Flour Babies Read online

  Robin scowled at him horribly.

  ‘Well, maybe your flour baby is a whole lot easier to look after than mine.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ scoffed Simon, though secretly he did think that it might be true. His own flour baby had a way of watching with those big round eyes that made her easy to look after. He often found himself chatting to her companionably. ‘Comfy?’ he’d ask, as he propped her on top of the rest of the stuff in his book bag. ‘Happy?’ as he lifted her to the top of the wardrobe (the only place Macpherson couldn’t get at her). Using his flour baby to join in a Glorious Explosion was going to be difficult enough. But at the very least it would be something extraordinary, something quite awesome. He couldn’t imagine just booting her in the canal.

  ‘What made you do it?’ he asked again.

  If it had been only Simon who was curious, Robin would have ignored the question. After all, everyone in the whole school knew by now that Simon Martin had gone quite daffy over his bag of flour. But the other three were watching him as well. Gwyn Phillips had even got off his bike. Everyone was standing waiting for his answer. They were, he thought, like a pack of jackals closing in on some poor wounded fawn.

  ‘I don’t know why I did it,’ he snapped. ‘I just lost my temper, didn’t I? I just got sick of the stupid thing staring at me day after day.’

  ‘Yours didn’t stare,’ Simon couldn’t help pointing out. ‘Yours didn’t have any eyes.’

  Robin turned on him.

  ‘Oh, go walk the plank, Sime! It’s all right for you. You don’t mind going around acting like a major wally. Nobody’s going to laugh at you, are they? Nobody’s going to tease someone the size of a gorilla for strolling about chucking a six-pound bag of flour under the chin, and singing it lullabies –’

  ‘Now look here, Foster –’

  But Robin was too annoyed to stop.

  ‘It’s all right for you, you great big-fisted ape. Nobody tangles with you. But what about the rest of us?’

  ‘Yeh!’

  Too true!’

  ‘Foster’s right.’

  Simon spun round to face the gang of traitors behind him.

  ‘You’re not taking his side?’

  But it seemed they were.

  Wayne Driscoll was the first to testify.

  ‘Robin’s right. I’m sick of mine, too. I’m sick of carrying it about everywhere I go, and trying to keep it dry and clean. I’m sick of the way it gets dirtier and dirtier without me even looking at it! I’m sick of putting it down somewhere perfectly all right for half an hour, and then, when I pick it up again, it’s practically gone black. I tell you, I’m just about ready to boot mine in the canal as well.’

  Simon tried to be reasonable.

  ‘Why don’t you put it into Sajid’s creche? He keeps them safe and clean.’

  Wayne had the answer ready.

  ‘I haven’t got any money, have I? I’m still owing for next door’s coal bin I borrowed.’

  Simon tried to be patient.

  ‘Look, Wayne,’ he said. ‘Luis’s mother is never going to let him have another Haunted House party. Not after all that mess last time. You won’t be using that coal bin as a coffin again for a long while. So give it back.’

  ‘Can’t, can I?’ Wayne snapped. ‘Not now it’s bust.And anyway, if it couldn’t even hold four ghouls and a vampire without falling apart at the seams, it’s not going to be able to hold coal again, is it?’

  His expression soured.

  ‘That’s what they’re saying next door, anyhow. A new coal bin or a trip to the police station. So as well as having to clear up all the mess, I’m having to buy them a new coal bin.’

  Simon was still searching for a solution.

  ‘You could just owe the money to Sajid.’

  This time, Wayne couldn’t help laughing in his face.

  ‘Do us a favour, Sime! If you weren’t so busy cuddling your new dolly all day, you’d know that Sajid’s already hired Henry and Bill to poke the money out of anyone who falls behind with their pram rent. Why do you think George is walking home with us today? He’s had his busfare robbed by Sajid’s hard nuggets.’

  Bitterly, he tilted his head to one side and did a creditable imitation of Sajid saying, ‘Very sorry, folks. That’s business!’

  But George was already pushing him aside in his eagerness to expand on his complaints himself.

  ‘That’s right. I’m sick of walking home. I’m sick of handing over all my money to Sajid, just to have a few measly hours off looking after this stupid thing every day. And I’m sick of getting no sympathy. Last night I was explaining how unfair it all was to my mother, and she just laughed. In fact, she said she wished Sajid had been running his pram creche when me and my brother were babies, because she’d happily have paid double the price he charges to get rid of us for a few hours. She says this flour bag is nothing to the trouble and bother of a real baby. She says, when it comes to looking after things, I don’t even know I’m born.’

  His face went dark.

  ‘I don’t get hardly any money anyway. I’ve already had to borrow from next week’s to pay Sajid last week’s pram rent. I can’t go on like this. By the time I give back the flour baby, I shall be months in debt. Months! I’m for kicking the thing in the canal now.’

  Before Simon could argue, Gwyn Phillips had chimed in.

  ‘Me, too! I’m fed up with mine. I’m fed up with having to tie the stupid thing safely on the back of my bike, and then go to all the extra trouble of wrapping it in a plastic bag in case some car wheel goes through a puddle and soaks it. I’m fed up with my mum and dad reminding me to take it upstairs with me every night, and bring it down again in the morning. I’m fed up with having to make sure it’s never left alone in the same room as our cat. I’m ready to boot mine in the canal along with everyone else’s.’

  And, to prove it, he started ripping the plastic bag containing his flour baby off the back of his bike.

  Simon was about to snatch it safely away when Wayne DriscoU stepped in front, holding his own flour baby ready for a drop-kick.

  ‘Let’s have a competition!’ he shouted. ‘See who can boot his flour baby furthest across the canal!’

  ‘See whose sinks quickest!’

  ‘See whose makes the most bubbles!’

  Simon moved closer to the canal, spreading his arms wide, to stop them.

  ‘No!’

  For a moment, they turned their attention back on him.

  ‘Don’t be such a pathogen, Sime!’

  ‘Wimpo!’

  ‘I tell you, this flour baby business is turning you into a real stain.’

  Simon stood his ground between the four of them and the slippery canal edge.

  ‘Listen,’ he begged. ‘I know you hate them. I know you all think they’re stupid and not proper Science and not worth bothering about, and you’d rather get mashed by Old Carthorse for losing them than trail them round one more day.’

  He spread his hands.

  ‘But it’s going to be worth it,’ he assured them. ‘It is! It is! If you can just hold on –’

  His eyes shone with the vision that had sustained him through eleven days.

  ‘It’s the explosion, you see,’ he explained. ‘It’s going to be brilliant. Amazing! Like one of those things in the Bible – you know – blood rivers and plagues of frogs and locusts and first-borns, and such. I promise you, it’s going to be one hundred pounds of sifted white flour exploding all over our classroom!’

  ‘Foster’s didn’t explode when he booted it,’ George pointed out sourly. ‘Foster’s just sank.’

  Fired with the iron conviction of the religious fanatic, Simon had no trouble at all coming up with a reason to dismiss this rather inconvenient observation.

  ‘Foster couldn’t have booted it hard enough.’

  Here was a challenge indeed. The little gang of them eyed one another, weakening.

  Wayne was the first to crack. After all, he’d poured scorn on Robi
n Foster often enough in games over the last three years. And facts were facts. Robin could barely kick a ball out of a paper bag.

  And it was true that, after eleven miserable days spent shackled to a flour baby, one brief booting of the thing into the canal did not match the glorious vision Simon kept holding out to them. Wayne wouldn’t put money on anyone else’s flour baby exploding over the water, anyway. Gwyn’s goal kick was worse than Foster’s. And George’s was no better. Their sacks of flour would probably sink, just like Robin’s, without trace. His own would explode, all right. No doubt about that. He wasn’t on the football team for nothing. But even then the flour would simply blow away over the water. There wouldn’t be a good and lasting mess.

  No. Whichever way you looked at it, one hefty kick over the canal would not make up for eleven ruined days.

  ‘All right,’ said Wayne. ‘You win. We’ll wait.’

  But there was still an unbeliever in their midst.

  ‘Why?’ George Spalder suddenly demanded. ‘Why should we wait? Just because Sime here keeps going on and on about his wonderful explosion? You’re crazy if you believe him. He must be wrong. Old Carthorse has taught in that classroom for four hundred years. He isn’t going to let anyone kick a hundred pounds of flour about in there. He’d have to be out of his mind. No. It’ll never happen. Sime must have got it all wrong.’

  Simon’s voice rang with honest conviction.

  ‘It’s what he said,’ he insisted. ‘I heard him. Don’t forget I was earwigging right outside the staffroom door! “Over a hundred pounds of sifted white flour exploding in my classroom.” That’s what he said. His exact words.’

  Now Wayne was torn between sense and desire.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, scuffing the side of his shoe against a clump of grass on the tow path. ‘It sounds pretty unlikely. But maybe Sime is right. After all –’ His voice rose as the rigour of his thinking was suddenly overwhelmed by the strength of his feelings. ‘After all, why else would we be forced to look after these floppy, useless, pathetic things for three whole weeks, with people snooping to make sure we do it right, if not to get us all so boiled up mad, we kick the stupid things to bits?’

  He glowered round, demanding an answer.

  ‘We were told why,’ George Spalder reminded him. ‘It’s to learn about ourselves, and how we feel about the job of being a parent. That was the point.’

  ‘Then it didn’t matter me booting mine into the canal,’ Robin said cheerfully. ‘Because I didn’t learn anything from mine. Not one single tiny thing. I dragged that stupid bag of flour round for eleven whole days, and all I learned is that I never, ever want a baby in my whole life unless someone else offers to look after it at least half the day, and there’s a free creche next door!’

  Everyone fell silent.

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Wayne, ‘that if people had the faintest idea what a bother they were, no one would ever have a baby.’

  ‘And,’ added Robin, ‘if they happened to fetch up with one by accident, anyone with any sense would run away.’

  He looked to Simon for agreement. But Simon turned his back.

  Then Robin realized.

  With a guilty glance at the others, he reached out and laid his hand on Simon’s shoulder.

  Instantly, Simon shook it off, and marched back along the tow path the way they had come.

  ‘What’s up with him?’ George Spalder asked, mystified.

  ‘Shut up, you great hiccup,’ whispered Robin. And he couldn’t help adding importantly: ‘Didn’t you know Sime’s dad only stuck six weeks of looking after him?’

  ‘No,’ George said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  He stared after Simon.

  ‘Not very long to have a dad, is it?’ he said.

  Robin said portentously:

  ‘It is exactly one thousand and eight hours.’

  Everyone looked at Robin with a new respect. Then, one by one, they turned to watch in sympathy as Simon drew further and further away from them along the tow path. It was perfectly clear that he didn’t want their company any longer.

  Gwyn got back on his bike.

  ‘I’ll be off, then.’

  George nudged Wayne. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’ He pulled Robin along with them. ‘You too, Robin. No point in hanging about here. He won’t turn round and come back till we’ve all gone.’

  And he was right. A minute or so after they disappeared between the trees on the bend, Simon glanced round to check the path was clear, and only then did he turn back again. Simon felt terrible. Unfit for company. Best left alone.

  Six weeks! Six whole weeks! Surely, he thought, as he kicked moodily at stones along the path, six weeks was long enough! What could have been wrong with him as a baby? What sort of little blot could he have been, that after six whole weeks his father hadn’t even thought him worth staying around for, worth bringing up? Simon had only had his flour baby eleven days, and already, just as he couldn’t imagine himself simply booting her into the canal out of temper, so he couldn’t think how his own father could just have walked out, whistling, one fine day. After all, Simon was real.

  So what had been wrong with him? Simon had seen other babies. Only that morning, on the way to school, he’d practically bumped into one. It was stuffed into one of those backpacks, and its mother was standing at the kerb on the corner, waiting for the light to go green. Eleven days before, Simon could have strolled past whole swarms of babies, and not even noticed them. Now he saw every one.

  It was wearing a bonnet studded with woolly knobs, with a ribbon bow under its chin. Both the baby and the bonnet looked very clean, Simon thought. Cheeks pink and gleaming. Wool as white as snow. He wondered how the parents managed it. For all his own studious efforts to protect her, his own flour baby seemed to be getting grubbier by the day.

  As if sensing his rather envious stare, the baby turned in the backpack to look at Simon. Its ribbon chin strap slipped across its mouth, and Simon stretched out a finger, thinking to push it back.

  The baby saw the finger coming. Instantly its bland pudding face was transfigured with a smile. To Simon it looked as if some mighty lightbulb had just been switched on in the baby’s head. The effect was magical. The little face shone.

  Simon grinned at the baby. What a doddle! To judge by the way it was beaming, you’d think Simon had just performed some absolutely unbelievable trick, some astonishing feat like doing a treble somersault with sparklers sticking out of his ears, and not just stuck out a grubby finger.

  He hooked the ribbon back under the baby’s chin. It didn’t flinch. Clearly it was so amazed and thrilled by the mere sight of the finger coming close that it didn’t even realize the point was to tug the bonnet straight.

  Drunk with power, Simon waggled the finger.

  Instantly the baby was reduced to paroxysms of mirth. It squirmed energetically in its backpack.

  Its mother turned round.

  ‘Sorry’ said Simon, and the light turned green.

  All the way over the road, Simon stayed a step behind the baby, waggling his finger just above its head. The baby kicked and crowed. Simon felt quite a pang when he had to peel away on the other side. He couldn’t remember ever delighting anyone so much, so easily. How old was that baby? He had no idea. He knew almost nothing about them. He did suppose that if one of those tiny, purplish new-born ones he’d seen on documentaries was put beside one of the hulking great pink ones you saw outside shops, he’d be able to tell the difference. But that was about it. Maybe, thought Simon, his dad was a duffer about babies too. Maybe, when he looked down at Simon gurgling blankly in his cot, he hadn’t realized that within weeks – or was it months? – he’d turn into something like that baby at the traffic lights, who could make you feel like a million dollars, just for being able to waggle a finger.

  That was the thing about babies, Simon decided. They were different from everything else. They were special. All of a sudden it was clear to him why everyone in the who
le world was forever queuing up to blow raspberries on their tummies. Even if you were a complete hiccup, leading a totally sad life, a baby thought you were a real star, the best thing since sliced bread, and worth falling out of a backpack to get one last backward look at. Small wonder everyone went round saying ‘Ooh!’ and ‘Aah!’ and cooing about how much they adored them. Before, Simon had always assumed that this was simply a bit of an act, to try and cheer up the new parents. It never occurred to him for a moment that it was sincere. But now he saw people meant it. They were saying what they thought. Babies were wonderful. And it was no more than the truth. Face facts – you’d never get something that good down the shops.

  And what was so good about them was that they weren’t really people – not yet, anyway. And so you could treat them differently. It was easier to like them. In fact, they were a bit like pets, the way you could feed and clean and tidy up after them day after day, and even if you got cheesed off, you didn’t feel they should be pulling their weight more. No one in his right mind would go all huffy because a baby wasn’t doing as much for him as he was doing for the baby.

  But people were a whole knottier prospect, with one side or another always feeling put upon, or taken for granted. Why, even Fruzzy Woods had got the final flick from Lucinda three days ago, for much the same sort of problem. ‘I’m finished with you!’ she’d yelled at him. ‘I’m sick of living on a one-way street! I cheered you on in all your football matches. I even chum you to practice. And what happens when I ask you to come and support me in my badminton final? You say you haven’t time!’ And now, each time Fruzzy phoned her after school to beg her to come out and talk, that’s all she’d say to him: ‘I haven’t time.’

  Compared to that, loving a baby was a piece of cake. In a sudden rush of affection, Simon halted in his tracks, tugged the flour baby out of his bag, and sat down with her on his knee beside the canal.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I like about you,’ he said, staring into her big round eyes. ‘You’re very easy to get on with. You’re not like Mum, always telling me to put my plate in the sink, or shut doors more quietly, or pick my shoes off the floor. You’re not like Gran, always telling me how much I’ve grown, and asking me what I’m going to do when I leave school. You don’t want me different, like all my teachers do. You don’t tease me, like Sue. And you don’t run off and leave, like my dad.’