First Fruits (6 page)

Let's hope she can work hard enough for
both of us. After all the commotion she caused last night, it was bedtime when
I finally got to look at the alphabet. And even then there was no peace.
Sometimes things just seem to conspire against you, stopping you doing the
things you should, feeling the way you ought.

In other words, I had the dream again.
The one I keep thinking will go away. After all, surely no-one was meant to
dream the same dream, time and time again. That's not what people go to sleep
for.

It's hardly worth talking about really.
But I'll mention it now, just this once, just in passing, even if it does make
me like Hilary who does it constantly, insisting on describing every dream
she's ever had. Mostly to do with sitting exams, or playing music on a piano
that won't keep still.

Never the same dream though. I asked her
once, and the silly girl just gave a me a funny look, as if she didn't
understand the question.

My dream then. I'm small and lighter
than feather. But my father is a giant, holding me to his chest as he strides
through a house where the walls are nothing short of dangerous, threatening to
fall in upon us. Yet nothing touches us. And as he walks, he shines, lit up by
the brightest of lights that glows on me as well, so both of us are brilliant,
dazzling, with pure light flickering up around us.

So much light, and his arms around me,
it should feel like heaven. But it never seems that way. And maybe, that's the
worst of it. Knowing I should be thankful, and feeling - nothing.

Is it any wonder then, when Dad comes to
wake me in the usual way, I've forgotten every word I'd tried to learn? After a
dream like that it's hard work remembering who
I
am, let alone a few
Greek letters.

Last
two periods of the day, and we troop outside into
the cold for P.E. Not that it is any concern of mine. No-one could expect me to
run around a netball court with a leg that won't do what it's told. I get to
sit on the sidelines and pretend to keep score.

Who would want to play ball at our age
anyway? Fiona McPherson and Jackie Milne apparently. It must be the stupidity
of it that makes me stare the way I do, sitting here next to the fence,
watching them so hard that something goes wrong with my eyes and I seem to be
seeing them in slow motion. When they run, it is as if they are dancing, long
legs kicking patterns in the air, while the ball appears to hang by a thread
from the ends of their fingers. Feet that do as they are told. Watching them,
the leg that's wrong begins to throb. And even then I can't look away.

Only today it's different. Moira has
been told to play.

Miss Botham must have put her foot down,
and dismissed all that stuff from Moira's Gran, about her having asthma, and
being too frail to play. Moira,
frail!!!
I'd bet Miss Botham is regretting
it now, though. Moira is standing there in the middle of everyone, like a piece
of furniture someone has dragged onto court; something massive - like a double
wardrobe say - getting in the way, stopping everything.

And that's without mentioning Lydia, on
court for her first ever game of netball. She's standing there, miles apart
from everybody else, yet impossible to ignore. Her arms and legs are pulsing as
if her braces were receiving invisible signals and transmitting them to every
nerve in her body. She has all the fingers and toes a person could wish for,
but can she use them? Don't ask.

But the funniest thing of all is Miss
Botham herself. She must believe so deeply in the benefits of Sport. You see,
even though it's impossible for someone in my position ever to play, she'd like
to have me on the court. I can tell from the way she looks at me every now and
then - as though she has temporarily forgotten the ball and Moira and Lydia and
everything. Some days, like today, Miss Botham can't seem to take her eyes off
me.

Especially when I give her that certain
smile, the one I keep just for her. The one that makes her look flustered and
turn quickly away.

After
school, Hilary is showered, dried, dressed and
standing next to me before certain others have even got their gym shoes off.
The black stuff blobbed around her eyes is mascara her mother doesn't know she
owns. It's Service in the City night, and again Dad won't be picking me up.
I'll be catching a bus from Aberdour Street Station, and as usual, Hilary will
be coming to keep me company. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that coming to
the bus station is the very highlight of her week.

It may even be mine. We can walk out of
school at the same time as everybody else. There's no need to stand out, not tonight.
No-one is watching. The next best thing to being invisible.

As for the other stuff - what happens at
that busy place, the bus station, week in, week out - that's just practise, a
way of reminding oneself exactly what it means to have
It
.

Next
morning though, the impossible has happened. Lydia
is even less of a pretty sight than usual.

Her specs are sitting all lopsided on
her face, and one of the panes of glass is cracked. Hilary snorts and whispers
what it was she had seen in the changing rooms last night . Lydia had been on
her knees in the showers, fumbling in all the steam for her lost spectacles
while everybody else had stood by and screamed with laughter. Incredible that
Hilary hadn't stayed to see the end of that. But then, she does so love the bus
station.

Lydia must have found her specs - but
just look at them now. And just look at her. The living, breathing picture of
misery. All because of a pair of glasses.

Or is there something else? When I slip
a hand through her arm, and whisper
Time for Greek
in her ear, she
doesn't stir. Doesn't even seem to hear. She just continues to stare into the
distance, fascinated, for all I know, by a world divided into two unequal
halves by that crack running through the glass.

 But as Dad says, there's nothing worse
than folk who don't listen, so I naturally I try again.

'Lydia, what
ever's
eating you? .

And finally she deigns to pay attention.
'Nothing,' she says, though sulky with it. 'Nothing's eating me.'

So I just look at her.

Sure enough, a moment later it all comes
pouring out: 'It's my parents. They've said they have to go away next week, to
Venice. There's a conference. Daddy wasn't going to go, but he changed his mind
when they kept calling. They said it wouldn't be the same without him.'

'What do they want him for?'

This is Hilary butting in, suddenly too
nosy for her own good. You wouldn't have caught me asking. My dad gets invited
to conferences all the time. Good grief, he was in Scarborough only last week.

Trust Lydia to have a reply ready,
though, as if it mattered. 'Trompetto. They want him to talk about Trompetto.'

It's a surprise she can get the word
out, with all that metal in her mouth. And look, she's lost Hilary.

'Tromp-
who
?'

'He's a painter, goofball,' I tell her.
'Fancy not knowing that.'

It has to be said, though, I wouldn't
have known myself, not in the normal way. We don't hold with pictures in our
house. It's the Catholics who like that sort of stuff, Jesus and Mary and all,
trying to make out it's always Christmas. A bad case of  the graven images Dad
says. But there's still that picture above the desk in his study, the one I've
known since I was a little girl, showing Moses coming down from the mountain to
find the Israelites worshipping false gods. That's by him, this Trompetto person.
It's got his name on it. So you see, I know all about him. Yet no-one has asked
me to go all the way to Venice to give a talk.

But hark at Lydia. 'My father knows more
about Trompetto than anyone in the whole world.'

Suddenly, there's no mistaking the note
in her voice. Pride. One of the Seven deadly sins.

'So what's the problem?'

Lydia's face, lit up a moment ago,
becomes decently miserable again. '
I've
got to go and stay with our
Aunty Jane. All the way down to Carlisle.'

So there we have it. Her parents are
getting rid of her - if just for a while. And who could blame them? If it's
charm you're after, Lydia's always going to be the one that's left behind, the
first person out of the balloon. The one no-one would miss.

Still, you have to look on the bright
side, even if it's for her sake.

'It can't be that bad,' I say. And it's
true. She'd miss school
and
she wouldn't be in Scotland, the country
where she can't open her mouth without sounding like an alien.

But Lydia's not having it. 'It is, it is
that bad. I mean,
Laura
loves it, but that's because she's young. She
doesn't mind the cats or Aunty Jane fussing. She doesn't even care about all of
Aunty Jane's friends. In fact
she
likes them. They give her fifty pences
and tell her she's wonderful.'

Silly of me. I'd forgotten Laura. Then
again, clever Laura, knowing the value of old ladies. Cleverer than her big
sister, that's for sure. Listen to her now, still going on, complaining about
the smell, the draughts and tinned macaroni cheese. As if these were the worst
things ever.

A proper moaning Minnie, that's what she
was being.

Then suddenly, out of the blue, a voice
cuts in, stopping her saying another word.

'If it's that bad, then why don't you
come and stay in the boarding house?'

It's Fiona McPherson, appeared from
nowhere, cool as a cucumber, a copy of
Just Seventeen
folded under one
arm. She must have been listening to every word. But on whose say so? I give
her one of my special looks, the sort that would chop the legs out from under
Hilary. The sort of look that has no effect whatsoever on Fiona.

Instead she's having an effect all of
her own.

'What?' says Lydia in a voice gone all
faint. 'What did you say?'

Fiona gives a smile, the sort anyone
else would have to practise in front of a mirror five times a night. Chilly,
but with just the correct touch of warmth -
if
you were the right
person. 'I said you could always get your parents to let you board for a while,
here at the school. People do it. You could sleep in our dorm.'

She raises an eyebrow (plucked, you can
tell) and pauses, waiting for a reply. But Lydia is speechless. Fiona smiles,
even more coolly and, as a final gesture, places that copy of
Just Seventeen
on Lydia's desk. 'Have this' she says,
so
casual. 'It's this week's. And
ask your parents about the boarding.'

Then she was gone - leaving Hilary and
Lydia to stare at the magazine as if it was a gift from high.

'Well,' I say, brisk as anything. 'Well,
really...
'

But this is bad. Because neither of them
seems to have heard me. Hilary reaches out a hand, touches the magazine, then
withdraws it, remembering it wasn't meant for her.

'Lydia,' she says, all breathy. 'Oh
Lydia, would you..?'

It's those books she will keep reading,
having their effect. Midnight feasts and talking far into the the night. All
girls together, having fun. Best of all, getting to sit with the boarders over
by the window day in, day out.

And Lydia? She doesn't even answer.
She's too busy staring at
Just Seventeen
, eyes dreamy behind the broken
panes, a tiny smile on her lips. Golly, it's like a disease, and she's got it
worse than Hilary. You can see it would be no good saying anything to her now.
You might as well try talking to the wall.

I think we may have lost her. And she
was turning out to have so much potential. Attention shared might have been
attention halved. Now Dad will never get his chance to meet her, and I'll never
see them together. It will just be just the two of us, as it has always been. 
I'll be his one and only for ever.

Unless.

Unless I do something about it.

A phone call, that's all
it took.

Monday morning, and Lydia is back to
normal. No more faraway looks, no more secret smiles aimed at the window, for
all the world as if she was safely there already, one of the gang. A single telephone
call and Lydia is herself again, one of us, where she belongs.

But does she appreciate it? Saved from
her Aunty Jane, saved from having to sleep among strangers - who wouldn't want
her anyway - and does she appreciate it?

The moment she walks into the cloakroom,
you can see the way it is. Barely able to raise a smile. And after all I've
done for her. She's still thinking about those midnight feasts and chats and a
place by the window. Things that just aren't going to happen now.

But I don't hold it against her, not yet
anyway. Instead I punch her in friendly fashion and say, 'Isn't it just the
best? You coming home with me every night. Can you imagine the fun we're going
to have?'