It was the week before Mothering Sunday and Toby hadn’t got any money to buy his Mum a present. It was also a bad week because he had to go to see the dentist. While Toby was sitting in the waiting room he looked at one of the magazines. It seemed very boring though the pictures of cakes looked good and he was just about to ask his Mum why her cakes never looked like that when he saw some pictures of a lady making some flowers. She was only using bits of paper and material and pipe cleaners and twigs and buttons but the flowers looked very grand.
So that evening when his tooth felt better, he shut himself in his room to see whether he could make some flowers like the ones in the magazine. Unfortunately he could only find a bit of an old tea towel with the back of a horse on it, some very bendy twigs and some left over Christmas wrapping paper with what looked like Father Christmas’s boots standing in lots of snow.
Toby hadn’t seen Arfur (his guardian angel) for some time but that evening he appeared so suddenly that Toby stuck a pin in his finger and said crossly ‘What do you want?’
Arfur was fed up; Arfur was often fed up and this time it was because he thought they had to do too much praying and singing in heaven.
‘It sounds like being in church all the time,’ said Toby.
‘It’s much worse,’ Arfur said.
Then Arfur saw Toby’s personal stereo and asked what it was. So Toby explained about tapes and how he listened to stories and music when he was in bed, and that gave Arfur an idea.
‘If I said a prayer into your machine and we got some music for it to play, I could leave it playing on my chair in heaven and go and do all sorts of other things outside instead of having to be there myself to pray and sing all the time.’
Toby wasn’t sure whether this would be a very good idea but he helped Arfur record a prayer. The music was more difficult because none of Toby’s tapes played the sort of songs Arfur said the Boss would like. He got quite excited when he saw something by someone called Madonna but it didn’t sound at all right when they played it.
‘At the moment the Boss doesn’t like things that are too loud and sort of jangly,’ said Arfur.
He was about to leave when he saw what Toby had been doing.
‘What’s that?’ he said, pointing at Toby’s attempt to make a flower.
It was rather droopy and had holes in all the wrong places and red marks where the blood from the finger he had pricked had stuck to the paper.
‘It’s a flower for Mothering Sunday,’ said Toby.
‘Doesn’t look like one,’ said Arfur, ‘ it’s more like something from the dustbin.’
‘Well you weren’t much help,’ said Toby. ‘I thought guardian angels were supposed to help people, but I always seem to be helping you.’
But Arfur had disappeared. Toby just managed to hide the flower as his Mum came in to say good night.
Next day all the children at Toby’s school went into the hall for assembly. When they were all sitting down the teacher played them what she said was some lovely music to help them be still and quiet. Toby thought it was boring but then he wondered if it mightn’t be just the sort of music the Boss would like in heaven. When assembly was over he asked the teacher if he could borrow the tape to play to his Mum, ‘because it was so beautiful.’ The teacher was so surprised that she let Toby have it, as long as he promised to bring it back the next day.
On his way home Toby passed the Vicar’s garden. The big gate was open and through it Toby could see lots of beautiful, real flowers that didn’t droop and have holes in. So he crept in through the gate and quickly picked a handful before anyone saw him.
That night he gave Arfur the tape from school. Arfur thought it was boring too but that the boss would probably like it. Later on, after his Mum had gone to bed, Toby crept down stairs and put the flowers in a milk bottle on the breakfast table because the next day was Mothering Sunday.
When his Mum saw the beautiful flowers from the Vicar’s garden she immediately wanted to know where Toby had got them from. So Toby had to tell her.
‘Taking flowers from other people’s gardens is very wrong; we’ll have to take them to church this morning and give them back to the Vicar,’ said his Mum. ‘But what happened to the thing you were making last night? That looked like rather a nice a flower.’
So Toby went and got the droopy flower with holes and red marks from under his bed, and his Mum put it in the milk bottle and said she’d much rather have something he’d made, thank you very much. And Toby did think it looked a bit better in the milk bottle because it didn’t droop so much.
When Arfur came to see him that evening he brought back Toby’s personal stereo and Toby asked what had happened.
‘I left it on my chair while I was outside playing, but the Boss soon noticed I wasn’t there,’ said Arfur.
‘Was he cross?’ asked Toby.
‘Well not really,’ Arfur replied. ‘He said he’d much rather I was there doing what I could even if it wasn’t very good. And any way he’s given me a new song to sing which is much better. Seems he doesn’t mind if the things we do for him don’t turn out very well as long as we’ve done our best.’
”My Mum said something like that when she saw the flower I made, which you said ought to be in the dustbin,’ said Toby.
‘ I know,’ said Arfur, ‘ and the funny thing was that when the Boss was talking to me he was wearing something just like your flower in his hat. Some of the petals looked as though they had a picture of the back end of a horse on them.’