Flour Babies - Anne Fine [14]
‘Are you sure it’s clean?’
Wayne blinked down like an owl caught in a torch’s glare.
‘Clean?’
‘Yes. Are the pipes clean?’
‘Grief, Sime!’
But already Simon was stepping on the lavatory seat and hoisting himself up on the partition beside Wayne. He ran his finger along the lower of the two pipes.
‘It’s filthy! It needs a good wipe.’
‘Sime! Don’t be a plague-spot! We’re already late!’
‘It’ll only take a minute.’
Slithering down the partition wall, Simon dived under the nearest sink, in search of a cloth.
‘Sime…’
‘Hold on, Wayne. There must be a cloth somewhere round here.’
‘Sime! Pass up my dolly thing! Now!’
‘I don’t believe this! Ten lavs, ten sinks, and no cloth! I mean, I’m not fussy, but wouldn’t you think –’
‘That’s it, Sime!’
Wayne let himself down to the floor, picked up his flour baby, scrambled back up, and shoved it tight between the pipes.
‘It’ll get filthy, Wayne.’
Wayne wasn’t listening. Rubbing the grime on his fingers off on to his tracksuit, he made for the door.
‘Bye, Sime! Enjoy your press-ups!’
Simon lifted his own flour baby out of his sports bag.
‘Come on, sweetheart,’ he told her. ‘Let’s go outside where it smells less hoofy. We’ll find you somewhere nice to sit, in the fresh air.’
The place he chose was a bush a few yards behind the one goal still flooded in sunlight. He thrust the flour baby into the rather meagre greenery, desperately hoping she would appear to be no more than a bundle of towel to the circle of his team mates already booting the ball to one another in the warm-up. Mr Fuller was watching him dangerously, arms folded, from the side of the pitch. But still Simon took his time, wedging the flour baby firmly into the bush. Mr Fuller was the least of his problems. At least now the snoopers couldn’t pick on him. She was there, in sight, and she was clean and safe. Mr Fuller could punish him for being late by giving him fifty press-ups. But if Simon got thrown off the flour baby project, he might miss The Glorious Explosion.
And it was going to be brilliant. That much he knew. Once or twice since Mr Cartright dealt out the flour babies, Simon had suffered moments of doubt. It struck him that he might somehow have misheard the conversation in the staffroom, or missed the point. And even if he hadn’t, one question still remained to be answered. Was the whole business worth it? After all, it wasn’t generally Simon’s way to stick at a project for the length of a lesson, let alone for a whole three weeks. Would any – Could any explosion Mr Cartright had to offer be worth the grind of dragging this flour baby around, keeping her clean, for twenty-one days of his life?
Yes. Yes, it could and would. Hadn’t he heard that from the expert himself, Dr Feltham? Running to join the warm-up, Simon braced himself against the look on Mr Fuller’s face by remembering what had happened that very afternoon, in the school corridor. He played it through his brain one more time, like a favourite moment on video. Mr Cartright had been beached up on the radiator outside the classroom door, seemingly doing nothing more strenuous than admiring the knot in his laces. It looked the picture of an unofficial break: the teacher idling outside in the corridor, the class causing mayhem within. But anyone who had strolled back late to Miss Arnott’s class last year as often as Simon knew the set-up for what it was. Mr Cartright wasn’t resting. He was listening. In fact, he was about to pounce. What he was doing out there in the corridor was taking a moment to work out to which of the hoodlums inside he would most enjoy awarding a punishment essay.
Simon was accustomed to this old routine. At any moment, Mr Cartright would heave his great carcass off the radiator shelf, sidle softly to the door, take a deep breath, and let it out on the other side in such a bellow that poor Miss Arnott, in the next-door room, would all but fall off her chair from fright.
Simon slid