with sincerity, “At your wedding, you remember, Oliver and Alexander made those comments about you showing if you had to wait and about their parents praying for you. Personally, I didn’t know if they were joking or not. I just didn’t see any other reason why you two would do something so rash. I only said about a baby to one person, I swear. The really mean stuff wasn’t me. I’d have never said any of that. I told people that it was a nice little wedding and that you both seemed very excited and happy. It was just so extreme, the way you two just went and did it! You’ve always been kind to me, Silvia. Oliver has been, too, even though I know he really can't tolerate me at all. I never meant to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
“Well thank you for that,” I said honestly. Meredith was a spoiled, whiney girl from North of London who most people couldn’t stand, but the truth was that I liked her. She had a good heart beneath it all. “I’m sorry Alexander is being so cruel to you.”
“That’s not your fault,” She pressed her pretty lips together. Alexander had been dating Meredith for a year, far surpassing any of his previous flames, but he’d turned on her when they came back to school. After humiliating her in the dining hall, he refused to speak to her. She’d gone out of her way to try to make things right between them. She’d cried, she begged to know what she’d done, she’d even pulled on his arm to force him to talk it out, but he’d simply walked away. I knew that the truth was that he was just bored of her and was using the situation as an excuse to get rid of her, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that. She was hurting enough, “I do hate him.”
I didn’t blame her for that one little bit, nor did I blame Jennifer Eisenberg when she spat on Alex in the common room as we were entering to make the curfew bell.
“Disgusting! Honestly!” Oliver rubbed it off his cheek, “Could you have sprayed any further? I think you might have missed someone! My brother is right, you are completely mental!”
“I’ve had your saliva on me before,” Alex retorted, wiping spit from his neck with his sleeve, “Always willing to share, aren’t you, Jen?”
“You’re a pig!”
“Oink-Oink,” He sneered, “And you’re an asymmetrical cocksucker.”
The common room filled with, “Oooooohs” and assorted laughter.
Jennifer whipped her head around, turned bright red, and began to cry. “I hate you, Alexander Dickinson!” She screamed as she tore her way through the crowd and out of the room toward the dormitory. “I wish you’d just die!”
“Join the crowd, take a number, get in queue,” Alex mumbled. He looked about the room, “Anybody else got anything to say to me?” He called. He waited a moment. There seemed to be no takers. “No? Brilliant! Fuck off then, all of you! Leave me alone!”
Alexander could be the foulest, nastiest person in the world. I was awfully glad he’d never seen me without my clothes on. If I ever made him angry who knows what he might have said.
Life at Bennington was easier to bear from then on, at least for me. Still, it was perfectly awful only being able to meet with my husband after classes and at meals. Sleeping without him beside me at night was hell. I would go to bed pretending that my pillow was his chest and wake up thinking we were at the cabin. I was so happy for just a second and I’d reach for him only to find the cold side of a bed. Then I would cry, wishing desperately that we were back where it was just us and the faeries who stole socks in the night.
“It’s going to be all right,” Sandy would whisper, “Oliver promised so you know it will.”
Friday came and went, marking a week we’d been kept away from each other, although Professor McClellan did allow us to stay in the common room so late on my birthday that we fell asleep spooning on the sofa. “Let no man set aside what God has put asunder,” She quoted to us as she gently shooed us back to our dormitories just after dawn, “Go get ready for breakfast before anybody finds out where you spent the night. Hurry! Here are your passes! Go!”
The following Friday evening our Headmistress again summoned Oliver and me to her office.
“We’ve had a board meeting,” She said without a smile, “To discuss your situation. It would seem that there is no rule as to whether or not our students who are of age or have parental consent may marry; therefore the board can say nothing of your marital status. They are afraid more than anything that you will set a precedent that others will follow. I told them,” She took off her spectacles and looked at us very seriously, “That not all of our students have that inclination and I did not think that you two could influence anyone to follow in your stead. Students, as we know,” She put her glasses back on, “Have found other ways to demonstrate their strong desires for each other without the constraints of marriage.”
Oliver grinned. I was sure he was thinking of Alexander and his proclamation that he’d banged half the bitches at Bennington.
“Now, as I had previously expressed to Miss Cot—I mean, Missus Dickinson, or, Silvia, if I may…I can’t quite get over the Missus, if you don’t mind,” She cleared her throat, “As I had previously expressed to Silvia, there are strict rules about students visiting the dormitories of the opposite sex. These we cannot bend, nor can we find a way to make any exceptions in your case.”
I felt tears rush to my eyes. “I knew it!” I gasped.
“We’ll get through it, Sil,” Oliver whispered, “Together. I promise.”
“Together would be right, Mister D
ickinson,” Headmistress Pennyweather leaned forward, “At the suggestion of both your parents, I, along with Sandra Ashby’s father, Roland, who sits on the board, and with the support of several professors who attended the meeting, have persuaded the board to allow the two of you to finish your term here at the school residing in the smaller of the gamekeeper’s quarters which until this morning housed many shovels and rakes. Those have been moved and the quarters are being cleaned as we speak to make them suitable for the two of you. They should be ready by the end of the weekend.”
I think I squealed. Oliver and I embraced and kissed quickly in our excitement. “I told you, Sil!” He held me tight, “I told you it’d be all right!”
I turned my head and saw that the headmistress was smiling.
“Thank you!” I ran around the desk and threw my arms around her neck. I am sure I was choking her by the way she rubbed her throat when I let her go. “Thank you so much!”
“I told you, I am no ogre,” She stood up, “But now I’ll tell you something I didn’t before,” She looked at us both with a sort of twinkle in her green eyes, “I met my husband here when we were students. It was our final year when he asked me to marry him, right under that tree where the two of you like to sit. We asked our parents to consent, but they refused. We had to wait then, of course, until autumn for me to turn eighteen to marry, but I understand how hard it can be to be asked to do so. I suppose now you can appreciate why I am on your side.”
“I can see why he married you!” Oliver exclaimed, pulling me back into his arms as I rounded the desk. He flashed that unbelievable smile at her, the one that made women wiggle inside like jelly. “You’re bloody beautiful, you are!”
“Flattery, my Dear Oliver,” She blushed, “Will not get you far, but,” She added with a hammy smile, “I do what I can. Thank you for noticing.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I don’t want a big bloody window in my bathroom!” I shouted.
Oliver was annoyed with me and had been the entire morning. “Get to your garden, Woman!” He yelled, still playfully, but his aggravation was mounting. He waved his hammer in the air, “Let me do everything wrong in peace!”
“It’s a learning experience,” Alexander chimed in, popping up beside him “He’s got no experience and he’s learning!”
“And what are you, a bloody carpenter?” Oliver demanded.
“What? Me? No! I’m learning from your mistakes!”
“Oh, sod off! You make enough of your own!”
“I’m copying you!” Alexander looked at me and pointed at Oliver as if to say his brother had lost his marbles. Alex had somehow managed not to lose his good humour that day and was taking the piss out of his brother every chance he got.
“Don’t you call me woman, you man!” I shook my garden hoe at both of them, interrupting their quibble. I was just as annoyed with my husband as he was with me, “It’ll be next spring by the time we get a toilet in at the rate you two are going! And, for the last time, Oliver, I don’t want a big window in my bathroom!”
“And why not?” He was really stuck on wanting this huge window in the loo, “It’ll give you light to see how lovely you are in the mirror!” Oliver steadied the board his brother was preparing to drive a nail into, “And you are lovely, yeah? Or has being in the dark so long made you forget?”
“It hasn’t me,” Alexander pounded his nail, “You’re beautiful. Every day I say to myself, ‘Alexander, that Silvia‘s beautiful. Today‘s the day you‘ve got to go steal her away from Oliver‘. Then I get drunk and forget to seduce you.”
I ignored him. “I don’t want people peering in at me while I’m in the tub!”
“Oh, aye,” Oliver snapped back, “That’s a big concern because there’s just so many folks wandering around in the wood waiting to peer in at you in the tub!”
“I, for one, would wait,” Alexander quipped, “But I might mistakenly end up peering in on Oliver on the shitter,” He shuddered and took another nail from the pouch on his belt and pounded it in.
“Yeah! An’ what about that then?” Oliver waved the hammer at me again, “That’s why you need a window! Without one, the toilet will stink!”
“Only when you use it!” I called, dropping back on to my knees and clubbing the dirt with my hoe, “This could be your head! Remember it!”
He laughed heartedly, “But I might use the toilet and then you come in behind me--”
“And pass out from the stink and drown in your tub!” Alexander finished for him. They both chuckled. “I think you need a window, Sil, for your own safety!”
“Oh, shut up! Make me any angrier and you’ll be without sex for a month!” I knew I wasn’t going to win this one, so I was reduced to idle threats. I threw down my hoe and wiped the dirt from my hands.
“Who me?” Alexander asked.
“Not you, you silly sot! Me!” Oliver retorted. He turned to me and bowed, flourishing his hammer grandly, “All right then, very well, Your Highness. Would it be all right if I put in a wee tiny window in your loo, up high where only eagles dare tread?”
“And dragons!” Alex added, “Dragons dare tread there, too! We are in Wales after all! Dragons dare tread there so they can eat the eagles!”
“Fine! Where only eagles dare tread to end up being eaten by dragons?” Oliver gave me that look, the one that I could never help but give in to, the one where the one eyebrow went straight up and he flashed the crooked smile. It turned me to a marshmallow.
I smiled, but looked down so he wouldn’t see, “Fine! A small one up high so only dragons eating eagles can see me in my tub! But if the stink of you brings one crashing down on on my roof, they’ll be hell to pay!”
“Alas,” Alex pounded another nail, “The happy twosome has reached a compromise!”
“That’s what this marriage is all about,” Said Oliver, “Well, that and hot sex.”
“Yeah, so you say, but can she cook on the wood stove yet?”
“She’s getting better. It’s really just about the sex right now.”
“I imagine it is!”
“I hear you!” I told them. I began to make my way across the lawn.
They whooped and hollered at me as I went up into the house. “You’re lovely!’ “What a tush!” “Marry me!” “Shut your noise, she’s married to me!” “Aw, you shatter my dreams!”
“Twincest is a crime!” I reminded.
“Only if it gets reported!”
“Shut up, Alexander!” Oliver barked.
“Oh, get to work then!” I called as I entered the door, “We only have a day before we have to leave off for school!”
School was ending the following Wednesday, which was at that point the greatest relief of my life. Oliver and I had our applications in at Cardiff University, but neither of us had heard back. Alexander was moving a few towns over from us at the cabin; he’d rented a flat and was, at this time, womanless. Having destroyed more than one reputation during his tirade at Bennington that night, most of the girls were afraid of what he might do if they bothered him. But that was all right. His being single gave him more time to help us put up the additions we were making to the cabin, which were not going up as effortlessly as we had hoped.
Oliver and I had discussed the plans for adding on to the cabin over supper, which we now had in our quarters when we were inclined to carry our dinner trays across campus and didn’t feel like joining the others in the dining hall. We shared our ideas with Alex over breakfast the next morning.
“We need a toilet first,” Oliver told him, “And a bedroom for certain. I imagine sooner or later a kitchen would be nice.”
Alex chewed his bangers in silence, his eyes fixed on his plate, but they shot up from time to time to meet his brother's and I knew he was listening. More than that I knew he was thinking. I didn't bother to ask him what about. Alex never said much when he was in the process of thought, but it was never long before he divulged a plan.
That evening, he came k
nocking on the door. Oliver and I answered it together.
“I went on the internet and I found some interesting stuff,” He said before he even came in. He had an armload of papers he’d printed out, rolled into cylinders under one arm and filling his hand. He walked directly past us and to the little kitchen where he set them down and unrolled two before he got to the one he was looking for, “There! This one! Look at this, Oliver! This right here is plans for installing eco-friendly plumbing in a remote location. It’s really cool,” He showed Oliver the prints, running his finger along the edge of the paper, “I could get into all this designing they do. Genius, really. Brilliant, mind. I mean, this here exactly as it is would never work in the room we’re building, but I’ve modified it. Look.” He unrolled a second paper and tapped the table, “I drew it out.”
“Lemme see that,” Oliver leaned over it with interest, “You designed this?”
“No. I stole the design,” Alex's chest puffed just a bit with pride, “But I did modify it.”
The twins discussed it seriously for at least an hour. I could hear them mumbling back and forth, occasionally laughing. Finally Oliver agreed, “It won’t be easy to install or very inexpensive, but I think we can manage it if we do it ourselves and I use part of my trust to pay for it.”
“Brilliant!” I had never seen Alexander as excited about anything as he was at the idea of building that toilet. He was chuffed to bugger.
It was quickly becoming a fiasco, however. Over-confidence is more often the kiss of death and we were all arrogant in those days. Life, however, and the pursuit of doing things that you are not schooled in accomplishing, has a way of knocking that out of somebody in the most painful ways. Our hands were blistered, we were bruised, but still, all of us were trying to keep our sense of humour. And putting the room up was fun, in a stressful sort of trying not to kill each other or ourselves in the process kind of way.
“If I hit myself one more time with that flipping hammer I swear I’m going to climb the tallest tree in the wood and jump out of it head over arse!” Alexander stuck his thumb into his mouth, “Bugger it all to hell!”