The Lonely Life of Biddy Weir

by Lesley Allen

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Biddy quietly. ‘I’m a weirdo.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Terri, through a mouthful of biscuit. ‘Well now,’ she beamed, and took a sip of her tea, ‘I am intrigued. So, Biddy Weir, how exactly did you come to be a weirdo?’ Biddy thought about Terri’s question for a few seconds. She had been a weirdo for so long now that it was hard to remember life before Alison’s life-changing revelation. She didn’t think of herself as a bloody weirdo so much these days, as she hadn’t actually heard anyone call her by that name for many years. She knew of course, by the way that most people still looked at her, that she really was one, but somehow, just being a weirdo was easier to live with. And, as she had discovered, people in general paid less attention to a weirdo adult than they did to a weirdo child. Certainly if she ever encountered someone she recognised from school, on the bus, say, or at Tesco, they would generally just ignore her – which was fine. Perfect, actually. Better to be ignored than, well, than what used to happen.

  ‘I think I’ve always been one,’ she finally said, whispered really, eyes down, staring into the teacup she was holding onto as firmly as possible to stop herself from shaking. ‘Probably since I was born, really, but I only found out in Primary 6. In Miss Justin’s class. Alison Flemming told me.’

  ‘Alison Flemming told you that you were a weirdo?’ asked Terri.

  Biddy nodded, still focusing on the teacup. ‘She said I was a bloody weirdo, actually. Well, first of all, she called me Biddy Weirdo and everyone thought it was funny because she’d changed my name from Weir to Weirdo. But then . . .’ Biddy paused and glanced up at Terri, who was still sipping her tea. She gulped and wondered why on earth she was talking like this to a stranger. To anyone. The very act of talking was surprising her as much as what she was talking about. The only other person she had talked to in this way before was Miss Jordan, and that was almost half her lifetime ago.

  ‘Biddy,’ said Terri gently, placing her cup on the floor, ‘if this is too painful for you, you really don’t have to continue. This is just supposed to be a wee getting-to-know-each-other chat. I’d really like to hear more about this Alison girl and the things she said to you. But if you don’t feel strong enough today, we can do it next time? There’s no rush.’

  She smiled that smile again – a proper warm, cosy, soft smile. The type of smile Biddy imagined a mother would have, or a sister. She thought again about Miss Jordan and her smile. Terri didn’t look remotely like Miss Jordan, yet there was something about her manner that reminded her of the teacher’s kindness. On her way here today, Biddy assumed that this would be a one-off visit. The idea of a ‘next time’ hadn’t even occurred to her. But now it did, and to her astonishment she hoped it would.

  ‘OK,’ she nodded, and took another sip of tea.

  33.

  ‘Next time’ happened the following Wednesday, an arrangement made at the end of her first visit. Biddy hadn’t been able to get Terri or Cove Cottage out of her head, and in the days that followed, often found herself wondering if the meeting had actually happened, or if she’d dreamt it. But now, as she took the bus back again, panic rose in her chest. What if Terri wasn’t so nice this time? What if she made her talk about things she didn’t want to talk about? What if she’d forgotten that Biddy was even coming?

  But she needn’t have worried. Terri greeted her with a beaming smile, ushered her in out of the rain with the same busy manner, and had a pot of tea and a plate of Kimberley biscuits waiting for them in the study.

  After a few minutes’ chitchat from Terri about the relentless dreadful weather, during which Biddy simply sipped her tea and nodded politely, Terri clapped her hands together.

  ‘So, Biddy,’ she smiled, ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about this weirdo business you mentioned last week, and this, what’s her name, Angela?’

  ‘Alison,’ Biddy mumbled. ‘She’s Alison. And it’s bloody weirdo, not just weirdo. I was,’ she cleared her throat slightly, ‘am, I am a bloody weirdo.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Alison,’ Terri nodded slowly, leaning back into her armchair.

  ‘You know, I’ve been called a bloody weirdo once or twice myself. In fact,’ she snorted, ‘I’m sure some people have called me worse. But that doesn’t mean I am one. Granted, I might be a bit different to them. Maybe I don’t look the same, or think in the same way, or dress the same,’ she waved a hand over her long jade-green and turquoise-blue velvet dress and chuckled. ‘Case in point. But it doesn’t mean I’m weird, or a bad person. And it certainly doesn’t mean I deserve to be treated badly. And you know, so what? I like it. I actually like being different, and I’ll tell you what, Biddy, I use it to my advantage. Anyway, aren’t we all just a little bit weird in our own unique way? What was it John Lennon said? “It’s weird not to be weird.”’

  Biddy stopped sipping her tea and glanced at Terri. She couldn’t believe that anyone would ever call this woman a bloody weirdo. It wasn’t possible. As far as she could see, there was nothing remotely weird about Terri Drummond at all. There’d been nothing weird about Penny Jordan either, or her father, or even Alison, for that matter. Had there? And did John Lennon really say that? She suddenly felt light-headed and, placing her cup on the table beside her, reached for her stick, gripping it tightly.

  ‘OK, so maybe you looked different to this Alison girl,’ Terri continued, lightly shrugging her shoulders. ‘Maybe you didn’t wear the same kind of clothes, or didn’t play the same games she played or have the same kind of schoolbag. You didn’t conform to her vision of what “normal” should be. But, well, so what?’

  Biddy looked down and began picking at her nails. She was starting to perspire under her armpits now and her stomach was churning.

  ‘Biddy,’ Terri said softly, leaning forward and fixing Biddy with a kind but stern look. ‘Listen to me. Just because a nasty little girl called you a bloody weirdo when you were eight or nine years old does not mean that you were a bloody weirdo then, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re one now.’

  Biddy clutched her stick again, digging the nail of her forefinger into her thumb as she did so. A mass of tangled images cluttered her head. A flash of a school bench in a gym hall, a café in the supermarket, a cherished letter. Terri’s words echoed what Miss Jordan had said to her all those years ago, almost word for word. But she was a weirdo. A bloody weirdo. A freak. A fuck-up. A worthless waste of space. She was all of those things that Alison Flemming and the others had said she was all those years ago; that almost every person she had encountered throughout her life thought she was – even if they didn’t say it. That was who she was, who she had always been. Who she would always be.

  ‘Tell me, Biddy, how long did this go on for, this Alison business?’ asked Terri gently.

  ‘Until . . .’ Biddy trailed off and started picking at her fingers again.

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until I didn’t see her anymore. Well, until she didn’t see me anymore.’

  For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was the spitting of wood burning in the fire. Then tears began to run down Biddy’s face, slowly at first, then streaming, gushing like a river bursting through a dam. Her whole body seemed to twist and she started to shake with juddering, jolting spasms, her sobs loud and rasping. Although mortified, she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t work out why she was crying; and yet she knew exactly why: the memory of the Alison-years brought back to life; pain for the life that she knew she hadn’t lived, that she couldn’t and wouldn’t ever live; and, finally, the tears for her papa that she thought she couldn’t shed – her beloved papa who, despite the exhaustion of the past few years, she missed with every inch of her soul.

  Terri stood up and moved over to Biddy’s chair. Stooping over, she put her right arm around Biddy’s back and placed her left hand on the top of her head, drawing it into her chest. She held her like that until it passed, when the light outside had faded and the fire was almost out. Then, when Biddy had settled, Terri offered to dri
ve her home.

  ‘It’s getting late and it’s pretty stormy outside,’ she said, half expecting Biddy to turn her down. ‘Besides, I need to get some cat food for Bertie from the garage at the roundabout.’

  ‘OK,’ Biddy whispered.

  They didn’t speak at all on the thirteen-minute drive from Cove Cottage to number 17, Stanley Street, except for Terri to get directions. When she drew up outside Biddy’s house, Terri placed her left hand lightly on top of Biddy’s right one.

  ‘Biddy, I know how stressful that was for you, but I’d really like you to come and visit me again. Would you do that? Maybe we could set up a regular day, or time? Hmm? What do you think?’

  Biddy didn’t respond at all for a few seconds, then she nodded.

  ‘You would?’ smiled Terri.

  Biddy nodded again.

  ‘Well, that’s great, Biddy. That’s great.’ Terri beamed. ‘Tell you what, I’ll call you tomorrow and then we can set something up. OK? A definite day and time that suits you. Will you be in at, say, eleven o’clock in the morning?’

  Another nod.

  ‘OK, then I’ll phone you at eleven. Here,’ she rummaged around in the glove compartment and found an old receipt and a biro, ‘scribble your number down on the back of this.’ She already had Biddy’s number of course, from Charlie, but she knew it would be better for Biddy to hand it over herself. That way the girl was maintaining an element of control.

  ‘Thank you,’ she smiled, taking the slip of paper and setting it on the dashboard. ‘It was nice to see you again, Biddy Weir.’

  Biddy undid her seatbelt, opened the car door and stepped onto the pavement.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quickly, glancing back at Terri. ‘It was nice to see you again too.’

  34.

  Terri phoned Biddy at eleven o’clock on the dot the next morning, half expecting her not to answer. She was slightly worried that after her emotional breakdown on her second visit, she might have lost her. But, to her surprise, Biddy picked up on the second ring, and agreed without any hesitation to come back to Cove Cottage the following Wednesday. Yes, she told Terri, Wednesdays were good. The only proviso was that their appointment should be in the early afternoon, as Biddy said she couldn’t leave home before 12.30, and needed to be back by 5 p.m. Terri was intrigued, wondering what required Biddy to be bound by those hours, but the arrangement suited her well, as she liked to potter and bake in the mornings. No doubt she would unravel the mystery in time. The telephone conversation was short and devoid of any small talk, but Terri understood that chitchat was not part of Biddy’s language. She had to let her open up at her own pace, no matter how long it took. That familiar tingle of excitement rattled through her again: she was already in her element.

  It was, just as Terri had expected, a slow process; but gradually, over the next few months, Biddy revealed some of the shocking details of her life as Bloody Weirdo. Some days, she would recount a particular incident in meticulous detail, as though it had only just happened. On other days, her memories were disjointed, fragmented and agitated. Sometimes Biddy said virtually nothing at all, and then there were days when she repeated the details of events she had already recalled. But Terri understood the benefits of patience. There was no rush. Biddy’s wound was obviously so very deep and still, despite the passage of time, so painfully raw that it would take a very long time to heal. It had never been properly tended to. But heal it would. Of that, Terri was sure.

  On Biddy’s fourth visit to Cove Cottage, she told Terri about Red Paint Day. That afternoon, as rain pelted at the window of the study and the flames of the fire raged wildly, whipped up by the wind from the chimney, Biddy talked non-stop for almost half an hour. She hadn’t ever spoken at such length before – not just to Terri, but to anyone; not even Miss Jordan. She never believed herself capable of finding so many words to say out loud. A lifetime of virtual silence was shattered in one afternoon. She hadn’t even realised that she’d remembered the incident so clearly; but it was all there, to the last detail, locked inside her own private memory box with so many other hideous recollections, which were finally being given the chance to escape. Like birds flying the nest.

  When she was done, Terri let silence sit in the room for a few seconds, waiting while Biddy emerged from the trance-like state she’d been in. When Biddy finally looked up, her eyes clear of tears but brimming with sorrow, she let out a long, slow, heavy sigh.

  ‘Would you like to hear about the disco now?’ she whispered.

  Terri stood up and went over to Biddy’s chair. Kneeling down she clasped Biddy’s folded hands in her own and looked her in the eye. ‘Let’s save that for another day, Biddy,’ she said gently. ‘I think you’ve had enough for now. How about I make a pot of tea? I baked a chocolate cake this morning for the first time in years. I think it tastes rather yummy, but I wouldn’t mind a second opinion, so let’s go through to the kitchen, shall we?’

  At the next few sessions, Biddy reverted to form and barely spoke at all. But Terri wasn’t concerned. She simply decided that they should cut the ‘official business’ short and retire instead to the kitchen for refreshments. Apart from the fact that Biddy responded well to her baking, it was proving immensely pleasurable for Terri to have someone to experiment on. At last her cookery books were being put to some, if limited, use, and, thank God, she didn’t have to eat those bloody Kimberley biscuits every week. And she was happy to chatter away about this and that and anything at all, while Biddy ate, and listened, and smiled. Those smiles, they melted Terri’s heart. With every week that passed, Terri could see the change in Biddy. Yes, it was subtle, sometimes barely visible at all – but all the same, it was there. It was like watching a china doll slowly come to life.

  35.

  Two months had passed since Biddy’s first encounter with Terri and, to her immense surprise, she found herself looking forward to her Wednesday visits to Cove Cottage more and more with every week that passed. She had started to feel a strange, fluttering sensation in her tummy as the bus passed through the town and the coast road came into sight: a bit like little butterflies dancing around inside her. It reminded her of the feeling she sometimes got when she used to paint the birds on the beach and they would swoop and dance and chatter, just for her. Or that surge of pleasure she’d felt all those years ago on the day Miss Jordan had taken her shopping. And on the bus journey her mouth would start to water in anticipation of what delicious treat Terri might have baked that morning.

  The cottage was everything she had ever dreamed it would be, and more; and each time she stepped across the threshold, it took her breath away that she was actually going inside the quaint little house she used to sketch and had fallen in love with from a distance many years ago; into its very hall, and study, and kitchen. She’d started to use the bathroom even if she didn’t need to go, just to sit on the pale pine toilet seat and wash her hands with the soap that smelt of lemons, and dry them with what must surely be the softest, fluffiest, whitest towels in the world. Apart from her own home, she had only ever been inside one other house in her entire life, and that had just been twice to Mrs Thomas’s. On both occasions she’d gone to number 21 to deliver post which had been put through their letterbox by mistake, and even then she’d never been invited further than the hall. Not that she’d have gone anyway. Of course she was going to go to Miss Jordan’s house once, but then, as it happened, she never got the chance.

  But Biddy knew it wasn’t just being in the cottage that she looked forward to – it was spending time with Terri too. She missed her father dreadfully, and wondered now if the pain she felt in her heart was partly due to loneliness? Oh, she was used to being alone, she’d been alone her whole life long, and she’d never really questioned it before; never considered loneliness as an actual emotion that applied to her. But now, as her contact with Terri rolled on from one week to another, she began to wonder if the permanent ache in her chest, which had been there since her papa died but seemed
to ease in Terri’s presence, was something more than grief.

  Of course Biddy was well aware that, as a counsellor, Terri was simply doing her job, but with each visit to the cottage they spent less and less time in Terri’s office, and more in the kitchen, drinking tea and eating cake. She had started to feel less of a ‘patient’ as such, and more of a . . . ? Precisely what, she wasn’t quite sure. She hesitated to use the word ‘friend’ after her previous experience with friendship, as the last thing in the world she wanted to do was get Terri into any kind of trouble. But trouble with whom? Dr Graham? It struck her then that Terri must be getting paid by someone to help her. After all, why would she see her voluntarily? No one – apart from her father of course, and Miss Jordan, and maybe, lately at any rate, Dr Graham, and Mrs Thomas on the odd occasion, and the doctors and nurses at the hospital after her fall – had ever willingly chosen to spend time in her company. So if Terri was getting paid, was the money coming from Dr Graham himself?

  These were the thoughts that had almost stopped her from getting off the bus at the Cove Cottage stop on this particular Wednesday afternoon. Maybe, she thought, her cheeks flushed with humiliation, Terri was only nice to her because she was getting paid to be nice, and not because she actually liked her. Who was she kidding? She almost choked on the idea; the very notion that someone like Terri Drummond would want to be her friend made her feel sick to her stomach with a wave of self-loathing. The lovely fluttering sensation vanished in a flash as she allowed the dark thoughts to take over. By the time the bus turned down Bay Road towards the shore, Biddy had decided to stay on board, get to the station in Whinport, the next village on, and wait there for the 3.30 return. She’d phone Terri when she got back and apologise. Tell her that her leg was playing up, or something. Tell her she was sorry, but she couldn’t come back again. And that would be that. Tears welled in her eyes and that old familiar lump, which hadn’t been around much these past few weeks, despite her father’s absence, throbbed at the back of her throat.