After Forever Ends, стр. 45
“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 knocking 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.