Flour Babies

by Anne Fine

  Russ Mould rose to his feet.

  ‘Suppose –’

  Words failed him.

  Mr Cartright looked at him encouragingly.

  ‘Yes, lad?’

  ‘Suppose –’

  Once again, Russ couldn’t carry on.

  Mr Cartright looked blank. But all the others were clearly finding it easier to interpret the look of baffled horror on Russ’s face.

  ‘Yes! Yes! Russ is right! Suppose you get stuck –’

  ‘With someone –’

  ‘And you’re not absolutely sure –’

  ‘Might not be safe.’

  ‘You can always say no,’ Wayne Driscoll responded virtuously.

  The others seemed satisfied with this.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Just say no.’

  ‘Not worth taking any risks,’ Phil Brewster told them all sagely.

  ‘Better be safe than sorry.’

  ‘One sloppy moment, and your life’s not your own.’

  Mr Cartright gazed out at the worried faces, all struggling with the idea of having to defend themselves against the terrible dangers on the horizon. Only one member of the class didn’t seem swept up in the general anxiety, and that was Simon Martin. Simon was sitting chewing his pen and staring thoughtfully out of the window. He’d been quiet throughout the whole hubbub. Mr Cartright was pretty sure he understood why Simon hadn’t joined in the general pillorying of the flour babies. After all, he’d taken such a strong shine to his own that his psychology had been a matter of heated discussion for over two weeks now in the staffroom, with half the teachers insisting the poor boy was in dire need of professional counselling, and the rest lining up behind Mr Dupasque and Miss Arnott to claim his response was ‘rather sweet’, and more to be applauded than pitied.

  But what was he thinking now? What was on his mind?

  Deliberately, Mr Cartright picked out the semi-literate Russ Mould to read the names on top of the diary entries and distribute them back to their owners. Then, under the cover of the spreading riot, he slid off his desk and made his way round the class till he was beside Simon and could ask him privately:

  ‘A penny for your thoughts?’

  Simon glanced up.

  ‘I was just thinking about my father,’ he said.

  Mr Cartright gave this response a moment’s consideration. You had to be careful. These days, some parents swapped spouses round like first-day-cover stamps, or football cards. Only the week before, he’d strolled behind a couple of pupils working side by side, and heard one saying to the other, amiably enough: ‘You’ve got my old dad now, haven’t you?’ No, you had to be very much on your guard.

  ‘Do you have a new one I don’t yet know about?’ he asked Simon politely.

  ‘No,’ Simon said. ‘I was thinking about my real one. I can’t help wondering about him. He’s on my mind.’

  Mr Cartright trod as carefully as he could.

  ‘Is there anything in particular bothering you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, there is,’ said Simon. ‘There’s something I really want to know.’

  Mr Cartright pitched his voice over the growing tumult behind them.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What he was whistling.’

  Mr Cartright was mystified.

  ‘What he was whistling?’

  ‘When he left,’ Simon explained. ‘I want to know what he was whistling the day he walked out.’

  Mr Cartright was floored. After a moment, he patted Simon affectionately on the shoulder.

  ‘Sorry, lad,’ he said gently. ‘Not on the syllabus.’

  He was on the verge of adding, under his breath: ‘Nothing of much use is,’ when suddenly it struck him he didn’t mean it and it wasn’t true. They’d learned a lot from this Science Fair project, for example. Dr Feltham was right. They’d learned about the tedium of responsibility, its endless grind, and how they felt about it. Mild little Robin Foster had even learned he had a serious temper. Sajid had learned (if he didn’t know already) he had a healthy entrepreneurial streak. And every single one of them now knew that, old enough to father a baby as he might be, he was not yet old enough to be a father.

  Every single one of them?

  Maybe not. Mr Cartright still had his doubts about Simon. There the lad sat, his huge limbs folded uncomfortably under his desk, fingering the grey lace on his flour baby’s bonnet and sunk morosely in thought.

  Was he still wondering about his father? Or was he, as half the staffroom insisted, going broody with longing for a real baby of his own?

  Either way, it was time to put a stop to it. Mr Cartright had never claimed to be a patient man. And it was at this moment that he decided that he’d had enough. There was, after all, almost a whole year of teaching the boy still ahead. He couldn’t stand this woebegone face, these glum looks. Up until now, Mr Cartright had not really noticed that many compensations came his way for having to teach 4C. But now he saw- that most of them, even if they weren’t all that bright, did at least make the effort to stay chirpy. Wasn’t there some old sea song about being of good cheer? That might perk the boy up a bit.

  Kill two birds with one stone, thought Mr Cartright.

  Reaching down, he snatched Simon’s flour baby off the desk, and hid it behind his back. If he was going to tell a whopping great lie to stop the lad fretting all year, he’d make sure he had his full attention.

  ‘But one of your dad’s old teachers always said she’d happened to pass him walking down the street that day, and he was whistling “Sail Away”.’

  ‘Which teacher?’ Simon demanded.

  ‘I can’t remember her name,’ said Mr Cartright, adding hastily: ‘And nor will anybody else. She’s long gone now. But she was very dependable. If she said your dad was whistling “Sail Away”, then that’s definitely what he was whistling.’

  He didn’t hang around for Simon to start asking him why he remembered such an insignificant piece of ancient gossip. He simply dropped Simon’s flour baby back on the desk, and took off as fast as a man of his bulk could go, across the room, not even slowing up to pull the occasional pair of pugilists apart, or tell Luis to stop chipping at his desk top.

  He didn’t stop until he reached his desk.

  ‘Right!’ he bellowed. ‘That’s it. I’ve had enough. It’s nearly time, so clear off, the whole lot of you. Go home.’

  This precipitated the usual tiresome performance, but in reverse this time.

  ‘But, sir! Sir! The bell hasn’t rung yet!’

  ‘Just go, Tariq. Go home, all of you, before I change my mind.’

  He sat watching the usual riot and confusion that took place as they poured out. Simon wasn’t the first to reach the door, he noticed; but neither was he by any means the last. And the troubled look on his face had vanished. The power was back in his stride.

  Content, Mr Cartright started to pack his own briefcase, ready to take off home. Not a bad lesson for 4C, he thought. Not bad. Not bad.

  Contrary to expectation – against all odds – he’d managed to do something with them.

  8

  ‘Go on,’ said Simon. ‘Sing it.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Simon’s mother turned to catch Macpherson creeping up on the flour baby, and swatted him with the tea towel. ‘You know I can’t sing.’

  ‘I’m not planning to give you marks out of ten,’ Simon assured her. ‘I just want to hear the words, and learn the tune.’

  ‘I don’t know all the words. I’m not even sure I’d get the tune right.’

  ‘Go on,’ Simon insisted. ‘Have a go.’

  So Mrs Martin had a go. Wiping her hands dry, she leaned back against the sink, and, while Simon rocked the flour baby in his arms, deliberately provoking Macpherson into yelping spasms of jealousy, she sang out as bravely as she could.

  ‘Unfurl the sail, lads, and let the winds find me

  Breasting the soft, sunny, blue rising main –’

  She broke off.

 
Simon looked up.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I’ve forgotten the next bit.’

  Simon sighed with exasperation.

  ‘But that was only two lines. You only sang two lines.’

  Mrs Martin threw the tea towel at Macpherson, who was surreptitiously taking advantage of the lull in the rocking to chew a bit more off one of the flour baby’s corners.

  ‘Two lines is all I can remember.’

  ‘Pathetic,’ said Simon.

  He looked so morose, Mrs Martin felt sorry for him.

  ‘Maybe the rest will come back to me,’ she tried to console him.

  But Simon wasn’t in the mood for waiting.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘We’ll ring Sue.’

  Dumping the flour baby on the seat of the chair, he made for the telephone.

  Shaking her head, Mrs Martin asked her son:

  ‘And why should Sue know the words?’

  He didn’t dare suggest that, if it was the song his father had been whistling the very last time Sue ever saw him, then she might very well have tucked little snatches of it away in her brain.

  He thrust the phone at his mother.

  ‘Just ring and ask.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Simon,’ said Mrs Martin.

  She reached down to prise the flour baby out from between Macpherson’s teeth as, seizing his chance, he tried to slink past her to the door. ‘I can’t just ring Sue to ask her to sing down the phone.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Put to the test, Mrs Martin couldn’t think of any reason. So while Simon used a clean pair of underpants from the laundry pile to try to wipe the worst of Macpherson’s slobber off the flour baby, she made the call.

  And Sue, when she answered, didn’t seem to find the request at all strange. Even before Simon could snatch the phone from his mother’s ear, and put it to his own, he could hear her chirruping away down the line.

  ‘Toss all my burdens and woes clear behind me,

  Vow I’ll not carry those cargoes again.’

  Then, just like his mother, Sue broke off.

  ‘I’ve forgotten the chorus,’ she told him. ‘Something about sunrise, and being of good cheer.’

  It was only the warning look on his mother’s face that turned Simon’s howl of frustration into a meagre grunt of thanks. Handing the phone back, he banged his fist against the kitchen door in sheer irritation, and then, when it flew open, felt obliged to walk through, because his mother was still watching him.

  In the shared yard, Hyacinth Spicer was sitting daintily on an upturned bucket, dyeing her sandals green. Hyacinth probably knew the whole song, Simon thought moodily. Learned it at Brownies, brushed it up at Little Woodland Folk, and sang the descant in the Baptist church choir. But he’d be happily boiled in oil before he’d ask Hyacinth Spicer any favours. He already suspected her of being one of Mr Cartright’s spies: a good amateur turned professional. He was on the verge of turning back into the house when Hyacinth herself raised the topic spontaneously.

  ‘Was that your mum singing?’ she asked. Then, dabbing dye carefully on her sandal strap, ‘Not very good, is she?’

  An idea struck Simon. Worth a try, anyway.

  ‘It’s a very hard song to sing,’ he said.

  Hyacinth looked up in surprise.

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Simon insisted. “The chorus is particularly tricky.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  And, her capacity for showing off undimmed since the day Miss Ness first pinned the huge tinfoil star of Bethlehem to her woolly in nursery school, Hyacinth threw back her head and sang:

  ‘Sail for a sunrise that burns with new maybes,

  Farewell, my loved ones, and be of good cheer.

  Others may settle to dandle their babies –’

  Just at that moment, she glanced down and noticed the dye dripping into her sandal.

  ‘Oh,sh – ugar!’

  Simon tried tempting her into singing what he could tell, from the sheer swell of the melody, must be the one, last, elusive line.

  ‘I expect you dripped that deliberately,’ he said. ‘Since it’s the end of the song that’s the hardest to sing well.’

  But Hyacinth Spicer had completely lost interest. She was intent on mopping up her shoe.

  ‘Shove off, Simon,’ she told him, just softly enough for both of them to be able to pretend he hadn’t heard.

  Simon went back inside. Shutting the door carefully, so Hyacinth Spicer couldn’t hear, he sang what he’d learned of the chorus to his mother. But though she claimed then, and several times later that evening, that the last line was on the tip of her tongue, she never managed to come out with it.

  By morning, Simon was in the sort of mental state he associated with victims of the water-drip torture.

  ‘I’m going mad,’ he told his mother over breakfast. ‘It’s driving me insane.’

  ‘You could go and be nice to Hyacinth. She’d sing you the last line.’

  The scowl Simon turned on her was prodigious.

  Mrs Martin shrugged.

  “Then you’ll just have to ask Mr Cartright.’

  Ask Mr Cartright! Simon shovelled more cereal in his mouth, and used the freshly-licked spoon to poke the flour baby.

  ‘This is your fault,’ he told her. And it was. If it weren’t for her, he realized, he would never have started to take an interest in his father, and what happened years ago. Without this stupid, useless, floppy bag of flour, he’d never have ended up in the awful, shaming position he was in today – keen to get off to school to learn something, like a proper ear’ole.

  He prodded the flour baby again. This time, a few drips of muddy brown milk from his bran cereal slid off his spoon and slithered down her front.

  ‘You’ll catch it,’ his mother warned him cheerily. ‘Look at the poor little mite. Slobber, toothmarks, bran-smears. And that’s just the last five minutes.’

  ‘She’s all right,’ Simon said shortly. He poked her again. ‘Aren’t you?’

  The flour baby didn’t demur. But peering more closely as he shoved her away in his bag, Simon could see that she was hardly in a state to pass muster at the twice-weekly weigh-in. Not only had she become grimy beyond belief over the last few days, but her corners were frayed and her bottom was leaking.

  Simon gave her the look that never failed to send Miss Arnott scurrying for her aspirins. How could something that couldn’t even walk get into such a mess? What a hiccup!

  And now his mother was handing him a plastic bag.

  ‘You’d better take this for her,’ she warned. ‘The forecast is rain.’

  He could have pointed out that any rainwater that fell on the flour baby might clean her up a bit, or make up some weight from the leakage. But, frankly, he couldn’t be bothered. He was sick of the whole business.

  Forcing the last spoonfuls of bran into his already bulging cheeks, he made a noise he hoped his mother would be charitable enough to take for a goodbye, and scooped up his school things and his flour baby.

  Mrs Martin stood firmly between him and the door.

  ‘Goodbye, Simon,’ she said pointedly.

  His mouth still stuffed to bursting, he grunted again.

  She stood her ground.

  ‘Goodbye, Simon,’ she repeated patiently.

  He recognized it for the yellow card.

  He stood there, like a huge dummy, making the effort to chew and swallow his huge mouthful of bran.

  Then:

  ‘Bye, Mum.’

  She smiled at last, letting him off the hook. He took off down the path, leaving the door swinging on its hinges. Strange, he was thinking, how parents, like teachers, could keep up the nagging for years and years about tin-pot things like saying thank you and goodbye. He didn’t know how they did it. He’d go unhinged within a week. Every single morning he went through this performance with his mother about emptying his mouth and saying goo
dbye properly. Every single school morning! That was five times a week, thirteen weeks a term, three terms a year. Every year. How many times was that? Millions, at least. So how did she manage to stand there each day and go through the whole thing without flying off the handle and going at him with a meat-axe? He certainly wouldn’t manage it, that was for sure. He thought of himself as patient as the next man. But if he had to remind the flour baby more than a dozen times in a row about not leaving the back door wide open, or turning off the hot tap properly, or talking with her mouth full, he’d do a Foster and boot her straight in the canal. Maybe the reason why his father left was that, like Simon, he realized almost straight away he wasn’t up to the job.

  Reaching the end of Wilberforce Road, Simon unaccountably burst into song.

  ‘Others may settle to dandle their babies –’ he warbled lustily, as, rounding the corner, he tripped over Wayne Driscoll who was fiddling about in the gutter.

  ‘What are you doing in that drain?’ Simon asked, picking himself up, and loath to believe the evidence of his own eyes, since Wayne appeared to be stooped over the grating, scooping up dirt and trickling it between his fingers into his flour baby through a small tear in the fabric.

  Wayne’s brows were knitted in the fiercest concentration.

  ‘Hold it steady for me, Sime. I can’t get this dirt down the little hole.’

  Simon squatted in the gutter and took Wayne’s bag of flour from him.

  ‘You could make the hole bigger/he suggested.

  Wayne snorted.

  ‘Oh, ace idea, Sime! Give Old Carthorse two reasons to maul me!’

  With his free hand, Simon tipped his own flour baby out of his bag.

  ‘If you’re in trouble, so am 1,’ he said. ‘Mine looks a lot worse than yours.’

  Wayne took a break from trickling dirt to glance at Simon’s flour baby.

  ‘Strick, Sime! What a grime-bag! You’ll catch it this morning.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Simon said confidently. Then, slightly less sure, he took another look. Maybe he would. No doubt about it, his flour baby was a mess. How had it happened? How did she get so mucky so quickly? One moment Simon was Star of the Project, with teachers he barely knew nodding affectionately at him in the corridors. The next, he was carrying about a manky leaking sack of flour with two smudged eyes and chewed corners. What went wrong?