After Forever Ends - Ramone Melodie - Страница 106
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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!”
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