Flour Babies - Anne Fine [19]
Still, mine has been a total drag all day.
I thought my mother was a real meaniefor not looking after her for a measly two hours while I did football. After all, she’s had enough practice looking after people. She’s looked after me for 122,650 hours, if Foster’s calculator works all right. And apparently I was quite noisy, and ate a lot, and made huge messes. Maybe that’s why my dad only managed to stick a pathetic 1008 hours. Foster says that makes him 121.6765 times more of a meanie than my mum, but I reckon Foster may have pressed some of the wrong buttons.
When it came, Dr Feltham’s response was even more of a shock to Simon than it was to Mr Cartright.
‘But this is splendid, Eric! Absolutely splendid! Look what the lad’s learned already. On only the first day he’s grasped that, even freed from three of the principal disadvantages of parenthood, the responsibilities are immense. He’s learned a little about his own early childhood development. And he’s even branched out into some quite sophisticated arithmetical calculations, working in tandem with this Foster.’
Behind the door, Simon lifted his head from his hands, and stared at the wall in astonishment. Could he be hearing right? Was this praise?
Outside, Dr Feltham glanced again at the laboriously written page.
‘Interesting that he already thinks of his sack of flour as female. What do you make of that, Eric?’
But, too excited to wait for Mr Cartright’s opinion on the matter, he went on to decode Simon’s second page.
DAY 2
Today Macpherson got a funny look in his eye, grabbed my flour baby, and gave her a bit of a chew down the bottom of our garden. Mum says I am lucky our dog has such clean slobber and most of it came off.
If I ever have a real baby, I will certainly make sure it gets all its shots against rabies.
I am watching Macpherson very carefully indeed.
Dr Feltham waved the page in the air.
‘See?’ he crowed to Mr Cartright. ‘See, Eric? On the second day he’s learning about the staining capacity of canine salivary exudate on woven organic material –’
‘Slobber on sacking!’
In his enthusiasm, Dr Feltham failed to catch Mr Cartright’s tone of outright scorn.
‘Exactly so!’ he agreed. ‘Not only that, but he’s already begun to reflect on the vital importance of primary childhood inoculation.’
He stabbed the sheet of paper with his forefinger.
‘For all we know, Eric, this lad may already have gone to the trouble of looking up the first presenting symptoms of rabies. How else would he know what to watch for in Macpherson?’
Behind the door, the look on Simon’s face was turning from bewilderment to pride. It wasn’t often that his work was praised. In fact, now he came to think about it, he couldn’t recall it ever happening before. Maybe he should have stayed in Dr Feltham’s class, where he might have been properly appreciated. It was a shame that interfering ear’ole Martin Simon had come along and bounced him out of there on the first morning. What did it matter which way round you wrote your name? Martin Simon. Simon Martin. What was the difference, anyway?
Buoyed with fresh confidence, Simon rocked on his heels in happy expectation while Dr Feltham rustled his way through the loose sheets of paper, searching for the third page of his diary.
DAY 3
Today Hooper got hold of my flour baby for a bit of a muck-about so I called him an animal and stamped on his sandwiches. Then Mr Cartright puffed in, saving my flour baby from doom and giving us both a detention.
Not me and the flour baby. Me and Hooper.
Behind the door, Simon lowered his gaze to the tiled floor. For the first time in his life, he regretted not having tried just that little bit harder, done that little bit more. He felt somehow he’d let Dr Feltham down. And through the door he heard with a twinge of shame the disappointed tones:
‘A lot less learned yesterday, admittedly. But never mind, Eric. We shall have to content ourselves with hoping the lad makes the