Iggy and Me and the Baby

by Jenny Valentine

  On the way downstairs to the kitchen, Iggy’s chin began to wobble and her eyes filled up with tears. “I’m scared to have a teacher who isn’t Rwaida.”

  Mum kissed her on the nose and said, “What are we going to do with you?”

  “A biscuit would help,” Iggy sniffed.

  A biscuit usually does.

  At the kitchen table, Iggy blew on her hot milk. “What if Mr Hawthorne doesn’t know that it’s my turn to wipe the board on a Tuesday? What if he forgets I always collect the register on Fridays? How will he know where everybody sits? What if he tries to change stuff? What if he doesn’t like me? What if he only picks boys for all the good jobs because he is one?”

  “Don’t worry, Iggy,” I said. “It’ll be OK.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because Mr Hawthorne is actually just as nice as Rwaida, but in different ways.”

  Iggy shook her head. “I’ve heard he is very strict and he doesn’t let you talk in the line and there is no calling out or going to the loo when you need to.”

  “Well, then you will have to be quiet in the line and not call out or go to the loo all the time,” Dad told her.

  “I know,” Iggy said. “That is exactly what I’ve been worrying about.”

  “Mr Hawthorne was my teacher once or twice when my real teacher was away. He is actually a lot nicer than he looks,” I told her. “He’s very funny really and he’s got lots of good reading voices.”

  “What does that mean?” Iggy said, through her biscuit.

  “Well, when he’s being a giant, he sounds enormous and when he’s being a mouse, he sounds small and furry.”

  “How does he do that?” Iggy said.

  “I don’t know. He just does.”

  Iggy raised her eyebrows and picked the crumbs off the table.

  “What else does he do?” she asked.

  “He’s good at PE,” I said. “We played lots of pirate ship games in the hall and quite a bit of rounders.”

  “I’m not very good at rounders,” Iggy said. “I’m better at cutting and sticking and glitter.”

  “Well, you will get good at rounders,” Mum said. “And other things that Mr Hawthorne is going to teach you.”

  “Like what?” Iggy said.

  “Like Geography and Science and Maths and History,” Mum said.

  “Boy things,” mumbled Iggy.

  “No young lady,” Mum said. “Everybody things. Important things.”

  “He’s really not that bad,” I said.

  Iggy folded her arms and looked at the ceiling. “We’ll see.”

  On her first day in Mr Hawthorne’s class, Iggy did not want to go to school. She groaned and grumbled and burrowed deep into her bed like a mole. Mum had to get her up and help her get dressed and march her down the stairs for breakfast.

  “I’m not going,” Iggy said. “I don’t want to go and I’m not going to like it.”

  Dad said, “I feel like that some mornings before work, but I still go.”

  “You’re a grown-up.”

  “And so is Mr Hawthorne,” said Dad. “I wonder what he’s thinking now.”

  “What do you mean?” Iggy asked.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to go to school either,” said Dad.

  “Why not?”

  “Maybe he’s nervous,” said Mum. “Maybe he’s worried that nobody is going to like him.”

  “Maybe,” Dad said, “he is scared that nobody in the class is going to give him a fair chance. And that everyone is going to say they only like Rwaida and not him.”

  “Poor Mr Hawthorne,” we all said.

  Iggy ate her breakfast double quick and dashed upstairs to clean her teeth.

  All day at school, I wondered how Iggy was getting on. At playtime, I looked for her, but she wasn’t there. I wondered if Mr Hawthorne had kept her in for talking in the line or calling out or going to the loo at the wrong time.

  But I didn’t need to worry. At the end of the day, when me and Mum went to Iggy’s classroom to meet her, she was cleaning the board. And she was smiling.

  “Mr Hawthorne put me in charge of pencils,” she said. “They all have to be sharp and every table has to have all the right colours.”

  “It’s a desperately important job,” said Mr Hawthorne, and he winked at me and Mum, and his moustache wiggled.

  “Excellent,” said Mum. “So you all had a good first day?”

  “Lovely,” said Iggy, and she smiled again. “And there was no need for Mr Hawthorne to stay in bed and be so nervous and worried. No need at all.”

  Every Monday, Iggy’s new teacher, Mr Hawthorne, asks the children to tell the class their weekend news. Iggy says that sometimes this is interesting, like when Naima Singh went to Italy and ate a pizza, or when Iris Eliot got a rabbit that was bigger than her baby sister, or when Lily Derrick won a trip to the funfair, and sometimes it is not, like when Jade Robinson got stuck in a lift.

  According to Iggy, some people in her class get so worked up about having interesting news that they just make it up.

  “Last Monday,” she told me, “Bailey Grey said he saw a real live dinosaur, but we all know he just went to the park and played football.”

  “And some people,” she said, “called Finn Green, put their hand up every week just to say they haven’t got any news at all.”

  Iggy rolled her eyes very slowly towards the ceiling, which is her new way of showing that she doesn’t approve.

  Dad said, “Have you got something in your eye?” And Iggy did it again to show that she didn’t approve of him either.

  Because she knows she has to come up with something to impress Mr Hawthorne on a Monday, and because she doesn’t want to make something up, Iggy is very keen to do unusual and fascinating things at the weekend.

  At breakfast on Saturday, she rubbed her hands together and made some suggestions.

  “Shall we swim with dolphins today?” she said, swirling her spoon in her cornflakes casually. “Or shall we visit Mrs Wilkes and her new baby, or shall we go to Paris and have a picnic at the top of the Eiffel Tower?”

  Dad said something about mowing the lawn and falling asleep under a tree with the radio on. Iggy put her head in her hands. This was not the earth-shattering, jaw-dropping news that she was hoping for.

  But Mum had a better idea. She said, “I have found something extremely exciting for all of us to do, not too far away.”

  “All of us?” said Dad.

  “What is it and when can we go?” said Iggy.

  “We can go when you’ve finished your breakfast and brushed your teeth and hair and put on some scruffy clothes. And you’ll see what it is when we get there.”

  “Do I have to brush my hair?’ said Dad, and Iggy sniggered.

  We put on our oldest and shabbiest trousers and jumpers.

  “Why are we wearing these?” Iggy said.

  “Because we’ll need them,” Mum told her.

  “Sounds ominous,” said Dad.

  “What’s ‘ominous’?” asked Iggy.

  “Scary and worrying,” Dad said.

  I asked Mum if we were doing anything scary or worrying. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “No,” she said, and she looked at Dad the way she looks at Iggy when she wants her to behave.

  Iggy stuffed her old trousers into her wellington boots. She was all creased and crumpled. We looked at our reflections in the big hall mirror. Dad’s shirt was the one he does building things in, covered in paint and bits of sticky stuff. Mum was wearing a grey and baggy old sweatshirt. The sleeves of my jumper were a bit holey and much too short. We all looked very scruffy indeed.

  “Perfect,” said Mum.

  “What a smart and elegant family,” Dad said. “I wonder who they are.”

  Iggy giggled.

  “Right,” Mum said. “Off we go.” She ruffled Iggy’s half-brushed hair. “Let’s try and take your mind off babies for five minutes.”

  “We’ll see about
that,” said Iggy.

  We went in the car and it only took ten minutes, or three of Iggy’s songs.

  “Here we are!” Mum said.

  “Where?” Iggy and me said together, while we all got out of the car. It didn’t look like anywhere to us.

  “Through that door.” Mum pointed down an alleyway to an old wooden door in the wall.

  Iggy looked at me and I looked at the door. It looked ominous.

  “Go on,” Mum said to us. “Be brave. Go and open it.”

  Iggy held my hand. We walked up to the door together. Behind us, Dad chattered his teeth and knocked his knees together, as if he was frightened.

  “Stop it,” said Mum.

  “I c-c-c-can’t,” said Dad.

  “What do you think it is?” Iggy asked, out of the side of her mouth.

  “I have no idea,” I said, out of the side of mine.

  “Is it a haunted house?” Iggy’s eyes were big and round and scared.

  “I don’t think so,” I told her, but a bit of me did.

  The door was dark and heavy and stuck. We pushed it with our hands and feet, and it swung open with a haunted-house groan.

  Iggy and me shut our eyes tight and then opened them just a peep.

  It wasn’t a haunted house at all.

  It was a big surprise.

  We saw a cobbled yard covered with mud and straw. We saw stables and sheds. A line of ducks and ducklings waddled to have a splash in a muddy puddle. It was smelly and friendly and noisy. It was a farm. A secret, hidden, real farm, only ten minutes away from our house.

  Iggy followed the ducklings to the puddle. They bumped against her wellington boots and hopped and splashed. She crouched down and counted them, one by one.

  “How do you do, Mrs Duck?” she said. “I like your seven ducklings.”

  Mum smiled. “Happy?”

  Iggy nodded, rooted to the spot with delight.

  A man came out of a tumbledown barn carrying two full buckets. He smiled at us and we smiled back. He put the buckets down and something slopped and splashed on to the cobbled yard. I could see potato peelings and cabbage leaves and carrot tops in there.

  “Lunchtime,” said Dad. “Eat up, girls.”

  The man laughed.

  “Hello,” he said to Iggy and me. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Flo and this is Iggy.”

  Iggy giggled and hid a little bit behind me.

  “I’m Peter,” the man said. “I work here. Welcome to the City Farm.”

  Iggy shuffled and peeked out at Peter. “Are you a farmer?”

  Peter nodded.

  “He doesn’t look like a farmer,” she said, in a too-loud whisper.

  “What do farmers look like?” Peter said.

  Iggy was holding very tightly to the back of my jumper.

  “Old and round and muddy with appley cheeks.”

  Peter laughed again. He was young, quite tidy, thin and he was wearing jeans. “Well, if I’m not a real farmer, you won’t want to help me feed the pigs.”

  “Yes we will,” Iggy said, and she came right out from behind me and tried to lift one of the buckets. It was much too heavy.

  “Pigs eat a lot,” she said.

  Peter said, “Pigs are the dustbins of the farmyard,” and Iggy giggled.

  “The friendliest dustbins in the world,” he said, and Iggy snorted.

  “Oh,” said Peter. “You speak piglet,” and Iggy snorted again. “That will come in very handy.”

  I held Dad’s hand and Iggy held Mum’s, and we walked with Peter and his buckets to a shed in the far corner of the yard. It was dark in there and smelly, and there was a lot of snorting and squealing and snuffling about.

  Iggy saw them first. “Babies!” Iggy hugged herself. “Flo! Look! Babies!”

  Mum and Dad looked at each other and sighed. I think I counted eleven tiny little piglets. They were squirming and trembly, and they were feeding from their mum, who was lying on her side in the warm stinky straw.

  “That’s Marmalade,” Peter said. “Poor girl. She’s a bit worn out.”

  We watched as Peter went in through the gate and poured the buckets into Marmalade’s trough. She looked up at him and made a grunting noise, and then slowly and carefully she got up to have her lunch. The tiny piglets rolled and squealed and tumbled over each other in the straw.

  Iggy cooed and sighed. She tried to speak piglet.

  “Would you like to hold one?” Peter asked us.

  Iggy jumped up and down on the spot.

  “Yes please,” I said.

  Peter picked up two tiny pink piglets. Iggy cradled hers just like a baby and I stroked mine. It was soft and warm and wriggly.

  “Oh, Flo, look,” Iggy said. “Look at his eyelashes,” and she groaned with joy.

  My piglet blinked up at me with its dark eyes. Iggy tickled her piglet’s tummy and gave it a little kiss.

  “Can we live here?” Iggy asked.

  “Well,” Mum said. “We live ten minutes away.”

  “I want to live here,” Iggy said.

  “Are you sensible?” Peter asked, and Iggy pulled her most sensible face, which is very staring and serious.

  “I think we are,” I said.

  “Oh good.” Peter took the piglets and put them back with their mum. “We need sensible people who live ten minutes away to come here and do lots of helping.”

  “What sort of helping?” I said.

  “Well, we need to bottle-feed a couple of the lambs,” said Peter.

  “Lambs? Where?” Iggy interrupted.

  “In the field at the back,” he said, “next to the goats.”

  “Goats?”

  “And the donkeys need brushing and feeding and watering,” said Peter.

  I love donkeys. They are my favourite animals ever.

  “Can we help?” I asked Mum and Dad. “Can we come after school and at the weekends and help?”

  “Of course you can,” Mum and Dad and Peter said, at the same time.

  “And there’s Ermentrude,” Peter said. “She’s my favourite.”

  “Who’s Ermentrude?” Iggy asked.

  “She’s the new calf. She was born three weeks ago. Would you like to see her? Oh, and the rabbits and kittens,” he said, smiling. “I almost forgot the new rabbits and kittens. They’ve just been born.”

  Iggy looked at Mum and Dad. “See?” she said. “Everyone’s having babies.”

  “Yes,” Peter said, “it’s that time of year.”

  Iggy stuffed her hands in her pockets. “Not in our house.”

  We followed Peter across the cobbled yard, away from the piglets.

  “Piglets and rabbits and kittens and lambs and calves and donkeys and ducklings and chicks and piglets and rabbits and…” Iggy chanted, while she skipped and sploshed through the mud and the straw and the puddles. “Just wait until I tell Mr Hawthorne my weekend news on Monday. It’s going to be the best ever.”

  For a long time, Iggy was the smallest person in her class. This meant that she was actually the smallest person in our whole school.

  This was not Iggy’s favourite thing to be. She wanted very much to grow. She was feeling quite impatient about growing.

  Mum and Dad tried to reassure her. They said that growing was a thing that Iggy and me were both really good at.

  “Flo’s better at it than me,” Iggy said, and she showed us all how she only almost came up to my shoulder.

  “I’ve been doing it longer,” I told her. “I’ve had a head start.”

  Mum said, “You are both doing it all the time.”

  Dad said, “You are even doing it in your sleep.”

  “How is that possible?” Iggy asked. “The only thing you are doing in your sleep is dreaming.”

  Mum and Dad told Iggy that wasn’t true. “A sleeping person can be doing all kinds of things,” said Mum.

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Like twitching,” Dad said, “and rolling about, and tal
king nonsense.”

  “And snoring,” said Mum.

  “And growing?” Iggy said.

  Dad nodded.

  According to Mum and Dad, when you are asleep, you are doing all the stuff that you didn’t have time for in the day when you were awake.

  “You are putting all the things you have seen and done and learned into the right boxes in your brain, so that in the morning you can wake up and start again,”said Dad.

  I had no idea how busy a sleeping person could be.

  Iggy had no idea there were any boxes in her brain. “How did they get in there? What happens when they are full?”

  “They’re not real boxes,” Mum said. “They’re just spaces for information. And they can never get full, because the more you put in them the bigger they grow.”

  “Unlike me,” Iggy said.

  Usually when I see Iggy at playtime, she is running about like a pony, and skipping and squealing and hula-hooping. She is always with her gang of friends, like a flock of noisy birds darting from one corner of the playground to the other. But today, she was hanging from the monkey bars by herself, doing nothing. She wasn’t swinging or laughing or even moving at all. She was just dangling like a wet shirt on a washing line.

  It was strange seeing Iggy so still and on her own. I went to talk to her.

  “Are you OK?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she said, and she carried on dangling. Her arms were very straight and her face was very red.

  “Where are your friends?” I said. “Why aren’t you playing?”

  Iggy stretched out her legs and looked down at her shoes.

  “I’m too busy,” she said.

  “Busy doing what?”

  Iggy looked at me as if the answer was perfectly obvious.

  “I am growing.”

  Her hands were gripping very tightly to the bars. Her arms must have been aching. It looked like hard work.

  Iggy stared up at her hands and puffed out her cheeks. “I think I can feel it working.”