Flour Babies - Anne Fine [43]
‘Who’s left?’ he called out. ‘Bill Simmons, do I have yours? Yes? Wayne, then.’
Wayne brought his flour baby up to the front.
‘Looks a bit thin,’ Mr Cartright said critically.
He threw the flour baby on the scales. The little steel pointer did its best, but, after a deal of desperate quivering, all it could manage was to struggle halfway across the scale.
‘Three pounds, seven ounces!’ Mr Cartright was incredulous. ‘Only three pounds, seven ounces! Do you realize that this thing of yours has lost getting on for half its body weight?’
Wayne scowled so horribly that even Mr Cartright thought better of pursuing the matter.
And that left only one.
‘Simon?’
Simon sat tight.
Mr Cartright looked up.
‘Simon?’ he said again.
Still Simon made no move. The boy looked ashen, Mr Cartright thought. Far more upset than could possibly be justified by the ring of hostile whispering around him. The boy was, after all, the most powerful member of the class by far. And fearless, too. If push came to shove, he could probably leave the whole pack of them lying bruised and battered on the pavement around him. So why on earth was he sitting there looking so wretched? Mr Cartright peered at him curiously. Could it be that he had truly believed all that nonsense about kicking the flour bags to pieces? Was this the sad snuffing of a glorious dream?
Really, if you thought about things too much, Mr Cartright decided, you could go quite unhinged, teaching 4C.
‘Simon!’ he bellowed. ‘Get yourself and your flour baby up here. Now!’
Like someone in a deep trance, Simon stood up, dug in his school bag and pulled out the flour baby. Like a sleepwalker, he came up to the scales. Reluctantly, he handed her over.
Mr Cartright stared.
‘What’s this?’
Simon forced himself out of his reverie.
‘Sir?’
Mr Cartright prodded the flour baby. Her bonnet promptly fell off, and she looked up at him at a distinctly rakish angle out of one badly smudged eye.
‘What’s this?’ Mr Cartright repeated.
Simon was baffled.
‘It’s my flour baby, sir.’
Mr Cartright’s look turned to one of dark displeasure.
‘But it’s disgusting,’ he thundered. ‘It’s utterly revolting. It’s in the most disgraceful state. It’s an absolute outrage.’
‘She did get a little bit grubby,’ Simon admitted.
‘Little bit grubby?’ Mr Cartright lifted the flour baby by one of its corners. ‘This isn’t grubby. This is black.’
‘Not exactly bl–’
But Mr Cartright didn’t give him the chance to argue.
‘I don’t know how you have the nerve to bring this travesty, this disgrace, up to my desk.’ He turned the flour baby over. ‘And what’s all this?’ he roared. ‘Burn! Toffee! Mud! Glue! Dribble!’
‘It’s not my dribble, sir,’ Simon hastened to point out. He was all set to embark on his prepared indictment of Macpherson when he realized it was too late. Mr Cartright had reached flashpoint. While everyone else in the room settled back in their seats to relish Simon’s discomfiture, Mr Cartright leaned over his desk, and stuck his angry face closer.
‘I’ve put up with a good deal from you already this term,’ he shouted at Simon. ‘I’ve put up with your dark mulligrubs, and your mucking about in Assembly, and your continual persecution of poor Miss Arnott. But if you think for one moment I am going to put up with being handed back this – this –’
He lifted the flour baby and shuddered.
‘This revolting little horror bag –’
He held it over the waste bin.
‘Then you are wrong. Quite wrong.’
The flour baby trembled in his angry grip as she hung, sagging and dishevelled, over whatever sticky remnants of food had recently been spat out under orders.
Simon’s eyes widened with panic. He couldn’t drop her in there. Surely he couldn’t.
He could, and did.
In a flash, with one of those lightning moves that kept him on the team, Simon had made the save. As Mr Cartright dropped the little sack of flour and turned away in irritation and disgust, Simon’s hands shot out and caught it. And with a simultaneous access of quick thinking, he kicked the waste bin, hard.
‘There!’ Mr Cartright said, satisfied at what he took to