Flour Babies - Anne Fine [11]
From that day on, Simon had looked at himself with a whole new respect, a far greater interest. The other holiday-makers became almost accustomed to seeing the lad from the end plot contorting himself into odd shapes, not like the family near the showerhuts who did yoga, but simply in order to gaze at parts of his body he’d never really looked at properly before: heels, elbows, belly button, inner thighs.
‘God knows which bits of himself he stares at in private!’
‘Do you suppose the poor boy’s mental?’
‘It’s his mother I feel sorry for really.’
‘Do stop that, Simon! People will think you’ve got lice.’
Neither the neighbours’ whispered comments nor his mother’s sharp orders grazed Simon’s consciousness. He was busy. Busy probing his huge, lank body with a curiosity, a real wonder, he’d never felt before. All that went through his brain was ‘This is me’. But there was more to it than that, much more, though he could never have explained it, and, in the intervening years, no one had ever asked him.
He had a question for his mother now, though. Picking the last of Macpherson’s wiry hairs off the flour baby, he asked:
‘What was I like?’
His mother sucked a stray bean off her fingertip.
‘When?’
‘When I was a baby.’
Simon’s mother narrowed her eyes at him across the table. Give a boy a dolly, she thought, sighing inwardly, and he goes all broody within minutes. What hope is there for girls?
But it was a fair question, and he hadn’t asked it for a good few years. Her son deserved an honest answer.
‘You were sweet,’ she said. ‘Good as gold, and chubby as a bun, and you had bright button eyes. You were so lovely that perfect strangers kept stopping the pram in the street to coo at you and tell me how lucky I was to have you. Everybody wanted to blow raspberries on your tummy. No doubt about it, you were the most beautiful baby in the world.’
He knew she wouldn’t want him to spoil things by saying it, but he couldn’t help himself.
‘So why did my dad push off so quickly?’
His mother tried her usual tack of making a joke of the whole business.
‘Be fair, Simon. He did hang around for six whole weeks!’
But she could tell from the look on his face that the answer wasn’t working the way it usually did. So she tried throwing in her Old Crone imitation.
‘And there be those who say he could see into the future…’
But still Simon wouldn’t smile.
Mrs Martin gave up, and took another mouthful of her supper, watching him carefully to try and work out exactly how upset he was.
Simon propped the flour baby up in front of him, and stared at her beautiful round eyes. He felt sour all over suddenly. Suppose his dad was able to see the future. Did that make up for Simon not being able to see the past? Anyone who’d ever met their real dad could put it together somehow. Take off some middle-aged spread. Wipe out a few wrinkles. Add a bit of hair. But if you’d never so much as seen the man –
‘Why aren’t there any photographs? I know you didn’t have a proper wedding or anything, but why aren’t there any other photos?’
‘Simon! There are photos! There are lots.’
‘But not with him. There’s hardly a single one of him.’
‘That’s because he was usually the one holding the camera.’
‘You could have taken at least one good photo of him.’
She jammed her tea spoon back in the sugar bowl so hard that sugar flew out and sprayed all over.
‘And how was I supposed to know he was going to walk out on me? Women don’t always get a week’s notice, you know!’
Simon stuck out his tongue and, after a small, insolent pause, began licking the grains of spilled sugar from his wrists. Then he turned his attention to the flour baby.
‘Don’t lick her, Simon!’ And then, instead of adding, ‘She’s been in the dog basket’, his mother warned him: ‘You might give her germs.’
It wasn’t a very good joke. But the fact that she’d bothered to try and make one at all made Simon feel better. He realized that, for all she made light of it whenever the business of his father came up, she did understand he had reasons of his own to feel sensitive