First Fruits
Authors: Penelope Evans
First Fruits
Penelope Evans
Copyright © 2000
Penelope Evans
All electronic
rights reserved
www.penelopeevans.co.uk
For Anne Bryant
Evans,
my mother
I
MADE A NEW FRIEND today. Her name is Lydia. Now I'm wondering how I'm going to
get rid of her.
That's the trouble with the new girls.
They promise more than they deliver. Although it's not all bad. It just depends
on what you need them for. Look at Hilary. Hardly what you would call ideal
material, but she's come in useful in all sorts of ways. It's only that, well,
I hoped for more.
But Lydia, she had potential. Or so I
thought. The signs were all there. Mrs. Chatto brought her into the classroom,
leading her by the hand like some small animal she had lassoed and then
stunned. Lessons hadn't started and the din was tremendous. Hilary was there of
course, glued to my side as usual, whispering into my ear the hundred and one
things she had done since she had got up this morning. That includes cleaning
her teeth and folding up her pyjamas. You see the problem.
But what can I do? If I let her go,
she'll be off to attach herself to Fiona McPherson and all that lot. And we
don't want that. Because who would that leave me with? I'll tell you who. Moira
MacMurray. In which case, need I say more?
Two reasons to sit up and take notice
then; one, just to have a distraction from Hilary and two, because you only had
to look at Lydia to see she would be easy. You felt that the moment Chatto took
her hand her away, she would fall over. I mean, the girl was shaking.
'Class,' Mrs. Chatto removed the hand so
as to clap for our attention - and see what I mean? For one astonishing moment
Lydia actually seemed to hang in mid air, like a baby that's been dropped.
'Class, this term we have a new girl, Lydia Morris. Lydia has moved up all the
way up from...' She paused, frowned and turned to Lydia who had recovered her
balance. 'Where was it again, dear?'
The girl beside her gasped. She was
wearing thick glasses, and you could see her eyes start swimming frantically
behind them like two small fish panicking. She muttered something none of us
could hear.
Mrs. Chatto turned to us again. 'Hole.
Lydia has just moved all the way up from Hole in Devon.' There was a hush, and
then the entire room exploded. This is Scotland for Heaven's sake. And it
wasn't going to occur to anyone here that the name of Auchtermuchty might cause
just as much mirth down where she came from.
Mrs. Chatto of course had recognised her
mistake. She clapped her hands again. 'Girls!' She had that look in her eye,
so we stopped laughing - all except for Moira MacMurray, for the simple reason
that she hadn't been laughing in the first place - and stared at Lydia instead.
And that was even better in a way, because you never would have thought it possible
for a human to turn so red, and all the while staring at the floorboards as if
searching for a crack wide enough to take her.
See what I mean? Easy.
Meanwhile Mrs. Chatto was casting her
eye over the class. 'Lydia, I think you should go and sit with...' Her eye
landed on Fiona McPherson. Just in time I realised what she was had in mind and
shot my hand into the air.
'Mrs. Chatto,' I cried. 'Lydia can sit
here, next to me.'
Note the sharp intake of breath from
Hilary. She had been under the impression that she would be sitting next to me,
just like she always did. So it served her right - she could go and sit beside
Moira MacMurray for thinking she could take me for granted all the time. Note
also the approving glance from Mrs. Chatto; it never did any harm to get on the
good side of her. But, most important of all, do you see what I'd done? I'd
snatched the new girl right out from under the nose of Fiona McPherson!
Only trouble is, Fiona McPherson didn't
seem to care. Now she was making a great show of wiping her brow for all to
see, and pretending to be relieved. So there you are; less than five minutes
into the friendship, and you had to wonder if being kind to Lydia might not be
a mistake after all. I mean if Fiona didn't want her...
Too late though. Mrs. Chatto had already
turned to Lydia. 'Alright, dear, you can go and sit next to Kate Carr.'
But, would you believe it, Lydia didn't
move. She took one look at me and bit her lip. And
that's
all the thanks
I get for putting up my hand when not a soul in the class wanted her. But it
gets worse. Now the whole room had grown quiet, watching as Mrs. Chatto
actually had to push her in my direction before she's willing to move. That's
when I noticed her sneaking a glance over at Fiona McPherson, as if she had
known that was where she might have ended up and was sorry she hadn't.
Finally she began to make her own way
between the desks, bumping against chairs and tripping over school bags, moving
like someone twice the size she was, which actually was no size at all. Imagine
a head with straggly thread for hair and a body made of pipe cleaners. Got it?
The full horror of it? Now you've imagined Lydia.
Hilary whispered in my ear. 'Did you
ever see anything so
skinny
?' She stood up straight and stuck out her
chest to show what a proper fourteen year old was like. As if Hilary would ever
know.
But Lydia didn't even look at her. She
was standing by the desk now, staring at the floor. Was it my imagination, or
was there suddenly the faintest whiff of TCP in the air? Yet I didn't say a
word about that. I just smiled, giving her one of what Hilary likes to call my
goofy grins. (Hilary adores words like
goofy
and
loony.
) It means
smiling at someone with every inch of your face and letting your eyes crinkle
up in the corners. It never fails, at least not on Hilary.
'Hi,' I said, and patted the seat beside
me. But still she didn't move. Maybe it was Hilary glaring at her, putting her
off. I sneaked a hand up to Hilary's waist and took a large pinch of all the
spare flesh that was there and squeezed. Hilary smiled. Sort of.
And at long last, Lydia sits down.
'Well,' I say, 'This is nice.' No
answer. She had her hands bunched in front of her, so tightly clenched you
could see the whites of her knuckles. At the same time, I looked up, and what
should I see but Fiona McPherson across the room grinning from ear to ear.
Well, that did it. I just lost all patience with her, with Lydia.
'Where did you say you were from again?
I don't think I've heard of it before.'
Above me, Hilary snorted, like one of
the horses she always claims she wished she had. At the sound of it Lydia's
arms seemed to twitch and something tinkled. That's when I noticed it, the
bracelet of metal links, hanging off her wrist like half a manacle. I picked up
her arm, and had a better look. The bracelet had one of those tabs you can get
inscribed, like this one.
'Good Luck Lydia,'
it said.
'From
all your friends in 2A.
'
Fancy that, she had had friends then,
before she moved up here, to the very top of the country. I bet it felt like a
hundred years ago, and a thousand miles away.
'Oh that
is
nice,' I said. Dad
says if there's nothing you can think to praise in a person, praise something
they're wearing instead. That way there's no end to the gratitude. 'You'd
better take it off though. Mrs. Chatto can't stand folk to wear jewellery.'
Well I couldn't let praise go to her
head.
Finally, however, a reaction. Lydia's
head shot up to look at me, eyebrows arching above her specs. 'Oh,' she said.
'Oh?' Her hand moved across to touch the engraved tab as if it was all she had
to ward off evil. 'Oh,' she said again, faintly.
As I said, a reaction - of sorts. But
really it wasn't good enough. Not after all the effort I had put in. After
break, she'd find herself sitting next to Moira MacMurray. We'd see if that didn't
teach her to be more appreciative. And better still, I wouldn't have to look at
her. You could hide the Rock of Gibralta behind Moira MacMurray.
After assembly, and the usual Welcome to
the New Girls, it was history. For once, Mrs Chatto ignored us, continued to
read what was in front of her long after we had sat down. People started to
exchange glances.
Finally she looked up, glared at us all.
That's when it occurred to me that whatever she had been reading had put her in
a thoroughly foul mood.
'Girls,' she says. 'I've just been
looking over Lydia Morris's report from her last school. You may be interested
in hearing a little of what is here for yourselves.' Then she made us listen to
all this stuff about Lydia's genius for history - not to mention maths, French
and every other subject under the sun. And to make matters worse, Lydia's last
school hadn't even been a private one, not like ours. Not so much as a penny
had changed hands.
Of course, it all rebounds on us, with
Chatto telling us we're going to have to pull our finger out, that we're
costing our parents the earth, and for what? We've to look at Lydia, see what
hard work can do for us.
Tell that to Moira MacMurray who could
work till there's no ink left in the world and still not be able to spell her
own name. In fact I noticed that Chatto let her eyes slide right across her as
usual, as if none of this had anything to do with her. They all do it, all the
teachers. I think they gave up on Moira years ago. If it weren't for needing
the fees, I reckon they would have bumped her out into one of those places
where they don't even try to teach folk like her. They just make them do basket
weaving instead. That's how Moira can get away with it, sitting there, eyes bulging,
taking nothing in, letting nothing out.
Meanwhile everyone else is looking at
Lydia with a kind of horrified interest - with the sole exception of me. Dad
says it doesn't do to let yourself be impressed. There's always going to be
something to detract.
And when has he ever been wrong?
But what about Lydia? What did she do
with all this praise flying about? I'll tell you what she did; she just sat
there gazing at the desk as if trying to ignore it all - Mrs. Chatto, people's
stares, everything. Yet she had to be secretly pleased, having all that
attention. I mean, she must have been. Surely.
Later, at breaktime, the inevitable
happens. Fiona McPherson moved in. Lydia was sitting beside me as before, but
we were just doing our best to ignore her now, bring her down to earth where
she belonged. Hilary was leaning over from behind, breathing loudly in my ear,
whittering on about something and nothing. And Moira... Moira of course was
just....there.
Moira.
I don't think even Dad would have
anything to say about Moira. Not that I've asked him. Somehow, I've just not
got round to it. Some things you just don't want to discuss. Right at this
moment she was opening her mouth to insert a sherbet lemon, the kind of sweet
all the old ladies eat in church, sweetening their breath before closing in on
Dad at the end of Service. Dad, who is a proper scream about these things, says
they have cups of tea which they keep ready for him in their handbags, but
that's not true of course. You can't keep pots of tea in a handbag. All he's
saying is, you can't escape old ladies when they're determined to give you tea.
But why should anyone want to be old
before their time? Moira does. Or rather, Moira doesn't. Care that is. Moira
doesn't seem to care about anything.
Where was I? Not thinking about Moira,
that's for sure.
So
where
was I? Oh yes, Fiona
McPherson moving in where she isn't wanted.
And the first thing that happens is that
Hilary shuffles out of her way because folk like Hilary will always be
impressed by Fiona. But Moira, Moira stays exactly where she was. Fiona has to
move round her, which she does, without seeming to mind, as if Moira were just
part of the furniture. That's how they all treat Moira. But they haven't
noticed, have they? They don't see what I see, how there's something very wrong
with Moira.
