Flour Babies Read online

  Then, clearing his throat loudly, he strode off as fast as he could, back to the sanctuary of his own desk.

  10

  Fired with determination to get the whole flour baby project out of the way for good, Mr Cartright kept everyone working. And as the clock hand rolled around the hour, interminably slowly, the sense of righteous outrage always felt by the members of 4C when sustained effort was expected of them merged with their resentment of Simon for his two terrible mistakes: picking the project in the first place, and being wrong about the Glorious Explosion.

  For form’s sake, Mr Cartright pretended he was deaf to the flurries of malignant whispering around him.

  ‘What sort of Warpo chooses to do babies anyhow?’

  ‘We could have chosen any of the others. We could have done food.’

  To try and distract them, he picked up the sheet of paper Russ Mould had just pushed aside with a huge sigh of relief.

  ‘Here. Someone’s finished. Let me inspire the rest of you by reading out Russ’s final entry.’

  He held it in front of his eyes for a few moments, trying – and failing – to decipher it.

  ‘You’re holding it upside down,’ Russ said reproachfully.

  Hastily, Mr Cartright turned the page the other way up.

  ‘Ah, yes!’ he said. ‘That’s better.’

  He peered at it for a few moments longer, concentrating hard, and then, defeated, gave it back to Russ.

  ‘I wonder if you haven’t been just a shade over-ambitious,’ he suggested gently. ‘Trying to move on to joined-up writing quite so soon.’

  As he stepped away, the bell rang, precipitating the usual frenzy of illicit bag-packing and chair-scraping.

  ‘Wait till the voice goes green!’ss he roared.

  The squall abated for a moment.

  Mr Cartright decided to make for the staffroom, and his reviving cup of coffee, a few minutes ahead of the stampede. Imposing his will on the whole lot of them with the darkest of looks, he moved backwards to the door. Then,

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Off you go.’

  Before the words were even out of his mouth, he was away, down the long corridor.

  With authority gone, the pack instantly went after their true quarry.

  ‘Thought you could get away with it, did you, Sime?’

  ‘Leading us on like that!’

  “ ‘Best science I’ve ever heard”, you told us. “Dead brilliant”, you said.’

  Once again, Simon unconsciously leaned forward and gripped his desk. No one believed the gesture stemmed from fear, and so for the second time that morning it proved his undoing.

  ‘What have you got in there?’

  ‘Open up, Sime!’

  ‘Let’s see!’

  They were too many for him. Their combined weight, and the enthusiastic charge, toppled the desk and sent the lid flying open.

  The flour baby shot out and sailed over the energetically fighting scrum. She flew high over the abandoned desks. Simon skidded beneath, tracking her flight, and managed to catch her, puffing flour from every pore, just as Mr Cartright came back to fetch his cigarettes.

  Striding to his desk, Mr Cartright took a brief, irritable look at the disorder and the small cloud of flour settling on the far side of the room. After wasting time retracing his steps, he wasn’t in the mood to fritter away more of his precious break pursuing either truth or justice.

  It was Simon he blamed.

  ‘Monday detention!’ he boomed. ‘For starting an unruly ball game in my classroom.’

  Lifting the desk lid a few inches, he surreptitiously drew the tell-tale cigarette packet out from its hiding place under some papers in the corner. Then, seeing they were all trying to work out why he’d come back, he made a show of grasping the bin bag of flour babies, and dragging it out of the door behind him.

  Simon stood staring at his departing back, outraged by the sheer injustice of the punishment. Sensing his temporary loss of concentration, Wayne dived for the flour baby. Without thinking twice, Simon spun round and hurled her in the air, giving himself enough time to leap on the seat of a chair, catch her safely, and hold her out of Wayne’s reach.

  Hearing the scuffle from halfway down the corridor,

  Mr Cartright strode back and caught Simon standing on the chair.

  ‘Tuesday detention!’ he bellowed. ‘For climbing on school property.’

  Again, he turned to go.

  Simon stood, encircled and besieged, as the rest of 4C crept closer, bent on the capture of his flour baby. Should he leap for the door now, before they expected him to make a move? They knew as well as he did that Mr Cartright would hear him pounding the other way down the corridor, whip round, and give him yet another detention for running within the school building.

  But so what? Marooned on his chair, holding the flour baby high, Simon couldn’t help thinking it. So what? There were worse things in life than getting three detentions in a row. Why, even added up, they wouldn’t last longer than one of Hyacinth Spicer’s grisly birthday parties, and he’d survived seven of those.

  So maybe he should just go for it. Give it a whirl. What had Old Carthorse said? ‘Aren’t you supposed to be one of the school’s sporting heroes?’

  Yes, go for it!

  In a rush of exhilaration, Simon suddenly astonished everyone around him by leaping for the door. The noise was tremendous. From desk to desk he leaped, leaving wobbly wooden legs rattling frantically, and chairs keeling over backwards. He held the flour baby high, and, as he jumped, what Mr Cartright said rang in his ears. ‘Do you want to know your problem, Simon Martin? You sell yourself too short.’ He sprang from Wayne’s desk to Russ’s in a clatter of flying pens and rulers. He sent Philip Brewster’s calculator flying. He vaulted over Luis’s desk entirely. And with one last tremendous bound, he made it to safety. He was through the door, punching the air with a fist. He felt as powerful as when, all those years ago, Miss Ness pinned the wonderful scarlet cloak around him for the nativity play, and he could practically hear trumpets. Who’d make a bad father? Not him, for sure. Maybe people like Robin Foster couldn’t stand the pace, and ended up putting an early end to their responsibilities. And people like Sue never even dared risk it. But as for him, Simon Martin, he wouldn’t be bad at all. In fact, he’d be better than not bad. He’d be pretty good. In a glorious, glorious explosion of confidence, the words Mr Cartright said echoed mightily in his brain. ‘If keeping what you care for dose and safe counts for anything, you’ll make a better father than most.’

  The foot stuck out to trip him brought him down. He landed with a thud and a grunt, and lay, spreadeagled and winded, as the flour baby shot out of his hands, and slid twenty feet along the corridor.

  The real voice put instant flight to the echo.

  ‘Ah! Simon Martin! Just the boy I need. Wednesday detention, of course, for running in the corridor. But, since you’re here, would you be so good as to drag this bag along to Dr Feltham’s Science Fair? There’s a good lad.’

  And, patting the comforting little packet in his jacket pocket, Mr Cartright hurried off for his coffee and a quick smoke.

  Simon had just hauled himself painfully into a sitting position when Dr Feltham spun around the corner with a bevy of helpers in tow, carrying the various parts of the Hughes twins’ hydro-electric power station.

  ‘Back! Back, back, back!’ Like a lion tamer, Dr Feltham snarled at the bulk of 4C who were fighting their way through the doorway after Simon. ‘Get back, boys! Back at once! Can’t you see this is expensive equipment?’

  No sooner had he said the words ‘expensive equipment’ than he noticed Wishart’s Digital Sine-Wave Generator on the floor where, on Mr Cartright’s orders, Simon had abandoned it earlier.

  ‘What on earth?’

  Then he saw the oscilloscope lying beside the radiator.

  “This is outrageous!’

  Then he saw Simon.

  ‘You! You there, boy! Lounging about on th
e floor! You!’

  Aware of the crippling limitations of speech, Simon simply hung his head.

  ‘Monday detention!’ Dr Feltham ordered.

  ‘I’m booked up till Wednesday,’ Simon told him sourly.

  ‘Thursday, then!’ snapped Dr Feltham. ‘Now look sharp! That equipment should have been taken through to the laboratories well over an hour ago.’

  Sighing, Simon scrambled to his feet, and looked round for someone to help him. But everyone in 4C had disappeared. Simon presumed, bitterly and rightly, that they had prudently begun to melt away the instant Dr Feltham started firing on all cylinders and dishing out punishment detentions. So, taking off only a moment to make a horrible face at his tormentor’s back, Simon thrust his own flour baby safely back up his jumper, and gathered up Wishart’s Digital Sine-Wave Generator and the oscilloscope. After shifting them about a bit, he managed to find a way of carrying both that left a few fingers free. With these, he grasped the neck of the heavy-duty bin bag, and slowly, slowly, stumbled backwards along the corridor, still balancing the equipment in his arms.

  He found Mr Higham standing in wait behind the third set of swing doors in the science block.

  ‘About time!’ He snatched the oscilloscope from Simon. ‘This should have been here well over an hour ago!’

  He consulted the massive Science Fair display plan Dr Feltham had pinned to the wall.

  ‘That thing of Wishart’s goes in here as well.’

  As he lifted the Digital Sine-Wave Generator out of Simon’s arms, he noticed the third and last burden.

  ‘What’s in that bin bag?’

  ‘Flour babies.’

  Mr Higham took another look at the master plan.

  ‘Flour babies… flour babies… Ah! Here we are!’ His face crumpled into a frown. ‘Bit early, aren’t they? Oh, never mind. Display on Table 18,’

  In vain he waited for Simon to make a move.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he repeated impatiently. ‘Go and display them.’

  Simon scowled. He was sick of people snapping at him.

  ‘How?’ he asked sullenly.

  But Mr Higham had a bigger fish to fry. Pitkin’s Electronic Window Burglar Alarm was just being carried through the door.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, boy!’ he scolded Simon. ‘Do you have to be spoonfed? Just set the things out to look interesting, and write a label explaining what they are.’

  So Simon grudgingly dragged the bin bag over to Table 18, which, he couldn’t help noticing with a flicker of resentment, was the one hidden away furthest in the corner. He pulled out the flour babies one by one, and dumped them on the table. Looking at each in turn, he was aware for the first time how much most of them had changed over the last eighteen days. His was no longer the only one with eyes. Several had noses, ears, lips, and even warts. George Spalder’s appeared to have measles. Bill Simmons’s sported one of his speciality bluebottle tattoos. Luis’s even had a pipe.

  Now what would make an interesting display?

  First, Simon pulled his own flour baby out from under his jumper and set her in the middle of the table. Then he put all the others in a circle round her.

  Good.

  He took a label from a nearby table and turned it over to the blank side.

  ‘Queen Flour Baby and her Courtiers’, he wrote, then looked at it critically. Even if people could make out what it said, they wouldn’t find it interesting.

  He tried again. This time he divided the flour babies into pairs, and tried to set them in the sorts of positions that suggested a Saturday night party.

  He stole the card from another table. Crossing out the neatly printed words Measuring the Wavelength of Laser Light, he turned it over and tried to write:

  Orgy.

  Only four letters, and yet he suspected that at least two of them were wrong, or badly out of place. And, anyway, it didn’t look a very interesting party. He tried to liven it up a bit by moving the flour babies into more interesting positions. But somehow they still managed to persist in looking disappointingly like eighteen little sacks of flour, just lying in a jumble on the table.

  Giving up, Simon tried something different. This time he set them out in strict rows and wrote Dr Feltham’s Class ofEar’oles on yet another card.

  Not very interesting.

  His next idea was the best. Taking the card belonging to Hocking’s Zero Gravity Project, he wrote on the back: Simon Martin’s Greatest Goal Ever. And then he set to recreating it with the help of the flour babies and a chocolate bar wrapper he found on the floor and crumpled up for a football.

  First he put the front three players into place. Then the middle four, and then the back three. Then he put in the other team. He’d played deep in defence, that glorious day. But when the time came, he’d dribbled the ball up the wing in an astonishing spurt of speed, swerving to miss one defender after another. He’d reached the edge of the penalty area, and let fly such a kick that the ball shot straight in the corner of the net. The goalie didn’t even see it, and Simon didn’t have the time to swing away from the inevitable collision with their beefy, cross-eyed sweeper.

  Taken up with the memory, he ran through the last moves of play, propelling the flour babies.

  ‘Baroom! Baroom! Pow!’

  As the two sacks collided, flour puffed out and showered all over.

  Out of the way the table might have been. Invisible it wasn’t. Mr Higham had stormed over within seconds.

  ‘Flour! You’re getting flour over everything! What’s the matter with you, Simon Martin? Why are you acting even more like a half-wit than usual?’

  Simon was nettled. He had, after all, only been doing his best to follow orders.

  Mr Higham spun round like a frenzied top.

  ‘Look!’ he was shouting. ‘Look at all this flour! It’s settling on Bernstein’s Pressurized Cylinders! And Butterworth’s Speech Synthesis machine! You can take a detention for this, Simon Martin.’

  ‘Friday’s my earliest,’ Simon informed him in a voice that was icy with resentment.

  ‘Friday, then! And don’t think I won’t be in to check on you. I’ll –’

  Mr Higham broke off.

  ‘My God! Now it’s drifting down into Tugwell’s Purified Water apparatus!’

  He turned to Simon.

  ‘Get those things out of here!’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Get them out!’

  Mr Higham was in such a fury that Simon didn’t argue. Hastily, he shovelled all the flour babies, including his own, into the bin bag.

  ‘Hurry up! Quick! Get them out of here! Take them away!’

  Still scowling, Simon dragged the bin bag towards the door.

  ‘But where shall I –?’

  Mr Higham was in no mood to solve Simon’s problem.

  ‘Just get them out! Take them away! I don’t care if you kick the damn things to bits. Just get them out of this building! Now!’

  Obediently, Simon dragged the heavy bin bag out of the door and back past the other laboratories. He was in no mood to take care going through the swing doors, and the bag snagged on one set of floor catches after another. The trail of flour he was leaving behind grew wider and deeper with each step.

  He’d reached the main door out of the science block when he ran into Miss Arnott.

  ‘What are you doing out of class?’ she asked. ‘The bell rang for the end of break several minutes ago.’

  Simon considered. He could have claimed that he was taking the flour babies to the science block. But it was unlikely that Miss Arnott would believe him, since he was clearly off the other way.

  He could claim he was taking them back to his own classroom. But she was more than capable of watching till he’d gone through the door. And, like messengers of old who brought bad news and were killed for their pains, Simon seriously doubted the wisdom of being the one to bring the flour babies back to Mr Cartright.

  Or he could say nothing, as usual.

  He said
nothing, as usual.

  Miss Arnott patted her shoulder bag, to check she still had her bottle of aspirins with her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Simon, but I have no choice. If you don’t have a reason to be out of class, I’m forced to give you a detention.’

  ‘It will have to be Monday week,’ Simon warned her. ‘I’m fully booked till then.’

  ‘Oh, Simon!’ said Miss Arnott, pressing the points on her temple where her headaches always started.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Simon assured her valiantly. ‘I don’t mind.’ And it was true. Between trying to explain, and taking another detention, he much preferred the detention. It was easier.

  ‘Monday week, then.’

  Like an unseasonal Santa, Simon nodded, gripped the bin bag, and moved off grimly down the corridor. Miss Arnott stepped aside to let him pass.

  And saw the trail of flour.

  ‘Simon –’

  ‘Yes, Miss Arnott?’

  But she had gone, fleeing to the staffroom to get some water for her aspirins. Simon stood looking at her footprints down the flour. Something – call it prescience, call it second sight – warned him Miss Arnott wouldn’t be with them very much longer. The woman was losing her grip, that was quite obvious. And if there was one thing you needed to be a teacher, it was grip. You needed it from a quarter past eight in the morning till a quarter past four at night. He stopped to count the hours on his fingers. Eight. It sounded a major grind, but, when you came to think, it was only a third of each day. Eight measly hours. If poor Miss Arnott couldn’t even manage that, then she’d better not leave and have a baby.

  Now there was a real job, thought Simon. Twenty-four-hour shifts. Every day. For nearly twenty years. No breaks. No holidays. It made one of Hyacinth’s parties look like a mayfly’s quick blink. Being a parent was pretty well a life sentence. Why, if instead of going off to hospital to have a baby all those years ago, his mother had stabbed someone to death with a bread knife, she’d be out of gaol by now. Twice over, probably, if she’d been good.

  Simon tugged his own flour baby out of the bin bag and stared at her. The more you thought about it, the more extraordinary it was, this business of having babies. No doubt about it, it was dangerous. It slowed you up. It tied you down. It cramped your style. It brought out the spy and the nag in everyone around you. And it made being a teacher look like party-time. No wonder his father hadn’t been able to stick it. How had he even lasted a thousand and eight hours? That was twice as long as Simon had looked after his flour baby. And look at his mother! Her score was up in the hundreds of thousands already! She must be a real heroine. She must be a saint.