Wuthering Dormice (aka Bike) Part 849 by Angharad

At dinner I watched Trish push her food around the plate rather than eat it, I was beginning to think this was a huge mistake, my taking in the two boys; after all my first responsibility was to the three girls. Tom was sitting next to her and he put his arm around her and hugged her–but she asked to be excused and left the table.

The two boys just ate everything in sight and after finishing thanked me for such a ‘super’ meal. I wondered if they were normally so polite, but my best source was absent, she’d gone up her room and shut the door, something we rarely did, but with such potentially dangerous strangers in the house, perfectly understandable. Stella and I had also locked away our jewellery–okay, that could be seen as over caution, or as I preferred to see it–reducing temptation.

I cleared up the after dinner mess, with help from Livvie and Tom. I sent Livvie up to be with her sister. Meems was with Simon who was still messing with the tree. I noticed after Leon went, the two boys became more relaxed.

It was interesting that when they were decorating the tree, Leon seemed very attentive to ideas from Trish and Livvie and the two boys seemed to almost shrink away from him. I suppose it’s all about male dominance roles and hierarchies , with Simon clearly the top male, then Tom and Leon with the two boys at the bottom.

As I cleared the dishes to put in the washer, I thought about the women–it was different there, I was I suppose, the matriarch–it was after all Tom’s house and he had unofficially declared me his daughter, so I was effectively the daughter of the house. I also took responsibility for most of the day to day running of the house, while Stella helped, she spent much of her time looking after her own baby. I had no problem with that, babies are very time consuming. Stella tended to play second fiddle to me, but could step into the breach in my absence and had done so.

Of the girls, Trish seemed to be the dominant one although Livvie would challenge this occasionally, and yet Mima had been with me the longest. Being a bit younger than the other two, she tended to be overshadowed by them much of the time. She was enjoying nursery as far as I could tell although her speech seemed much as before.

I checked on what the boys were doing, Simon was checking for a faulty bulb on the Christmas lights and they were helping him. They seemed to be gelling quite well. Maybe my fears were groundless and Trish was oversensitive–time would tell.

I went up to the girl’s bedroom, Trish and Livvie were lying on Trish’s bed reading, both were lying on their tummies with heads propped on hands while resting on their elbows–oh to be so young and supple again.

“Are you okay.”

“Yes thank you, Mummy,” answered Livvie.

“Trish?” I asked sharply.

“I’m okay.” She practically ignored me.

“Right, I’ll go then.” I turned to go out of the door and Trish looked up at me. I hesitated and I thought she was on the verge of saying something but she didn’t, so I left. If she had issues, she needed to come to me, I’d gone to her. I know Livvie was with her but that shouldn’t have been a problem, we could have gone to my room and spoken or she might have included Livvie in her confidence. She did none of these, so I left.

Downstairs, Simon had fixed the lights to much cheering by the boys and Mima. Tom even came out of study to see what the noise was about. I could smell a scent of whisky on his breath, so I knew what he was doing–at near enough seventy, he was old enough to make his decisions.

An hour later, I put the girls to bed and read them a story–a Gaby one about a bike race in the Isle of Man–they seemed to enjoy it, even if the whole concept was preposterous.

Back downstairs and Stella and I had a cuppa while Simon started to teach the two boys how to play chess. I found it astonishing they didn’t already know how to play, then realised, I was about eight when I learned the basic moves. I was tempted to offer to get the other chess set out so both could play at the same time–but I felt quite stressed enough without adding to it by being beaten by a nine or ten year old.

Grandmaster Cameron won convincingly in both games

Both boys wanted me to play them, but I was too tired and stressed and I made them go to bed. Simon supervised them and I checked afterwards that they had everything. It seemed they did and they thanked me for a nice day. They’d had to have been conditioned to do that–these were feral kids, so manners seemed incongruous–didn’t they? Perhaps they were strict on boys at the home and this was its legacy–if so, I’d certainly seen worse.

Twenty minutes after bed it was lights out and I sent Simon to enforce the rule, he grumbled about his knees and the stairs. I took no notice, retired early myself and woke up at six the next morning–everything was white, we’d had several inches of snow. It possibly explained my lord and master’s knee pain the previous night.

I got out of bed and looked out the window, it was going to be too dangerous for Simon to try and get to work–I hoped, then we could take them all skiing or sledging.

The girls blasted into the bedroom before the radio had come on–they might have heard us talking. They were clearly excited and wanted to get out into the snow. Simon seemed enthused with showing me how good he was on skis, until I pointed out his weren’t with us. I didn’t tell him Tom had some–well, that’s for him to find out the same way I did.

At breakfast the boys, who’d brought skateboards with them, wanted to get out and play in the snow, albeit not on skateboards. They seemed to be surprised that (a) we had a castle in Scotland and (b) we didn’t seem to have any skis.

“I’ll bet you’re just windin’ us up,” said Danny to Trish.

“No we’re not are we, Mummy?”

“Not what, sweetheart?”

“Windin’ up the boys.”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, I wasn’t listening, I was talking with Gramps.”

“Oh,” she said.

“See, I knew she was lyin’,” Danny was triumphant.

“Lying about what, Danny?”

“’Avin’ a castle.”

“We do have a castle, or rather the Cameron family has one–would you like to see it?”

“Oh yeah, that’d be great.”

I asked Simon to show them his brochure for the ancient monument and I didn’t mean Tom or Henry.