Flour Babies

by Anne Fine

  And his mum was exactly the same. ‘You can’t do your homework properly with that radio blaring, Simon.’ Or, ‘Make toast or play with the dog – one or the other, but not both. That’s the fourth slice of bread that’s gone up in flames!’ She knew he couldn’t do two things at once. None of this would have happened if she’d offered to look after the flour baby for him. She’d brought him up all by herself, after all. She must know what it was like. She must have realized that his football practice would turn into total disaster. Had she forgotten all those evenings she took him with her to the club while she played badminton? They were wretched enough. He still remembered peeling the back of his legs off those horrible plastic bucket seats again and again, in order to drape himself over the balcony, and call down:

  ‘Can we go home now, please?’

  Over and over, the same answer floated up from the court.

  ‘Be patient, Simon. We’re nearly finished.’

  He’d sit there for what seemed another fifteen hours, bored out of his skull, and then ask:

  ‘Can I go on ahead, Mum?’

  ‘Simon, please! I won’t be much longer. This is the last game.’

  Maybe it was. But as soon as they finished playing it, Muni’s good friend Sue would always act as if Simon’s misery and restlessness were just something best ignored, like gnats or rain, and sweep his mother along to the club room for her idea of ‘just one quick drink’. If Simon so much as opened his mouth to complain, he was treated to an earful along with his Coca-Cola.

  ‘Simon, please! It was a hard game, and I’m thirsty. We’ll only be a few minutes. Try and be patient.’

  He’d sit in a separate booth, sullenly stirring the bubbles out of his drink with his straw while she and Sue gassed away: ‘Her husband…’ ‘My father…’ ‘Their neighbours…’ ‘His daughter…’ He’d glance round the club room for the ninetieth time. No one his age. No one to stand beside at the machines. No one to muck about with in the lavatories.

  He’d hang over the partition between their two booths.

  ‘Why can’t I stay home by myself?’

  ‘Soon, sweetheart. As soon as you’re old enough.’

  ‘I could have a babysitter.’

  ‘Simon! It’s once a week! For one hour! You know this is practically the only time I ever get to go out. Now don’t be a pain!’

  And he’d been nine or ten. She didn’t even have to watch out for him. He wasn’t going to fall out of a bush and get covered in mud, or be kidnapped and kicked to bits in the changing rooms…

  Round the last corner! He could see the worst! Was that really the flour baby, still safely hidden in the bush? Did the bundle of towel look as bulky as when he first stuffed it in there? Or had –?

  Once more the ball rolled between his feet, unchecked.

  ‘I’m warning you, Martin! One more duff yard, and you’ll be following this with fifty press-ups!’

  It wasn’t a job for one person, that was the truth of it. To look after a flour baby, you needed two. A substitute. A reserve. Someone with no particular plans for the evening. He’d heard his mother saying as much often enough herself when she couldn’t find a babysitter, or they couldn’t afford one. It would have been a whole lot easier if there’d been two of them, that was for sure. Odd, then, to realize he’d never heard her wishing his father back again (unless you counted the time she’d stood at the end of his bed and said rather sourly: ‘So. Mumps. Pity your father’s not here to look after you…’).

  But Simon had missed him. Oh, not personally. It wasn’t possible to miss someone whom you’d never known, and whose face was a rather blurry picture. The person Simon missed was someone he had made up. Dark and curly-haired, as in the few poor photos he’d found lying about in drawers. And with a splendid singing voice, as even Gran still admitted. “A glorious tenor. When he sang out, he made the rafters ring.’ But it was Simon who threw in the crinkly blue eyes and the strong hands, the grin and the genius at throwing and catching. Long hours of Simon’s childhood had been spent working out how his father would come back. One day he’d change his mind. He’d just show up, without any warning, and he and Mum would try again. And this time it would work. He’d want to stay. As Simon sauntered down Wilberforce Road each afternoon on his way back from his first school, he’d let his thoughts run riot around his father. He would be standing at the gate, his arms outstretched. He’d shout to hurry Simon. And Simon’s run would shake the paving stones under his feet, till finally he made it past the last house, and hurled himself into those strong arms.

  Ten feet from the corner, Simon would slow his pace, to hold the dream a few moments longer. Then, just as he’d conjured his dad up, he’d snuff him out. Wipe him away, before turning into his own street. It was a trick he learned to keep disappointment from rising, like tears, and spoiling the pleasure of getting home.

  He’d cried once, though. He hadn’t been able to help it. He’d been terribly young – only about six, for heaven’s sake. Six-year-olds cried all the time. He had the main part in the Christmas play. (Joseph the car-painter, as he thought at first, till Miss Ness put him straight.) He’d learned his words, and had a scarlet cloak that trailed behind him so importantly that Miss Ness kept saying she ought to take it off him and give it to one of the three kings instead. Each time he wrapped it around himself, he could practically hear trumpets. He waited for the big day in a blaze of excitement.

  And then Mum didn’t come. He knew she might not, because, when she begged Mrs Spicer to walk him to school that morning, she was already unsteady on her feet, and coughing horribly. Her eyes were streaming. But through the morning he must have managed to convince himself that she would get there somehow, ill or not, because when the moment came, and Miss Ness pushed him out on to the stage, the first thing he’d done was peer along the rows of faces, desperate to find her.

  ‘I’ll be right beside the door if I make it,’ she’d promised him.

  And there was Sue. Funny – he’d never realized before that Mum must have dragged herself downstairs to phone Sue at the last minute. And Sue must have dropped everything – taken a whole afternoon off work and rushed across town – just to be sitting where Mum told her, right beside the door, trying to be someone for him.

  It wasn’t the same, though. And during the short break between the scenes, Miss Ness, struggling with Hyacinth’s huge foil star, forgot for an instant.

  ‘Never mind,’ she’d said. ‘Is your dad there?’

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, she realized her mistake. But it was too late. He was in floods of tears. She pulled him on her knee and patted him. But it was no good. The tears were rolling and they wouldn’t stop. In the end, too many minutes had gone by. The interval couldn’t last for ever. So Simon had to let her unpin his glorious scarlet cloak and wrap it round Hamid, who had been boasting about knowing everyone’s lines from the very first day they had started.

  Boot!

  He gave the ball a savage kick.

  ‘There you go, Dad,’ he panted. ‘That one’s for not being there.’

  He kicked even harder.

  ‘Ever!’

  Boot! Boot! Boot!

  He could hear Mr Fuller thundering up behind him, but he couldn’t care.

  Boot! Boot!

  ‘That’s it, Simon Martin! I’ve had enough.’

  BOOT!

  Reaching the last stretch, Simon drew back his foot and gave the ball such an almighty kick that it went flying over the roof of the changing rooms.

  ‘That one’s for you, Dad,’ he shouted. ‘Thanks for nothing!

  He realized afterwards that he was grateful for the punishment. After all, he was more than fit enough to add on fifty press-ups. The extra effort even dulled the pain. But, best of all, they took a bit of time. Not much more than two or three minutes, even taking them steadily and doing them properly. But long enough – almost exactly long enough – to give the fierce glittering in his eyes time to subside.


  5

  ‘Is this really the sort of thing you had in mind?’ Ambushed on his way out of the staff lavatories, Dr Feltham flicked through the sheaf of pages Mr Cartright had thrust in his hand.

  ‘Go on,’ urged Mr Cartright. ‘Read one.’

  Dr Feltham glanced, puzzled, at the name scrawled across the grubby sheet of paper on the top.

  ‘Simon Martin? Isn’t he one of mine?’

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ snapped Mr Cartright. ‘The one you have is called Martin Simon. You must know the boy – passes exams, reads Baudelaire – that sort of thing. This one is Simon Martin. One of mine. Spends half his time skulking in the lavatories, and the other half shuffling round acting a stick short of the full bundle.’

  Dr Feltham couldn’t help rebuking his colleague for his unprofessional way of speaking.

  ‘I think you mean, Eric, that he’s not yet living up to his full academic potential.’

  ‘Just what I said,’ insisted Mr Cartright. ‘Goes about behaving like a halfwit.’

  Less than three feet away, behind the door of the boys’ lavatories, Simon Martin sank on his heels and buried his head in his hands as Dr Feltham ploughed through the joint obstacles of crabbed writing and pitiful spelling, to read aloud the first page of his flour baby diary.

  DAY 1

  I think the whole idea of carrying a flour baby around is completely stupid because she doesn’t even cry, or eat anything, or mess any nappies.

  Still, mine has been a total drag all day.

  I thought my mother was a real meaniefor not looking after her for a measly two hours while I did football. After all, she’s had enough practice looking after people. She’s looked after me for 122,650 hours, if Foster’s calculator works all right. And apparently I was quite noisy, and ate a lot, and made huge messes. Maybe that’s why my dad only managed to stick a pathetic 1008 hours. Foster says that makes him 121.6765 times more of a meanie than my mum, but I reckon Foster may have pressed some of the wrong buttons.

  When it came, Dr Feltham’s response was even more of a shock to Simon than it was to Mr Cartright.

  ‘But this is splendid, Eric! Absolutely splendid! Look what the lad’s learned already. On only the first day he’s grasped that, even freed from three of the principal disadvantages of parenthood, the responsibilities are immense. He’s learned a little about his own early childhood development. And he’s even branched out into some quite sophisticated arithmetical calculations, working in tandem with this Foster.’

  Behind the door, Simon lifted his head from his hands, and stared at the wall in astonishment. Could he be hearing right? Was this praise?

  Outside, Dr Feltham glanced again at the laboriously written page.

  ‘Interesting that he already thinks of his sack of flour as female. What do you make of that, Eric?’

  But, too excited to wait for Mr Cartright’s opinion on the matter, he went on to decode Simon’s second page.

  DAY 2

  Today Macpherson got a funny look in his eye, grabbed my flour baby, and gave her a bit of a chew down the bottom of our garden. Mum says I am lucky our dog has such clean slobber and most of it came off.

  If I ever have a real baby, I will certainly make sure it gets all its shots against rabies.

  I am watching Macpherson very carefully indeed.

  Dr Feltham waved the page in the air.

  ‘See?’ he crowed to Mr Cartright. ‘See, Eric? On the second day he’s learning about the staining capacity of canine salivary exudate on woven organic material –’

  ‘Slobber on sacking!’

  In his enthusiasm, Dr Feltham failed to catch Mr Cartright’s tone of outright scorn.

  ‘Exactly so!’ he agreed. ‘Not only that, but he’s already begun to reflect on the vital importance of primary childhood inoculation.’

  He stabbed the sheet of paper with his forefinger.

  ‘For all we know, Eric, this lad may already have gone to the trouble of looking up the first presenting symptoms of rabies. How else would he know what to watch for in Macpherson?’

  Behind the door, the look on Simon’s face was turning from bewilderment to pride. It wasn’t often that his work was praised. In fact, now he came to think about it, he couldn’t recall it ever happening before. Maybe he should have stayed in Dr Feltham’s class, where he might have been properly appreciated. It was a shame that interfering ear’ole Martin Simon had come along and bounced him out of there on the first morning. What did it matter which way round you wrote your name? Martin Simon. Simon Martin. What was the difference, anyway?

  Buoyed with fresh confidence, Simon rocked on his heels in happy expectation while Dr Feltham rustled his way through the loose sheets of paper, searching for the third page of his diary.

  DAY 3

  Today Hooper got hold of my flour baby for a bit of a muck-about so I called him an animal and stamped on his sandwiches. Then Mr Cartright puffed in, saving my flour baby from doom and giving us both a detention.

  Not me and the flour baby. Me and Hooper.

  Behind the door, Simon lowered his gaze to the tiled floor. For the first time in his life, he regretted not having tried just that little bit harder, done that little bit more. He felt somehow he’d let Dr Feltham down. And through the door he heard with a twinge of shame the disappointed tones:

  ‘A lot less learned yesterday, admittedly. But never mind, Eric. We shall have to content ourselves with hoping the lad makes the very best use of his detention.’

  His footfalls faded down the corridor, punctuated only by Mr Cartright’s resonant snort of contempt as he took off in the other direction. Simon crept out. The pile of flour baby reports, he saw, had been dumped on the radiator shelf. Unwilling to go straight along to the detention room and risk his reputation by arriving on time, Simon lounged against the wall, leafing through them.

  He found Sajid’s the easiest to read because he’d already heard the story in the cloakroom, several times, and that gave him a good start.

  DAY 3

  I took my flour baby on the bus today. It was shoved under my arm, out of the way, till some interfering old trout forced me to sit down and put it on my lap. All the way down the Foleshill Road she kept poking it and nattering to it. I thought she was a loony. But when we reached the bus stop at the Eye Centre, she got off.

  I hope my eyes never go that bad.

  Russ Mould’s was underneath. Simon did have a stab at trying to decipher the first few words. But it turned out to be harder than one of those ‘Unscramble these letters to find the names of five vegetables’ quiz books his mum used to waste her time and money buying him before the long bus journey to Gran’s house.

  In the end he gave up, and turned to Rick Tullis’s effort. He found this one surprisingly easy to read, perhaps because he and Tullis obviously shared a trick or two, both in handwriting and in spelling.

  DAY 1

  I said J wasn’t coming in if we did babies, and if Mr Henderson hadn’t spotted me down the shops I wouldn’t be here today. I definitely shan’t be here tomorrow. Or the next day. Or –

  Suddenly recalling that the minimum number of sentences for the daily entry was three, Rick Tullis had broken off promptly at this point, considering duty done.

  Simon ran his eyes a second time over Tullis’s brief and sullen report. Perhaps he was still warmed by Dr Feltham’s generous praise. Perhaps the glimpse of insight came spontaneously. But, staring at Rick Tullis’s niggardly and mean-spirited scribblings, Simon saw for the first time why teachers showed such scorn for those who did as little as possible. He understood why lesson after lesson was shot through with their howls of exasperation and anguish.

  ‘Believe me, George Spalder, it’s not me who’s the poorer for your not bothering to do your homework. It’s you.’

  To me, Tullis, this blank page signifies just one more piece of paper I don’t have to take home and mark. To you, on the other hand, it signifies yet another blank patch in your bra
in.’

  ‘I know I didn’t specifically say you had to do it, Luis. I’m not in the habit of saying “Everyone has to do the work, and that also goes for Luis Pereira”.’

  Suddenly it all meant something to Simon. He was struck by the sheer grit of teachers. Their stout hearts. Their unflagging fixity of purpose. Determinedly they bashed on, term after term, trying to make their pupils give of their very best. And with what results? With what thanks? Simon was appalled to think how often he (and so many others) had insulted these dedicated saints in human form by handing in such shoddy work. How could he have been so ungrateful? How could he?

  There and then, Simon vowed to make amends. He would begin by fulfilling Dr Feltham’s fond hope that he’d make the best use of his time in the detention room. Resolutely, he shovelled the pile of flour baby reports back on the radiator shelf, scooped up his book bag and strode off down the corridor, not even stopping to draw one or two tiny cartoon figures on this week’s wall display, as usual.

  Hearing the door shudder horribly on its hinges, Miss Arnott looked up. When she saw it was Simon Martin she couldn’t help sighing. She’d had him in detention often enough before, and, unacquainted with his change of heart, all that went through her mind was that his arrival presaged, as usual, a farewell to quiet marking, an end to peace.

  She leaned back in her chair and waited for the performance. What would it be for starters? A swipe at Hooper with the book bag, of course, just to remind him of his joint role in whatever villainy it was that had landed them there in the first place.

  Then to warm up, perhaps, the drama of the pencil. Its noisy and argumentative borrowing, followed, in natural order, by its sharpening, its dropping with a clatter, its ostentatious chasing across the floor and its resharpening, then the flicking of its broken point at one of the window panes. Hearing the ping, Miss Arnott would be expected to raise her head in time to watch the pencil finally being used – as a drumstick for the tattoo on the desk top.