The World's Worst Mothers (3 page)

The wind was whistling particularly strongly this morning around the old factory. An iron door was banging open and shut. The once white walls on the exposed side of the building were green with moss. Clumps of grass flourished on the roof, and there was even a little birch tree sprouting up between the roof tiles. It was being shaken back and forth in the wind.

The island where Wohlfarth's toy factory was situated was called Nordfall. It was just about an hour by boat from the mainland.

Over a hundred years ago, Nordfall had been twice as big as it was now. Wind and sea had gradually carried off more and more of the island, which lay like an elongated egg in the middle of the North Sea. At the broad end was the ferry port, next to a little collection of houses in which not much more than a dozen people were still living. They were mostly sheep farmers. Their sheep were pastured on the salt meadow behind the dyke.

The narrow end of the island was separated from the rest by a barbed-wire fence as tall as a man, which was higher on one side than the dyke and which ran along by the dunes on the other side as far as the sea.

The fence dated back to the time when Walther Wohlfarth's toy factory had belonged to his father. Walther Wohlfarth Senior, however, had not been a maker of toys. He was much more interested in manufacturing hand grenades, cartridges, landmines and gunpowder. Wohlfarth's munitions factory had been in the family for generations before Walther Wohlfarth Junior broke with this tradition and started making dolls and teddy bears. But with competition from cheaply made toys from the Far East, Wohlfarth's toys had stopped selling, and eventually he had had to shut down his factory and let his employees go.

Kruschke had stayed on, though. He would not be parted from his creations. He went through the warehouse every day to check that they were all still working. He made Bella, a ballerina in pink, do a pirouette on the dusty floor, or he got The Amazing Somersaulting Poodle to do exactly five somersaults one after another before standing upright again on all four paws and giving a joyful woof.

Apart from Kruschke, three of the other former employees remained on Nordfall. Partly because they didn't know where else to go, and partly because they hoped that one day there might be work for them again.

That day had now arrived. Wohlfarth had asked them to come to his office at three o'clock on the dot. Two women and a man expectantly entered the factory. Vibke Paulsen led the way, a kindly and cheerful person who used to be in charge of the women who did the sewing. She made sure the hairstyles were all in order and that the little dolly clothes had no crooked seams. She was a native of Nordfall, the same as her husband, who rented out beach chairs in the summer.

Ramona Bottle came behind her. She used to be Wohlfarth's secretary. She was a bony blonde with long, pearly fingernails, which she filed and polished every day, as if she was just waiting for the moment when Wohlfarth would call on her to take dictation. She was very excited.

‘Do you think the factory is going to open again?' she asked Vibke Paulsen.

‘Hardly, with just the three of us,' answered Frau Paulsen. ‘And anyway, bankrupt is bankrupt.'

‘But I've heard it said that Kruschke has developed a totally new doll, an enormous one.'

‘Yes. Apparently she ran half-naked over the dunes,' chipped in a wiry young man called Sven-Ole, who had been one of Wohlfarth's drivers. Nowadays he transported sheep from the island to the mainland. ‘Hinnerk saw it himself.'

‘What rubbish! Your cousin needs a new pair of glasses,' said Vibke Paulsen, laughing. ‘I bet he believes in ghosts too!'

‘Maybe Kruschke really has invented something new,' said Ramona Bottle hopefully. ‘Something that might make real money.'

‘Can an old fellow with a bald head get a lucky streak?' asked Sven-Ole, laughing at his little joke. ‘Do you get it? Like streaks in your hair!'

‘Oh, you and your silly nonsense,' said Vibke Paulsen, wagging her finger playfully at him.

The gate to the factory was opened. Kruschke waved them in.

‘Hurry up. The boss is waiting.'

‘It's such a shame, isn't it?' Vibke Paulsen whispered to Ramona Bottle, who was just stepping over a heap of something filthy, her nose wrinkling. ‘The way it's all gone downhill.'

‘Well, I just hope he isn't expecting us to clean this place up,' Ramona Bottle whispered back.

Wohlfarth was standing at the internal window, looking down at his ex-employees. Kruschke, fussing as usual, had already reached the stairs. Vibke Paulsen hadn't got any slimmer over the last few years, and Ramona Bottle hadn't got any younger. The only one who didn't seem to have changed was Sven-Ole. But then he was far too inexperienced to be of any real use.

Well, he'd just have to make the best of it. He had no choice and, more to the point, no money. He'd sunk every penny he had into this enterprise. If it went wrong, he'd be ruined for good.

He put his shoulders back. Why should it go wrong? The idea was simply stunning, and this time nobody was going to steal it. that was for sure.

He went behind his desk and straightened the big picture that hung on his wall.

‘You will be proud of me, Mother,' he said. ‘Very proud, even.'

At that moment, there was a knock on the door.

‘Come in,' called Wohlfarth.

He's hardly changed,
thought Ramona Bottle, looking at her former boss.
A few more grey hairs, maybe, and he looks a bit tired.

‘Good afternoon,' said Wohlfarth. ‘Thank you for coming.' He smiled crookedly. ‘Do sit down.'

He pointed at a couple of armchairs that were grouped with a sofa around a table. In the old days, only Wohlfarth's business partners were allowed to sit here. His former underlings sat carefully now on the sagging armchairs with their worn covers.

‘I hope you all remember my … our firm's motto.'

‘Of course we do, boss,' said Sven-Ole. ‘Something like “If your child is happy, so is the world”, or some such.' He stopped.

Ramona Bottle's hand flew up. ‘“Make your child happy and you save the world,”' she said proudly.

Wohlfarth nodded at her. ‘That's right. That was exactly my slogan. More than that – it's the principle on which I have based my whole life. I, whose mother, God rest her soul' He made a pained face and pointed at the portrait behind him, which showed a kindly smiling lady with grey hair and a chain around her neck, on which hung a gold medallion. ‘I who have my mother to thank for the happiest childhood that a man could possibly have, I've only ever wanted one thing: to make children happy. Because only happy children grow up into happy adults who can give something to the world, who can creatively engage …'

Sven-Ole wasn't listening any more. Why did the boss not just say straight out what on earth it was that he wanted from them? There wasn't even anything to drink on the table and not as much as a few dry biscuits to eat. He squinted at his watch and got a disapproving look from Ramona Bottle. Yeah, well, every word that dropped from Wohlfarth's lips was music to her ears. Everyone in the factory used to laugh at her. It really was funny how moonstruck she'd been. And she was supposed to be engaged at the time. Her fiancé had broken it off because all she did was waffle on about Wohlfarth. And here she was again, gazing at him as if she were a sheep and he a nice juicy bunch of grass.
Baa, baa.

A new joke occurred to him: if a shepherd beats his sheep, does that make him a
baaaad
person? He had to bite his lip to prevent himself from laughing out loud.

Even Vibke Paulsen found it hard to concentrate on Wohlfarth's ramblings. Her husband wouldn't be one bit pleased if she went back to work. He'd got used to her being at home all day, making sure there was always a beer in the fridge and that his underpants were nicely folded in his drawer. At the same time, the extra money would come in handy. Three of their beach chairs had been swept out to sea in the last storm. But what use were they anyway when there were no holidaymakers any more? She sighed loudly.

‘And what do you think, Frau Paulsen?' asked Wohlfarth, annoyed at this interruption.

‘You're quite right,' said Vibke Paulsen, nodding her head vigorously. ‘Making children happy is …'

‘… the most honourable task that a person can devote themselves to,' Wohlfarth completed the sentence.

Sven-Ole understood only one word of this: task.

‘I'd be delighted to have something to do other than carting sheep to the mainland,' he said.

Wohlfarth sat up. ‘Right. From now on, you are all working for me again.'

Ramona Bottle cast an irritated look around the room.

‘What am I supposed to write your letters with, Herr Wohlfarth?'

The little desk behind which she had sat for many years attending to the business correspondence was bare. No computer, not even a typewriter on it.

‘I didn't see any trucks outside, boss,' said Sven-Ole. ‘Just the little pick-up.'

‘And will you be employing people to sew?' asked Vibke Paulsen. ‘Only my niece has been looking for something for ages –'

Wohlfarth made a dismissive hand gesture. ‘No, no, I have obviously not made myself clear. It's not about producing toys. It's something quite different. It's about a mission!
My
mission!'

‘What would you like for mother's day?' asked Bruno at lunch.

There was spinach ravioli with cheese sauce. He took a second helping. Boxers need their carbohydrates – he knew that. Pasta was just the thing.

‘Have you not had enough, darling?' asked his mother with a frown.

‘No,' said Bruno, stuffing three ravioli into his mouth all at the same time. He knew what was coming.

‘You eat far too quickly. You should wait until the feeling of being full has set in –'

‘It takes twenty minutes for your stomach to realise it's full,' said Bruno, licking his lips and finishing the sentence. ‘But I don't want to wait that long.'

His mother didn't always seem to wait until her stomach informed her that it was full, either. She wasn't exactly slim.

‘What about mother's day?' asked Bruno again. ‘Dad will probably buy you flowers, but I could bring you breakfast in bed.'

‘Oh, please, no! Last time you did that, everything ended up on the duvet cover. The juice stains never did come out.'

His mother bent over. ‘I have only one wish, son. Professor Griebel said that today is the day it will be decided if you can take part in the recital at the conservatory.'

All of a sudden the spinach ravioli tasted of cardboard.

‘Promise me you'll do your best?'

Bruno's stomach rumbled. It rumbled so hard that Bruno had to run to the loo and throw up.

Later that day, Bruno leafed dutifully through the magazine his mother had brought him, as he lay recovering from his stomach upset.
The Young Virtuoso
contained nothing that was of the remotest interest to him: articles about three-year-olds who could play the Moonlight Sonata perfectly. Exercises for the left hand.

He was just about to slam the magazine shut when something caught his eye. Under an ad for gross piano stools he read:
We're looking for the world's worst mother.

A website address was given where you could download a questionnaire. First prize: four weeks' holidays on an island, no mothers allowed.

Bruno went into his father's room. He turned on the computer, opened the internet browser and typed in the address:
www.worldsworstmothers.eek
.

The questionnaire was four pages long. Bruno printed it out and took it into his bedroom. He quickly filled in his name, age and address, and the question
Why do you think your mother is the world's worst mother?
was not difficult to answer.

Because she forces me to play the piano, but I would much rather box,
wrote Bruno.

Then it started to get difficult. He had to give all these details about his mother, whether she had relatives and, if so, what they were called, what her likes and dislikes were, how many people were in the household and what kind of pets they had.

When it came to likes, he mentioned her favourite perfume, but for dislikes, he put,
She doesn't like being contradicted.

My great-aunt Adelheid was first viola,
Bruno scribbled under the heading ‘Relations'.

He was supposed to send a photo of his mother along with the questionnaire. The only one he could find was taken on his first day at school. She hadn't changed much, apart from getting a bit heavier.

She's a bit fatter than in the picture,
wrote Bruno on the back of the photo. Then he folded the questionnaire and put it into an envelope with the photograph. Finally, he wrote the PO box-number address on the outside of the envelope and went and got a stamp.

He didn't really think he'd win first prize. There must be worse mothers than his. But it had done him good to write down what he had to put up with. Now all he had to do was post the letter.

Emily found a note on the kitchen table:
Back later. There are roast potatoes in the fridge. You can have fromage frais with them.

The potatoes had been there for three days and had got hard around the edges. Emily held the bowl under her nose. It didn't smell good. She got a packet of fromage frais out of the fridge and opened it. There was a furry green film on it. Not surprising, considering that the best-before date had passed in January. Her mother always said you didn't need to pay too much attention to those dates, that most food would keep for much longer. Well, that might be true of things like sugar or tinned tomatoes, but obviously not of dairy products.

Emily opened the larder. It was full of bottles and jars with hot sauces and pastes. Her mother spread stuff like this on her bread for breakfast, even. Emily didn't like spicy foods. She took out a packet of cornflakes, shook the cereal into a bowl and then went into the bathroom to wash her hands.

A red light on the washing machine showed that the wash cycle had finished. Emily's mother had done a wash the previous evening, including Emily's new blouse with the ruffles. Had she not hung the things up yet?

Emily opened the drum. Of course, her mother had, as usual, stuffed far too many things in. Emily pulled a crumpled piece of flowered material out of a tangle of towels, knickers and socks. She tried in vain to smooth it out. The blouse had shrunk by at least two sizes, and the soft and flimsy material had gone hard and stiff. Emily sat down on the toilet seat, pressed the damp remains to her eyes and sobbed.

Her father had given her the blouse as a present on the last father-daughter day they'd had. It had actually been far too expensive, but so lovely. Her father had thought so too.

‘Made in India,' her mother had remarked snidely, looking at the label. ‘That'll have to be washed first. It's sure to be full of harmful chemicals.' She was clearly annoyed about the blouse because it was a present from Emily's father. ‘So much money for such a little scrap of material. It would have been much more sensible to buy you a new pair of runners.'

But Emily didn't want something sensible. The blouse had been lovely, and now there was nothing for it but to throw it out.

She blew her nose on a piece of toilet paper and hauled the rest of the washing out of the machine to hang it up in the kitchen. Her mother was always forgetting to take the washing out of the machine, just as she had forgotten to take the fromage frais out of the fridge. Emily loved her mother, but it was exhausting to live with her.

When she had hung up the washing, Emily sat at the table to eat her cornflakes. That was when she noticed what it said on the back of the packet:
Fun and games on the beach.
There were pictures of children making sandcastles and young people playing volleyball. Emily would have loved to go to the sea. But this year she was going to have to stay at home again because there was no money for a holiday.

Emily sighed. If only her mother hadn't been so terrible, her father would never have fallen in love with this other woman and they'd all be still together.
And I wouldn't have to eat dusty old cornflakes for lunch,
thought Emily, just as her eyes fell on this sentence:
Wanted: The world's worst mother.

Well, if that wasn't just the thing!

Sophie was standing in the kitchen stirring a cake mixture. Tomorrow was mother's day, and she wanted to surprise her mother with a home-made Swiss roll. Her mother was quite a good baker but she'd never had the nerve to try Swiss roll. Sophie thought it wasn't really all that difficult. You just had to separate the eggs and beat the whites until they were good and stiff and then mix them carefully into the mixture. It looked wonderful, very light and pale yellow. Suddenly a hand appeared and, quick as lightning, a mucky finger was dabbling in the mixture.

‘Nicholas!' yelled Sophie. ‘Take your finger out!'

‘What's it going to be?' asked Nicholas, licking his finger. ‘Pudding?'

‘No, it's going to be a mother's day cake,' said Sophie, raising the bowl up over her head. ‘Now get lost.'

‘But I want to bake a cake too,' said Nicholas.

‘Why don't you paint a pretty picture for Mum?' suggested Sophie, taking the bowl to the counter. ‘Pass me the sugar. It's there on the table.'

Nicholas gave her a container.

‘Not the salt, you twit! Just think, if I'd poured that in!'

‘Then there'd be trouble!' Nicholas giggled and ran out of the kitchen.

He'd done it on purpose! But Sophie decided not to make a fuss, not after the row there'd been yesterday. Sophie had come home from school and immediately she'd noticed that her bedroom door was open. There was a big notice on the door since the near catastrophe with the sand:
Absolutely no little brothers allowed!
She'd stuck a photo of Nicholas under the notice and crossed it out with a red marker. Her mother had got into a terrible tizzy about it, but George had only laughed and said, since Nicholas couldn't read properly, one had to resort to such measures.

There had been a vase of flowers that Sophie had picked on her bedside table. The vase had been knocked over, water had spilled over Sophie's diary and the flowers lay strewn about the floor.

Naturally she'd immediately suspected Nicholas. She went into his room, full of a cold anger. He was sitting on the floor, zooming toy cars over the carpet. Without saying a word, she pulled him up by the arm and gave him a resounding clip on the ear. Nicholas stared at her, horrified, and for a moment Sophie was sorry.

Then he started to yell. ‘Sofa hit me! Sofa hit me!' he shrieked.

Her mother came at a run.

‘What's wrong now? Can I not get a second's peace in this house?'

Nicholas didn't have to say a thing. The finger marks on his cheek were a dead giveaway.

‘Sophie! How could you?' Her mother looked at her with almost as much horror as Nicholas had.

‘He was in my room and he knocked over the vase of flowers and now everything is wet, even my diary.' It all came pouring out of Sophie.

‘In the first place, Nicholas was at playschool all morning, and secondly, I told you yesterday not to put the flowers by your bed because you can get a headache from that, and in the third place, Lulu snuck into your room with me when I went in earlier to open your window. It was very stuffy in there.'

Lulu! Of course. The cat was very keen on flowers. She was always sticking her paws into flower vases. Sophie stood there like a muppet. She was just about to say sorry to Nicholas when her mother said, ‘No television for you, starting right now!'

‘But today it's –'

‘I don't care what's on. You smacked your little brother in the face. That really is the end. And by the way, if you don't comb your hair, I'm going to cut it!'

Sophie left the room without a word.

Then, as she was trying to dry her diary with kitchen paper, a flattened moth fell out of it. One of Nicholas's collection of dead animals. So there! But Sophie knew her mother would never believe her. She was still cross with Sophie and only spoke to her when it was absolutely necessary. That was worse than if she'd shouted at her. But if Sophie could make a good job of this Swiss roll and bring it to her mother in bed on Sunday morning, then surely she'd be forgiven. She spread the mixture on the well-oiled baking tin and stuck it in the oven.

Lulu had jumped up onto the counter and was licking the mixing bowl. Sophie got the cream out of the fridge. She had to beat this now with caster sugar and grated lemon peel, and use it to fill the roll. Easy peasy. She hoped she'd get it done before her mother got home. She'd gone shopping with George. George had promised Sophie he'd make the shopping trip last as long as he could.

But just as Sophie was spreading the lemon cream on the sponge, she heard the key in the lock. Her mother came storming into the kitchen and threw her bag angrily onto a chair. Sophie looked enquiringly at George but he was raising his hands apologetically.

‘What's that supposed to be?' asked Sophie's mother, pointing at the baking tray.

‘Sofa is making a cake,' said Nicholas, trundling into the kitchen. ‘Big fat mama cake.'