Flour Babies - Anne Fine [23]
Simon called her attention back, just for a moment.
‘What was he whistling?’
She turned and stared.
He asked again.
‘What was he whistling? When he strolled out of the gate with his hands in his pockets, what tune was he whistling?’
She shook her head.
‘Oh, Simon! How should I remember that?’
He didn’t push his luck saying so, but for the life of him he couldn’t see why it was any more strange than remembering whether a man had cornflakes or bran mix the day he walked out of the gate and down the street and out of your life for ever. Surely the tune he was whistling was far more important. It might, after all, be a clue to what he was thinking. And what would someone only a very few years older than Simon himself have in his mind as he walked out to begin his life all over again, somewhere different? What would he be whistling? ‘Faraway Roamer?’ ‘Long and Lonesome Road?’ ‘Goin’ to the City and Ain’t Never Comin’ Back?’
And now, in the stuffy detention room, the tunes he’d thought of came back, one by one, and idled through his mind as his pen tracked over the paper, steadily setting down in his flour baby diary everything his mother had told him the night before. When little snatches of song broke through his clenched teeth in a soft whistling, Miss Arnott didn’t bother to hush him. He wasn’t trying to disturb the others, after all. He didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it. And while he was so absorbed, she could keep making her quiet circuits of the room, and coming up behind to peep over his shoulder and read the last few sentences he’d written.
And what was strangest of all the things Mum said was that my father wasn’t even cheesed off or in a mean mood that day. Somehow that makes it seem as if he wasn’t so much leaving us as moving on to whatever it was he wanted next. And I’ve realized something else. I’ve realized that, if I hadn’t been there, already born, my dad would by now be just one of those old boyfriends that Mum’s forgotten completely. If they hadn’t had me between them, she probably wouldn’t even get his name right by now, let alone remember what he looked like and what he ate for breakfast.
I just wish I knew what he was whistl -
The bell rang.
Miss Arnott jumped back so, when they all swivelled in their seats to look at her hopefully, Simon wouldn’t realize she’d been reading his work.
‘Is that it?’
‘Yes. Off you go.’
He wasn’t as quick as usual at stuffing his things in his bag, and making for the door. Miss Arnott took the chance to speak to him.
‘Simon –’
He turned.
She didn’t know quite how to put it without insulting him. In the end, she just said companionably:
‘You wrote an awful lot today.’
He shrugged.
She tried again.
‘Sometimes people just take time to get started with schoolwork. Late bloomers, we call them. They muck about for years, not really seeing the point of any of it. And then one day light dawns, and they actually begin to enjoy it.’
She waited.
Simon said nothing.
She knew she might as well drop it. But out of sheer, burning curiosity, she couldn’t help trying one last time.
‘Do you think that might be what’s happened to you today?’
Simon inspected his huge feet. He didn’t actually regret putting his energy into his work for the whole of the period she’d been watching him. But most of the early enthusiasm, and all of the guilt, had drained away now. He felt like an empty pen cartridge, used and spent. Just for a moment he did consider the idea of trying to stay a new person, a born-again Simon, religiously doing his homework and handing it in on time, spending his lunch hours in the library, discussing study projects in depth with his teachers. After all, the last forty minutes hadn’t been too bad. His hand was aching, yes. And there was a red patch on the side of his finger where he’d been gripping the pen (though that was nothing compared with the battering he took for granted in ten minutes’ football). No, what Simon didn’t like – stronger than that, what he hated - about the last forty minutes was that