Birdy (6 page)

All of a sudden Nan leant forward and turned the TV off. ‘That’s enough,’ she snapped. ‘That’s enough of that rubbish. Come on, time for bed.’

‘Is it?’ Granddad asked. ‘Already?’

‘Yes,’ Nan said firmly. ‘It’s late.’

It was barely nine o’clock, but Granddad nodded obediently and shuffled out of the living room. Nan didn’t move for a minute. She just sat in the chair, staring at the blank TV. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to move.

Neither of us said anything for a minute or two, then Nan spoke.

‘She tried to kill you too, you know,’ she said, her eyes still fixed on the empty TV screen. ‘Never told you that. She dissolved some of those pills into your milk. Tried to get you to drink it. You wouldn’t though, of course. Even a baby knows that’s not right. Never told you that, did we?’

Her voice was strange. It was completely emotionless. It was scary. Much more scary than any of the angry, shouty outbursts that erupted when I broke one of her many house rules. I felt very much like I was in trouble, like Nan was saying this was all my fault somehow. But I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do about it.

‘No,’ I replied quietly. ‘You never told me that.’

My friendship with Bert started to affect my marks at school. It wasn’t always dramatic, but it was enough for me to notice. Maybe I should’ve taken that as a sign to take a step back from her for a while, but the thing was, the impact wasn’t all bad so I thought, on balance, it didn’t matter too much.

In maths and science, my grades took a bit of a nose dive. Bert didn’t have any time for those subjects. I’d always got on quite well with them. I liked the certainty, the right answers. Not to mention the fact that they were subjects you could mostly get on with on your own without the need for all that horrible group work that teachers are so keen on but that can be a real headache if you’ve got to scrabble around for someone to work with before you can get going. But Bert declared them ‘boring and nit-picky’ so we spent most of those lessons at the back of the class, talking quietly when we could get away with it, passing notes when we couldn’t.

In art, though, I suddenly found my grades perking up. Cs, Bs … even the odd A. Art was Bert’s favourite subject and her enthusiasm was infectious. Mostly because she was every bit as excited about my efforts as her own work.

‘Oh, Birdy!’ she said once as I put the finishing touches on a charcoal drawing of a stallion. ‘That’s just beautiful. I love the look in his eyes … he’s so wistful and wise. Can I have him, once he’s marked and everything, of course?’

I just shrugged and smiled a shy smile, the way I always did when Bert piled praise on me like this.

English was another subject where I found things improving. Although I’d always liked to read, I’d always felt a bit confused by English as a school subject. I liked spelling and grammar – stuff with rules – but all that woolly, creative business was a mystery to me. I suppose it just always seemed like such a strange way to spend study time.

Miss Lily, our English teacher, was a vague, drifty kind of woman and she’d usually set us vague, drifty kinds of tasks to complete. For example, once we had to ‘describe the inside of a horse chestnut’. Another time, she told us to ‘write a diary from the point of view of a snowflake’. I mean, I felt that I probably
could
do these things if that’s what she really wanted, but I just wasn’t quite sure what the point of it all was. I always felt a bit like I was missing something, or that those kinds of tasks were some sort of psychological test and they were going to use what we wrote to make a judgement about our character. I always approached those assignments a bit cautiously, being careful not to write anything too unusual or creative in case it gave anyone the idea I was not quite right.

It was the same with English literature. ‘What is the significance of the fire in
Lord of the Flies
?’ Lily would write across the middle of the board and I’d feel a sinking feeling as I realised we were going to have to spend the next hour – if not the next term – discussing something which as far as I could see was neither here nor there. Does it really matter
?
I’d think, looking around at the other people in my class to see if they were wondering the same thing. It’s a work of fiction, isn’t it? I doubt even William Golding himself was particularly interested in the significance of the fire. He probably just stuck it in there to give the boys something to sit around. And actually, these kinds of questions annoyed me too. I mean, what a way to ruin a good book! Picking stories to pieces like that. Spelling it all out. It was like having someone explain the punchline of a joke to you – it just didn’t really work after that. Once, when I was looking for some past exam papers online, I found a copy with the examiners’ marking notes attached. ‘Examiners are encouraged to reward any valid interpretations,’ it said. I knew it, I thought to myself. Just like I always thought: Any old rubbish will do. I felt a bit better then, less like they were trying to catch me out. But still, it seemed a very bizarre thing to be studying at school.

With Bert though, I tried to approach English with a new enthusiasm. After all, I thought, she seems to love it, so there must be something I’m missing. Like me, Bert was a reader – I guess most people who’ve grown up without many friends are – but unlike me, she loved nothing more than to spend hours talking over the motivations and personality traits of the characters. And to my surprise I found that, with Bert, I quite liked it too. It was fun with her. She had interesting ideas. She wasn’t like drippy Miss Lily, head on one side, eyes getting all misty at the drop of a hat. When Bert talked, she was so passionate; it sometimes did feel like we were talking about real people. She was sparky. She made me laugh.

By this time, we were well into Bert’s first term and the boys who’d been initially sniffing around her seemed to be losing interest. I think on the whole they just found Bert a bit too odd.

Once a scrappy little boy called Tom Coleman sidled up to her. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘you know what? I think there might be something wrong with my eyes. I can’t take them off you.’

Bert spun round and looked Tom straight in the face – the poor kid probably thought he was in with a chance for a minute – but she just stood there, staring at him intently.

‘What?’ he said, backing away. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Checking your vision.’ She held up a finger. ‘Can you see this? Can you follow it with your eyes?’

Tom had batted her hand away and slunk away, muttering, ‘Nutter,’ under his breath.

I don’t know for sure if those kinds of reactions were genuine – if she really was so out of practice when it came to teenage flirting stuff that she just didn’t know what was expected – or if it was a bit more contrived than that, and playing the innocent was her way of letting people down without upsetting them. I wasn’t really bothered either way, just as long as she kept turning them down. Even though I was pretty sure that Bert and I were quite solid friendship-wise by this point, I still didn’t really fancy the idea of being ousted by some annoying boyfriend type.

The one boy who’d really stuck around despite Bert’s slightly odd knock-backs was Jac Dubois – of index-finger salute fame. He was one of those who enjoys playing the role of the joker, whatever the situation. The whole act got a bit annoying at times, but he was harmless enough. He was the son of a French couple who owned the Parisian bistro in town and he was bilingual – a fact which lifted him a bit above the class clown status he’d assigned himself, I always thought. I used to like to hover around nearby when one of his parents picked him up from school and listen to them babble away in French together. How lovely, I always thought, to have another language that you could just slip into like that.

Jac would loiter around us in registration, trying to engage Bert in banter, alternating between outrageously sexist teasing and shameless flattery. I couldn’t tell for sure what Bert felt about it but the whole thing made me nervous. He wasn’t technically spoken for, but he was quite popular with the girls in general. I was worried someone might step forward to stake their claim if it looked like Bert was getting too involved, which might lead to tension all round. Luckily though, Bert managed to knock any romantic ideas on the head herself, one day in early November.

‘I think he likes me,’ she said that afternoon after school. We were in her den, sitting in the Egg and drinking big mugs of hot chocolate. ‘Jac, I mean. Do you think he likes me?’

‘French Jac?’ I asked lightly, although I already knew who she meant.

Bert nodded and blew on her chocolate to cool it down. Then she giggled. ‘I think he’s handsome.’

I scrunched my nose to one side. ‘Really? Do you? But he’s got that … tail thing in his hair.’

Jac
almost
had a neat short back and sides, but right at the back, at the nape of his neck, he had a little straggly rat’s tail hanging down. It was a bit odd, really.

‘I like it,’ Bert said. ‘It’s exotic. Do you think he likes me? I think he might like me.’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ I said, not quite meeting her eye.

‘Or do you think he doesn’t? I don’t know about this … about boys our age. Am I misreading the signs?’

I didn’t say anything. I concentrated on trying to suck up a marshmallow from the top of my hot chocolate.

‘Oh, I am, aren’t I? I’m taking him too seriously. All those things he says … those comments … they’re just part of his comedy routine, aren’t they?’ Bert said, shaking her head. ‘Of course they are. What a wally I am.’

Conversations with Bert were often like this. I wouldn’t necessarily need to say anything at all. She’d just gallop along on her own, jumping from one thought to another, making connections and drawing her own conclusions. I could just step in if and when I wanted to. I decided to step in now.

‘I think it’s just his way,’ I said. ‘He likes girls. Girls like him. I think it’s because he’s French.’

‘I see,’ Bert said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘A veritable Lothario. Understood.’

We were quiet again as we sipped our drinks and listened to the rain on the skylight above us.

‘Goodness, imagine if I’d said something,’ Bert said after a while. ‘He would’ve laughed in my face. Quite rightly too.’ She shook her head and sipped her drink. ‘And anyway, what am I thinking? What am I
thinking
? The last thing I need is to be getting into that kind of trouble. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just …? Honestly, what on earth would I do without you, Birdy? You must never leave me to my own devices. Think of the pickle I’d be in.’

I laughed. I wasn’t totally sure what she was talking about, couldn’t quite keep up with her leapfrogging thoughts, but I figured it didn’t matter too much. Whatever idea about Jac she’d been briefly entertaining seemed to have been snuffed out. She’d managed to talk herself out of it. I was relieved. I could do without Bert getting us dragged into the middle of some hormonal cat-fight about boys.

And to be honest, I could do without anyone disrupting our peaceful little twosome.

So you’ll probably remember earlier in the story when I told you about the two girls in primary school rejecting me when I tried to join in their chalk-drawing playground project. One of those girls – the bigger, darker one – was Pippa Brookman and, as bad luck would have it, she and I seemed to end up being thrown together almost every year – in the same classes at St Paul’s and the same tutor groups at Whistle Down. I worked out pretty quickly that I’d had a lucky escape that day in the playground: Pippa was horrible.

She was annoying even to look at – she had a big moony face and the kind of smile that was about eighty per cent gums with little stubby shark teeth just peeping through. She was one of those people who fancy themselves as incredibly important, putting herself forward for anything and everything, from peer bullying counsellor to PE captain to recycling monitor. She had this loud, hooting voice that she’d use to broadcast whatever ever-so-important crusade she was on at the time. She could be mean too, in a really sneaky way. Even though she liked to make a big deal about all her fundraising and charity work, she never seemed that bothered about actually being a nice person.

This one time, in Year Eight, I’d come to school with a new haircut. It was just something I thought I’d try out to make me look a bit older – a bit shorter and a few layery bits. It didn’t really work out as I planned though, partly because as soon as my hair gets shorter than my shoulders it puffs up like a mushroom but also because I’d tried to cut it myself and things had got a bit tricky around the back. I was feeling a bit self-conscious as I walked into school that morning, but I’d been trying to reason with myself:
No one cares about your hair, Frances. No one looks at you at all. They wouldn’t notice if you walked in without a head
. But then, when I stepped into our tutor room and slipped into my seat, Pippa did this loud ‘
Woooo
’ noise and everyone looked over to me.

‘Look at
you
,’ she called, making sure her voice was loud enough for the whole room to hear. ‘New look, is it? Well, well, well.
Very
brave.’

I just ignored her and pretended to look for something in my bag.

She came over to me and made a big thing about circling around me, trying to get a look at me from all angles, everyone else still watching too.

‘Ooh,’ she said, doing a wincey face and shaking her head. ‘It’s so hard, isn’t it? When you’ve got so much
body
in your hair. Does have a tendency to make you look like you’ve stuck your fingers in a plug socket if you go too short.’ She shook her head again in mock sympathy. ‘Still,’ she said. ‘Well done, you, for trying something new. You’ve got to try things, haven’t you, before you can know they don’t work.’

I glared at her but she just turned away from me and headed back to the other side of the classroom, pulling an exaggerated horrified face as she went.

Luckily, by Year Ten, although we were still in the same tutor group, our timetables were different enough that I only really had to see her in registration. Even then we ignored each other. I knew we’d always remember the chalk day in the playground. I hoped she was ashamed. She probably wasn’t.

In our school, assemblies were held every Thursday and, at the end, there was a five-minute slot for students to deliver messages to the school – stuff like updates on the football team’s performance, requests for sponsorship for charity walks, that kind of thing. One Thursday in late November, Pippa Brookman stepped forward together with Ana Mendez, a dark, mousey girl from my French class. I rolled my eyes and looked out of the window.

Pippa pulled down the projector screen at the front of the hall.

‘Sorry, could we … could we do the lights?’ she called, looking around for someone to follow her command.

A sixth-former stood up at the back of the room and flicked the switch. Pippa gave Ana a nod and Ana darted forward to switch on a laptop on the table in the middle of the hall. An image flicked onto the screen of an old woman. She had one of those faces that’s so crinkled and toothless it looks like it’s going to crumple right in on itself. A couple of Year Sevens giggled at the sight of her, but Pippa shot them a fierce look to shut them up.

Pippa paused, waiting for everyone to have a good look at the woman, then she said, ‘I’d like to introduce you to Edna.’ Another pause. She’d obviously been practising her dramatic delivery. ‘Edna is ninety-four years old. She’s lived through two world wars.’ I did some fast maths and looked around me to see if anyone else had picked up on the obvious mistake here. It didn’t look like they had. I looked at Bert, but she was staring intently at the image of Edna.

‘She was married to George for sixty-two years, until his death ten years ago,’ Pippa went on. ‘She had one son, Jimmy, but he was killed in a motorbike accident in the seventies.’

At the side of the hall, our head, Mr Jeffrey, pointedly tapped his watch but Pippa wasn’t put off. She was on a roll, and I was sort of fascinated by where she was going.

‘So Edna is all alone. She has no family except for the family she’s made for herself amongst the staff and residents of the Meadowrise Residential Care Home, up near the racecourse.’

She paused again, giving everyone a moment to take in this solemn news.

‘Now,’ she said, in a brighter tone. Hopefully she was getting to the point. ‘As part of my Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some of the lovely elderly residents at Meadowrise and I’ve seen first-hand just how much the home means to them. So you can imagine my dismay when I learnt that the home was to be closed down due to cuts in council funding.’

Another pause. I suppose people were supposed to gasp or something but most people just looked at their feet, probably wondering when someone was going to shut her up.

‘I’m sure you’ll all agree that this can’t be allowed to happen.’

Pippa gave Ana a small nod and Ana quickly replaced the picture of Edna with a slide showing text that said:

‘Tomorrow, I’ll be leading a protest outside the gates of Meadowrise. We need to show the council that we, the people, care about the elderly, that we won’t be ignored. If you think vulnerable people like Edna have a right to live peacefully in the place they call home then join Ana and I. Meet us outside Meadowrise at ten to one. Bring banners, bring placards, bring enthusiasm!’

I think this last bit was meant to be rousing, but she was met with an echoey silence and the odd yawn.

Luckily, Mr Jeffrey stepped in before she had a chance to go on.

‘Thank you, Philippa,’ he said. ‘Most … inspirational. I’m afraid we’ve run out of time this week, so any other student notices will have to wait till next week. Off to classes please, everyone.’

‘
Me
,’ I said to Bert as soon as we were out in the corridor. ‘Why does she always say “I”? She means
me
.’

‘Hmm?’ Bert said, frowning.

‘She said, “Join Ana and I.” It’s not
I
in that context, it’s
me
. It should’ve been “Join Ana and me.” She always says I.
Always
. It’s like she thinks it makes her sound more intelligent. Sometimes I just want to tell her, I just want to say, “It’s not always I! Sometimes it’s me!”’

‘Oh right, yes,’ Bert said.

Bert and I had already discussed our shared intolerance of bad grammar so I’d thought this little rant would make her laugh but she barely seemed to be listening at all. She was frowning into the distance. ‘Don’t you think it’s awful, though? About Edna?’

I shrugged. ‘S’pose.’

‘Oh, Birdy, I think it’s dreadful! Don’t you? After what happened to her son, and her husband, and now … being uprooted like this. She won’t have a clue what’s happening to her, poor love.’

‘Won’t she?’ I said, looking at Bert out of the corner of my eye. ‘I don’t think Pippa mentioned that she was senile.’

‘Well, whatever,’ Bert said. ‘I still think it’s awful. We should go, Birdy. To the protest. We should make a stand!’

I couldn’t think of anything I’d less like to do at the weekend than stand with Pippa Brookman outside an old people’s home in the freezing cold, waving banners while Pippa would probably want to lead us through a selection of embarrassing chants. The truth was, I wasn’t totally sure I was all that bothered about the old people. Is that terrible? I don’t know. It’s so hard, isn’t it, when for all the excuses you might make about why you can’t do something, the simple truth is you just don’t
want
to do it. I had a feeling Bert would just see that as me being a bit mean. She didn’t know Pippa well enough to see it from my point of view. She didn’t know what she was really like. So that meant excuses were in order if I was going to get out of the protest without looking like a grouch.

‘I can’t, unfortunately,’ I said, doing my best to put on a such-a-shame face. ‘I’ve got to help my nan with some stuff. She wants to sort out the loft and she can’t get up there now. Doesn’t like going up the ladder.’

This was partly true, although it probably wouldn’t take much more than an hour and Nan hadn’t specified it had to be done on Saturday afternoon. Still, I thought it was the perfect excuse. Got me out of the ridiculous protest without making me look unkind. Luckily, this was exactly how Bert saw it.

‘Oh, of course,’ she said, turning to look at me. ‘You’ve got quite enough on your hands, dealing with your own grandparents. Sorry, Birdy, I didn’t think.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said with a modest shrug. ‘It’s just … you know, they can’t do everything they want any more. I need to be there for them sometimes.’

I was worried I was laying it on a bit thick, but it seemed to work quite well on Bert.

‘Of course,’ she said, putting her hand on my arm. ‘Of course. I understand. You are good, you know. The way you look after them.’

I gave her a small, put-upon smile and assumed that would be the last I’d hear of the Meadowrise old folks protest. So you can imagine my surprise when, as Bert and I crossed the field on our way home that evening, Pippa cycled past waving and calling out, ‘See you tomorrow, Alberta. Don’t be late.’

‘See you!’ Bert replied, smiling and waving back.

I spun round to look at her. ‘What?’ I said. ‘You mean, you’re going to the protest?’

‘Oh yes,’ Bert said, wide-eyed. ‘Of course. How could I not? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Edna all day.’

‘Oh,’ I said, trying to keep the indignation out of my voice. ‘Right.’

I desperately wanted to talk Bert out of it. I thought about suggesting the two of us do something together instead but I’d already shot myself in the foot by telling her that I was busy with Nan and Granddad so that wasn’t an option. What I really wanted to do was launch into a massive rant about what a cow Pippa Brookman was and how Bert really shouldn’t be encouraging her by taking part in any of her stupid little projects. But I held my tongue. I knew if I looked like I was being bitter about things it would make her get all haughty, and would probably only make her think badly of me rather than Pippa.

I just sulked all the way home, saying a bit of a cool goodbye to her at the top of the hill where we went our separate ways.