The Lonely Life of Biddy Weir

by Lesley Allen

  ‘Right, girls. Settle down.’ The spell was broken. The girls started to leap into their bunks as Mrs Abbott strode into the room. ‘It’s lights-out time.’

  There were groans of ‘Aww, Miss,’ from around the room. ‘Just a wee while longer?’ pleaded Julia.

  ‘Go on, Miss, ten minutes?’ ventured Jill. ‘Five?’

  ‘Please, Miss,’ tried Karen.

  Still peeping out from the top of her duvet, Biddy noticed Alison dabbing something from a tiny bottle behind her ears, and on her wrists and down the middle of her breasts. The other girls were still trying to persuade Mrs Abbott to delay lights out, but Alison just slipped into the bottom bed of the bunk she was sharing with Georgina and didn’t say a word.

  ‘No, seriously girls, that’s it. You’ve got a long day ahead tomorrow and you all need a good night’s sleep. You can chat for five minutes, but that’s all. Anyone heard talking after that will be punished. And don’t think I won’t be listening. You never know when I’ll be prowling outside your door. Night, girls.’

  ‘Night, Miss,’ some of the girls reluctantly groaned.

  Biddy pulled the duvet over the top of her head, turned on her side and drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them. In the dense, black darkness she could almost pretend she was back in her own bed, except for the strange light spongy quilt and the breathing and whispers of the other girls. She’d been OK there for a while, lost in the curiousness of what she had been watching, but now she felt a surge of longing for her own heavy blankets, for the sound of her father snoring. She didn’t want to hear these sounds. She unclasped her hands from around her knees and stuck her fingers in her ears. Now all she could hear was her own heavy breathing and the rush of blood inside her head. It sounded a bit like the waterfall they had come across on the mountain earlier that day.

  Eventually she had to pull down the duvet to get some air. The girls continued to chatter and giggle. Mrs Abbott banged on the door twice and told them to settle down, which they did for a moment, before erupting into giggles again. But Biddy was aware that Alison’s voice wasn’t one of them, which was strange, and instantly unsettling. Mrs Abbott banged the door again, but still the giggles persisted.

  ‘For God’s sake, would you all shut up!’ yelled Alison. ‘I want to go to sleep.’

  ‘Eeeeeuuuwww. What’s up with you?’ someone retorted.

  ‘Nothing’s up with me. I just want to get some sleep. Now, shut the fuck up.’

  Alison obviously had more influence on the others than Mrs Abbott. Once or twice someone sniggered or cleared their throat, or whispered something to their bunk mate, but gradually the room fell silent.

  Biddy had never shared a bedroom with another person before. In almost sixteen years, she had never slept anywhere but her own bed in her own bedroom with the same wallpaper on the wall and the same blankets and the same creaking floorboards. She lay still in the darkness, eyes wide open, arms now stiffly by her sides, and listened to the unfamiliar sound of other people sleeping. Deep, heavy breathing reverberated throughout the room. Someone started to snore, but it was light and high-pitched, unlike her father’s deep wheezy rattle. Beds creaked, duvets rustled, someone near her sounded like they were grinding their teeth. Biddy was tired. She wanted to sleep, she knew she needed to sleep, but her eyes wouldn’t let her. Every time she closed them, someone moved or coughed, and they sprang back open again. Gradually, she felt herself get heavy and her eyes began to droop. But then a noise from the other side of the room jolted her awake. Someone was getting out of bed. She could just make out their outline in the gloom, pulling on a dressing gown. They moved towards her bed. Biddy swallowed and screwed her eyes shut tight, waiting for whatever was coming. Were they going to put a pillow over her face? Or pour something over her? What? What were they going to do? But then she heard the door slowly creak and opened her eyes. Whoever it was, she was going out of the room. Biddy had a clear view from her bed, and as the door opened, the dim light which had been left on in the corridor highlighted Alison Flemming’s long golden hair, like a halo.

  Biddy breathed a sigh of relief, which was instantly drowned by a huge gulp of panic. What was Alison doing? Where had she gone? Was this all part of a plan? Was everyone else just pretending to be asleep, waiting for Alison to prepare her next trick? Breathe, she told herself, breathe. Listen to the other breathing. The snores. They were real. They were.

  Maybe Alison had simply gone to the toilet.

  As that thought hit her, that sensible, rational thought, Biddy realised she actually really needed to go to the toilet herself. She hadn’t gone before lights out, as she hadn’t wanted the others to see her pyjamas. And now she was worried if getting out of bed was against the rules, even to go to the toilet. What if Mrs Abbott was doing her prowling and caught her? But Alison had left the room, so she mustn’t be worried about getting caught. But then again, Alison was never caught. The more she thought about it, the more Biddy’s bladder seemed to cramp. She couldn’t go now, obviously. Not while Alison was there. She’d just have to wait until she returned. Then wait some more until Alison fell asleep. And then she would go. Her bladder was getting heavier and more painful by the second. Alison was taking an awfully long time. Maybe she’d got locked in the bathroom? Maybe she’d lost her way back to the room? Biddy crossed her legs and sucked in her tummy. Maybe she should just risk it and go. No. She couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t. Her bladder was close to bursting now, and her kidneys began to ache. ‘Please hurry up, please hurry up, please hurry up,’ she whispered, over and over again.

  Eventually, a long time later, the door creaked slowly open and in came Alison. She closed it gently behind her, then tiptoed over to her bed. Biddy held her breath and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. The room stayed silent. Nobody stirred. Alison didn’t speak to anyone. But it was too late anyway. Biddy pulled the duvet over her head, stuffed the corner of her pillow into her mouth and cried silently as the warm urine seeped through her pyjama bottoms, saturated her sheets and oozed into the mattress.

  22.

  The next day, their mountain hike soon eased Biddy’s anxiety, the fresh, fragrant breeze blowing off the fog of a sleepless night. As they climbed higher and higher up the winding stony path, the smells and colours and sounds of the mountain increasingly enthralled her. She often dawdled behind to examine a wild flower or inhale the sharp scent of a mountain herb, and was frequently yelled at by their group leaders Mrs Abbott and Mr Price, one of the resident instructors at Brook House, to get a move on – despite the fact that she never once complained about the trek, unlike most of the others, who moaned and groaned throughout the day.

  ‘How much further, Miss?’

  ‘Can we sit down for a minute?’

  ‘I’m knackered, Sir.’

  Whenever Mr Price pointed out a rook or a fox’s lair or a rare wild flower, the majority of pupils would roll their eyes at each other, or mutter ‘big deal’ under their breath. But Biddy quietly hung on his every word. The maze of stone walls zig-zagging across the landscape particularly fascinated her, and she wished she was brave enough to ask Mr Price about them. But Mr Price must have read her thoughts.

  ‘You’ll have noticed all the stone walls on the mountain,’ he said, when they stopped beside one for a snack and water break. ‘There are hundreds of them. Literally. In fact, Innis boasts some of the finest examples of dry stone walling in the world.’

  Mr Price encouraged the pupils to examine the structure of the walls, which some approached with more enthusiasm than others. ‘People used to come from all over the world to see these walls,’ he continued, ‘and sometimes to help to build them. From geologists to poets and students to walking groups. They don’t come as often now, not since the Troubles started, even though you don’t get any trouble on a mountain; not of that kind, anyway. But they’ll come again one day, when it all settles.’

  Biddy was intrigued by the notion of people from foreign countries vis
iting this mountain just to see a wall. When she looked more closely, however, she understood why. The silver-grey stones were piled together in seemingly random yet precisely positioned rows, with no cement to bind them together.

  ‘This particular one is known as “Paddy’s Wall”,’ Mr Price said, patting the wall. ‘It starts on the far side of the stream down below, and runs for about half a mile up towards the heart of the mountain until just over there.’ He nodded towards a mound of unused stones a few feet away from where they stood, where the wall came to an abrupt end.

  ‘What’s that, Sir?’ Ben Creegan asked, pointing to a small wooden cross which was lodged into the earth, just beside the pile of stones.

  ‘Well, Ben, why don’t you go and take a look. Tell us what it says,’ Mr Price smiled.

  Ben wandered over and knelt down beside the cross. ‘Paddy Joyce 1886–1951: a man of the mountains, a mountain of a man. RIP,’ he called back to the group.

  ‘Paddy Joyce was a well-known local waller who spent his entire life on the mountain,’ Mr Price explained, as the rest of the group gathered around the stone mound. ‘He lived in a little stone cottage at the foot of Innis. It’s still there, but it’s basically a ruin now. You’ll have passed it on your way through the village. Anyway, it’s said that Paddy’s mother brought him to the mountain the very day he was born in a sling across her chest, and that he came back here every single day of his life for the next sixty-five years. In fact,’ Mr Price paused and looked around the mountain, ‘he single-handedly built many of the walls dotted across Innis. He died right here, on this spot, in April 1951 while building this wall. The locals didn’t want Paddy to miss his daily fix of the mountain while waiting for a funeral to be arranged, so they carried him down, sorted him out a coffin, and between them managed to carry it back to this spot, where they buried him the very next day.’

  ‘What, here, Sir?’ Rory interrupted. ‘Right here?’

  ‘Yes, Rory, right here. Right underneath these very stones.’

  Most of the group were horrified.

  ‘Aw, no way, Sir,’ said Paul.

  ‘You mean, there’s a dead body under there?’ gasped Nicola.

  ‘I feel all shivery,’ shivered Clare.

  Ben Creegan actually said, ‘Shit.’

  ‘Ben,’ warned Mrs Abbott.

  ‘Is that not, like, illegal, Sir?’ asked Rory. ‘I mean, do you not have to be buried in a proper graveyard? Or else get cremated like my grandma was?’

  ‘Well, Rory, the mountain has its own laws,’ smiled Mr Price. ‘And I guess it was happy enough to keep the body of Patrick Joyce. After all, he truly was a man of the mountain. He knew it like the back of his hand. If a lone climber lost his way or got into a spot of bother, it was always Paddy who got him – or her – down. He could sniff out trouble on the mountain like the scent of burning turf floating on the breeze, and in his time he saved more lives than the mountain rescue service ever did.’ He paused, and raised his eyebrows. ‘Some people claim they still see Paddy wandering the hills at twilight, especially around Clundaff Point. Which, as it happens, is where we’ll be stopping for lunch.’

  ‘Aw, no way, Sir. I’m not going anywhere haunted,’ gasped Rory.

  ‘Don’t worry, guys, he doesn’t appear until twilight,’ Mr Price winked. ‘We’ll be long gone by then. Now, I guess we’d better get a move on, as my tummy is already rumbling.’

  Biddy was immediately fascinated by Paddy Joyce and his wall. She lingered for a moment, looking at the cross. Imagine living your whole life on a mountain and never having to go anywhere else, she thought. Or on a beach. I could do that.

  ‘Come on you lot. Move it!’ Mrs Abbott called from further on up the hill, and Biddy reluctantly left the stone, following slightly behind Rory, Paul and Ben.

  ‘Are you saying you believe in ghosts?’ she heard Paul laugh as he nudged Ben.

  ‘Yeah, ya big sissy,’ teased Ben.

  ‘’Course not,’ scoffed Rory. ‘Don’t be soft.’

  ‘Whooooo! Whooaaa!!’ Paul made mock ghostly movements with his arms in front of Rory’s face. ‘Rory’s scared of the ghost of Paddy Joyce.’

  Rory pushed him off: ‘Piss off. Why the fuck would I be scared of a bloody weirdo like that?’

  Biddy stopped in her tracks. Another one, she thought, and smiled. She liked Paddy Joyce even more now.

  By the time they reached the heather-covered plateau dotted with huge grey boulders where they stopped for lunch, Biddy was already in love with the mountain, but the appearance of two peregrine falcons swooping and sweeping over a turret high above them triggered a sense of elation she had never experienced before.

  She knew they were falcons immediately, recognising them from her big encyclopaedia of birds, and Mr Price confirmed it. ‘They’re common to Innis,’ he said. She hadn’t known that. The boys, excited at the sight of real live birds of prey, were hoping to see a kill. Maybe the birds would swoop down and grab a fox or a rabbit or a mountain hare. They quickly lost interest, however, when Mr Price told them that peregrines mostly only ate other birds, and that as there were no other birds around, a gory display was unlikely. But Biddy was entranced by the falcons’ grace and beauty and their silent, elegant dance of flight. She wished she had her sketchbook with her. She wished she could fly like they could. To her, the mountain was like a magical paradise, a haven, a whole new world, where anything was possible. And when the time came to head back to the house, she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay there forever, on her own, with the butterflies and the swooping falcons.

  23.

  ‘All right everyone, settle down,’ Mr Patterson bellowed from the top step of the big porch. ‘You’ve got one hour to chill out before tea, which, by the way, is stew tonight.’

  ‘Aww no, Sir,’ groaned Stewart Stevenson, ‘I hate stew.’

  ‘Shut it, Stevenson. You’ll eat what you’re damn well given. Now, bugger off the lot of you, and be back here at 5.30 p.m. sharp.’

  Someone produced a football from somewhere and the boys began kicking it around on the grass at the side of the house. Most of the girls went up to the dorm, giggling and whispering, eager to exchange gossip about who was trying to get off with whom. The teachers went into the lounge to have a smoke and sort through the pile of worksheets. Biddy stood alone outside the big house while the others dispersed. Not knowing what to do or where to go, she walked back up the path to the big birch tree and sat on the grass with her back resting on its trunk. She picked at shoots of grass and thought about the stew. She liked stew. Food didn’t generally excite her, but stew was one of her favourite meals. Her father made a big pot every other Monday, and it lasted two or three nights. It was his mother’s recipe, he’d told her, and her mother’s before that. He didn’t know how far it went back – generations, probably. Anyway, he’d have to teach her someday. He said that every time he dolloped the first steaming spoonful of the fortnightly pot onto her plate, and every single time she inhaled the sweet, warm smell of meat, carrots, onions and something she didn’t know the name of, she wondered when that ‘someday’ would be.

  Her tummy gurgled, either with nerves or with hunger. It didn’t matter which, as after last night she knew she wouldn’t be able to eat anything anyway, no matter how good the stew looked. She’d eaten nothing at breakfast, even though she wasn’t sitting at Alison’s table, but she did wrap a piece of dry toast in a napkin which she slipped under her cardigan and ate in the toilet before they went off on the hike. Lunch was a picnic on up the mountain, the same as yesterday, only with a ham sandwich this time. She’d managed most of it as she sat alone on a moss-covered rock surrounded by clumps of wild purple heather, mesmerised by the peregrine falcons.

  The sound of low voices coming from somewhere behind made her look up, just in time to see Alison and Georgina dart around the back of the big old greenhouse. They were probably going to smoke a cigarette, just like they had last night. They hadn’t seen her, but jus
t the sight of Alison unnerved Biddy. She had managed to avoid her for most of the day as they’d been put in different groups. Everyone in her group ignored her completely, but nobody did anything bad. Biddy could cope with people not talking to her. She was used to that. She liked it that way. But at teatime, she would be back in the same room as Alison, and then it would be bedtime, and somewhere along the course of the evening Alison was bound to have something or other planned for her. The lump started to move up her gullet into the back of her throat and she swallowed repeatedly to keep it from pushing into her mouth. She thought about her father and his stew and the half-hug they’d had yesterday morning before she left, and she really, really wanted to go home.

  Alison and Georgina reappeared, arms linked, giggling together. Alison threw her head back, tossing her long golden hair, which glistened in the warm September sunshine. Biddy held her breath, willing them not to see her. But they were too busy gossiping about something or other more important than Biddy to notice her, and disappeared around the back of the house. She exhaled, sighing with relief. A crow squawked loudly above her head. Biddy looked up to see three of the large black birds high above her, swooping from the tallest chimney on the roof of the big house down to the glass roof of the greenhouse and back again, dipping closer to her with every dive, crying out as they passed. She was sure they were calling to her. Her father and his stew and that evening’s dinner and Alison and Georgina were forgotten, as an urge to draw the crows consumed her. But her sketchbook was in her case, and that would mean going into the dormitory where some of the other girls were sure to be. Maybe they would just ignore her. Maybe they wouldn’t even notice her. She decided to risk it. She’d get in and out as quickly as possible.