Flour Babies - Anne Fine [50]
Obediently, Simon dragged the heavy bin bag out of the door and back past the other laboratories. He was in no mood to take care going through the swing doors, and the bag snagged on one set of floor catches after another. The trail of flour he was leaving behind grew wider and deeper with each step.
He’d reached the main door out of the science block when he ran into Miss Arnott.
‘What are you doing out of class?’ she asked. ‘The bell rang for the end of break several minutes ago.’
Simon considered. He could have claimed that he was taking the flour babies to the science block. But it was unlikely that Miss Arnott would believe him, since he was clearly off the other way.
He could claim he was taking them back to his own classroom. But she was more than capable of watching till he’d gone through the door. And, like messengers of old who brought bad news and were killed for their pains, Simon seriously doubted the wisdom of being the one to bring the flour babies back to Mr Cartright.
Or he could say nothing, as usual.
He said nothing, as usual.
Miss Arnott patted her shoulder bag, to check she still had her bottle of aspirins with her.
‘I’m sorry, Simon, but I have no choice. If you don’t have a reason to be out of class, I’m forced to give you a detention.’
‘It will have to be Monday week,’ Simon warned her. ‘I’m fully booked till then.’
‘Oh, Simon!’ said Miss Arnott, pressing the points on her temple where her headaches always started.
‘It’s all right,’ Simon assured her valiantly. ‘I don’t mind.’ And it was true. Between trying to explain, and taking another detention, he much preferred the detention. It was easier.
‘Monday week, then.’
Like an unseasonal Santa, Simon nodded, gripped the bin bag, and moved off grimly down the corridor. Miss Arnott stepped aside to let him pass.
And saw the trail of flour.
‘Simon –’
‘Yes, Miss Arnott?’
But she had gone, fleeing to the staffroom to get some water for her aspirins. Simon stood looking at her footprints down the flour. Something – call it prescience, call it second sight – warned him Miss Arnott wouldn’t be with them very much longer. The woman was losing her grip, that was quite obvious. And if there was one thing you needed to be a teacher, it was grip. You needed it from a quarter past eight in the morning till a quarter past four at night. He stopped to count the hours on his fingers. Eight. It sounded a major grind, but, when you came to think, it was only a third of each day. Eight measly hours. If poor Miss Arnott couldn’t even manage that, then she’d better not leave and have a baby.
Now there was a real job, thought Simon. Twenty-four-hour shifts. Every day. For nearly twenty years. No breaks. No holidays. It made one of Hyacinth’s parties look like a mayfly’s quick blink. Being a parent was pretty well a life sentence. Why, if instead of going off to hospital to have a baby all those years ago, his mother had stabbed someone to death with a bread knife, she’d be out of gaol by now. Twice over, probably, if she’d been good.
Simon tugged his own flour baby out of the bin bag and stared at her. The more you thought about it, the more extraordinary it was, this business of having babies. No doubt about it, it was dangerous. It slowed you up. It tied you down. It cramped your style. It brought out the spy and the nag in everyone around you. And it made being a teacher look like party-time. No wonder his father hadn’t been able to stick it. How had he even lasted a thousand and eight hours? That was twice as long as Simon had looked after his flour baby. And look at his mother! Her score was up in the hundreds of thousands already! She must be a real heroine. She must be a saint.
‘She must be absolutely sick of me,’ he told the flour baby.
But it wasn’t true, and he knew it. The words even rang a little hollowly down the corridor. Because Simon knew in his heart that, give or take the odd day when he’d done something truly daft like feeding Gran’s wig to Tullis’s alsatian, or throwing that cactus at Hyacinth, she was quite fond