Flour Babies Read online

  ‘She must be absolutely sick of me,’ he told the flour baby.

  But it wasn’t true, and he knew it. The words even rang a little hollowly down the corridor. Because Simon knew in his heart that, give or take the odd day when he’d done something truly daft like feeding Gran’s wig to Tullis’s alsatian, or throwing that cactus at Hyacinth, she was quite fond of him really. That was the problem.

  ‘That’s how the trap works/he explained to the flour baby. “That’s how it gets you. First you know nothing. Then it’s far too late.’

  He paused.

  ‘Unless you’re a tall ship.’

  A tall ship…

  His father…

  Simon sat down on the bin bag, which bulged voluptuously beneath his weight, and formed a snug nest around him. He was thinking hard.

  His father.

  Experimentally, he rolled the words out, considering them in a new way.

  ‘My father. My father. My father.’

  Who?

  Who?

  ‘Who?’

  The live echo was Robin, sent to track him down, and bring him back for a roasting.

  ‘Exactly!’ said Simon. ‘Who?’

  But Robin was in no mood for riddles. He was on a mission.

  ‘Out of that bag, Sime. Time to get back to base. Old Carthorse is smouldering in his socks.’

  ‘You see,’ explained Simon, ignoring him totally, ‘I don’t know who he is. And he doesn’t know who I am. And so what Mum and Gran say is quite right. The fact that he walked out is really nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Out of the bag, Sime! Time’s up!’

  ‘I’m not saying what he did was right,’ Simon went on. ‘Sailing off like that and leaving my mum to look after me for ever and ever.’ He poked the flour baby. ‘Though after lugging this thing about for three weeks, I can understand how it happened. I’m just saying that it shouldn’t – doesn’t – matter to me any longer.’

  ‘Yes, Sime. Now out of the bag, please.’

  ‘You see, I’m finished with him,’ Simon persisted. ‘In fact, in a way, we never even started. He’s really nothing at all to do with me. And out there in the world there are millions and millions of people who have nothing to do with me, who don’t even know me. They all get on perfectly well without me. And I get on perfectly well without them.’

  But Robin’s patience had run out.

  ‘Sime, I’m not getting in trouble for you. I’m going back now. I’m going to tell Old Carthorse I found you but you wouldn’t come. You were too busy sitting in a flour bag, spouting about your family.’

  It was as if Simon didn’t even hear him.

  ‘And what I’ve realized is that my father is just one more person on the planet who doesn’t know who I am. That’s all he is. And only the people who know you really count.’

  ‘I’m counting, Sime.’

  ‘And so my mother counts. And Gran. And Sue.’

  ‘One…’

  ‘But not him. He doesn’t count.’

  ‘Two…’

  ‘Not that I’m blaming him. But he doesn’t count.’

  ‘Three!’

  Despairing of forcing Simon to see sense, Robin turned to go back to the classroom. And as he reached the bend in the corridor, he could still hear faintly, from behind, the sound of Simon holding forth to his flour baby.

  ‘I feel a lot better now, really I do. I don’t think I knew how much the whole business has been bothering me. But I feel different now. I feel free.’

  The flour baby stared back out of her sympathetic, long-lashed eyes.

  ‘You do see, don’t you?’

  The look on her face never altered.

  ‘You understand?’

  The flour baby watched him impassively.

  And slowly, inexorably, Simon came back to his senses. What was he doing, sitting in a school corridor in a nice, comfy bin bag, chatting to a lump of flour? Was he cracked?

  Simon leaped to his feet as if he’d been scalded. Flour baby! She wasn’t a flour baby. She was a silly, lifeless bag of flour. She wasn’t even a she. She was an it. What was the matter with him? For nearly three weeks now, he’d been discussing his life with a flour sack. Was he unhinged? This thing he was holding was nothing more than part of some boring school project. She wasn’t real. None of them were real.

  Grasping the corners of the bin bag, he upended it forcibly. Flour sacks spilled far and wide. That’s all they were. Flour sacks! Sacks of flour!

  Picking one up, he hurled it at the ceiling. It split, showering flour all over. Simon didn’t care. He felt the most extraordinary relief, as if he’d suddenly been let out of gaol; as if, swimming hopelessly round and round after a shipwreck, he’d spotted lights on land; as if the doctor and the vicar and the teacher had come to tell him they were wrong, just a mistake, he wasn’t going to have to be a parent yet after all.

  It was all over. The relief of it! He hurled another flour baby. And another. Because it had been a near thing, a very near thing. He’d really grown to love his flour baby. He’d really cared about her. But she wasn’t real! And so he was free! Free, free, free

  The next flour baby caught on the light fitting and tore. Ecstatically, Simon lifted his face to the cascade of flour spilling down on him, and hurled the next flour baby harder. Why should he care? Hadn’t Mr Higham all but given him permission, after all? 7 don’t care if you kick the damn things to bits. Just get them out of here.’ And Simon had.

  Kick them to bits, though?

  Great idea!

  He kicked one, and then another. Flour exploded all over. It billowed down the corridor in mushrooming white clouds. Each time he kicked another flour sack, more huge puffs of pure white transformed the dull corridor into a storm of snow, a dazzling blizzard – a glorious, glorious explosion.

  The flour was drifting up the walls, and settling ankle-deep. Who cared? Not huge, white, flour-kicking Simon. There would be time enough to be responsible when he was older. When the right moment came, there would be all the time in the world to be a good father.

  But not now. Not while he was so young. Not while he had the strength and power and energy to do anything, and all his horizons were giddy and bright, and wider than he could imagine.

  Boot… Boot… As flour flurried and swirled in arctic chaos, Simon raised his arms to it in triumph. He wouldn’t make the same mistake as his father. Oh, no. He wasn’t going to pin himself down years too soon, and have to make the bitter choice between snatching back his own life, and leaving some child to dawdle down Wilberforce Road every day, talking inside his head to some crinkly blue-eyed father he’d had to make up all by himself, because the real one hadn’t stayed around.

  He’d never do that. Never, never, never. He’d wait till he was ready. He’d take care. And then, one day maybe, when he felt like it…

  Boot… Boot…

  Flour rained on him. It ran all over him in rills and rivulets. It swirled all about him. He was a snowman, a yeti, a walking avalanche. Boot… Boot… He took all the petty frustrations of three weeks out on the tattered bags of flour. ‘Don’t leave her there, Sime.’ ‘Be careful.’ ‘Are you sure she’s safe?’ Is this what his mum was feeling all those years ago, when she dragged him down the club so she could let fly playing badminton one measly hour a week? How could he have leaned over the balcony nagging at her like that? How could he?

  Boot… Boot… Boot… More bags split and showered flour. His mother was a saint. He’d take her flowers. He’d bully Sajid into lending some of his ill-gotten gains, and he’d take his mum a dozen red roses. She deserved them.

  Simon dipped his arms elbow deep in flour, and, ripping the last few flour babies apart at the seams, he shook the flour all over. He was so happy, nothing could spoil it. They could give him detentions till hell froze. He didn’t care. An hour a day? Chicken-feed! Look at what he’d just escaped!

  He couldn’t help it. He burst into song.

  ‘Unfurl the sail, la
ds, and let the winds find me

  Breasting the soft, sunny, blue rising main –’

  The strong voice rang out in the storm of flour. Scooping up more handfuls, he tossed them around him, white on white. Oh, lucky, lucky Simon!

  Toss all my burdens and woes clear behind me,’ he carolled.

  ‘Vow I’ll not carry those cargoes again.’

  The flour gusted round him like a good sou’wester.

  ‘Sail for a sunrise that burns with new maybes –’ Louder and louder he sang. He wasn’t trapped. He would be punished, but he wasn’t trapped. And there’d be time enough to be responsible.

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

  There weren’t many bits of sacking left now. The flour spread all the way down to the corner. A pity about there being nothing at all by 4C in the Science Fair. Still, never mind. At least they’d learned a lot.

  The matchless voice soared.

  ‘Others may settle to dandle their babies –’

  With one last kick at the flour, Simon set off down the corridor.

  ‘My heart’s a tall ship, and high winds are near.’

  Martin Simon, taking the opportunity of a trip to the lavatories to finish the last pages of The Quest for The Holy Grail, lifted his head from the words he was reading.

  ‘Here is the source of valour undismayed,’ he couldn’t help repeating, whispering it softly to himself. For it did seem that here in front of him was someone magically tall and strong, who walked like a knight in his aura of pure white – awesome and amazing.

  Martin Simon flattened himself against the wall as Simon Martin strode past, singing.

  And Mr Cartright, testily making his way along the corridor to fetch his errant pupil, heard the glorious, glorious tenor voice echoing from ceiling and walls, and fell back respectfully to let the young vision in white sail past, like a tall ship, out into his unfettered youth.