Flour Babies - Anne Fine [41]
Mr Cartright’s face darkened. Science Fair! Science Fair! There was still half a week before it even started, and already he was heartily sick of it. Why, the business disrupted the whole term. If every other school in creation could tack this sort of licensed chaos on to the very last week, why on earth couldn’t Dr Feltham? Really, the man was getting too big for his boots.
Mutiny rose in Mr Cartright. Before he could stop himself, a string of unteacherly words sprang from his lips and rang down the corridor with such force that Simon was shocked. Not that he hadn’t used language as bad as that himself. Worse, in fact. And quite often. But for Old Carthorse to start frothing at the mouth, and let fly with such a blue flood – well!
Simon gazed at his teacher with a new respect.
‘And as for you!’ Mr Cartright finished up, glowering horribly at Simon. ‘You can just put down that pile of junk, and come back to the classroom for the weigh-in.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Simon laid the oscilloscopes and Wishart’s Digital Sine-Wave Generator down on the floor, and submissively fell in behind as his teacher strode off down the corridor.
‘That’s better,’ muttered Mr Cartright. All very well, he was thinking, this business of Simon being of good cheer. But unfortunately, just like anything else in a school, it could be taken just that bit too far.
His bad mood lasted as far as the classroom.
‘Right!’ he bellowed, as he came through the door in time to catch Philip Brewster practising scissor jumps over Sajid’s prams. ‘That’s it! I’ve had enough! You can just push that tin juggernaut in the corner, and line up with your little sacks of flour. I’m taking them in, and giving them back to Dr Feltham.’
‘Giving them back?’
Mr Cartright totally misunderstood the nature of their astonishment and concern.
‘Yes. Giving them back. I know it’s four days too early, but you can just spend the time getting your diaries up to date.’
‘But –’
‘No buts!’ roared Mr Cartright. ‘Just get your flour babies, please, everyone.’
He stood beside the scales.
‘Who wants to be first?’
From the thunderstruck silence that followed, he took it that no one wanted to be first.
‘How about you, George?’
George was too baffled even to shake his head.
‘Henry?’
Henry looked to the others to sort out this obvious oversight. But, seeing him turn away, Mr Cartright moved on impatiently.
‘What about Rick? Not here? No, of course not. What about you, then, Russ? Are you ready to hand over your flour sack? One last weighing, and the thing will be off your hands for ever. How does that sound?’
Russ glanced up from picking cat hairs off his flour baby. He didn’t realize that, by now, everyone else in the class was staring at Simon Martin expectantly, waiting for the one amongst them who had first burst in extolling the virtues of this particular experiment to break out of his ashen-faced paralysis and clear up this obvious confusion about the way it should end. Returning his attention to picking off the cat hairs, Russ simply asked:
‘But what about the Glorious Explosion?’
Mr Cartright stared.
‘The Glorious What?’
‘The Glorious Explosion.’ Russ looked up again. ‘Simon told us that, on the last day, there’d be a Glorious Explosion. We’d all get to kick our flour babies to bits.’
‘Kick them to bits?’
Mr Cartright could scarcely hide his amusement. ‘Kick the flour babies to bits? And you believed him?’
He looked round and saw all their crestfallen expressions.
‘You did!’ he declared. ‘You all believed him!’
He turned to Simon, whose stupefaction was giving way to deep embarrassment.
‘You managed to convince them that, on the last day, they’d get to kick over a hundred pounds of sifted white flour around?’
Simon nodded.
Mr Cartright spread his arms wide.
‘Here? In my classroom?’
Simon nodded again.
And then, slowly, seismically, Mr Cartright began chuckling. As he gripped the sides of his