by Lesley Allen
45.
The key was under the yellow flowerpot on the porch, just as Terri had said. Biddy still didn’t really believe this was happening and half expected there would be no key, a note from Terri left in its place, telling her that she’d changed her mind and had asked someone else to look after Bertie. Biddy’s hands were shaking as she let herself into the house and dragged her father’s old brown suitcase into the hall.
She had taken a taxi rather than get the bus and have to face the short walk from the bus stop lugging the suitcase, not because it was heavy, but her stick made carrying even more than one bag of shopping from Tesco extremely difficult. She had packed very little. Just some clean underwear, a spare pair of trousers, two clean shirts and a cardigan, along with her toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, soap and hairbrush. Plus her sketchbook, a few pencils and the small watercolour set she’d bought in Easons to replace the old one she’d found under the sink. As she placed the items in the case, which smelt fusty and old, the memory of the last time she had packed it made her feel slightly woozy. But then she had looked at her painting of Cove Cottage, which now sat on top of the chest of drawers in her own bedroom, and a wave of calmness had engulfed her. This time, she was packing for a trip that she really wanted to go on. She decided that while she was there, she would do a painting of Cove Cottage for Terri as a thank-you for asking her to do this favour, for trusting her to look after Bertie and live in her house. Her stomach had fluttered with that feeling of dancing butterflies: a much more familiar sensation these days than the lump in her throat, or the acid in her gullet.
Biddy left the suitcase in the hall and went into the kitchen. This was her favourite room in the cottage. She loved every room, well, all the ones she had been in, but the kitchen was definitely the best. Terri had made the entire back wall into a big window with sliding glass doors out to a patio, and the view over the bay was breath taking. Biddy had often imagined herself living here, eating her meals at the kitchen table, looking out at the view. She could spend hours watching the landscape change in tone and shade and mood. The rest of the room was painted bright yellow, the colour of sunlight, and all the cupboards, the wooden chairs and the big square table were stained in a beautiful shade of blue. ‘It’s cobalt blue,’ Terri had said when Biddy admired the colour one day, not long after her visits began. ‘My favourite colour. Reminds me of Greece. Ever been to Greece, Biddy?’ she had asked. Having never been anywhere, Biddy had felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment as she shook her head. ‘Well, you really must go someday. You’d love it. If you’re going to go anywhere, go there. The smells, the sounds, the scenery, the food, the people, the flowers,’ Terri had closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, lost in a memory. ‘It really is heaven on earth. Truly. And a painter’s paradise, Biddy, a painter’s paradise.’
Of course, Biddy hadn’t known about Harry then, and the real reason why Terri loved these colours and that country, but she had thought it sounded wonderful. She’d love to go somewhere with skies the colour of Terri’s kitchen cupboards one day, but she knew she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have a clue how to do it.
She thought again now of Harry, and Greece, as she looked around the room.
‘I know it’s sad about what happened to Harry, Bertie, but I’m so glad Terri didn’t go to Greece,’ Biddy said to the cat, who had just come in through the cat flap on the utility room door and was rubbing his head against her ankles. ‘I’m so glad she came here to Cove Cottage and I’m so glad that I met her and I’m so glad that she asked me to come here to look after you.’
She noticed an envelope on the kitchen table, propped up against a little vase of freshly picked daisies, with ‘Biddy’ scrawled on it in Terri’s handwriting. An image of Miss Jordan’s letter falling through the letterbox onto the hall floor flashed into her head – the only other handwritten, personal letter she had ever received. Hands shaking a little, she tore open the envelope and read Terri’s note.
Dearest Biddy
You’ll find everything you need in the fridge – I made one of my special lasagnes last night and a berry crumble – and the freezer is packed with goodies too, so just help yourself to ANYTHING. Tea, coffee, biscuits (Kimberleys, of course, as well as some of my own), breakfast cereal, etc. are all in the larder. There are plenty of tins of tuna in Bertie’s cupboard – don’t let him hassle you too much for food! He’s a greedy old beggar!
Good news – my new television is up and running! Dean, my jack-of-all-trades friend, tuned it in for me yesterday! I do hope you enjoy watching your programmes on it. I’ve left all the instructions and the remotes sitting on the coffee table in the living room, but if you have any problems with it (or with anything), just call Dean. His card is pinned up on the notice board. He’s a lovely young man, and will come out at the drop of a hat.
I’ll give you a bell this evening but if you have any queries or worries, just call me on my mobile.
Terri.
P.S.: Hope you don’t mind, but as a little thank-you for helping me out, I’ve asked Dean to pop round and sort out your garden while you’re here. He’s got terrific green fingers and I know he’ll do a grand job. He’s under strict instructions to treat the rose bush with extra care! If you’re pleased with his work, he’d be happy to talk about a more permanent arrangement, but we’ll discuss that when I get back.
P.P.S.: If you go into the utility room, you’ll find a little surprise. It’s my proper thank-you present for looking after my Bertie and the cottage.
Enjoy!
Terri x
Biddy re-read the letter twice. It was short, but contained a lot of important information and she wanted to be sure to take it all in. The thought of Terri’s home cooking made her mouth water. She’d never been greatly excited by food until she had met Terri. Finally learning to bake with her had been a revelation. And though she’d only been for a proper meal once – that lovely Sunday lunch almost two months ago – Terri would often send her home with little plastic containers crammed with ‘leftovers’ like cottage pie, chicken and broccoli bake and lasagne.
She’d never tasted food like it, especially the lasagne. She loved the lasagne. She wouldn’t wait until dinner time, she decided – she would have it for lunch. The new television was exciting, but worrying at the same time. It would make a change from watching her programmes on her old portable, which had been a bit fuzzy lately. But she hoped Terri’s new television worked properly and that she would understand the instructions, because she definitely wouldn’t be phoning Dean, no matter how nice Terri said he was. It was very kind of Terri to ask Dean to sort the garden, as it was so badly overgrown now that it made her feel sad. And she trusted Terri that he would do a good job.
That brought her to the P.P.S. A present. Terri had bought her a present! She flung open the door to the utility room, gasping in disbelief. Before her stood a tall easel on which sat a large, blank canvas. In front of the easel was a stool with a high back, which was set at just the right height for her to comfortably sit on, and on the floor, propped up against the easel, was a black case and another canvas. She picked up the case and opened it, balancing it against the stool, and gasped again. It was a treasure case crammed with little tubes of watercolour paints, pencils and an array of paintbrushes. She shook her head. She closed her eyes and opened them and closed them and opened them, not quite believing what she was seeing. Tears dripped from her eyes: but they were different tears than she was used to. They felt good: joyful. Biddy realised that she wasn’t crying because she felt scared or worried or humiliated. She was crying because she felt happy: really, really happy.
46.
The day was as perfect as a day could be. Certainly more perfect than any day in the life of Biddy Weir had been since the Saturday all those years ago when Miss Jordan had taken her to the department store in the city to buy a bra, and then on to a café for brunch. The consequences of that day had been disastrous, but so long as Biddy made sure that Bertie was fed and
that nothing untoward happened to the cottage, nothing was going to spoil the magic this time. She was so excited by her present from Terri that she immediately dragged the easel out onto the patio and began to paint the view across the bay. The morning sunlight tickled the waves, and as she painted, the gulls glided to and fro across the horizon, as though they were performing a private ballet just for her. She was so enthralled that she forgot all about Richard and Judy. She didn’t even stop for lunch, which she always took at 12.30 p.m., as that was the time her father had always wanted to eat. It wasn’t until Bertie emerged from a long, peaceful nap and demanded his own lunch that Biddy set down her brushes and looked at her watch. It was almost two o’clock. As she slid down from the stool, it occurred to her how wonderfully thoughtful Terri had been, as her leg wouldn’t have endured standing for that long. She stood back and studied her work, happy with her creation. It was almost perfect, just a bit more to do. She would give it to Terri, and tomorrow she would bring the easel down onto the beach and paint a replica of the painting at home, the one which had been responsible for her bringing her here, for her friendship with Terri, and she would give that one to her too.
Bertie meowed loudly, interrupting her thoughts.
‘OK, Bertie, come on. Let’s get you fed.’
After they had eaten, Bertie took himself out through the cat flap and settled down for another nap on the big wicker patio chair which was bathed in the warm afternoon sun. Biddy brought her suitcase down to the guest bedroom and unpacked her things. She wished she’d brought more with her, not because she actually needed anything else, but because the little white wooden wardrobe and the matching drawers and bedside table were so pretty that she wanted to fill them up with all the belongings she had in the world. She had never imagined that furniture could be so beautiful. The room was painted white, with a pale blue gloss on the woodwork. The blue and white gingham bedspread matched the curtains and the little lampshade on the bedside table. On top of the drawers Terri had left another bunch of daisies from her garden, this time in a glass tumbler. On the bed sat two huge white fluffy towels, and a towelling dressing gown. Biddy sat down and buried her face in the towels, inhaling their scent. They smelt of outside in summertime. They were the softest towels she had ever felt. She stroked the dressing gown. How different it felt to the old blue nylon one she’d had for years, too many years to count. She would definitely be taking a bath tonight, she decided. As she sat on the bed holding the towels, gazing through the window at the view of the bay, a seagull swooped down and stood on the windowsill. It looked in through the glass and held her gaze for a second then flew away. ‘I think this must be what paradise is,’ she whispered into the towels.
She spent the afternoon pottering about the cottage, wandering from room to room, taking in the colours, the furniture, the fabrics. By four o’clock she was unusually peckish again, and took a cup of tea and three of Terri’s oatmeal cookies to the patio. Collapsing into the wicker chair, she shared her cookies with the gulls, and let the afternoon sun drench her face. Yes, she decided, this was definitely paradise. She sat back in the chair and closed her eyes, semi-dozing and thinking of nothing, until a sudden breeze made her shiver. She looked at her watch. It was a quarter to five. Almost time for Honey’s Pot, and she hadn’t even figured out how to work the TV yet. Throwing the remnants of her biscuit crumbs to the gulls, she picked up her cup and went back inside the house.
Settling down in Terri’s red velvet chair, Biddy switched on the television, which was enormous: more than twice the size of her own portable one, at least. Working the controls was easier than she had anticipated, and she flicked from channel to channel, enjoying the luxury of not having to get up and go over to the TV to change the programme. She found the station she was looking for, just in time to hear the female announcer say, ‘And now it’s time for Honey’s Pot with Honey Sinclair,’ and the familiar theme tune began to play. And then there she was: all white teeth and sparkling smile, and twinkling eyes, and glowing skin and golden hair. She looked so real on this huge screen that Biddy was momentarily startled. She sometimes thought that Honey couldn’t be real, not really real, that perhaps she had invented her, that she was actually a figment of her own imagination. But as her face filled the screen, Biddy had to face it. She was real, all right. Honey Sinclair, chat show hostess, TV presenter, girl-about-town, media darling. It was definitely her. Biddy shivered. For a moment or two, she willed herself, as she always did, to turn the TV off. But the moment passed and, as she always did, she began to watch the show, hypnotised, along with half of the nation, by the myth of Honey Sinclair.
Today, the programme was all about wearing the right bra size.
‘Do you know, lovely people, are you aware, that eighty per cent of the female population in the UK wear the wrong size of bra?’ Honey told Biddy and the rest of her multitude of viewers in her sing-song posh English voice, head tilted ever so slightly to the right. ‘And this,’ she sang on, ‘affects their posture, the appearance of the clothes they wear and even,’ pause, blink, smile, ‘their safety.’
Biddy wondered how on earth wearing the wrong size of bra could be unsafe. She’d probably always worn the wrong size, she thought. She had never had a proper fitting and was still unsure about what her real size actually was, but she was equally sure that this had never put her in any danger. She still had her first bra, the one she’d bought the day Miss Jordan took her to the city. For a long time it had been the only one she owned, and though it was now too worn to wear, and too small into the bargain, it still lived in her underwear drawer, tucked in beside the letter.
The special guests today were Cindy someone or other from a famous lingerie shop called Scarlet (Biddy imagined it must be so much more glamorous than Lorraine’s Lingerie, which had closed down several years back), ‘stylist to the stars’ Connor Craig and a ‘yoga and posture expert’, Alana Lovell. They were all thin and glamorous and terribly serious, as Honey’s guests always were. Alana Lovell had been on the programme before and Connor Craig was a regular. He sat with his legs crossed sideways, and he wore mascara. He was gay and often talked to Honey about his boyfriend, Demetrius. A couple of months ago, there had been a show about a campaign for a change in the law to allow gay people to get married. Connor Craig had announced on the programme that whenever it finally happened, on the very day it was made legal in actual fact, he was going to get married to Demetrius, his boyfriend, and Honey had squealed and hugged and kissed him. Then he asked her right there live on air to be one of their witnesses at the ceremony, even though it mightn’t be for years yet. And she had said yes and then cried. She was crying, she said, because she was so very, very happy. And this, she said, was one of the proudest moments of her life, because she had always campaigned for gay rights and had always, always believed that gay people should be allowed to get married, ever since she had been at school, she said, where some of her very dearest friends had been gay.
Biddy had thought then about Penny Jordan and Samantha, and wondered where in the world they were, and if they would get married if the law changed and what they would make of all this. And she thought about Penny again now, as Cindy started to discuss the bras that the models were parading around the set in, explaining to the audience precisely why each of them was wearing the wrong size.
Biddy learnt about normal people’s lives from Honey’s Pot and Lorraine Kelly on Lorraine Live and This Morning with Richard and Judy. They were like encyclopaedias of life to her. She learnt about the lives of famous people too – pop stars and movie stars; but it was the normal people who really interested her. She was fascinated by the ornamental details of their lives: the kind of clothes they wore, the perfumes they liked, the food they ate, the wine they drank, the places they liked to go on holiday. She had gathered so much information from these programmes about so many things – things she wouldn’t have considered to be of any interest or importance before. She had learnt about sex, and babies, and breas
tfeeding, and toddler taming, and dealing with difficult teenagers, and women’s problems like PMT and infertility. She realised that she wasn’t the only woman in the world to suffer from painful heavy periods and strange, uneasy feelings in the build up to the bleed. And thanks to nice Dr Chris on This Morning, she now took oil of evening primrose tablets which had made her feel much better. She watched people cooking strange, exotic dishes with ingredients and names she’d never heard of and couldn’t pronounce. She discovered that there were men who liked to dress as women, and women who would happily get pregnant with other women’s babies, and people who believed they could talk to the dead – and that nobody thought any of this was remotely weird at all. Well, at least none of the presenters on the programmes did. Honey Sinclair, in particular, loved everyone who was a guest on her show, and the stranger or more extreme their problem or situation happened to be, the more she seemed to love them. And, of course, the more she loved everyone, the more everyone loved her.
When watching her programmes, Biddy often wondered what her own life would have been like if she had been normal: if she’d had a father who carried a briefcase, and had a job he went to every day, and drove a car, and played football or golf on a Saturday afternoon; if she’d had a mother who loved her enough to stay and take care of her, and brush her hair, and tell her about periods so she hadn’t had to find out from Alison Flemming, and show her how to put on make-up, and taught her how to cook and bake and maybe even sew, and take her shopping for nice new clothes – and her very first bra. If she had been born into a normal, regular life, she wondered, would she have done normal, regular things, like gone to the Brownies or had ballet lessons or joined a youth club when she was a child? Or studied Art at university and had a career? Or fallen in love with a man who loved her back? And married that man, and maybe even become a mother herself?