After Forever Ends - Ramone Melodie - Страница 131

“This is depressing,” He said with a grin, “But it must be done.”

“It must.”

We sat together and figured out exactly what our life’s work was worth and devised a way to split it among all seven children and our grandchildren. It was not as easy a thing to do as I might have thought.

“They can sell the cars,” Oliver sat back in his seat, “And really anything else they might want to get rid of. I imagine there’ll be some.”

“And what about the house and the land?”

“I’ve thought about that. This land’s been in my family for almost three hundred years. Caro lives too far, it’ll rot out by the time she gets back here to it. Nigel loves the wood, but he’s busy with his own life. His children aren’t interested. It would sit. Annie and Bess…they’ve no attachment. Bless them, they’d just sell it off. Natalie’s a wonderful choice, but she’s got her own home and family, she doesn’t want to be bothered coming out here. So that leaves us two choices. Our sons, Gryffin and Warren.”

“Warren lives the closest,” I said quietly, but it was my sensibility talking, not my heart. “He’d care for the place.”

“Aye, he does.” Oliver nodded in agreement, “And he would take care of it. Maybe he’d even use it sometimes. But his piano wouldn’t fit in here and I don’t think he’d ever want to tear himself away from his music.”

“I agree.”

“It’s Gryffin who loves the wood most of all,” Oliver was looking at the papers on the table, “He always has.”

“He does.” I agreed, relieved that he said what I’d been thinking, “Gryffin understands the winds and whispers. He has a special tie to the faerie folk.”

“He’s connected to this place in a way the others are not,” Oliver’s face relaxed as he looked into my eyes, “He’d live here if it were empty. I’m sure of that. He’d live here with Lakshmi and he’d write his stories under the tree like he used to when he was little.”

“I know he would.”

“And he wouldn’t change it up.” Oliver was deep in thought. “I reckon he’d probably not change a thing. He respects the magic of the place.”

“He’s made up of all the magic that’s here. If any of the children got a full cup of muffin magic, it was our Gryffin.”

“Now that’s the truth.”

“Ollie, there is no choice. The cabin and the land need to go to him. You know that as well as me.”

He nodded again, “I thought the same.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“If I go before you, I want Carolena to have my ring,” I ran my fingers over it, “To give to Kitty one day.”

“All right, Love,” He wrote it down. “Anything else? “

“I think we’re finished.”

“I hated doing this when I was thirty. It was much simpler then. It reminds me of my mortality and I hate that. I’m only sixty… something…”

I laughed, “And getting senile, I see! You’re sixty seven, Sweetie!”

“Am I that old?”

“That’s not old!”

He laughed. “Sixty seven! Here I was thinking that old bloke in the bathroom mirror was me and to find out I’m still young.”

“Quite.”

“I’m a very mature eighteen, that’s it, yeah?”

“Yes, that’s it.” I drummed my fingers against the table.

He looked at me thoughtfully, “Don’t you think it’s time for you to go and see your friend Sandra?”

I took a deep breath, “We’ve tried so many times. Something always seems to happen. Every single time. I’ve more or less given up.”

“You talk to her five days a week on the phone, Love. I’m officially retired now. We’ve never taken a trip to Ireland in all the years we’ve been together. Why don’t we take a hop over and see her?”

“We should.”

“Aye, we should. Why don’t you call her and see when it would be best for her. There’s nothing stopping us now.”

A sudden excitement was coursing through me, “I’ll do it now!” I began to stand up, but Oliver caught me by the hand.

“Can you believe it’s been fifty years?” He asked slowly, as if he were contemplating a deep secret of the universe, “I bet you a quid she looks like hell.”

We both burst out laughing.

I had not been to Ireland since I was a child of about nine. I had forgotten how incredibly beautiful the countryside was. Sandra lived in a small village about two hours outside of Dublin in a ridiculously huge old manor that housed a small museum.

“She married well,” Oliver noted as he parked the car.

I didn’t say anything, but I had known that her husband was from old money and was a descendant of Duke Whoever-He-Was of Wherever-He-Was-From. She had mentioned that she lived in a manor house, not that it was in reality a small castle.

“Her parents weren’t exactly poor, either.” I muttered.

A tall, heavy set old woman in a rose coloured silk suit came out the great front doors and jogged down the steps. “Silvia!” She shouted, “Silvia! Silvia! Oh, Sil!””

“Great galloping green grasshoppers!” Oliver gasped, “It’s Sandra!”

I instinctively hurried toward her with my arms open. We met half way and clung to each other in the way that I had only seen two women cling to each other in films. Both of us had tears rolling down our faces.

“Oh, Sandy!” I said into her snow white hair, “It’s been so long!”

“Oh!” She sobbed, “It hasn’t been a day!” She pulled back and looked at me. Her face was wrinkled like an old piece of parchment, “Look at you! Silvia Cotton! All these years and you’re still beautiful! Hardly a wrinkle! And you’re wearing the hair clip I gave you at school!”

“Of course I am! Did you think I’d lost it?”

“I didn’t think you’d still have it!”

“A gift from my best friend? It’s a treasure!”

“Oh, Sil!” She threw her arms around me again. “My best friend!”

Oliver stood patiently to the side. When Sandra finally looked at him, he flashed that charming smile, “Sandy Ashby! The Grand Trumpeter of Bennington Palace!”

That was a nickname he had given her first year when she passed gas during a timed exam.

“It was so loud it echoed!” She had told me one night after lights out, “And it was just me and Ollie in the back of the class. So everyone turned and looked at us. I was dying from embarrassment, but Oliver just got that nutter grin and he said, ‘What? They give us a decent amount of fibre in our meals!’ Oh my God, Sil! He took the bloody fall for me!”

We had laughed so hard about it that the Professor McClellan came into our room and told us if she heard another peep again we’d both be in detention.

“Oliver,” Sandra was positively beaming at him, “Do you want the first thing I say to you to be shut up? Oh, do come here!”

He lifted her off the ground with a hug. “Ah, Sandy, it’s good to see you after all these years! You look well.”

“You look old,” She teased, “And so do I! Enough of your politeness! Come on, you two! Come inside! Have you eaten?”

Sandra brought us up into her mansion and introduced us to a few members of her staff. “They’re at your disposal,” She told us, “You can pick up any phone and dial 9.” Oliver and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows. Neither of us had ever been in a home so fine.

Sandra seemed to think nothing of the surroundings. Her husband had left her the manor years earlier in exchange for her not divorcing him. “He owed me more than this,” She told me with the look that only another woman could understand, “But I took it anyway. He’s dead now, did I tell you?”

“No, you didn’t mention it.”

She nodded. There was not even a hint of emotion in her voice, “Yes, well, you know he was considerably older than me. He died in Hawaii, of all the places he could have been wasting his last moments, with his newest mistress. As if a twenty-nine year old divorcee with three children was in Hawaii with a seventy-nine year old man because she loved him!”

She glanced at Oliver, who was noticeably bored. “Ollie,” She prodded him gently, “Do you still like to golf?”

“I don’t golf, Sandy. I whack golf balls. I find it much more therapeutic than driving myself mad trying to knock a walnut into a tiny hole. Alexander is the golfer.”