Flour Babies - Anne Fine [35]
Kill two birds with one stone, thought Mr Cartright.
Reaching down, he snatched Simon’s flour baby off the desk, and hid it behind his back. If he was going to tell a whopping great lie to stop the lad fretting all year, he’d make sure he had his full attention.
‘But one of your dad’s old teachers always said she’d happened to pass him walking down the street that day, and he was whistling “Sail Away”.’
‘Which teacher?’ Simon demanded.
‘I can’t remember her name,’ said Mr Cartright, adding hastily: ‘And nor will anybody else. She’s long gone now. But she was very dependable. If she said your dad was whistling “Sail Away”, then that’s definitely what he was whistling.’
He didn’t hang around for Simon to start asking him why he remembered such an insignificant piece of ancient gossip. He simply dropped Simon’s flour baby back on the desk, and took off as fast as a man of his bulk could go, across the room, not even slowing up to pull the occasional pair of pugilists apart, or tell Luis to stop chipping at his desk top.
He didn’t stop until he reached his desk.
‘Right!’ he bellowed. ‘That’s it. I’ve had enough. It’s nearly time, so clear off, the whole lot of you. Go home.’
This precipitated the usual tiresome performance, but in reverse this time.
‘But, sir! Sir! The bell hasn’t rung yet!’
‘Just go, Tariq. Go home, all of you, before I change my mind.’
He sat watching the usual riot and confusion that took place as they poured out. Simon wasn’t the first to reach the door, he noticed; but neither was he by any means the last. And the troubled look on his face had vanished. The power was back in his stride.
Content, Mr Cartright started to pack his own briefcase, ready to take off home. Not a bad lesson for 4C, he thought. Not bad. Not bad.
Contrary to expectation – against all odds – he’d managed to do something with them.
8
‘Go on,’ said Simon. ‘Sing it.’
‘I can’t.’ Simon’s mother turned to catch Macpherson creeping up on the flour baby, and swatted him with the tea towel. ‘You know I can’t sing.’
‘I’m not planning to give you marks out of ten,’ Simon assured her. ‘I just want to hear the words, and learn the tune.’
‘I don’t know all the words. I’m not even sure I’d get the tune right.’
‘Go on,’ Simon insisted. ‘Have a go.’
So Mrs Martin had a go. Wiping her hands dry, she leaned back against the sink, and, while Simon rocked the flour baby in his arms, deliberately provoking Macpherson into yelping spasms of jealousy, she sang out as bravely as she could.
‘Unfurl the sail, lads, and let the winds find me
Breasting the soft, sunny, blue rising main –’
She broke off.
Simon looked up.
‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘I’ve forgotten the next bit.’
Simon sighed with exasperation.
‘But that was only two lines. You only sang two lines.’
Mrs Martin threw the tea towel at Macpherson, who was surreptitiously taking advantage of the lull in the rocking to chew a bit more off one of the flour baby’s corners.
‘Two lines is all I can remember.’
‘Pathetic,’ said Simon.
He looked so morose, Mrs Martin felt sorry for him.
‘Maybe the rest will come back to me,’ she tried to console him.
But Simon wasn’t in the mood for waiting.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘We’ll ring Sue.’
Dumping the flour baby on the seat of the chair, he made for the telephone.
Shaking her head, Mrs Martin asked her son:
‘And why should Sue know the words?’
He didn’t dare suggest that, if it was the song his father had been whistling the very last time Sue ever saw him, then she might very well have tucked little snatches of it away in her brain.
He thrust the phone at his mother.
‘Just ring and ask.’
‘Don’t be silly, Simon,’ said Mrs Martin.
She reached down to prise the flour baby out from between