An AU. Fairmont university, Southport, and all other places referred to herein are fictions of the author's making. Any resemblance to people or places already extant is entirely coincidental, except in the case of the Fellowship of the Ring and all of Tolkien's other elven characters, in which case I apologise profusely, and I'll put them back when I've finished, okay? Oh, no money is being made from this, although that's not for lack of wishing it was.
Life with my Uncles:
====================
*Chapter One: Moving in*
I don't know what I was expecting when I first came to live with my uncles. The main reason I'd chosen to move in with them was because they were close to the university I was planning to study at. Or at least, closer than the rest of my family. It also helped that Mother and I got along like cats in a sack. We've both got the same kind of personality - and oh boy, does it show at times. The rest of my family were quite pleased when I announced that I was going to go and live with my uncles while I was off at university. I presume they anticipated a return to something verging on peace and quiet. My cousin Claire had been living with them, but she was now at the point where she wanted to move in with her boyfriend. So they had a room free, anyway.
I moved in, complete with my gear, on the Saturday before enrollment day. Uncle Arthur showed up and gave me a hand transporting most of my stuff, remarking at the weight of some of the boxes of books I'd brought with me. He commented that at least I didn't seem to be as much of a clothes-horse as Claire, which wasn't saying much. Claire is clothes-mad and as a result she's probably the least favourite of my cousins. There's not a single word of coherent conversation that can be had with her if you're within fifty feet of a newsagent that sells fashion magazines, or a store that sells clothes. (I mean, don't get me wrong: I like having nice clothes myself, but most of the time all I care about is that they'll keep me warm and decently covered.) I wasn't going to leave my books or my music behind, though. So I had the better part of four bookshelves and five CD racks stuffed into boxes, ready to take with me. As well as my PC and a small packet of games. Well, small compared to my standard pile, most of which I'd sold off in order to get some spending money. I just hoped that I'd be able to get myself a job when I got there, so that I could keep the spending money coming in.
I'd been given a room to myself, which was nice of them. I suspected that it was the room that Claire had formerly occupied. They'd redecorated it for me, from the smell of fresh paint. Again, very nice of them, although I could have wished that they'd chosen another colour for me than girly pink. Ah well, beggars can't be choosers, and they didn't have to keep me here. I could have been looking at the university's student accommodation, which was frankly grotty; I'd seen it. I started unpacking everything and putting all my things away. Due to the previous occupant of the room having been Claire, there was loads of wardrobe space and very little shelf space. The largest horizontal surface in the room was the bed, which looked to be about queen sized. A lot of my books were going to have to stay in their boxes, drat it. At least there was a desk available to use. I started setting up the PC.
I was about three-quarters of the way through the setup when I became aware of someone. One of Uncle Arthur's housemates was looking around the door. I'd been vaguely aware of them the few times we'd visited, mainly as a sort of muffled presence in the background. I hadn't really met up with any of them aside from Arthur, Boris and Larry.
"Hullo," I said. "I'm Sarah, Arthur's niece."
A rather short man came in the door, to greet me. "Hullo Sarah. I'm... Fred. Yes, that's right, Fred".
Ohhh-kaaay.
"Pleased to meet you, Fred."
"What are you doing?" he asked, looking curiously at me. I was bent near double over the back of the PC plugging cords in. I raised my eyebrows slightly because it seemed fairly obvious to me what I was doing, but decided to be courteous.
"I'm connecting up my computer."
At the sound of the word "computer", another two heads popped around the door. They were both slightly taller than Fred and they looked about twice as curious about what was going on.
"Ummm, hi," I said, slightly confused.
"Ah, you'd be umm.. Arthur's new relative, wouldn't you?" asked one of them. I nodded.
"I'm Sarah."
"Oh, Trixie's girl!" the other one piped up. I nodded again. I wondered how they knew my mother, because she generally avoided this part of the family like the plague. I'd had about three courtesy visits with my uncles, which I could only remember dimly. The last one had happened after the birth of the second of my two younger brothers, when I was six. That was about the point where we'd all moved to a different town and Mother had rather emphatically cut down the connection to occasional letters and phone calls on birthdays. I'd taken a bit of a chance on writing to them when I heard that Claire was moving out, since they didn't really know me and I didn't really know them. But the answer had come quickly by phone: Uncle Arthur had been quite happy for me to come and stay, even offering to give me transport there.
So now, here I was, meeting his... housemates. Funny, I hadn't known that he roomed with dwarfs. Ah well, better be polite and politically correct.
"Yes, I'm Beatrice's daughter," I corrected them. "I'm staying here while I'm at university."
"Oh, so you'll be studying then?" The question came from Fred.
"Yes", I agreed. I'd chosen to come to the Southport campus of Fairmont university because it was a bit out of the way, as well as having a damn good IT degree in the works. The fact that it was a five hour journey from home helped a fair amount, too. Mother and I seem to agree more when we're in separate postal districts. I had some vague memories of Southport from my childhood, of swimming in the ocean and of walking along the beaches with my mother. I was looking forward to seeing whether I could find the places I remembered from my childhood.
"Maybe we should tell Sam and ... Larry", said one of the two by the door. Again, that small stumble over the names. It was almost as though they weren't used to them. I suddenly recalled that I hadn't been introduced to the two people at the door. I raised the matter with Fred.
"Oh, yes, how careless of me," he said, sounding about twice as old as he looked. "This is ... Mark", he gestured at the left hand one of the pair, who was slightly taller than the other, "and this is ... Phillip".
"Call me Pip," Phillip said, holding out a hand to shake.
"Pleased to meet you both," I said, shaking hands with each of them, then turning back to my PC. "If you'll all excuse me, I have to finish unpacking."
I heard their goodbyes, and continued with setting up the PC. Once everything was assembled, I switched it on and checked that it booted up successfully. Yup, no problems there. Once I'd made certain that my PC was okay after the journey, I proceeded to unpack all of my clothes and put them away. As I'd suspected, my clothes packed into about a third of the space that Claire's had occupied. Then I moved on to my books and my CDs. The CDs were easy: I'd packed them in their racks, so all that had to be done was to take the racks out of their boxes and put them on the floor between the desk and the chest of drawers. I put my stereo on one end of the desk and plugged it into a spare outlet on the powerboard that I was using for the PC. Then I opened the first box of books, the one that contained all my old favourites, that I enjoyed re-reading. I found shelf space for all of these, but only just. I'd need to reserve some room for my textbooks, after all. With a sigh, I looked at the other two boxes of books and carefully pushed these into the bottom of one of the wardrobes. Then I took a look around the rest of the room, picked up my rather battered teddybear and placed it on top of the bed. A bit childish, I suppose, but I found that if I had the bear to cuddle, I fell asleep a lot easier. Given that this was going to be my first time living away from home, I wanted to make certain that I wasn't going to be lying awake all night.
Just as I'd finished this, I heard a knock on the door. I looked up.
"Hullo uncle Arthur," I said.
"Oh, just Arthur will do. I'm not really your uncle, after all," he replied, smiling at me. "I was wondering whether you'd like to meet the rest of the household?"
I nodded. "That sounds good."
"Well, we're all downstairs, in the sitting room. Come and meet the others."
I followed my uncle to the sitting room. There were seven other people there, including the three I'd met previously. Of those I hadn't met, there was an elderly man, with a long grey beard (Augustus, or Gus, White); a tall, slender, blond man, wearing the type of haircut I'd always associated with Norman-era pageboys (Larry Green); a short, solid man, with a gruff manner and a bristling beard which appeared to have a personality of its own (George Goodwin) and the final one, another dwarf, like the other three, was Sam Gardiner. Apparently the other person who shared the house, my other "uncle", Boris Barhill, was currently on active service in the military, but was due home on furlough at some point in the next month or so. I said all that was polite and listened to a number of anecdotes from each of them, while waiting for dinner. I explained about my plans for study, with regard to the IT side of my planned degree, as well as getting some advice from both Larry and Gus about what I should take as "breadth" modules for my degree. Well, it was sort of advice. Larry was suggesting I stay well away from the English department, and Gus was telling me that I shouldn't take philology or philosophy, because he wasn't there to teach them any more. I filed these recommendations away in the back of my mind, and decided to see what was available when I got to enrollment day on Monday. The best thing that came out of the whole business was that Arthur said that he'd see whether the high school was willing to pay for a part-time computer person (ie me!) while I was being trained. I agreed to the idea: I mean, it's a job, it'll give me work experience and I'll be able to claim it as relevant experience on my resume. What's not to like about the idea?
Over dinner, Fred raised the issue of getting me onto the roster as soon as possible.
"What roster?" I asked.
"The roster of household chores," Fred explained. "We've found that this makes it easier for everyone to get things done. This way, everyone has a turn at everything and nothing misses being done." He sounded very chirpy about the whole notion. I had a look at the fridge, where there was a large chart, colour-coded with squares in different colours running across each job. Seemed logical enough to me, so I agreed to get dropped into the roster as soon as I could.
"We'll let Mr .. Arthur explain the house rules to you," Sam said. Hmm... seemed to be a regular thing, this hesitation over names. I would have considered it a bit further, but Arthur had started speaking.
"The first rule is that all visitors of the opposite sex have to be out of the house by midnight."
I nodded. I wasn't surprised at that one. Mother had just about had a shrieking fit when she'd discovered that I'd had sex twice with Barry Michaels back home. I didn't think she'd let me stay here without at least some efforts at chaperonage.
"Next rule is that visitors of the same sex can sleep over, provided sleeping is all that they're doing."
I raised my eyebrows at that one, as girls really weren't my thing and it wasn't my business what any of the men in the house were doing. I nodded all the same.
"As Fred has already mentioned, everyone takes their turn at cooking, cleaning and all the other chores. Fred keeps track of the roster, and it's pinned to the fridge. Next up, all your washing has to be in the washing basket at nine am sharp on Saturday morning. If you leave anything in the pockets, it'll get thrown in the bin: cash gets put into the jar on top of the dryer. If it's late getting in, you don't see it until after the next washday. No mid-week loads of washing. Your bedroom is your responsibility to keep clean. Or not, as you prefer."
"What about board?" I asked. This was worrying me slightly, as although I was eligible for student allowance, I knew it didn't come to much. This is why I was looking for a part-time job.
"You're not paying board as such," Arthur explained. "Instead, you'll be chipping in your share of the bills. It's equal for everyone. Oh, and it has to be paid on time. No credit."
I nodded again. "All sounds fair enough. Are there any other rules?"
Larry laughed. "Not written ones, although you'll probably learn the unwritten ones soon enough."
"Any other matters?" Arthur asked. "Is your room all right? Do you need anything else? We weren't sure whether to get any extra furniture or not, so we left the things that Claire had been using in there."
I smiled. "Well, I'm nowhere near as interested in clothes as Claire was," I commented. "I'd actually prefer a few more bookshelves to the second wardrobe, to be honest. Oh, and is it okay if I set up an internet connection? I'll pay for the extra phone line and everything else involved myself, if you like."
"Bookshelves we can do," Mark said. "There's a couple of them out in the shed."
"And that second wardrobe can come out easily," Pip agreed.
"There should be a second phone line already in that room," George commented. "We had it put in for Marcia, when she stayed here. The phone bill was going through the roof, so we got her her own line and told her to pay the bill herself. I'll see about getting that one reactivated"
Hang on... Marcia? The only Marcia I knew of in the family was my Aunt Marcia, who was about ten years older than Mother. Now, most of the men in this household didn't look much older than about thirty-odd. Mother was about fifty, which made Aunt Marcia about sixty. Something strange was happening here. However, it had been a long day. I was feeling tired. I decided to get some sleep, so as soon as dinner was actually finished and Mark and Pip had started on the washing up, I excused myself to go to bed. As I snuggled up to my bear and huddled under the covers, I thought I heard conversation from downstairs, but it was lost in the mists of sleep.
***
"What did you have to go and mention Marcia for, Gimli? She's not as daft as Claire, she might figure it out!"
"Not as daft as Claire covers a fairly wide spectrum, Frodo. But I agree, we're all going to have to be a bit more circumspect around Miss Sarah. That includes the four of you practicing referring to everyone by their mufti names. I saw the looks she was giving you."
"Oh, but Gandalf! It's so difficult to remember all those names!"
"This from the hobbit who can remember the whole of Sarah's family tree right back to myself, recite it flawlessly, and not miss a single name of all the cousins, branches or spouses. Methinks you protest a little too much, Merry."
"Shh. She's only just upstairs. She might hear us."
***
Life with my Uncles:
====================
*Chapter One: Moving in*
I don't know what I was expecting when I first came to live with my uncles. The main reason I'd chosen to move in with them was because they were close to the university I was planning to study at. Or at least, closer than the rest of my family. It also helped that Mother and I got along like cats in a sack. We've both got the same kind of personality - and oh boy, does it show at times. The rest of my family were quite pleased when I announced that I was going to go and live with my uncles while I was off at university. I presume they anticipated a return to something verging on peace and quiet. My cousin Claire had been living with them, but she was now at the point where she wanted to move in with her boyfriend. So they had a room free, anyway.
I moved in, complete with my gear, on the Saturday before enrollment day. Uncle Arthur showed up and gave me a hand transporting most of my stuff, remarking at the weight of some of the boxes of books I'd brought with me. He commented that at least I didn't seem to be as much of a clothes-horse as Claire, which wasn't saying much. Claire is clothes-mad and as a result she's probably the least favourite of my cousins. There's not a single word of coherent conversation that can be had with her if you're within fifty feet of a newsagent that sells fashion magazines, or a store that sells clothes. (I mean, don't get me wrong: I like having nice clothes myself, but most of the time all I care about is that they'll keep me warm and decently covered.) I wasn't going to leave my books or my music behind, though. So I had the better part of four bookshelves and five CD racks stuffed into boxes, ready to take with me. As well as my PC and a small packet of games. Well, small compared to my standard pile, most of which I'd sold off in order to get some spending money. I just hoped that I'd be able to get myself a job when I got there, so that I could keep the spending money coming in.
I'd been given a room to myself, which was nice of them. I suspected that it was the room that Claire had formerly occupied. They'd redecorated it for me, from the smell of fresh paint. Again, very nice of them, although I could have wished that they'd chosen another colour for me than girly pink. Ah well, beggars can't be choosers, and they didn't have to keep me here. I could have been looking at the university's student accommodation, which was frankly grotty; I'd seen it. I started unpacking everything and putting all my things away. Due to the previous occupant of the room having been Claire, there was loads of wardrobe space and very little shelf space. The largest horizontal surface in the room was the bed, which looked to be about queen sized. A lot of my books were going to have to stay in their boxes, drat it. At least there was a desk available to use. I started setting up the PC.
I was about three-quarters of the way through the setup when I became aware of someone. One of Uncle Arthur's housemates was looking around the door. I'd been vaguely aware of them the few times we'd visited, mainly as a sort of muffled presence in the background. I hadn't really met up with any of them aside from Arthur, Boris and Larry.
"Hullo," I said. "I'm Sarah, Arthur's niece."
A rather short man came in the door, to greet me. "Hullo Sarah. I'm... Fred. Yes, that's right, Fred".
Ohhh-kaaay.
"Pleased to meet you, Fred."
"What are you doing?" he asked, looking curiously at me. I was bent near double over the back of the PC plugging cords in. I raised my eyebrows slightly because it seemed fairly obvious to me what I was doing, but decided to be courteous.
"I'm connecting up my computer."
At the sound of the word "computer", another two heads popped around the door. They were both slightly taller than Fred and they looked about twice as curious about what was going on.
"Ummm, hi," I said, slightly confused.
"Ah, you'd be umm.. Arthur's new relative, wouldn't you?" asked one of them. I nodded.
"I'm Sarah."
"Oh, Trixie's girl!" the other one piped up. I nodded again. I wondered how they knew my mother, because she generally avoided this part of the family like the plague. I'd had about three courtesy visits with my uncles, which I could only remember dimly. The last one had happened after the birth of the second of my two younger brothers, when I was six. That was about the point where we'd all moved to a different town and Mother had rather emphatically cut down the connection to occasional letters and phone calls on birthdays. I'd taken a bit of a chance on writing to them when I heard that Claire was moving out, since they didn't really know me and I didn't really know them. But the answer had come quickly by phone: Uncle Arthur had been quite happy for me to come and stay, even offering to give me transport there.
So now, here I was, meeting his... housemates. Funny, I hadn't known that he roomed with dwarfs. Ah well, better be polite and politically correct.
"Yes, I'm Beatrice's daughter," I corrected them. "I'm staying here while I'm at university."
"Oh, so you'll be studying then?" The question came from Fred.
"Yes", I agreed. I'd chosen to come to the Southport campus of Fairmont university because it was a bit out of the way, as well as having a damn good IT degree in the works. The fact that it was a five hour journey from home helped a fair amount, too. Mother and I seem to agree more when we're in separate postal districts. I had some vague memories of Southport from my childhood, of swimming in the ocean and of walking along the beaches with my mother. I was looking forward to seeing whether I could find the places I remembered from my childhood.
"Maybe we should tell Sam and ... Larry", said one of the two by the door. Again, that small stumble over the names. It was almost as though they weren't used to them. I suddenly recalled that I hadn't been introduced to the two people at the door. I raised the matter with Fred.
"Oh, yes, how careless of me," he said, sounding about twice as old as he looked. "This is ... Mark", he gestured at the left hand one of the pair, who was slightly taller than the other, "and this is ... Phillip".
"Call me Pip," Phillip said, holding out a hand to shake.
"Pleased to meet you both," I said, shaking hands with each of them, then turning back to my PC. "If you'll all excuse me, I have to finish unpacking."
I heard their goodbyes, and continued with setting up the PC. Once everything was assembled, I switched it on and checked that it booted up successfully. Yup, no problems there. Once I'd made certain that my PC was okay after the journey, I proceeded to unpack all of my clothes and put them away. As I'd suspected, my clothes packed into about a third of the space that Claire's had occupied. Then I moved on to my books and my CDs. The CDs were easy: I'd packed them in their racks, so all that had to be done was to take the racks out of their boxes and put them on the floor between the desk and the chest of drawers. I put my stereo on one end of the desk and plugged it into a spare outlet on the powerboard that I was using for the PC. Then I opened the first box of books, the one that contained all my old favourites, that I enjoyed re-reading. I found shelf space for all of these, but only just. I'd need to reserve some room for my textbooks, after all. With a sigh, I looked at the other two boxes of books and carefully pushed these into the bottom of one of the wardrobes. Then I took a look around the rest of the room, picked up my rather battered teddybear and placed it on top of the bed. A bit childish, I suppose, but I found that if I had the bear to cuddle, I fell asleep a lot easier. Given that this was going to be my first time living away from home, I wanted to make certain that I wasn't going to be lying awake all night.
Just as I'd finished this, I heard a knock on the door. I looked up.
"Hullo uncle Arthur," I said.
"Oh, just Arthur will do. I'm not really your uncle, after all," he replied, smiling at me. "I was wondering whether you'd like to meet the rest of the household?"
I nodded. "That sounds good."
"Well, we're all downstairs, in the sitting room. Come and meet the others."
I followed my uncle to the sitting room. There were seven other people there, including the three I'd met previously. Of those I hadn't met, there was an elderly man, with a long grey beard (Augustus, or Gus, White); a tall, slender, blond man, wearing the type of haircut I'd always associated with Norman-era pageboys (Larry Green); a short, solid man, with a gruff manner and a bristling beard which appeared to have a personality of its own (George Goodwin) and the final one, another dwarf, like the other three, was Sam Gardiner. Apparently the other person who shared the house, my other "uncle", Boris Barhill, was currently on active service in the military, but was due home on furlough at some point in the next month or so. I said all that was polite and listened to a number of anecdotes from each of them, while waiting for dinner. I explained about my plans for study, with regard to the IT side of my planned degree, as well as getting some advice from both Larry and Gus about what I should take as "breadth" modules for my degree. Well, it was sort of advice. Larry was suggesting I stay well away from the English department, and Gus was telling me that I shouldn't take philology or philosophy, because he wasn't there to teach them any more. I filed these recommendations away in the back of my mind, and decided to see what was available when I got to enrollment day on Monday. The best thing that came out of the whole business was that Arthur said that he'd see whether the high school was willing to pay for a part-time computer person (ie me!) while I was being trained. I agreed to the idea: I mean, it's a job, it'll give me work experience and I'll be able to claim it as relevant experience on my resume. What's not to like about the idea?
Over dinner, Fred raised the issue of getting me onto the roster as soon as possible.
"What roster?" I asked.
"The roster of household chores," Fred explained. "We've found that this makes it easier for everyone to get things done. This way, everyone has a turn at everything and nothing misses being done." He sounded very chirpy about the whole notion. I had a look at the fridge, where there was a large chart, colour-coded with squares in different colours running across each job. Seemed logical enough to me, so I agreed to get dropped into the roster as soon as I could.
"We'll let Mr .. Arthur explain the house rules to you," Sam said. Hmm... seemed to be a regular thing, this hesitation over names. I would have considered it a bit further, but Arthur had started speaking.
"The first rule is that all visitors of the opposite sex have to be out of the house by midnight."
I nodded. I wasn't surprised at that one. Mother had just about had a shrieking fit when she'd discovered that I'd had sex twice with Barry Michaels back home. I didn't think she'd let me stay here without at least some efforts at chaperonage.
"Next rule is that visitors of the same sex can sleep over, provided sleeping is all that they're doing."
I raised my eyebrows at that one, as girls really weren't my thing and it wasn't my business what any of the men in the house were doing. I nodded all the same.
"As Fred has already mentioned, everyone takes their turn at cooking, cleaning and all the other chores. Fred keeps track of the roster, and it's pinned to the fridge. Next up, all your washing has to be in the washing basket at nine am sharp on Saturday morning. If you leave anything in the pockets, it'll get thrown in the bin: cash gets put into the jar on top of the dryer. If it's late getting in, you don't see it until after the next washday. No mid-week loads of washing. Your bedroom is your responsibility to keep clean. Or not, as you prefer."
"What about board?" I asked. This was worrying me slightly, as although I was eligible for student allowance, I knew it didn't come to much. This is why I was looking for a part-time job.
"You're not paying board as such," Arthur explained. "Instead, you'll be chipping in your share of the bills. It's equal for everyone. Oh, and it has to be paid on time. No credit."
I nodded again. "All sounds fair enough. Are there any other rules?"
Larry laughed. "Not written ones, although you'll probably learn the unwritten ones soon enough."
"Any other matters?" Arthur asked. "Is your room all right? Do you need anything else? We weren't sure whether to get any extra furniture or not, so we left the things that Claire had been using in there."
I smiled. "Well, I'm nowhere near as interested in clothes as Claire was," I commented. "I'd actually prefer a few more bookshelves to the second wardrobe, to be honest. Oh, and is it okay if I set up an internet connection? I'll pay for the extra phone line and everything else involved myself, if you like."
"Bookshelves we can do," Mark said. "There's a couple of them out in the shed."
"And that second wardrobe can come out easily," Pip agreed.
"There should be a second phone line already in that room," George commented. "We had it put in for Marcia, when she stayed here. The phone bill was going through the roof, so we got her her own line and told her to pay the bill herself. I'll see about getting that one reactivated"
Hang on... Marcia? The only Marcia I knew of in the family was my Aunt Marcia, who was about ten years older than Mother. Now, most of the men in this household didn't look much older than about thirty-odd. Mother was about fifty, which made Aunt Marcia about sixty. Something strange was happening here. However, it had been a long day. I was feeling tired. I decided to get some sleep, so as soon as dinner was actually finished and Mark and Pip had started on the washing up, I excused myself to go to bed. As I snuggled up to my bear and huddled under the covers, I thought I heard conversation from downstairs, but it was lost in the mists of sleep.
***
"What did you have to go and mention Marcia for, Gimli? She's not as daft as Claire, she might figure it out!"
"Not as daft as Claire covers a fairly wide spectrum, Frodo. But I agree, we're all going to have to be a bit more circumspect around Miss Sarah. That includes the four of you practicing referring to everyone by their mufti names. I saw the looks she was giving you."
"Oh, but Gandalf! It's so difficult to remember all those names!"
"This from the hobbit who can remember the whole of Sarah's family tree right back to myself, recite it flawlessly, and not miss a single name of all the cousins, branches or spouses. Methinks you protest a little too much, Merry."
"Shh. She's only just upstairs. She might hear us."
***