by Lesley Allen
Biddy didn’t have a proper school bag either, just an old string shopper with broken handles, which she tried to patch together with wool or thread, or even Sellotape.
And then there was her name. Her real name, that is, not the one she would become known by when she was almost ten years old. All of the other girls in her class had nice, sensible names like Julia or Jacqueline or Georgina. But Biddy’s young mother, Gracie, who had not really been ready to have a child of her own when her daughter was born, named her after a cat who had adopted her family when Gracie was eight. There had been many Flynn family cats over the years, they came and went with regular ease. But Old Biddy was special. She stayed far longer than any of the other cats and had only died the week before Gracie went into labour.
‘I’m not bloody well naming her after your mother,’ Gracie had screamed hysterically at Biddy’s father on his first visit to the hospital to meet his baby daughter, when he had tentatively suggested that Margaret might be a much more suitable name. ‘And just be thankful it wasn’t a boy.’ He didn’t dare ask what the boy’s name might have been.
As it turned out, Gracie Weir had swiftly realised that she wasn’t ready to be a mother and, in actual fact, had never really intended to become a wife. So, when Biddy was just six months old, Gracie ran away to join a travelling fair. The family never heard from her again.
So, that left Biddy, her middle-aged father and his elderly mother. Mrs Weir senior helped to rear the child as best she could while her darling son continued to work as a bookkeeper at Morrison’s, the local hardware store. She cursed the day that Gracie, ‘that little harlot’, had come to work at the store. At fifty, her boy Howard was much too old to leave home, and Mrs Weir had assumed that she’d succeeded in her life’s ambition – to keep him all to herself. The shame of the whole affair with Gracie and the child had nearly killed her.
‘But you’re more than twice her age,’ old Mrs Weir had gasped when Howard sat her down in their dark parlour to break the news, thrusting a cup of sweet tea and two Marie biscuits into her hands. ‘It’s disgusting. Filthy. How could you let this happen, Howard? How could you do this to me?’ It was even worse than when her late husband, Harold, had been hit by the train and killed.
Mrs Weir had consoled herself by believing that Gracie Flynn was nothing more than a shameless opportunist who had seduced her darling Howard for financial security and a roof over her head. None of this was Howard’s doing, of course. Helen, the nice young secretary at Morrison’s (not nice enough for her son, mind you), told her that Gracie had recently moved into one of those new council housing estates on the outskirts of town with her family – all ten of them. Nobody seemed to know where the Flynns had come from, but word was, they had a bit of a reputation for trouble. In Mrs Weir’s mind, that explained everything. After all, Howard couldn’t possibly have done the seducing himself as, quite frankly, he wouldn’t have known where to start. She suspected that Gracie and her abundant family were really gypsies who’d been forced to live ‘normal lives’ by the powers that be. When she put her theory to Helen, it wasn’t rebuffed.
‘I knew it,’ old Mrs Weir thought, pleased with herself, ‘I just knew it.’
‘Perhaps she got him drunk,’ she whispered confidentially to Helen. ‘Or perhaps she put one of her gypsy spells on him. He mustn’t have realised what was happening.’
Helen, delighted with this exciting turn of events in her normally mundane existence at Morrison’s, smiled and nodded. ‘Perhaps,’ she whispered back.
The truth of the matter was in fact pretty close to Mrs Weir’s imagined version. Howard was as shocked as anyone when Gracie fell pregnant after their somewhat brief fumble in the sand dunes during the Morrison’s annual Easter picnic. In almost fifty years, he’d never been drunk and he’d certainly never had sex and now here he was, getting pissed and making someone pregnant in the same afternoon.
As for Gracie, she didn’t even fancy Howard. How could she? He was old and odd, and, with his thick brown spectacles, green cardigans and stinking breath, utterly unattractive. But, in her first week at the store, she’d boasted to Helen that she could bed any man she wanted.
‘Not Howard, you can’t,’ laughed Helen, rolling her eyes. ‘Not even you could do that.’
‘Just you watch,’ Gracie had smiled coyly, tossing her copper curls.
Once the damage had been done, so to speak, Howard had no option but to propose. A hasty, modest wedding at the town hall registry office ensued, with two staff drafted in as witnesses and Mrs Weir senior as the only guest. The reception was a cup of tea and a ham sandwich at the Peacock Café in the park. It wasn’t quite what Gracie had imagined for her wedding day. But on the whole she was enjoying the drama of this new game, and decided to play along for a while, to see what happened. She could always leave, she reasoned to herself. If she’d learnt anything at all from her family’s way of life it was that leaving was easy. And at least there was no need for any further awful sex with Howard. He showed no interest anyway, but even if he had, she wouldn’t have hesitated to use the pregnancy as a get-out clause.
For a little while, Gracie almost enjoyed living in the dull but relatively comfortable environment of number 17, Stanley Street. It was quiet, such a change from what she was used to. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for Howard’s mother, she might have even found it a pleasurable experience. Until the child was born, that is.
Mrs Weir senior had glowed with relief when Gracie ran away, and was more than happy to resume the cosseting regime that had served her son so perfectly well before his ill-fated marriage. Her only regret was that her daughter-in-law hadn’t taken the child with her. ‘Perhaps that Flynn family will take her,’ she quietly suggested to Helen on a rare trip into Morrison’s with the pram. ‘After all, there are more of them to help out. It’s the least they could do.’
It soon became clear, however, that none of Gracie’s relations were the least bit interested in the baby girl. When Gracie had married Howard Weir they may have been shocked by her choice of husband, and annoyed that there wasn’t to be a boozy reception, but at least it meant they had one less mouth to feed. Gracie’s hasty and mysterious departure was actually a relief to them, eliminating the concern that she would one day land back on their doorstep with the child in tow, as it was obvious the marriage wouldn’t work. Marriages never did in the Flynn family. Ever. So, when a postcard from somewhere foreign arrived one day, informing them that Gracie was following her dream and would never return, they hastily made it known to Howard that they had neither the time, nor the inclination, to be involved in Biddy’s life. For a short time, Mrs Weir hoped and prayed that the Flynns would come to their senses, change their minds and reclaim the child. Her prayers were shattered for good, however, when, a few months after Gracie had run away, the rest of her family upped sticks and moved yet again – this time, apparently, to Manchester, though no one really knew. And that was that.
So, Mrs Weir was stuck with Biddy. She didn’t know quite what to do with a girl, as, apart from her own darling Howard, she had never really been one for children. Still, she made sure that Biddy was fed and clothed, and once or twice, when they had an unexpected visitor for one reason or another, she even bounced the child on her knee and patted her curls.
Mrs Weir’s sudden demise from a massive, violent stroke coincided with the closure of Morrison’s and Howard’s premature entry to retirement. There really was very little hope of alternative employment for a fifty-three-year-old bookkeeper with a three-year-old daughter and no driving licence. But, as a man who was good with figures, he had made a number of small but canny investments in the past, particularly with the modest sum of money his father had left in trust when he died on Howard’s tenth birthday.
Mrs Weir had always suspected that her husband, Harold, was a secret drinker and that his outings to the weekly evening mission meetings at the bandstand often included a trip to the local pub. It was the only time he would ever smell
of peppermint – ‘for my indigestion, dear,’ – and Ralgex – ‘my back is playing up today, and I didn’t want to miss the meeting.’ Her suspicions were confirmed when Harold’s mangled body had been found on the railway line which ran directly behind the car park at Crawford’s Inn. If Harold had come straight home from the meeting as they would do when they both went on Sundays, his journey would not have taken him anywhere near the Inn, or the railway. Mrs Weir never spoke of her suspicions, as her husband had been known as a good, God-fearing man, but she vowed that not a drop of alcohol would ever pass her son’s lips.
And look what happened when it had.
Howard was a clever lad. He did well at school and could have gone to university, made something of his life. But his mother had other plans. Mrs Weir decided that her son should stay at home and get a decent, steady job with no real prospects. She also made sure he had few friends and limited interests, so that he could spend as much time with her as possible. She even stopped taking Howard to the Sunday mission meetings, deciding that, since He hadn’t done a very good job with her husband, she couldn’t trust God to keep an eye on her son. She’d just have to do it all herself.
When his mother died, Howard cashed in one of the saving policies he had set up with his father’s inheritance fund and forgot about the rest. He put the money from the policy into a building society in the High Street. The interest from that, coupled with his meagre pension, would be quite enough for a man and a child with limited needs to live off for the foreseeable future. What point was there in having any more? He’d never been a spender, inheriting a tightness that had been in the Weir family for many generations. They were always keeping their money for a rainy day, but even when those rainy days arrived, they still went out with holes in their umbrellas. That was just the sort of them. And anyway, Ballybrock wasn’t exactly the kind of place that required high living. It was more than a little bit backward in coming forward, and when Biddy was a baby, there had been no cinema, leisure complex, or big fancy shopping centre in the town. Even when those ‘scourges of modern life’, as Mr Weir called them, did start to arrive, he never went near them, so neither did Biddy.
All things considered, however, Mr Weir did the best he could with his daughter. He took her to the park, where they would feed stale bread to the ducks. They would walk along the shore and watch the noisy gulls dive for fish and swoop across their heads. He would sometimes read her stories and, for her fourth Christmas, he even withdrew enough money from the building society to buy a portable television so the two of them could sit together for Watch with Mother. Gradually, a bond of sorts began to grow between the quiet little girl and her almost silent father. Neither of them realised it was love at the time. But it was. It was just their love.
2.
As her school years passed, it gradually dawned on Biddy that she didn’t quite fit in. She knew she wasn’t pretty like the other girls at school, as during the ritual catchy-kissy sessions which had become customary in the playground, she was the only one in her class from whom the boys would run away, screaming.
‘Ugh! She touched me, she touched me,’ they would shout, cupping their hands over their mouths, pretending to vomit if one of them even brushed against her accidentally, or ran too close to her, as she wandered round the tarmac doing her daily count of bird poo patches. But Biddy didn’t care. She never wanted to join in the game anyway. And she wasn’t in the least bit jealous of the other girls, who all looked so similar that she sometimes had difficulty in telling them apart. Biddy wasn’t worried about her wild frizzy hair or her badly fitting, grubby uniform. She was much more interested in bird poo.
Biddy had studied bird poo since she was little, after witnessing a seagull poo on another child’s head, and over time she had become something of an expert. She knew, for example, that a large splatter of poo dotted with berries or seeds was probably deposited by a big black crow, or a magpie. A big white patch splashed with grey belonged to a seagull. That was the kind she liked best. A small whitish splodge, which could sometimes be mistaken for chewing gum, was the work of a tit or a sparrow. Biddy wasn’t interested in dog’s dirt or cat shit or rabbit droppings. Just bird poo. She was fascinated by the colours and textures, and loved the fact that birds could shit in mid-flight, hitting an unsuspecting human if they were lucky. She’d never been struck herself, but she’d seen it happen, often, and she couldn’t understand why people always reacted with horror, screeching or wailing or swearing when they were hit. She’d often stand on the beach, perfectly still for minutes and minutes at a time, arms outstretched, staring up at the gulls, willing them to hit her. But the birds never did shit on Biddy.
So Biddy knew that she was different, and that was fine. But she didn’t realise that she was actually a weirdo, never mind a bloody one – until, that is, Alison Flemming joined her class.
Alison Flemming was beautiful, smart, sporty and a talented pianist. With her honey-blonde hair, smooth skin, deep hazel eyes, and tantalising smile, she wooed people wherever she went. If Alison Flemming had lived in America, she would have been heading for the Prom Queen crown from the day she was born.
And Alison Flemming had another skill: even at the tender age of ten, she was a clever, accomplished and manipulative little bitch. It was a talent she would hone and develop over the years, becoming a master in the process. And like all good bitches, Alison liked to make sure she had a dependable team of devoted followers. Disciples, she liked to call them. It was only when she came to Ballybrock that she recognised her true potential, and fully comprehended the power she could have over others: both those who adored her, and those who did not. There were many hangers-on, but the true believers, the hard-core Alison Flemming fans, were Jackie McKelvey, Georgina Harte and Julia Gamble.
When Alison arrived at Prospect Park in November 1979 – the third month of Primary 6 – she was an instant hit with everyone in the class. Well, everyone except Biddy. At first there were fleeting feelings of jealousy from Jackie, Georgina and Julia, who until that day had generally been regarded as the collective leaders of the Primary 6 female pack. But the threesome quickly realised that Alison was something special and that, for the sake of their long-term prospects, they should become the new girl’s closest allies. So, by the end of break time on Alison’s first day, the three girls had cooed and clucked and flirted with sufficient eagerness to be awarded the honour of being regarded as the new girl’s new best friends. And that was how it stayed, for years.
Alison knew that she would be adored, as that was all she had ever been used to. Well, apart from when the thing with Selina Burton had happened. But thankfully, that was all behind her now. The thought of moving to a new small town from the big city hadn’t fazed Alison in the slightest, as she had had no real emotional attachment to any of her old friends, especially after the incident with Selina. She was looking forward to the challenge of making new people fall for her, and this time she was determined not to mess up. But even she didn’t expect it to happen quite so quickly. The swiftness of her positioning as the most popular girl in the class was a pleasant surprise that inflated her already lofty ego to new heights, and gave her a formidable flush of bravado.
So when she noticed the odd-looking girl from her class with the horrible hair and the dirty, ill-fitting uniform, walking around the playground, head bent, hands clasped behind her back, stopping every so often to stare at – what? – her interest was instantly piqued.
The girl was the only female pupil who hadn’t clamoured to talk to her, or flash her a toothy smile, or offer to show her where the cloakroom was, or the canteen, or the gymnasium. In fact, she hadn’t even acknowledged her arrival in any way at all. How dare she?
Alison took a closer look. She really was quite repulsive. Her socks were a colour she couldn’t put a name to. Her cardigan was missing several buttons. She was certain she smelled of something rotten. She kept glancing at her during the History lesson after break, and the Maths one before
lunch, certain the girl would finally look her way, flash her a smile, try to befriend her – which, of course, she would not allow. But she didn’t. It appeared that she, Alison Flemming, was entirely invisible to this, this ‘thing’. Memories of Selina and the aftermath of the ‘incident’ flooded her, and she felt an irrational sense of rage. This hideous girl might not have noticed her yet. But she would. Oh, she would.
By the end of lunchtime, Biddy’s fate was sealed.
‘What’s her name, then?’ Alison asked her new admirers, glancing over at Biddy as they returned to the classroom.
‘Oh, her,’ sniggered Julia, ‘that’s just Biddy.’
‘Biddy?’ laughed Alison, almost choking. ‘Biddy? What kind of a stupid name is that? Who on earth would call their child Biddy? Bet her parents are as odd as she is.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Georgina with vigorous enthusiasm. ‘Bet.’
‘Actually, her dad’s dead old,’ said Jackie, keen to provide some juicy information for Alison. ‘He looks like her grandpa. Don’t think she has a mum.’
‘No wonder she looks like that, then,’ Alison sneered. ‘What’s her other name?’
‘Weir,’ said Georgina, Julia and Jackie in unison, ‘Biddy Weir.’
‘More like Biddy Weirdo,’ laughed Alison, flicking her long golden mane behind her, and her little group of admirers laughed with her.