Flour Babies - Anne Fine [37]
‘You’ll catch it,’ his mother warned him cheerily. ‘Look at the poor little mite. Slobber, toothmarks, bran-smears. And that’s just the last five minutes.’
‘She’s all right,’ Simon said shortly. He poked her again. ‘Aren’t you?’
The flour baby didn’t demur. But peering more closely as he shoved her away in his bag, Simon could see that she was hardly in a state to pass muster at the twice-weekly weigh-in. Not only had she become grimy beyond belief over the last few days, but her corners were frayed and her bottom was leaking.
Simon gave her the look that never failed to send Miss Arnott scurrying for her aspirins. How could something that couldn’t even walk get into such a mess? What a hiccup!
And now his mother was handing him a plastic bag.
‘You’d better take this for her,’ she warned. ‘The forecast is rain.’
He could have pointed out that any rainwater that fell on the flour baby might clean her up a bit, or make up some weight from the leakage. But, frankly, he couldn’t be bothered. He was sick of the whole business.
Forcing the last spoonfuls of bran into his already bulging cheeks, he made a noise he hoped his mother would be charitable enough to take for a goodbye, and scooped up his school things and his flour baby.
Mrs Martin stood firmly between him and the door.
‘Goodbye, Simon,’ she said pointedly.
His mouth still stuffed to bursting, he grunted again.
She stood her ground.
‘Goodbye, Simon,’ she repeated patiently.
He recognized it for the yellow card.
He stood there, like a huge dummy, making the effort to chew and swallow his huge mouthful of bran.
Then:
‘Bye, Mum.’
She smiled at last, letting him off the hook. He took off down the path, leaving the door swinging on its hinges. Strange, he was thinking, how parents, like teachers, could keep up the nagging for years and years about tin-pot things like saying thank you and goodbye. He didn’t know how they did it. He’d go unhinged within a week. Every single morning he went through this performance with his mother about emptying his mouth and saying goodbye properly. Every single school morning! That was five times a week, thirteen weeks a term, three terms a year. Every year. How many times was that? Millions, at least. So how did she manage to stand there each day and go through the whole thing without flying off the handle and going at him with a meat-axe? He certainly wouldn’t manage it, that was for sure. He thought of himself as patient as the next man. But if he had to remind the flour baby more than a dozen times in a row about not leaving the back door wide open, or turning off the hot tap properly, or talking with her mouth full, he’d do a Foster and boot her straight in the canal. Maybe the reason why his father left was that, like Simon, he realized almost straight away he wasn’t up to the job.
Reaching the end of Wilberforce Road, Simon unaccountably burst into song.
‘Others may settle to dandle their babies –’ he warbled lustily, as, rounding the corner, he tripped over Wayne Driscoll who was fiddling about in the gutter.
‘What are you doing in that drain?’ Simon asked, picking himself up, and loath to believe the evidence of his own eyes, since Wayne appeared to be stooped over the grating, scooping up dirt and trickling it between his fingers into his flour baby through a small tear in the fabric.
Wayne’s brows were knitted in the fiercest concentration.
‘Hold it steady for me, Sime. I can’t get this dirt down the little hole.’
Simon squatted in the gutter and took Wayne’s bag of flour from him.
‘You could make the hole bigger/he suggested.
Wayne snorted.
‘Oh, ace idea, Sime! Give Old Carthorse two reasons to maul me!’
With his free hand, Simon tipped his own flour baby out of his bag.
‘If you’re in trouble, so am 1,’ he said. ‘Mine looks a lot worse than yours.’
Wayne took a break from trickling dirt to glance at Simon’s flour baby.
‘Strick, Sime! What a grime-bag! You’ll catch it this morning.