The Lonely Life of Biddy Weir

by Lesley Allen

  But then, there was Cove Cottage in the distance, jutting out of the headland like a glistening pearl, its whitewashed walls and bright blue shutters glimmering in the early March sunshine. Biddy’s heart lurched. She imagined Terri in the kitchen, preparing a tray of something delicious for them to eat, placing out bright floral napkins and her favourite mugs with the poppies on them. The memory of the second time she’d gone to the cottage rushed through her; when she’d somehow, strangely, easily, poured her heart out. When Terri’s own words had echoed those of Miss Jordan’s from all those years ago; when Terri had silently, gently, held her whilst she wept. No one would touch her if they didn’t want to, never mind hug her. She knew that. No – Terri was good, and kind, and clever, and funny, and maybe even properly liked her just a little bit. And, yes, maybe some day, she might even be her friend.

  ‘Oh,’ she uttered a little gasp of panic as the bus stop came into sight, and struggled out of her regular window seat three rows from the front (far enough from the driver but close enough that she didn’t have to walk too far up the aisle or pass too many other passengers) just in time.

  As Biddy rang the old brass doorbell she felt so relieved, and the smile she presented to Terri when she opened the door took not an ounce of effort. And when Terri asked her if she liked scones she wondered how she could have been so stupid as to even consider not coming here today. She hadn’t had a scone for months, not since Papa had become really sick, and she missed them. They used to bring home fruit scones from the Griddle bakery every Wednesday after their weekly outing to Ballybrock market. But that stopped when Papa became too poorly to make the trip. And when he told her one day that the scones from Tesco were repulsive and shouldn’t be served to pigs, she never bought them again. But she’d never had a scone that had actually been baked by a person in their very own kitchen, and right now, right this moment, she was desperate for one.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she beamed at Terri, feeling a sudden desire to hug her. ‘I love them.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ Terri sang, as she took Biddy’s coat and hung it on the coat stand. ‘Well then, you can help me bake some. I haven’t had time yet today to make anything for our afternoon tea, and there’s a new recipe I’m desperate to try out. So we can do it together now. It’s got raspberries in it and,’ she winked, ‘white chocolate.’

  There was a sudden clatter. Biddy had dropped her stick.

  In a split second, her smile vanished, and reality slapped her in the face. She’d made a huge mistake. She should have stayed on the bus after all. Terri wanted her to bake – and she couldn’t. She still couldn’t. All these years on and she’d never learnt. Oh, she’d picked up the basics of cooking from her father over the years, and could make things like stew, and vegetable broth, and shepherd’s pie. When he became ill she really had no choice, and she sometimes quite enjoyed it. It was a distraction. But she wasn’t adventurous; she never deviated from the limited repertoire of recipes passed on from her father – acquired over time by watching him closely as he prepared the meals, rather than any handwritten instructions. Even though she often watched the cookery items on her daytime TV shows with awe, wondering what things like pasta bakes and mushroom risotto and goat’s cheese and onion tart tasted like, she didn’t experiment, and she never baked. Her baking chance had passed. And that was that.

  And now that humiliating truth was about to be revealed to Terri. She felt sick. What was better – to own up and make a fool of herself, or try to bake and make a fool of herself? Why was she so incapable of doing normal things? Because she was a weirdo, that’s why: a dumb, stupid, bloody weirdo.

  ‘Biddy? Are you OK? What happened? My word, you look as though you’re about to pass out.’

  Terri had grabbed her by the elbow and she realised with a jolt that she’d dropped her stick on the floor. She might as well get it over with.

  ‘I can’t bake,’ she stuttered, her cheeks flushed with shame, as Terri retrieved the stick and handed it to her. She waited for Terri to laugh, to tell her she couldn’t be serious, that all women her age could bake. Maybe now Terri would realise what a weirdo she was after all.

  ‘Well then,’ Terri beamed, ‘I shall bake the scones, and you can make the tea.’

  36.

  As it turned out, that afternoon turned out to be Biddy’s best visit yet to Cove Cottage. The baking process fascinated Biddy and her initial tension and discomfort eased remarkably quickly. She was mesmerised by Terri’s hands, transfixed as they expertly and effortlessly measured out the ingredients into a big pale blue bowl, bound them together, and moulded the mixture into perfectly formed mounds of dough – which looked good enough to eat before they had even gone into the oven. Biddy felt an overwhelming desire to grab the wooden spoon and lick it clean. There was an energy to Terri’s baking that reminded her of painting and she realised with a jolt how much she missed her art. She would draw again soon, she decided. She would draw for Terri.

  And she learnt so much more about Terri herself that afternoon. So far, Terri’s chatter had always been interestingly frivolous: her plans for the garden and her trips to the garden centre; her constant disagreements with the snooty receptionist at the health centre who, in her opinion, Charlie needed to ‘boot the hell out’; the proposed new out of town retail park; and, of course, her beloved Bertie. Biddy always loved her chatter, regardless of the subject matter. As far as she was concerned, Terri could make cleaning toilets sound interesting. And it was so wonderful to listen to an actual person talk, rather than someone on the television. But today as she made the scones and bustled about the kitchen, Terri chatted easily about her own childhood in Ballybrock, growing up in one of the large Victorian terrace houses on Shorehill Road, just behind the station. She was one of five, she said, number two, with two sisters and two brothers. She rhymed through all the names of her brothers and sisters in order of age: Patrick, herself, Caroline and Kate. ‘And then,’ she hesitated, ‘there was Jamesy. We didn’t have Jamesy for long,’ she sighed. ‘He died a few days before his fourth birthday.’

  Biddy gasped loudly. The whole time Terri had been talking, she had been painting a colourful mental image of this big bustling family living in one of those tall regal houses on Shorehill Road that she’d always admired. She had often noticed the birds huddling in rival gangs on the majestic peaks of their roofs which were visible from the beach. The bubble was growing bigger every second. She didn’t expect it to burst. ‘Oh,’ she said quietly. ‘Poor Jamesy.’ She had to swallow down a lump, fearing she might cry.

  Terri wiped some flour from her hands with a tea towel. ‘Well, he lived a lot longer than anyone expected him to,’ she said, smiling wistfully. ‘He was poorly when he was born, you see, and he suffered a lot throughout his little life. Even then we knew it was a blessing when he went. But he was such a bright wee thing, and utterly beautiful. I still think about him.’

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ said Biddy softly. ‘I am so sorry, Terri. It must have been awful.’

  ‘It was,’ Terri nodded. ‘Frightful. But every family has its heartache. And I’m lucky I have my sisters and Patrick. Caroline lives in Canada now, has done for thirty years or so, and Kate lives in Cornwall. I used to see quite a lot of her when I was in London; now I see more of Patrick who still lives here. We’re quite close. But I do miss us all being together.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s not that long since you buried your father, Biddy. You must miss him very much.’

  Biddy nodded and lowered her head, fixing her stare on the mixing bowl. She did miss him, but she understood that, like Jamesy, it was a blessing that his suffering was over. She also realised, with a slight jolt, that if he were still alive, she wouldn’t be sitting here in Terri Drummond’s kitchen, watching her bake scones.

  But the next question almost made her choke.

  ‘What about your mother, Biddy – is she still alive?’

  Biddy swallowed and cleared her throat. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her voice unsteady. />
  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  Biddy shook her head and inhaled slowly. ‘No. I don’t know anything about her. Well, I know she was called Gracie. But,’ she shrugged her shoulders slightly, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, Biddy, I am sorry. I didn’t realise.’ Terri stopped what she was doing and rubbed her hands with a tea towel. ‘I shouldn’t . . .’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Biddy interrupted, surprising herself. There was something about being here in this warm, cosy kitchen, watching Terri bake scones and listening to her talk about her family that made her feel unusually comfortable. She breathed in deeply.

  ‘I didn’t even know that, her name, I mean, until a year or so ago when Papa’s mind was getting really muddled. He never spoke about her. Ever. And I never asked. I wanted to, all the time. I really wanted to. But I didn’t. It was really stupid of me, but I don’t know why I didn’t ask about her. Maybe,’ she hesitated and rubbed at a drop of flour on the table with her forefinger, ‘maybe I was scared he’d tell me she’d left because of me. Because I was, you know,’ she paused again, breathing in sharply, ‘a weirdo. A bloody weirdo. When all that started, when Alison arrived, I thought that that must be it. That must be the reason I didn’t have a mother. It made sense then. I mean, what mother would want to have a weirdo for a child? Sometimes I wondered if they had drawn straws, my mother and my papa, or flipped a coin to see which one would have to keep me, and which one could escape.’

  Tears pricked at the back of Biddy’s eyes now, but she couldn’t stop. She didn’t want to stop.

  ‘That day, when I went into Papa’s room, I can’t remember why now, it must have been to give him his pills or feed him, he looked at me so strangely that I stopped and stood still at the end of his bed. “Gracie,” he croaked. His voice was shaking. “What do you want?” He was really agitated. I didn’t know what he was talking about or who Gracie was. “Papa,” I said, “it’s me, Biddy.” And then he started waving his arms wildly in front of him, trying to shoo me out. “I know who you are. I know what you want,” he shouted. “Well, you can’t have her. I won’t let you take her. You’re too late.” And then he started to cry, to wail. “Get out, Gracie, go away, get out, get out, get out.” It was awful. I had never seen my father cry. I had never heard the name Gracie before in my life. But in that instant I knew as sure as anything that she was my mother, and I realised he thought that I was her, come to take me away. She must have looked just like me. So I turned and left the room and I sat on the top step of the stairs until my father stopped wailing. When I went back into the bedroom, he was asleep. So, you see,’ Biddy looked at Terri as she sat down beside her at the table, ‘I knew for sure then,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders, ‘that she had left me. That she didn’t want me. But that he did. But that’s all I know. Apart from her maiden name: Flynn. It was on my birth certificate, which I found in a wooden box in my father’s wardrobe when I was getting out his best suit for the undertaker. It had his initials on it. The box, that is. I think perhaps he made it himself.’

  The tears which had been threatening finally began to drip from Biddy’s eyelids. One ran down her nose and splashed into her mug of tea. Terri handed her a box of tissues and placed a hand on her shoulder as she stood to check the oven. Biddy blew her nose loudly and dabbed a tissue at her eyes.

  ‘You know, Biddy, there are many, many reasons why your mother might have left,’ Terri said, carefully lifting the baking tray out of the oven. The kitchen was instantly filled with the aroma of freshly baked scones, and Biddy instinctively licked her lips, immediately feeling better. ‘Perhaps the responsibility of having a baby to care for was too much for her. Perhaps she simply panicked, or maybe she was suffering from postnatal depression, which really wasn’t recognised in those days. You know, it’s even possible that your mother and father really weren’t getting along and she thought you’d be better off with him. The possibilities are endless, but I am sure her decision to leave was not made easily, and was not because she didn’t love you.’

  ‘Then why did she never come back for me? Or visit? Or write me a letter? Even one letter?’

  ‘Honestly, Biddy, I really don’t know.’ Terri sat down beside her again. ‘But if you want, you could try to trace her yourself. There are agencies now which can help with that sort of thing. I’ll support you if you do want to try.’

  Biddy shook her head ferociously. She felt sick at the very thought of trying to trace her mother, only to be rejected again. ‘No. No, I won’t. I can’t do that. She knows where I am. If she wants to see me she will come, some day. I’ll wait. I’ll always wait.’

  ‘Biddy, there is the possibility that she isn’t alive anymore,’ said Terri softly.

  ‘I know.’ Biddy breathed in slowly. ‘I do know that.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you something for nothing though,’ Terri said as she popped a scone onto Biddy’s plate, ‘if your mother did look like you then she must have been quite beautiful. I mean it, Biddy,’ she smiled in response to the look of shock on Biddy’s face. ‘You have the most exquisite eyes. And as for your hair, why, people pay a lot of money for curls like those, and I can tell you that if I had your hair colour, I’d never have gone near a bottle of dye in my life.’

  Biddy smiled, despite herself. She remembered Miss Jordan saying something similar about her hair the night of the disco, telling her she had a hair clip which she wanted to give her. But she herself had never thought of her hair as anything other than an ugly mess that suited her weirdness well.

  ‘Your beauty might not be considered standard – it’s certainly not at all like those girls on the front of magazines or on TV programmes, you know, all perfect breasts and bleached blonde hair, like what’s-her-name . . . Carice, no, Caprice, or that Ulrika Jonsson, or that other one . . .’

  Honey, thought Biddy, her heart lurching, she’s going to say Honey. But then the phone rang, and Terri excused herself to answer it.

  As Terri chatted to her brother Patrick on the phone about an upcoming family lunch, Biddy inhaled the soft, sweet scent of the just-baked scones, and thought of her mother again. She closed her eyes and imagined Gracie floating around their tiny kitchen in Stanley Street, a blue and white gingham apron covering her yellow dress, patterned oven gloves slung over her shoulder, a dusting of white flour streaked through her copper curly hair. Since discovering that she bore a resemblance to her mother, it was so much easier now to picture her in her fantasies. If she had stayed, she wondered, if she had loved her enough, would they have baked scones together?

  ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, suddenly glancing at the clock. ‘I have to go. Now. I’ll miss my bus.’

  ‘I’ll call you back this evening, Patrick. Cheerio,’ said Terri into the receiver as Biddy stood to go. ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer today, Biddy?’ Terri ventured. ‘Get the next bus?’

  ‘No,’ Biddy shook her head, slightly agitated. ‘I have to go home now. Thank you for the scones. I . . . they . . . I loved them.’

  Terri was used to this abrupt change in Biddy’s manner. It happened often: one minute she would be talking freely, openly, and the next it was as though she had pulled down a heavy metal shutter.

  ‘OK, Biddy,’ she smiled, ‘that’s absolutely fine. Just let me wrap up a couple of these scones for your supper. Do you think next week you could come a little earlier? Or stay a wee bit longer?’ she ventured, as she covered the scones in tinfoil. ‘Even half an hour? I have another recipe I’d like to try out. The trouble is, it’s quite complicated and I could do with a helper, just to keep me right. No baking skill required, I promise. Just an extra pair of hands. So, if you could give me a little squinch of extra time, I would really appreciate it.’

  Biddy paused, considering the request for a few seconds. People didn’t generally ask her for help. She liked the idea of helping Terri out, of actually helping her to make something. And watching her bake the scones today had been wonderful. She never got to help Miss Jorda
n with her fairy cakes and she knew she didn’t want to miss out on this opportunity too. Maybe she could come earlier, but she absolutely, definitely couldn’t stay later.

  ‘OK,’ she nodded.

  ‘Great, lovely,’ Terri clapped her hands together and ushered Biddy into the hall. ‘I’ll give you a shout later in the week to see how you’re fixed.’

  37.

  Biddy turned up almost a full hour earlier than normal the following week. Her excitement had been mounting for days. She wanted to mix and stir. She wanted to watch the colours of all the different ingredients blend together in a magical muddle. She wanted to eat something exotic and mouth-watering that her very own hands had helped to create.

  ‘I’m truly excited about this one, Biddy,’ said Terri as she handed her an apron adorned with little pink roses. ‘It’s Nigella’s Boston Cream Pie.’ Biddy instinctively ran her tongue over her teeth. This sounded perfect.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to try it for ages; well, ever since my good friend Carla from London sent me her latest book as a belated Christmas present. How to be a Domestic Goddess,’ Terri chuckled holding up a shiny black hardback book with a photo of a single cup cake, dripping with white icing, on the cover. ‘Thing is, it seems a tad complicated,’ she winced. ‘Involves making a crème pâtissière. That’s the trouble with Nigella –’ she put the book on the table and pulled on her own brightly coloured apron, ‘– she may be a domestic goddess, but, sadly, simply owning the book doesn’t put the rest of us mere mortals on the same plane. Still, we’ll give it a bash, shall we? And by the end of the day perhaps you and I shall join the domestic goddess club,’ she winked. ‘But we’re going to use the age-old traditional method: our own hands!’ She held up her palms and waved them in front of Biddy, making her smile. ‘I know Nigella is into using a great big all-singing-all-dancing processor,’ Terri carried on, taking bowls out of cupboards and spoons out of drawers, placing them on the big wooden table, ‘but personally I can’t be doing with that. And she does say hands will do. So, hands it is. Okey dokey?’