Flour Babies - Anne Fine [33]
‘ “What gets me is that I get seriously ticked off for playing my radio so soft I can’t even hear it. This baby is switched up to Volume 10 all night, and when I come down in the morning firing on only one cylinder because I’ve had no sleep, everyone tells me we’re lucky it isn’t our baby. I wish it were. I’d soon put an end to its bleating.” ’
Everyone turned to look at Philip, who blushed.
‘Go on,’ Tariq begged Mr Cartright. ‘Go on with the story, sir. Find his Day 12.’
Mr Cartright found Philip’s Day 12.
‘ “I went round and told that woman next door I wasn’t getting much sleep, and she went totally unpicked. I only just managed to get off the doorstep ahead of the lava. I don’t understand people with babies, really I don’t.” ’
A warm, full-throated cheer of agreement greeted this last announcement.
‘Yeh! People with babies have to be totally unhinged.’
‘Barking mad.’
It was Sajid, as usual, who put the point over most coherently.
‘I mean, they stroll round all day with these real ones tucked under their arms that keep bawling and messing and having to have their bums wiped –’
‘Not just their bums!’ interrupted Henry. ‘My mum says you have to keep wiping their noses.’
‘Grotesque!’
‘Disgusting!’
‘Just the thought of it makes you feel sick.’
‘And then they yowl all night!’
A fresh onset of grumbling from the back row proved to be Philip Brewster’s personal corroboration of this last complaint.
‘That’s all I said to her, that it had been yowling all night. And she went unpicked.’Sajid went on with his allegations.
‘And some of them are even heavier than ours. My aunty brings hers round and it weighs twenty-four pounds. Twenty-four pounds! And my aunty still has to carry it. It still can’t walk!’
Wayne Driscoll broke in at this point.
‘That’s definitely the thing that gets me about them. They can’t walk. They can’t talk. They can’t kick a ball, or even get the spoon anywhere near their own faces.’
‘They’re just a total nuisance.’
‘You can’t blame Robin for booting his in the canal.’
‘His flour baby was lucky,’ Tariq told them darkly. ‘In the good old days, people used to dump babies out on the mountainside.’
‘Or cook and eat them.’
Mr Cartright felt obliged to step in at this point to pull 4C’s lively discussion back on the rails.
‘No, I don’t think so, George. Not cook and eat them.’
‘Oh yes, sir.’ George was adamant. ‘They taste exactly like pork. I read it in a book.’
The general clamour for more information was almost drowned out by potential individual researchers.
‘What book?’
‘Do you still have it?’
‘Can I borrow it?’
‘Pork?’
‘What about crackling? Do babies make proper crackling?’
Hastily, Mr Cartright wellied in again.
‘People with babies aren’t all barking mad,’ he told them. ‘In fact, any one of you lot might choose to have one some day. Not to mention the fact that many people fetch up with babies by accident.’
The rush of feeling engendered by this observation astonished even Mr Cartright.
“That’s terrible, that is!’
‘Having a baby by accident!’
‘Strick!’
‘I’d never have one by accident. Never!’
Bill Simmons seemed almost in tears at the idea.
‘It’s horrible even to think about. One careless moment and then – hell on wheels!’
Gwyn clearly agreed with him.
‘Your whole life ruined by one slip.’
‘Shocking!’
Luis Pereira took full advantage of his reputation for knowing more girls than anyone else in the class.
‘And it might not even be your fault,’ he warned them all conspiratorially.
There was sheer consternation at the thought that anyone present might end up with a baby through no real fault of his own. For the second time in under three weeks, 4C fell absolutely silent.
Russ Mould rose to his feet.
‘Suppose –’
Words failed him.
Mr Cartright looked at him encouragingly.
‘Yes, lad?’
‘Suppose –’
Once again, Russ couldn’t carry on.
Mr Cartright looked blank. But all the others were clearly finding it easier to interpret the look of baffled horror on Russ’s face.
‘Yes! Yes! Russ is right! Suppose you get stuck –’
‘With someone –’