by Lesley Allen
Biddy stared at Miss Jordan. It had been three days since the incident in the gym, and she’d spent most of that time wondering if it had really happened. She mostly felt a sense of crushing mortification, horrified that she’d told a teacher about Alison, sick with fear about what the repercussions might be. She wished she’d kept her stupid mouth shut; or that Miss Jordan had never spoken to her in the first place. But then again, another part of her was glad it had happened. The kindness in the teacher’s eyes, the softness of her smile and the gentle way in which she talked had been teasing her. And, the best thing of all was the fact that Miss Jordan had called her a ‘friend’. She wanted more of it, that feeling – whatever it was.
‘Have you lost something?’ Miss Jordan asked.
Biddy shook her head. How could she tell the teacher that she’d just been staring at some bird poo to make her feel balanced after a particularly bad Alison day? Miss Jordan would realise what a weirdo she was after all.
‘No-no, Miss,’ she stammered.
‘Stuart Smith!’ Miss Jordan yelled as a boy ran past, bumping into her, almost knocking the rackets from her arms. ‘Slow down! Honestly, the playground at home time is like a battlefield,’ she grinned at Biddy and rolled her eyes.
Biddy just stared, not knowing what to say, or do, or what was coming next.
‘Oh, are you rushing for a bus too? Am I holding you back?’ Miss Jordan grimaced, trying to balance the rackets.
‘N-no, Miss,’ Biddy stammered again. ‘I walk.’
‘Oh, well, in that case, would you do me the biggest favour, Biddy, and help me take this lot back to the P.E. store? I think I underestimated their weight,’ Miss Jordan laughed lightly.
Biddy continued to stare at the teacher, trying to process the request. A favour? She didn’t think anyone had ever asked her for a favour. Not even her father. Obviously he asked her to do things: bring in the milk, take out the rubbish, get his pills from the chemist. But a favour? No. Never.
‘Of course if you need to get off, don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.’
‘No.’ Biddy almost snapped. ‘I mean yes. I mean no, I don’t need to . . . erm . . . yes, I’ll . . . here . . .’ she slung the nylon shopper which was now serving as her schoolbag over her shoulder and snatched the top three tennis rackets from the pile in Miss Jordan’s arms.
‘Thank you, Biddy,’ the teacher smiled. ‘That’s very kind of you. You’re a star.’
As they walked across the playground towards the gym, Miss Jordan chatted away; but Biddy barely heard a word, as ‘favour’, ‘star’, and ‘very kind’ were ringing in her ears. No one had ever spoken to her in the way Miss Jordan did, and the effect was both surreal and intoxicating. It was almost as though she was having an out of body experience.
Neither did Biddy notice Georgina Harte pass them on her way to Mr Mackey’s detention in Hut 4, for getting caught with cigarettes in her blazer on one of the Head of Year’s random uniform inspections. The cigarettes, of course, were Alison’s, but Georgina didn’t mind taking the hit. Any opportunity to curry favour with Ali above Jackie and Julia was a welcome one. And any vague irritation she did feel about missing out on the bus ride home was instantly negated now she could report back her sighting of Bloody Weirdo sucking up to that new P.E. teacher Alison couldn’t stand. What a stroke of luck.
Penny thought it was a stroke of luck bumping into Biddy too. She’d been thinking non-stop about the girl since their encounter in the gym hall, and had come up with several plans to help end her misery – then discounted them one by one. It wasn’t as simple as just reporting Alison Flemming to Mr Duncan. She needed evidence, for a start, but stomping straight in and going for the little madam’s jugular would actually be the worst way to tackle it for Biddy. There had been something about Alison that annoyed her from the very first time she encountered her. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something about the girl unnerved her. She was too sickly sweet. Too seemingly perfect. But everyone else seemed to be dying about her.
She also knew from her own experience that first and foremost what Biddy needed was a sense of self-worth, a feeling of empowerment; someone to show her that despite what she’d grown to believe, the whole world was not against her, and, most important of all, that she was not a flipping ‘Bloody Weirdo’.
‘Can you believe that?’ she’d yelled at Sam that evening as they prepared dinner. ‘Can you actually believe that the girl has been basically brainwashed into believing she is a bloody weirdo. Not just a weirdo, but a BLOODY weirdo? That’s what she said. Her very words were, “I’m not just a weirdo, I’m a bloody weirdo, and that’s the worst kind of weirdo there is”. I mean it’s sick, isn’t it? It’s fucking sick. She has done nothing to deserve this. Nothing. OK, she may be a bit “different”, but that doesn’t make her a weirdo. She’s just a sad, lonely girl called Biddy.’
‘Yes, Pen, it’s sick,’ agreed Sam, handing Penny a glass of wine. ‘Now drink this, down in one if you have to, and calm down. And stop yelling please. It’s not my fault.’
‘Oh, Sam, I’m sorry,’ she paused, almost downing the contents of the glass, ‘but I’ve never been so angry in my life. Even when that bitch Joanna betrayed me all those years ago. So,’ she held her glass out for a refill, ‘what the hell am I going to do about it?’
‘I don’t know, Penny, really I don’t. I’m rubbish at this kind of thing, you know that. But as I’ve said before, be careful. Please.’
‘I will, Sam, I will.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise,’ Penny nodded, stroking Samantha’s cheek.
She still hadn’t made up her mind what to do when she, quite literally, stumbled upon Biddy in the playground. The girl seemed to be glued to the tarmac, staring at the ground in that trance-like way she’d witnessed several times before. Penny always wondered what on earth she was doing. As they walked together towards the gym hall she gabbled away ten to the dozen about none of the second years offering to help her with the rackets, and how she couldn’t wait for the new tennis courts to be ready so they didn’t have to use the back playground, and wasn’t it just great to get some nice warm sunshine for a change, desperately trying to think of a way to turn this chance encounter to her benefit. But, just as before, Biddy said nothing. Not a word.
‘Right then,’ Penny said, locking the gym store door behind them, ‘job done.’ She beamed at Biddy. ‘Thanks so much, Biddy, it’s good to know that chivalry hasn’t died out completely. Those second years could do with a lesson in manners from you,’ she winked. Still nothing back.
‘So, are you off home now?’
Biddy nodded.
‘And you walk, you said?’
Biddy nodded again.
‘Well, good for you. Walking’s the best form of exercise. Never worry about playing netball, and tennis and rounders if you walk every day,’ she beamed again, then looked around her conspiratorially and whispered, ‘but never let on to Mrs Cunningham I said that. I’ll get the sack.’ She winked again, and this time Biddy smiled.
‘So, any nice plans for the weekend?’
Biddy shook her head. She’d probably take her sketchpad to the beach, depending on homework and chores, but she suspected that wasn’t what Miss Jordan meant.
‘I’m going to do some baking myself. Start getting in some practice for the cake sale at the end of term. I haven’t baked in years, and from what I hear there’s quite a bit of competition amongst the staff,’ she laughed. ‘What about you? Will you be baking something?’
Biddy continued to stare, not knowing quite what to say. Wasn’t it obvious? Of course she wouldn’t be baking. She’d never baked at home, ever. She hadn’t a clue how to do it, and Domestic Science hadn’t helped her learn. Oh, she liked the idea of it, baking, cooking; but while Domestic Science lessons were a nightmare for her, they provided a dream opportunity for Alison and the others to ridicule yet another of her weird inadequacies. She often didn’t have the correct i
ngredients for the practical lessons, and, naturally, never had a partner to borrow from either. Her current teacher, Miss McFettrick, generally just ignored her now, apparently not bothered whether she completed the tasks or not. It was as though she was completely invisible in her kitchen. But Biddy couldn’t blame her, really. When she’d had to make a quiche lorraine for the Christmas exam last December, Miss McFettrick actually spat out the mouthful she was sampling, causing a roar of hilarity in the class.
‘I didn’t think it was possible for a female to make something quite so disgusting,’ she had said, glaring at Biddy with undisguised disdain as she wiped her mouth with a tea towel. ‘Your incompetence has reached a level I have never before experienced in all my years of teaching, and, I pray, I will never encounter again. How much salt did you put in here? A tablespoon? Do you not understand simple measurements, girl?’
The other girls broke into a round of applause, led, of course, by Alison. Needless to say, they devoured Miss McFettrick’s words, quoting them to Biddy verbatim at every opportunity over the weeks that followed, and making sure that the entire school heard them too. Miss McFettrick hadn’t tasted a thing that Biddy had attempted to make since. At least in the second and third year Mrs Hobart had been kinder, often using Biddy’s work station to demonstrate the assignments and allowing her to take home the results. Although Biddy’s father always cleaned his plate on these occasions, he never passed comment, and she often wondered if he believed she had actually made those things herself, or if he really knew the humiliating truth. Now she always tipped her woeful efforts in a bin on her way home from school, and as her papa never asked about her ‘cooking classes’, she never had to lie.
She felt a sudden wistful urge for her mother. Her mother would have been a wonderful baker; she just knew it. She would have taught Biddy in their kitchen, wearing matching pretty aprons with flowers on them. And together they would have baked delicious things for the school cake sale.
‘Biddy?’
Biddy jolted and realised that Miss Jordan was actually expecting an answer, so she shook her head and simply said, ‘No, Miss.’
‘Just right,’ the teacher smiled. ‘Far better to go along and buy some delicious treats. Tell you what, I’ll give you a heads-up on whatever my contribution ends up being, then you can buy it so I don’t feel rubbish when it’s the last cake standing.’
Miss Jordan laughed, so Biddy laughed her best forced laugh back and nodded. She was sure Miss Jordan’s cake wouldn’t be the last one left. She was sure it would be the most delicious cake in the whole of the sale, and that it would be the very first one to be bought, and that people would be clambering to buy it. But she wouldn’t be one of them, because she wouldn’t be there. They didn’t do things like that, her father and her, and she’d never missed that they didn’t. Until now.
‘Well, I must be off.’ They’d reached the school entrance and Miss Jordan looked at her watch. ‘Need to go and get my stuff, then head home. I think it’ll be takeaway in my house tonight. I was going to go shopping after work, but to be honest I can’t be bothered.’ She laughed again, and Biddy thought how she’d never heard someone laugh so much before in such a musical way. It was nice. It reminded her of a bird singing. She’d like to laugh like that herself, but of course she’d only sound ridiculous.
‘There isn’t a thing in my fridge,’ Miss Jordan was saying now, ‘save a big bar of Caramac. And I’m not going to get dinner out of that, never mind bake a cake. Have you been to that new supermarket yet?’
Biddy shook her head.
‘Oh, it’s great,’ Miss Jordan clapped her hands together. ‘Honestly, they have everything. And there’s even a lovely coffee shop. I know I shouldn’t admit this, being a P.E. teacher and all, but they do the most delicious donuts. Do you like donuts, Biddy?’
‘I don’t know, Miss,’ Biddy answered honestly. To her knowledge she’d never eaten a donut before. Her father liked Kimberley biscuits, and that was that. But she suddenly had an overwhelming urge to eat one.
‘Oh, well you must try one when you do go. That’ll be my elevenses treat to myself tomorrow morning after I’ve finished the shopping. I might even buy an extra one; an emergency consolation just in case the baking turns out to be a disaster.’ She beamed again, and giggled loudly. If Miss Jordan was a bird, thought Biddy, she’d be a Laughing Kookaburra.
‘Well, cheerio, Biddy. Hope you have a lovely weekend. See you next week. And thanks again for your help.’
Biddy smiled weakly. She didn’t want the conversation to be over, even though it wasn’t really a proper conversation. She could stand here and listen to Miss Jordan talk for hours. No one had ever talked to her like this before, and the best thing of all was that Miss Jordan hadn’t even mentioned Alison.
‘You’re welcome, Miss,’ she managed to croak. And as she turned away and began the walk back to Stanley Street and her father, her weak, fake smile became a huge, helpless grin.
11.
Biddy left the house at a quarter past ten the following morning to walk to the supermarket. She told her father she was going to the beach early because she wanted to catch the mid-morning light, that he wasn’t to worry as she’d very little homework to do, and that she’d pick up any odds and ends of shopping they needed on her way home. He presented her with a neatly written list, with the names of all the appropriate shops she was to purchase the item from beside each one: 6 pork sausages – McDaid’s, 2lbs potatoes & 6 carrots – Gregg & Sons, 2 soda & 2 potato farls – Griddle, 1 tin Campbell’s chicken soup (condensed), 1 packet of Bird’s custard & packet of Kimberley biscuits – Mrs Henderson’s. He’d have had a fit if he’d known where she was really planning on doing the shopping. Even though the supermarket had been open for a couple of months now, her father still preferred to shop at McDaid’s Butchers and Gregg & Sons greengrocers in town.
‘What would I be wanting to go to that place for?’ he had snarled when Biddy had tentatively suggested a trip shortly after it opened. ‘Full of foreign things and people with high-falutin’ ideas. I know what it’s like to be put out of work because people are changing their ways, remember. Well, I won’t be changing mine.’
If he was suspicious this morning, his voice did not reveal it, but on the way she almost turned back – several times. She felt sick, both with nerves and remorse. Biddy had never lied to her father before about what she was doing or where she was going, and now she felt as though she was doing something very wicked and deceitful. Waves of nauseating shame and embarrassment flushed through her, stopping her in her tracks every few minutes, but then the thought of Miss Jordan’s smile and the sound of her voice kept her going.
The walk only took twenty minutes. There was a direct bus route from the main road just around the corner from their house, but even on a Saturday, Biddy couldn’t bear the thought of it. Now she was finally here, the size of the supermarket unnerved her, and the range of products on the shelves was overwhelming. She watched as young mothers with children in trolleys, and middle-aged women, any one of whom could have been her own mother, glided around the aisles with ease and plucked things from the shelves with an air of efficient confidence. Her armpits began to sweat, the sick feeling churned in her stomach and panic started to rise in her throat. Her arms ached from the heavy basket, which was already weighed down with some of the items on her list: the tin of soup, the packet of custard, a packet of sausages and a bag of potatoes. She was finding it difficult to negotiate the unfamiliar aisles with the basket and the plastic bag containing her sketchpad and pencils. Finding herself in the household cleaning aisle, she stopped and put the basket on the ground, wiping her brow. What was she doing? She didn’t belong here. And what was she actually going to do if she did bump into Miss Jordan? Go for elevenses with her? Stupid, stupid, stupid, bloody weirdo!
She was every bit as weird and as thick and as stupid as everyone said she was. Why hadn’t she thought this through? Aside from not having a clue what
she would say to the teacher if she did see her, she couldn’t return home with the potatoes and the sausages anyway, as the supermarket wrapping meant it would be obvious to her father they hadn’t come from McDaid’s or Gregg & Sons. What was she going to do? Buy them, then dump them in a waste bin like she used to do with her Domestic Science efforts? She glanced at her watch: ten to eleven. Miss Jordan had said she took her elevenses in the café, after her shopping, so that would mean she was probably already here somewhere. Maybe she was in one of the long queues at the tills, or maybe she was already in the café. Biddy could feel the sweat running down between her breasts now too, saturating her vest. Her mouth felt dry and her head was dizzy. She thought she might be sick. She needed to get out of this place, now, before Miss Jordan saw her. She would just leave the basket here and run, and she’d never be so stupid again. Never.
‘Hello, Biddy. What a lovely surprise. Doing some shopping?’ Biddy looked up, startled to see Miss Jordan smiling at her. Even though just minutes before she’d been hoping to meet the teacher, she was instantly mortified: horribly conscious of her sweaty armpits and damp vest and the perspiration which must be evident on her forehead and upper lip. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.
‘Oh my word, Biddy, are you all right? You look as though you’re about to pass out.’ Sensing Biddy’s discomfort, Penny took control. ‘It’s really busy here today. I can’t be doing with the crowds, to be honest. Look, do you fancy a quick cup of coffee? Come on, my treat. I was heading to the café anyway. You can bring your basket with you, then finish your shopping later.’ She headed off in the direction of the café but Biddy stayed still, unable to move. Penny looked back at her and smiled encouragingly. ‘Perhaps you’d rather have a Coke,’ she called, ‘or even a hot chocolate?’
Discovering her legs could actually move, Biddy followed Miss Jordan and joined her in the queue.