Copyright

First published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Ltd. in 1977

First published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

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London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

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Copyright © The Estate of Helen Creswell 1977

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Cover illustration © Sara Ogilvie 2017

Helen Cresswell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008211677

Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008211684

Version: 2016-12-20

To Brian, with love

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

The Bagthorpe Saga

About the Publisher

Chapter One

When Rosie, who was only eight anyway, beat him doing ten lengths of the pool, it was the last straw. He didn’t show he cared. He made such a point of sauntering carelessly to the dressing room that he skidded and went flat and everybody laughed. He forced himself to laugh as well, and only found the grazes on his elbows when he was towelling himself.

I got born in the wrong family, he thought, as he trudged back home alone over the fields. The others were still in the water, getting their money’s worth.

Ordinary Jack, that’s me. It’s what they should’ve christened me – Ordinary Jack Matthew Bagthorpe – with an e.

There were four Bagthorpe children, and the other three were always winning prizes and medals, and William, the eldest, had got to the point where he was winning cups, silver ones, for the sideboard, and little shields with his name engraved on them.

You’re immortal if your name gets put on cups and shields, thought Jack moodily. I’ll never be immortal.

William’s cups and shields were for tennis, and were bad enough in themselves, but what really rankled was that tennis was only the second String to William’s Bow. (Most of the family had second Strings to their Bows, and some had three or even four. Strings to Bows were thick on the ground in the Bagthorpe household.) William’s real speciality was electronics. He had put up an aerial thirty feet high in the vegetable garden and was in touch with a whole lot of radio hams all over the world including one called Anonymous, from Grimsby, who wouldn’t give his real name. William said he was a pirate, which sounded fascinating, but he wouldn’t let anyone else speak to him.

“A veil of secrecy must be preserved,” he was fond of saying.

Jack, who would have given anything to be on speaking terms with a pirate from Grimsby, often felt like punching William when he said this.

Uncle Parker was dozing in a deckchair under the apple trees when Jack reached home.

“Hello, young Jack,” he said, without opening his eyes.

There’s another of them, Jack thought. Can even see with his eyes shut.

None the less, he liked Uncle Parker, who was not all that brilliant, and whose main distinction was that the way he drove his car was the talk of the neighbourhood (though he had never yet been prosecuted for it).

“If you could do anything in the world this afternoon, what would you do?” enquired Uncle Parker, his eyes still closed. This was another thing about him that Jack liked. He never said what you expected him to say.

“Be immortal,” said Jack promptly.

“Bit pointless,” observed Uncle Parker. “You’re bound to survive the afternoon anyway, I should say. You can’t be immortal just for an afternoon, you know, old son.”

“I know that,” said Jack, nettled. “It means to live for ever. Anyway, you asked me, and I told you.”

“You won’t get immortal piggling at your father’s pansies,” said Uncle Parker. “That I can tell you. More likely to get cut off in your prime.”

Jack snatched away his hand which had admittedly, though quite of its own accord, been picking off pansy heads.

“It just shows what a nervous wreck I am,” he said. “I already bite my nails, and say ‘touch wood’ all the time, and now I’m piggling pansies. Goodness knows how I’ll end up.”

“I suppose what you’re all steamed up about as usual is not being a genius?”

Jack nodded. The two of them had had this kind of conversation before. Uncle Parker, not being a Blood Relation of the Bagthorpes, merely lucky enough to be married to Jack’s Aunt Celia (who was not only ravishingly beautiful but could also solve The Times crossword in ten minutes flat without a dictionary and do pottery and poetry) could sympathise with Jack’s feelings. On the other hand, whereas Uncle Parker did not seem to mind being everlastingly eclipsed, Jack did.

“What’s been going on at the pool, then?” enquired Uncle Parker. “One of ’em do a triple somersault from the top board and get invited to the next Olympics, did they?”

“Rosie beat me doing ten lengths.”

“Pooh!” said Uncle Parker.

“It’s all right you saying ‘Pooh!’ You’re not her brother, and older, and you won’t hear them all going on at tea-time when she tells them.”

“I shall, then,” returned Uncle Parker. “We’re stopping. Grandma’s birthday, remember. And I shall say ‘Pooh!’ then, just as I say ‘Pooh!’ now.”

“Will you? Will you really?”

“Naturally. You must have the courage of your convictions, Jack, old lad. If you mean ‘Pooh!’ then you must say ‘Pooh!’ and the devil take the consequences.”

“But why do you mean ‘Pooh’?” persisted Jack. “After all, it’s pretty good – she is younger than me.”

“If you’ll forgive me saying so,” said Uncle Parker, “the way you swim, just about anyone could beat you. So her doing it doesn’t exactly add up to an Olympic future. If she brings it up at tea, I shall put it into the category of ordinary, common or garden boasting, and I shall say ‘Pooh!’ accordingly.”

“Not her speciality, of course, swimming,” said Jack glumly. “I was thinking of trying to make it mine, but I shan’t now.”

“Well, I wouldn’t, either,” agreed Uncle Parker. “If old Rosie’s already got a head start on you, not much future there.”

“So what shall I have as a speciality?”

Jack did not really believe Uncle Parker would be able to answer this question. Hours of solitary, nail-biting thought on his own part had as yet produced no result.

“I’ll think about it,” promised Uncle Parker. “Think about it and let you know.”

“Thanks. Nothing to do with maths, thanks, and nothing to do with sport. We’ve already got two walking computers, and Mother’s always carping on about cleaning silver cups.”

“Doesn’t leave much,” said Uncle Parker. “But I’ll try. Hello. Here come the genii.”

Jack turned his head and they both watched the advance of the Bagthorpes. You could hear them better than you could see them because they were bawling out a song together. It sounded like Frère Jacques but could easily have been something else. None of the Bagthorpes were great singers, though Rosie played the violin and Tess the oboe and piano and both were always appearing in concerts, and William (for his third String) was a wizard on the drums. Mr Bagthorpe was given to saying on occasion that William must have been a tribal warrior in a previous incarnation, which, while interesting, was hard on his present family.

They don’t look like geniuses, Jack thought, not for the first time. Just like anybody else’s brother and sisters they look.

Now William, lank and sandy, had Rosie on his shoulders, clutching and screaming as she swayed up there. Tess (who was thirteen and read Voltaire in the original for pleasure and was a Black Belt in Judo, besides talking like a dictionary) ran behind, beating William with a branch.

Normal, even, sometimes, thought Jack. He even knew that they were all fond of him, in their own way. But more as if I was a kind of pet, or something, he thought. As if I’m just harmless. Not as an equal. I want to be equal.

Now they were through the wicket between garden and meadow and William finally pitched the shrieking Rosie somersaulting on to the grass.

“Didn’t hurt yourself, did you, Jacko?” William pitched himself full length beside him. For answer, Jack raised his skinned elbows.

“Making a grand exit,” said Tess. “Gosh, they look sore.”

“Hey – Uncle Park!” Rosie was up again now. “Guess what? I beat Jack doing ten lengths.”

“Pooh!” Uncle Parker was true to his word.

“What d’you mean, ‘Pooh’?” demanded Rosie. “He’s three years older than me.”

“And swims like an elephant,” returned Uncle Parker, admittedly unflatteringly. “There’s too much boasting goes on at this house.”

“Not boasting,” corrected Tess. “Mother and Father both say we should be proud of achievement. They say it’s an inbred fault of the English to underestimate themselves. Their favourite sin is ‘pride that apes humility’.”

“Well, if it is,” said Uncle Parker, “you lot are certainly doing your bit to redress the balance. Enough boasting here to leaven the whole loaf.”

“Except for me,” said Jack, “who hasn’t got anything to boast about.”

“Never mind,” Tess said. “I bet you’ve got a hidden talent that will emerge. Einstein was a terribly late starter, you know, prodigiously late. You’ve got to have got some hidden talent somewhere or you couldn’t be a Bagthorpe. You might go to the moon when you grow up, or anything.”

“I don’t particularly want to go to the moon, thank you,” Jack said. “Any fool could go there.”

“Anonymous from Grimsby reckons there’s an alien intelligence out there,” William told them. “Says he keeps picking up signals from outer space.”

“What do they say?” demanded Jack, interested.

William stood up.

“Sorry. I told you – a veil of secrecy must be preserved. I think I’ll go and see if he’s there now, actually. Might’ve got something new.”

Jack watched him go.

One day I will punch him when he says that, he thought.

“Better get back myself.” Tess stood up now. “I want to finish my Voltaire. And you’d better finish that Birthday Portrait of Grandma –” this to Rosie. (Rosie’s second string was portraits.)

When they had all gone Jack lay back on the warm grass and shut his eyes. He decided to try to go into a trance and get some inspiration that way, since ordinary straightforward thinking never got him anywhere. Uncle Parker, however, evidently misinterpreted this action.

“No good just lying back and giving up, you know.”

“I haven’t given up. I’m trying to go into a trance.”

“Hmmmmmm.”

There was silence for a while. Jack became conscious of the nearby humming of bees and flies, and the effect was hypnotic and he really did begin to think he was on the verge of a trance when Uncle Parker shouted, “I’ve got it!”

Jack shot up as if stung. His head went fizzy and black.

“You have?” He was still half hypnotised.

“I most certainly have.”

“Jack! Russell! Tea!”

He turned. His mother was standing by the rose arch, waving.

“Damn,” he said. “How long was I in a trance?”

“In a trance? You, young Jack, were in a trance my elbow,” said Uncle Parker severely. “Asleep, that’s what you were. There’s got to be a bit of diligence and application if we’re going to do anything with you, I can see that. Coming, Laura!”

He unfolded himself from the deckchair, all six foot four of him, and looked down at Jack.

“You may as well come and have some tea,” he said. “Get some energy up. You’re going to need it.”

Jack scrambled up and hurried to keep pace with him.

“It’s nothing sporting, is it?” he asked. “I said not sporting.”

“It’s not sport. How old did we say the old lady was?”

“Seventy-five,” Jack told him. “And Grandpa’s eighty-five. Not today, though. I hope I don’t get as deaf as that when I’m old.”

“Your grandfather,” said Uncle Parker, “is not as deaf as you all fear. He’s what I call SD – and you can be that at any age.”

“What’s SD? Stone Deaf?”

“Selectively Deaf. You hear, in effect, just as much as you wish to hear. And I am bound to say that if I were married to a lady who talks like your grandmother does, I should be SD – very much so.”

“I don’t think you ought to say that, on her birthday,” said Jack. “I mean, I know what you mean, but it’s not very kind to say it. Not on her birthday.”

“Sorry. No offence.”

They trudged companionably up the terrace steps and went through the French windows and into the Birthday Party.

Grandma was sitting at the far end of the table, though all that was visible was the odd wisp of white hair, because she was behind a large cake on a high stand. The cake was forested with candles. Jack had no intention of counting them. He knew for a fact that there would be seventy-five. His mother did not believe in doing things by halves. She would light the candles when the time came, and the icing would start melting while she was halfway through and by the time all the candles were lit the icing would be hopelessly larded with multicoloured grease and the whole top slice of the cake would have to be cut off and thrown to the birds. It happened every year. Mr Bagthorpe thought the practice dangerous and unnecessary, and said so, but was ignored. He even said that the birds ought to be protected, but no one took any notice of that either – least of all the birds, who sorted the crumbs with lightning dexterity and left the greased icing to seep, in the course of time and nature, into the lawn, with no apparent detriment to the daisies.

“Hello, Grandma,” said Jack. “Happy Birthday.”

He went down the table past the bristling cake and kissed her. Her skin was very soft and powdery and smelled unaccountably of warm pear drops.

“You are a good boy,” said Grandma.

“What about me?” enquired Uncle Parker, delivering his own peck.

“I know perfectly well who you are,” said Grandma. “You are that good-for-nothing young man who married Celia and ran Thomas over.” (Thomas was an ill-favoured and cantankerous ginger tom who had unfortunately got in the way of Uncle Parker’s car some five years previously, and whom Grandma had martyred to the point where one always half expected her to refer to him as “St Thomas”.)

“That’s me,” said Uncle Parker mildly. “Sorry about that, Grandma. Nice old cat that was. Just not very nippy on his feet.”

“He was a jewel,” said Grandma. “He was given me on my fourth birthday, and I was devoted to him.”

No one contradicted her. Clearly, no ginger tom in history had ever survived sixty odd years, with or without the intervention of Uncle Parker’s deplorable driving. But today was Grandma’s birthday and she was not to be contradicted. (She was rarely contradicted anyway. It was a whole lot of trouble to contradict Grandma. If Grandma said seven sixes were fifty-two, you agreed with her, as a rule. The odds against convincing her otherwise were practically a million to one anyway, and life was too short.)

“He was a jewel.” Grandma repeated her observation a trifle argumentatively. Grandma liked arguments and got disappointed when nobody else wanted them.

“You’re a jewel,” said Mr Bagthorpe diplomatically. He dropped a kiss on her head and pulled out a chair for his wife and the danger was temporarily averted.

Jack, seated between Uncle Parker and Rosie, cast a speculative eye over the table. All the customary Bagthorpe birthday trimmings were present, he noted with satisfaction. The sausage rolls (hot), salmon and cucumber sandwiches, asparagus rolls, stuffed eggs, cream meringues, chocolate truffle cake and Mrs Fosdyke’s Special Trifle – all were there, and the eyes of all Bagthorpes present were riveted upon them. There was a pause. Jack’s eyes moved to the top of the table. Grandma, thwarted of her argument, was hanging fire on purpose, he guessed, to pay them back. They waited.

“For what we are about to receive,” she eventually remarked, eyes piously closed, “may the Lord make us truly thankful.”

On the last two words her eyes blinked open like a cobra’s and a hand went rapidly out to the nearest pile of stuffed eggs.

“Amen,” gabbled the company, with the exception of Uncle Parker who said loudly and cheerfully, “Hear, hear!”

The food began to vanish at an astonishing rate.

“Well, darlings,” said Mrs Bagthorpe. “What is there to tell?”

Babel was instantly let loose as all present with the exception of Grandpa, Uncle Parker and Jack, began to talk with their mouths full. Mrs Bagthorpe believed that meals should be civilised occasions with a brisk and original interchange of views and ideas, but as none of the younger Bagthorpes were prepared to talk at the cost of stuffing themselves, they invariably did both at the same time.

“I beathja teleths,” came a crumb-choked voice by Jack’s elbow.

“Told you,” said Jack to Uncle Parker.

“What was that, Rosie?” enquired Mrs Bagthorpe. “You left what in the bath?”

“I beat Jack doing ten lengths.” This time Rosie’s voice was shamingly distinct and, what was worse, fell into a rare lull in the general din.

“Did you really?” exclaimed Mrs Bagthorpe, and “Pooh!” said Uncle Parker simultaneously with such force that morsels of crust flew across the table at his wife.

Conversation ceased abruptly.

“Did you say something, Russell?” asked Mrs Bagthorpe.

“I said ‘Pooh!’”

“That’s what he said before when I told him,” squeaked Rosie indignantly. “And it’s good – it is! Jack’s three years older than me and I beat him and it is good!”

“Of course it is, darling,” agreed her mother. “And I’m terribly proud of you. Bad luck, Jack.”

“Bad luck Jack my foot, leg and elbow,” said Uncle Parker. Everyone stared at him except Grandpa who was being SD and evidently did not realise what he was about to miss.

“I’ll elaborate,” said Uncle Parker. “In my opinion young Jack here, while being a perfectly good chap and worth ten of most here present, swims with the approximate grace and agility of an elephant.”

No one contradicted him.

“The fact, therefore,” he continued, “that young Rosie here, while also being perfectly acceptable in many ways though some might say too clever by half, the fact that she has beaten Jack doing ten lengths seems to me to be an event totally devoid of interest. It seems, in fact, to be a non-event of the first order.”

“I am three years younger,” piped Rosie.

Uncle Parker turned to her.

“Kindly do not tell me that again,” he told her. “I have been given that information at least three times in the last hour and am by now in perfect possession of it.”

“No, Uncle Parker,” said Rosie meekly. “I mean, yes.”

“Crikey, Uncle P,” said William, “you are in a lather. Anyone’d think Rosie’d beaten you.”

“I don’t doubt that she could,” returned Uncle Parker calmly. “I am a notoriously bad swimmer, and I dislike getting wet unnecessarily. The only good reason for swimming, so far as I can see, is to escape drowning.”

“The thing I best remember about that jewel of a cat,” said Grandma reminiscently, “was his extraordinary sweetness of nature. He hadn’t a streak of malice in him.”

It was, after all, Grandma’s Birthday Party, and she probably felt she was losing her grip on it.

“That cat,” said Mr Bagthorpe, caught off-guard and swallowing the bait, “was the most cross-grained evil-eyed thing that ever went on four legs. If I had a pound note for every time that animal bit me, I should be a rich man, now.”

“How can you, Henry!” cried Grandma, delighted that things were warming up.

“I’d be Croesus,” said Mr Bagthorpe relentlessly. “Midas. Paul Getty. That cat bit people like he was being paid for it in kippers.”

“There he would lie, hour upon hour, with his great golden head nestled in my lap,” crooned Grandma, getting into her stride, “and I would feel the sweetness flowing out of him. When I lost Thomas, something irreplaceable went out of my life.”

“Bilge, Mother,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “That cat was nothing short of diabolical. He was a legend. He was feared and hated for miles around. In fact I clearly remember that the first dawnings of respect I ever felt for Russell here began on the day he ran the blasted animal over.”

“Language, dear,” murmured Mrs Bagthorpe automatically.

“Not on purpose, of course,” said Uncle Parker.

“Of course not on purpose!” snapped Mr Bagthorpe. “The way you drive, you couldn’t hit a brick wall, let alone a cat.”

“It just wasn’t very nippy on its toes, you see,” said Uncle Parker apologetically to Grandma.

“It nipped me on my toes,” said William. “Bags of times.”

The rest turned unsmilingly towards him.

“All right,” he said. “So it wasn’t all that funny. But what about this ‘Pooh!’ business of Uncle P’s? Let’s get back to that. Unless you want to hear what Anonymous from Grimsby told me.”

“I don’t think you’d better,” said Jack. “It’d be breaking the veil of secrecy.”

He enjoyed making this remark, but his pleasure was short-lived.

“I wish you’d learn to use words accurately,” said Mr Bagthorpe testily. (He wrote scripts for television and now and again got obsessed about words, which in his darker moments he believed would eventually become extinct, probably in his own lifetime.) “You can’t break a veil. A veil, by its very nature, is of a fine-spun, almost transparent texture, and while it may be rent, or even—”

“For crying out loud,” said Uncle Parker.

“Oh, dearest,” murmured his wife, “must you …?”

This was the first time Aunt Celia had spoken. She had not even noticed when Uncle Parker had sprayed crumbs at her. The reason for this was that she was gazing at a large piece of bark by her plate. No one had remarked on this because Aunt Celia often brought pieces of bark, ivy or stone (and even, on one memorable occasion, a live snail) to table to gaze on as she ate, even at other people’s parties. She did this because she said it inspired her. It was partly to do with her pot-throwing, she said, and partly her poetry. There was no argument about this since her poetry and pottery alike were not much understood by the other Bagthorpes. They respected it without knowing what on earth it was all about. Also, Aunt Celia was very beautiful – like a naiad, Uncle Parker would fondly tell people – and looked even more so when she was being wistful and faraway. In the hurly-burly of Bagthorpe mealtimes she was looked upon more as an ornament than a participant.

She had, however, now spoken, and the Bagthorpes were sufficiently surprised by this to fall silent again.

“Must I what, dearest?” asked Uncle Parker, leaning forward.

“I was just on the verge … I thought … I was almost …”

Her voice trailed off. When Aunt Celia did speak it was usually like this, in a kind of shorthand. She started sentences and left you to guess the ends – if, of course, you thought it worth your while. By and large, the Bagthorpes did not. Uncle Parker, however, did.

“Just on the verge of …?” he prompted delicately.

“What about my portrait?” demanded Rosie loudly. Having had her swimming feat passed over as a mere nothing, she had no intention of letting her Birthday Portrait go the same way. It was set on an easel just by Grandma herself and no one had commented on it because in the first place they were currently more interested in food, and in the second because it looked unfinished.

“Where’s her mouth?” demanded Tess.

“And her nose?” asked Jack.

“Not to mention her eyes,” added William. “Might come out right, Rosie, but doesn’t look like one of your best. You’ve got her ears wrong. You’ve got ’em too flat. Look – you look – they stick out a lot more than you’ve got them.”

The entire table turned its eyes on Grandma’s ears. Grandma looked frostily back at them.

“My ears,” she stated, “are one of my best features. This was one of Alfred’s favourite contentions during our courtship. “I could love you for your ears alone,” he would say, and, ‘Grace, your ears are like petals, veritable petals.’ Isn’t that so?”

All eyes now turned towards Grandpa who was stolidly making his way through what was probably his tenth stuffed egg. In his rare communicative moments he would sometimes confide that one of the few pleasures left to him in life was stuffed eggs – that and skewering wasps he would say – and the latter was unfortunately seasonal. (A relative of Grandpa’s had once died of a wasp sting and he was convinced that this would be the way he would go too, unless it were under the wheels of Uncle Parker’s car.)

“Alfred!”

Grandma leaned forward and jabbed at his arm, determined that he should give testimony. He dropped his egg and blinked blankly at her.

“Eh? Eh? Happy Birthday, my dear.”

“SD,” murmured Uncle Parker to Jack. “See what I mean?”

“I was saying about my ears!” Grandma pointed to her own with either hand simultaneously, thereby taking on a distinctly lunatic look.

“Ah – my ears!” Grandpa sounded relieved. He picked up his egg and started in on it again. “Aid’s playing up a bit. One of those days. I don’t reckon much to these aids. It’s the weather, you know. They’re affected by the weather.”

“My ears!” Grandma positively shrieked. Grandpa did not turn a hair. He did not even seem to know she had spoken. He simply went on polishing off his stuffed egg. He had flecks of yolk in his beard, Jack noticed.

“The candles!” cried Mrs Bagthorpe with tremendous gaiety. She rose and swept theatrically towards the head of the table where Grandma sat fuming behind her porcupine of a cake.

“I hope you’re satisfied!” she hissed at Mr Bagthorpe as she passed behind him.

He turned to Uncle Parker for support.

“I never said a word about her ears,” he protested. “I may have said one or two rather strong things about that blood-crazed animal of—”

“Ssssh!” Mrs Bagthorpe had just struck her first match and her hiss blew it out. She struck another.

“The older you get,” observed Grandma dismally, “the more you are trodden down. Life is nothing but a process of being trodden down from the cradle to the grave.”

“Note the change of tactics,” said Uncle Parker to Jack sotto voce. “She’s not half bad, I’ll say that.”

Mrs Bagthorpe was now lighting candles with practised rapidity and had signalled Tess to start on the other side of the cake. Grandma kept up a muttered monologue as the conflagration spread before her. Jack could not catch all of it but it seemed mostly to be about graves, and ingratitude.

“The crackers!” exclaimed Mr Bagthorpe suddenly. He was evidently remorseful and felt bound to do his own share of drumming up a festive air. “By Jove – can’t have the cake cut without hats on!”

“Where are the crackers?” asked William.

They looked about the littered table.

“I put them out – I did! There was one on every side plate!” Tess was frantically darting her hands among the candles as she spoke. “And Daisy helped me.”

There was a real silence now.

“Good God,” said Uncle Parker at last. He had gone quite white. “Daisy.”

“She’s not here,” said Jack unnecessarily.

“Daisy, Daisy, where – oh where—” moaned Aunt Celia wildly. She pushed away her piece of bark and stood swaying like a reed.

“I clean forgot. Oh my God. I’ll find her – I will!”

“But what – where – the lake …” moaned Aunt Celia.

At Grandma’s end of the table concern for Daisy was not half so strong as concern for the crackers.

“She was here, I tell you, putting out crackers.” Tess’s face was lit now from below, the cake was sputtering and ablaze.

“We’ll have to blow the candles – we’ll have to sing – we can’t wait!” shrieked Mrs Bagthorpe.

“Look – here’s one!” Mr Bagthorpe snatched a cracker from under a crumpled napkin. “Quick – Jack – you pull it with me, and then there’ll be a hat for Grandma.”

Jack reached over and they pulled hard. Crack!

Chapter Two

What happened next was so confusing that even when you put together the different accounts of everyone there present, nothing like a clear picture ever emerged. The Fire Brigade, when they arrived, could certainly make neither head nor tail of it and had never before attended a fire like it.

In the Bagthorpe family, the incident became known, in course of time, as “The Day Zero Piddled While Home Burned”. (No one actually saw this, but he sometimes did when he got nervous, and it rhymed so well with ‘fiddled’ that it was passed as Poetic Licence.)

Only a handful of facts – as opposed to impressions, which were legion – emerged. These were as follows:

Fact the First

Daisy, aged four, had been sitting underneath the table the whole time the party was going on.

Fact the Second

What she had been doing under the table was opening all the crackers and taking out whatever was inside. (After the fire quite a lot of melted plastic was found mixed in with the carpet.)

Fact the Third

What was also under the table (mistaken by Daisy for a second box of crackers) was a large box of fireworks which were a surprise present to Grandma from Uncle Parker. He said afterwards he had given them in the hope they would liven things up.

Fact the Fourth

Daisy was in the company of a mongrel dog called Zero who belonged to the Bagthorpes in general and Jack in particular. He had just appeared one day in the garden, and stayed. The Bagthorpes had advertised him in the local paper, but nobody seemed to have recognised the description, or if they had, had not come forward. Mr Bagthorpe disassociated himself from Zero and would often pretend he had never set eyes on him.

“There’s a dog out there on the landing,” he would say. “A great pudding-footed thing covered in fur. See what it wants.”

It was Mr Bagthorpe who had given Zero his name.

“If there was anything less than nothing,” he had said, “that hound would be it. But there isn’t, so we’ll have to settle for Zero.”

The family computers, William and Rosie, had pointed out that mathematically speaking there was a whole lot to choose from that was less than zero, but Mr Bagthorpe had dismissed this as idle speculation.

“You show me something less than nothing, and I’ll believe you,” he had told them.

Mr Bagthorpe could be very categorical, and was especially so on subjects about which he knew practically nothing, like mathematics. Anyway, Zero was called that, and Jack sometimes used to wonder if it had affected him, and given him an inferiority complex, because sometimes Zero seemed to drag his feet about rather, and his ears looked droopier than when they had first had him. Jack would spend hours poring over old snapshots of Zero, comparing ears. When they were alone together Jack would praise Zero up and tell him how wonderful and intelligent he was, to try and counteract this. Also, when in public Jack would call him “Nero” so as to give him a bit of dignity in the eyes of others, and as Zero hardly ever came when he was called anyway, it didn’t make much difference.

So the fact was that Zero was under the table with Daisy, who had probably given him some food to keep him quiet. When she was cross-examined afterwards Daisy said she had taken him under the table with her because she had thought it would be lonely under there by herself. Mr Bagthorpe flatly refused to believe this, and said that Daisy must have plotted the whole thing because if Zero hadn’t been there with her none of the things that did happen would have happened.

He and Uncle Parker used to have rows about this for weeks afterwards. Uncle Parker would say that while he admitted that Daisy was a genius (she had to be, with a reading age of 7.4 and the way she was always writing her thoughts on walls, and what with having Aunt Celia for a mother) she was too young to have plotted anything as complicated as that. He would also point out that the whole thing had hinged not so much on Zero being under the table as on the moment when a certain cracker was pulled, Mr Bagthorpe being the person who had made this suggestion and connived at its execution. Mr Bagthorpe would retaliate by saying that the coincidence of Uncle Parker’s having bought a large box of fireworks, and of Uncle Parker’s daughter being under the table with them, might strike some people as rather more than coincidence. He would usually end up advising Uncle Parker to take himself and Daisy off to a psychiatrist.

Fact the Fifth

When Jack and Mr Bagthorpe pulled the single available cracker, Zero, who was probably already nervous at being trapped so long under a table surrounded by so many feet and legs, had blown his mind. He had sprung forward, got both sets of paws wound in the tablecloth and pulled the whole lot after him, including the cake.

At the actual moment this happened, of course, no one had any inkling that Zero had been under the table, and the sight of the tablecloth leaping forward and rolling about on the floor had almost unhinged some of them, notably Grandma, Mrs Bagthorpe and Aunt Celia. The latter certainly always referred to it afterwards as a “manifestation” and would refer to how Daisy had been “delivered”. (This also helped make Daisy seem less of a culprit, because it made her seem more a victim, and it was difficult to see her in both roles at once.)

Grandma herself, with it being her birthday and her cake, had taken the whole thing personally and had thought she was being struck by a thunderbolt. She had miraculously escaped injury altogether, but Rosie’s Birthday Portrait had been one of the first things to go up in flames and always afterwards Grandma saw this as what she called a “Sign”. A Sign of what she didn’t specify, but she always said it very darkly, and when she was feeling low. Sometimes the others, to cheer her up when she got brooding about it, would say that if it were a “Sign” it was clearly a Sign that Rosie’s Birthday Portrait had not been worth a light – so to speak.

Grandpa had not of course heard the whole lot of cracks and bangs as all the crackers Daisy had dismantled started going off, but had not failed to note that the last remaining stuffed egg had been suddenly snatched from under his very nose. He had risen hastily to grab after it, knocked over his own chair, tripped, and fallen over Grandma and lost his hearing aid.

When the firemen came they were very helpful and said they would keep an eye open for it, but what with the whole room by then ablaze and the curtains just beginning to catch fire, they didn’t really have time. They were very good firemen but they did seem nervous about bangers still going off and sudden flares of blue or green light. They definitely seemed jumpy. Afterwards, when they were having some beer with the Bagthorpes to moisten their dried-out mouths, they apologised for this. They said that the Bagthorpe fire was not really a run-of-the-mill job or something for which they had been properly prepared during their training.

They stayed on quite a while after the fire was out. They sat round in the kitchen and told the Bagthorpes a lot of interesting things about arson and so on, and before they left Rosie got all their autographs. They seemed quite flattered by this. Rosie told them the autographs were more of a gamble than anything, just in case one of them ever died rescuing someone from a burning building, and became a national hero and got a post-mortem award on the television. Soon after this the firemen left.

When they had gone, Mrs Fosdyke (who came in daily to do for the Bagthorpes, but refused to sleep in) said she thought they had all looked too young and inexperienced to be proper firemen. She did not believe they had been a proper Fire Brigade at all, and said that her carpet and her furniture would not now be in the state they were in if a proper Brigade had been sent in time. People were too easily deceived by uniforms, she said. (Mrs Fosdyke had missed the actual moment when the tablecloth went up in the air and was naturally bitter about this.)

Nobody did anything about cleaning up after the fire that night. They all sat round and talked about it till quite late. At around ten o’clock Mr Bagthorpe went out to close his greenhouse for the night and fell over Zero, who had not been seen since the Party. Jack had even feared him lost, and had had a quick look among the debris for signs of bones, though he was not certain what exactly a burned bone would look like.

“That infernal hound’s back,” Mr Bagthorpe announced and Zero crept in behind him. He was still shaking. Jack stood up.

“I’m going to bed,” he said. Zero always slept in his room and he looked as if he needed a rest.

“Nobody’s sung ‘Happy Birthday’ to me yet,” Grandma said. “My birthday’s nearly over. I shan’t be having many more. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Nothing really matters.”

“Oh, darling, of course it matters. We’ll all sing it now, this very moment, won’t we, everyone?” cried Mrs Bagthorpe. “But what a shame about the candles.”

Chapter Three

Jack wondered whether Zero’s legs looked wobbly because of the chilliness or because they had still not picked up after last night. Zero had certainly not wanted to go with Jack when he went to have a look at the scene of the disaster in daylight, or rather, dawnlight. It was not yet six o’clock. The gutted and blackened state of the dining-room had shaken Jack himself. The tattered curtains swung to and fro in the shattered windows. It looked more like a scene out of a film than home.

Jack and Zero were padding together over the fields towards The Knoll, Uncle Parker’s house. (He had wanted to call it “Parker Knoll” but Aunt Celia had said she would leave him if he did.) Jack had not slept too well. He had not been thinking especially about the fire, though he had once or twice been tempted to go down and make sure that there wasn’t anything still smouldering. Mrs Fosdyke had been very definite about the dubious credentials of the firemen who had come, and they had certainly been jumpy. But what was really exercising his mind was Uncle Parker’s idea. He had obviously thought of a way that he, Jack, could become immortal and keep up with the rest of the Bagthorpes. He had been, maddeningly, on the very brink of imparting it on the previous afternoon.

“If I get immortal, old chap,” Jack told Zero now, “I’ll make sure you do as well. I’ll work you in on the act somehow.”

He made quite a few other similarly encouraging remarks to Zero on the walk, because his self-confidence must have suffered a severe setback last night, and Mr Bagthorpe, for one, wouldn’t let him forget it in a hurry. (Jack was right about this. Quite often in weeks and even months to come he would say things like, “Look to yourself – here comes that incendiary hound again,” or, “If that animal’s stopping, the house insurance’ll have to go up again, you realise that”.)

Jack was going to The Knoll so early partly because he was impatient to hear the idea and partly because he knew that this was Uncle Parker’s best time of the day. Uncle Parker spent his whole time apparently lounging around and led a life of ease, but he had long ago confided to Jack that this sort of thing was by no means as simple as it looked. He rose at six, summer and winter alike, did a workout and then jogged for three miles round the fields. He then went home, took a cold shower, prepared orange juice, toast and coffee and retired into his study with the morning papers, which he paid an extra fifty pence a week to have delivered early. What he did then, or so Jack gathered, was something to do with stocks and shares. In the village opinion ranged from suspecting him of being the compiler of The Times crossword (which would explain why Aunt Celia was so good at it) to his being an Enemy Agent (this by people who had had particularly narrow escapes from Uncle Parker’s car). He stayed in the study till about ten answering letters and making telephone calls, and then the rest of the day was free.

This infuriated other people who were mystified as to what Uncle Parker actually did in life to maintain, for instance, the kind of car he drove round in, terrifying the life out of everyone else. They were also irritated by the way he looked so lean and fit while apparently inviting flab and liver trouble by lounging around sipping gin and doing crosswords.

“I am an idle devil,” Uncle Parker once told Jack. “But at least I work at it.”

Jack could see him now, at a distance, clad only in shorts and vest, jogging along in a shower of spray. He shouted and Uncle Parker waved and veered in his direction.

“Up early,” he called. “House hasn’t gone up again, has it?”

“They’re all asleep. I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Uncle Parker, drawing up to him. “No more could I. And the thing that kept coming at me all night was those allfired mottoes.”

“Mottoes?”

“In all those crackers. We’ll never know what they were, now. I use ’em, you know, at dinner parties, as conversation-stoppers. The minute they start on about politics, out I come with one of my little mottoes. To tell you the truth, I collect them. Got a little book full of ’em. I wonder who thinks them up.”

“Nobody, I don’t suppose,” Jack said. “I should think they’re handed down through the generations. They’re immortal. And that reminds me …”

“I know, I know.” Uncle Parker raised a silencing hand. “You jog along back with me, and I’ll tell all.”

“I don’t know if Zero’s up to jogging.” Jack eyed him dubiously. “Do his ears look droopy to you?”

“He’s not much of a livewire at the best of times.” Uncle Parker in turn surveyed him. “On the other hand, he did have a bit of a raw deal yesterday. If he had any spirit, he’d take a piece out of Daisy’s leg.”

“He’d never!” Jack was shocked.

“To be frank –” Uncle Parker started jogging and Jack kept up – “I was about ready to take a piece out of her leg myself. All those mottoes!”

“What about being immortal, then?” Uncle Parker would keep going off on different tacks if he were not pinned down.

“Ah. Well. What I’ve hatched up for you, young Jack, is going to shake that family of yours to its foundations. To its core.”

“It is?”

“What you are going to be,” Uncle Parker told him, as they entered the field that was the home straight to The Knoll, “is a prophet.”

Jack was struggling to keep up. He was a full foot shorter than Uncle Parker and what was a jog to him was an all-out striding for Jack.

“You mean—?” He was bewildered. “Make a profit? Be in business? But I said nothing to do with figures.”

Uncle Parker stopped so suddenly that Jack was several yards past him before he realised, and had to turn back.

“What I mean,” he said, “is that you are to become a mystery, an enigma, a mystically gifted being beyond all ken. Beyond anybody’s ken.”

There was quite a long silence then, which allowed Zero to catch up.

“It was what you said yourself, yesterday,” Uncle Parker said. “About going into a trance.”

“Oh, I wasn’t in a real one,” Jack assured him hastily. “All I meant—”

“I know you weren’t in a real one,” said Uncle Parker. “But what if you had been?”

They looked at one another.

“What,” said Uncle Parker pregnantly, “if you’d been having a Vision?”

“B-but I never do have visions. I’ve never had one in my whole life. I—”

“From now on,” Uncle Parker told him firmly, “you will have Visions. Frequently. You will also hear Voices.”

“W-will I?”

“You will receive,” said Uncle Parker, “Messages.”

“But I don’t get them either.”

“Didn’t,” corrected Uncle Parker. “You didn’t get Messages. From now on, you will get them. Daily. Well, no, perhaps not daily, not at the start. If we overdo things, it’ll arouse suspicions. No, to begin with, you will just get the odd Message.”

“What sort of Message?”

Uncle Parker was not even listening.

“And hear the odd Voice. But there again, we don’t want to go overdoing the Joan of Arc bit, not at the beginning.”

“Look, Uncle Parker. I know you’re trying to help. But—”

“I’ve got the first move all planned. As soon as I get back and change, I’ll prime you up. But you realise –” he started jogging again, and Jack had no option but to follow suit – “that there’ll have to be a bit of discipline and hard work.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“I’ve told you. The easier it looks, the harder it is. And to start with, I think you ought to start practising a few basic skills.”

Jack did not bother to ask what these basic skills were because he knew he was about to hear anyway.

“One that occurred to me last night when I was lying there thinking about those cursed mottoes, was water divining. Dowsing. Read an article about that only last week, and there’s definitely something in it. Might even give it a go myself. Just think – you and me waltzing about the place with forked twigs leaping in our hands like live fish – give ’em something to think about that will!”

Jack felt, despite himself, the stirrings of excitement. He too had read about water divining, but had imagined that you had to be the seventh son of a seventh son even to think of taking it up. He said so.

“Pooh!” returned Uncle Parker. “Anyone can do it. Just takes a bit of application. Or else,” he added, “a map showing local underground water courses.”

“You mean …?”

“I mean,” said Uncle Parker, “that we shall both have a good stab at making ourselves into diviners of water. But if all else fails, we shall content ourselves with convincing other people that you, at any rate, are.”

“Oh,” said Jack. “Cheating.”

“Being one cleverer than they are,” corrected Uncle Parker. “Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

“Well, I suppose …”

“Come on, old son, brace up.” They were entering the garden of The Knoll now. “You stop here, and I’ll be back in a jiffy and let you have the lowdown on the whole thing.”

He jogged off over the lawn leaving his footprints in the dew.

“You could try having a ferret round for a dowsing twig,” he called over his shoulder. “Hazel’s best.”

Jack took a look about, but Uncle Parker’s garden was full of flowering shrubs and rambling roses and did not look half wild enough to house dowsing twigs. After a while he gave up looking, and sat on a stone bench and got Zero to sit in front of him while he took a good look at his ears. He was not really satisfied with what he saw, so he spent the time waiting for Uncle Parker to reappear in giving Zero a pep talk. He told him how the whole thing had been Daisy’s fault, how sensible Zero had been to clear right off out of things instead of hanging around waiting to be burned, and how Grandma had said that the carpet and curtains were getting shabby anyway.

“By the time the Insurance have paid up,” he told Zero, “our whole dining-room’ll be better than it’s ever been. And it’s all due to you. Good boy. Good boy.”

He leaned back to survey Zero’s ears and assess how much good his pep talk had done, but just then Uncle Parker came back. He sat next to Jack and produced two loose-leaf notebooks. He passed one to Jack.

“Here,” he said. “Guard this with your life.”

Interested, Jack opened it.

“But there’s nothing in it!”

“Yet,” said Uncle Parker. “There will be. This is for notes and records of the Campaign. Better not to have one, of course, better to commit all to memory – but there you are. With due respect, I don’t think you’ve got the memory.”

“No.” Jack was not offended. He was used to this kind of remark.

“Now, here’s a pen.” Uncle Parker passed one over, the felt-tipped variety. He opened his own notebook and Jack saw that his first page was already full.

“Write down ‘Create Mysterious Impression’,” commanded Uncle Parker. “And underline it.”

Jack obeyed.

“One ‘e’ in mysterious and two ‘esses’ in impression,” said Uncle Parker, “but never mind.”

“What does it mean?” Jack asked.

“It means,” Uncle Parker told him, “that from now on you are to behave, now and then, Mysteriously. What I mean by this is that you are to give the impression, now and again, that your eyes are fixed on things invisible to mortal eyes. That you are, possibly, seeing Visions.”

“How?” Jack asked.

“Watch me.”

Uncle Parker laid aside his notebook and looked with a kind of mad intensity at something just to the right of Jack’s head. It was as if he were trying to look Jack in the eyes to hypnotise him, but missing. His look deepened in such a definite way that Jack, alarmed, actually turned his head to see if there were anything there behind him.

“Aha!” Uncle Parker was triumphant. “Ha! Got you! See what I mean? That’s the kind of look to give ’em! Come on, you do it. Have a go at looking Mysterious.”

Jack, whose sole dramatic experience to date had been playing Third Shepherd in a Nativity play when he was six, tried to oblige. He fixed his gaze on a point behind Uncle Parker’s left ear and tried to imagine he was seeing a Vision. He kept it up for what seemed a very long time. He tried not to blink because that seemed a good and visionary thing to do, but then his eyes started to water and he ended up having to blink twice as much as usual. Through a blur he moved his gaze on to Uncle Parker.

“Look,” said Uncle Parker kindly, “it was a good start. Fine. But you did look a bit as if rigor mortis had set in. The whole idea is to look Mysterious and faraway – there was too much stare about the whole thing. Now watch me again.”

Jack watched Uncle Parker do it and then Uncle Parker watched him have another go. This time Jack decided on imagining a plateful of bacon, egg, sausage, tomato, mushroom and fried bread behind Uncle Parker’s ear.

“How was that?” he asked, reluctantly letting the picture go.

“Better.” Uncle Parker was emphatic. “Not far off first class. There was a whole lot of soul about that. You really looked as if you were seeing a Vision that time.”

“I was,” said Jack simply.

“We’ll forget that for now,” said Uncle Parker, “and get on to the first Vision.”

“I thought that was it,” said Jack.

“That,” explained Uncle Parker, “was for you to go round doing a few times during the day. Do it while several people are around, if you can, and do it about twice this morning and the same this afternoon. Make sure they get the message.”

“The awful thing would be if I laughed,” Jack said.

“If you laugh,” said Uncle Parker sternly, “I wash my hands of you. Clear?”

“Clear,” Jack said. “There is one thing. Could Zero be in on it as well?”

Uncle Parker, floored, looked at Zero lying slumped by Jack’s feet as if he were sculpted in dough.

“Now listen,” he said, “I’ll take you on, because by and large I think you’re promising material. I think I’ll make something of you. But that hound’s another matter.”

“Don’t call him an h-o-u-n-d,” pleaded Jack. He spelled the word out because he was pretty sure that Zero, being so simple in other ways, would almost certainly not understand. “Please. Father does it all the time. It undermines his confidence. And he’s in a terrible state after last night.”

“We’re all in a terrible state after last night,” said Uncle Parker. “And some of us didn’t do double somersaults with burning tablecloths on our heads.”

“You would,” said Jack, “if you’d been under there, in his position.”

“We won’t go into that,” said Uncle Parker. “All I’m saying is that any question of that dog having Visions is out. Come to think –” he eyed Zero speculatively – “that’s not quite right. Come to think, he goes round half the time looking as if he’s having Visions. You could do worse than study him.”

“Hear that?” Jack, delighted, bent and patted him. “Hear that, Zero? Good old boy!”

Zero wagged his tail lethargically.

“I’m glad you said that,” Jack told Uncle Parker. “It’s cheered him up no end.”

“So – ready for another note.” Uncle Parker changed the subject. “Write ‘Vision One’ and underline.”

Jack obeyed.

“Now write what I dictate.”

Jack poised his felt-tip ready.

“Write: ‘I see … I see … I see a Lavender Man who Bears Tidings.’”

Jack let his pen drop.

“Write what?” he said incredulously.

“Never mind that. You write it down. ‘I see dot dot dot, I see dot dot dot, I see a Lavender Man who Bears Tidings.’”

Jack wrote it down in a fog.

“Now read it back to me.”

Uncle Parker listened.

“You don’t say dot dot dot,” he explained patiently. “Those are to indicate pregnant pauses. I see … pause, I see … pause … Get it?”

“I get it.” Jack altered his dot dot dots to ‘…’

“Now say it,” ordered Uncle Parker. “With feeling.”

Jack stood up.

“I don’t think I want to go on with this,” he said.

“Sit down,” said Uncle Parker.

Jack sat down.

“I know. I know it’s a damn-fool thing to say,” Uncle Parker said.

“It certainly is,” said Jack with feeling. “I can’t say it. I’ve never said anything like it in my life.”

“Precisely. You take the point exactly. You have never said anything like it in your life. And so when you do say it, around tea-time, after spending most of the day seeing Visions past people’s ears, it’s going to get noticed.”

“It certainly is,” said Jack again. “They’ll probably send for the doctor.”

“They won’t,” said Uncle Parker. “But if they do, make sure you look past his ear as well. Do the Vision stuff on him like we practised. Might even help if they do call for a medical opinion.”

“Actually,” Jack said, “I think I might be going to go mad. What’s it all about? What’s all this about Lavender Men and Bearing?”

“Aha!” Uncle Parker was triumphant again. “That’s where they start sitting up and taking notice. That’s where I come in.”

“It is?”

“Last week,” explained Uncle Parker, “unbeknownst to your Aunt Celia, unbeknownst, in fact, to anyone in the world except myself, a tailor in the West End and possibly my bank manager, I purchased, after much deliberation, a lavender suit.”

“A suit made of lavender?”

“A lavender-coloured suit, Jack, so far as I can describe it.”

“Whatever for?”

“You’re a bit young to understand,” Uncle Parker told him. “I bought it because – I think because – I felt I wasn’t quite living up to your Aunt Celia’s ideal. I felt that if I took to wearing a lavender suit now and again, she would see in me the man she once hoped I was.”

“Oh.” Jack was as nonplussed as he had ever been in his life.

“Listen carefully. At around half-past six, I shall whip up your drive and emerge wearing the aforesaid lavender suit. I shall also bear tidings. I shall have, in other words, news for you.”

“What news?”

“I don’t think I should tell you that,” said Uncle Parker. “If I do, I think it will be hard for you to act surprised when I tell you tonight, so it’ll be better if you actually don’t know. No offence. But you see what I mean.”

“I wish I did,” said Jack.

“Now look. It’s all absolutely straightforward. You’ve got it all written down. One – you act Mysterious. Right?”

“Right.”

“Two, you come out, round about tea-time, with Vision One. You say, ‘I see dot dot dot I see dot dot dot et cetera.’ Right?”

“I suppose so.”

“That’s it, then. That’s all there is to it. Just leave the rest to me. By seven o’clock tonight, I promise you, you’ll be Number One Attraction in the Bagthorpe ménage. Your wildest dream come true.”

“Uncle Parker …”

“Well?”

“I think – yes, look! There is – there’s smoke coming out of your house.”

Uncle Parker turned towards The Knoll. From the window of one of the upper rooms was issuing, undeniably, a cloud of smoke.

“My God!” exclaimed Uncle Parker. “It’s Daisy again!”

He leapt up and was off.

“You get back!” he shouted. “You get back and make out you’ve never set eyes on me since last night. Get back quick!”

He was running, not jogging.

“And act natural!” His parting words floated out as he disappeared into the smouldering Knoll.

“Come on, Zero.”

Jack started off back home. It was still only just past seven. He stuffed the notebook deep in the pocket of his jeans.

“Act natural,” he repeated to himself. Then, uncertainly, “Act Mysterious. Stage One, Act Mysterious.”

It was all very confusing.

Chapter Four

The first thing Jack did when he got home was to get Vision One to materialise. He found all its ingredients except for the mushrooms, and set about frying them. No one else was down yet, but some of them were up because he could hear the far-off notes of an oboe and also from time to time a bump which was probably Mrs Bagthorpe unwinding herself from a Plough Posture. She had only recently taken up Yoga and was not very good at it but said she felt calmer already. She said she had felt calmer since the very first lesson when they had spent the whole hour just breathing. Jack had not noticed any real change. She certainly had not acted calm at Grandma’s Birthday Party, he reflected. She had been in a fair lather even before the tablecloth took off.

He sat at the table with his fry-up and cut off all the bacon rinds to give Zero. He was just feeding them to him when the kitchen door opened and in came Mrs Fosdyke.

“Here!” she said sharply, without preliminaries. “No feeding at table. You know as well as I do.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot.”

“No one to see, you mean,” returned Mrs Fosdyke. She had not stopped moving since she came in and had already removed her outer clothes to reveal a patterned wrap-round pinafore and exchanged her outdoor shoes for pink fur-edged slippers. (Mrs Fosdyke got cramps in her feet sometimes and the fur was a comfort, she said.)

“Your ma don’t like you frying up,” she observed. She went to the sink and set up a businesslike rattle.

“She likes you to get your vitamings of a morning. Grapefruit and that.”

“I’ll have a grapefruit as well,” Jack offered.

“It’s no good.” Mrs Fosdyke withdrew her hands from the water and wiped them on her front. “I shall have to go and have a look. Never a wink did I have last night. It was as if all my furniture and ornaments was floating round me.”

“I’ve seen it,” he told her. “It’s horrible. I shouldn’t go. It’ll only upset you.”

It was too late. Mrs Fosdyke was halfway across the hall before the words were out. Mrs Fosdyke was a very fast mover. She moved like a hedgehog, Mr Bagthorpe was fond of saying, and was about as much use about the house. This was up to a point true. Mrs Fosdyke had to a fine art the ability to move around fast without actually doing very much. Mr Bagthorpe said a lot of people in the army had this gift, and in the Civil Service, but that it was rare in a Daily.

Mrs Fosdyke was uttering little shrieks and Jack, wiping his plate with a crust, could imagine her in there darting around on the sodden carpet. She came back in.

“Those beautiful chairs,” she said. “Hairlooms. And all my best crystal. I could weep.”

Her voice was actually quite choked and Jack delicately turned his eyes away while she blew into a tissue. A sudden thought struck him. It might be a good idea, he thought, to practise giving a Mysterious Impression on her before any of the others got down. Her eyes were not too good, and she would not be so likely to notice any flaws in his performance.

What I’ll do, he thought, next time she asks me something, I won’t answer. Then she’ll look at me to see what’s the matter and I’ll do the Mysterious Impression. I won’t see bacon and eggs past her left ear, I’ve just had them. I’ll see dinner – roast beef and Yorkshire pud, or treacle tart. Something like that.

He already realised that visions of food were going to produce the required soulful look better than anything else.

“That dog, if it was mine, I’d take a slipper to,” Mrs Fosdyke said. “And that Daisy the same. Little madam her.”

Jack said nothing.

“That mother of hers is only half there,” Mrs Fosdyke went on. “Less than half. There’s no wonder that child’s out of control.”

Still Jack waited. This was not his cue.

“It’ll be months before that room’s set to rights,” continued Mrs Fosdyke. “Months and months. And I suppose you’ll all be eating in the kitchen under my feet till then. Yes. Well, that’ll be nice, I must say. Very nice.”

Jack began to wonder whether Mrs Fosdyke talked like this all the time, whether there was anyone else there or not, asking herself questions and answering them and changing from one subject to another. He began to suspect that his cue never would come up. Another thing was that she was always moving round and half the time he had his back to her. He did not feel that he could create a Mysterious Impression with his back. He got up, and stood waiting around for her to say something else.

“There’s butter gone up again two pence a pound.” Mrs Fosdyke was off on a new tack. She turned from the sink and Jack stepped into her path so that she would have to look at him and notice something faraway about him, but all she did was scoot round him and next minute had her back to him, shaking dusters out of a drawer.

“Mrs Bagthorpe,” soliloquised Mrs Fosdyke, “says there is more actual vitamings in marge than there is in butter. But that’s no comfort, the price marge is.”

Jack was just wondering whether he ought to make a few low moaning noises or something when the telephone rang and Mrs Fosdyke scuttled out to answer it.

“Oh, my good gracious!” he heard her say, followed by a series of disbelieving cries on an ascending scale. Then the telephone was put down.

“Mr Parker!” she poked her head in. “House gone up in flames – oh, would you – oh, I’d best go and tell them!”

She was down again in two minutes and started putting the kettle on and rattling cups and saucers.

“You can’t hardly believe it,” she said. “I thought I should’ve dropped dead when he told me. Sounded cool as a cucumber, mind. ‘Just let ’em know I’ve got my own little blaze going,’ he says, or something like that.”

On she rambled. Jack was by now thoroughly fed up with Mrs Fosdyke. She had refused to look at him and notice that he was doing a Mysterious Impression, and now she was telling Jack a piece of news he already knew – had known over an hour ago. There are few more frustrating things in life than being told something that you already know but cannot admit to knowing.

He decided to go up to his room and practise doing his Mysterious Impression in front of a mirror.

“Come on, Zero.”

He did not want Zero to be lying there looking so comfortable when Mr Bagthorpe came down, because he would probably get irritated by this and start in on Zero again and undo all the good work Jack had been doing on him. As Jack went out he heard Mrs Fosdyke telling herself:

“If I could remember for the life of me whether I turned my gas off under those prunes, I’d feel better. Things always go in threes. There’ll be a third.”

The way Jack felt at that moment about Mrs Fosdyke he rather hoped her prunes would set fire to her house – in a minor way, anyhow.

He met his mother on the landing. Her Yoga did not seem to have worked very well this morning, or else the calmness had worn off already.

“I must get over there and see if Celia’s all right. Have you heard? Oh, it’s dreadful, terrible!”

“It’s Daisy again, I expect,” Jack said. “It didn’t sound all that bad from what Mrs F said.”

“But Celia – you know how highly strung she is.”

“At least no one can say it’s Zero’s fault this time,” Jack said. “Come on, Zero, good boy.”

He went into his room. He sat in front of the mirror and began to practise but soon found it was no good. You couldn’t do it in a mirror. The whole point was that you had to look past somebody, just by their ear, and if you did that to your reflection you couldn’t check up on yourself. It didn’t matter how quickly you flicked your eyes sideways, you couldn’t catch yourself looking past your own ear. You always ended up looking yourself in the eye. Jack gave up.

He took out his notebook and studied it. There wasn’t much in it so far. It didn’t look like a Plan of Campaign at all. He remembered Uncle Parker’s instruction to guard it with his life. He hid it between his comics, where he knew it would be safe. Everybody else in the house despised him for reading them, and said so. They would not, they said, be caught dead looking at them.

By now there was quite a lot of noise downstairs, so Jack decided to go down and have another try at creating a Mysterious Impression. Twice this morning and twice this afternoon, Uncle Parker had said, and he hadn’t done it once yet.

“Stay, Zero.”

The longer Zero lay low the better, Jack thought. He found the whole family in the kitchen with Mrs Fosdyke darting among them distributing orange juice and toast. Everyone was talking loudly about fires. Mr Bagthorpe was moodily weighing up the chances of both himself and Uncle Parker getting their insurance money when it turned out Daisy had started both fires. It would look like conspiracy to defraud, he said.

“We got our fire in first, though. We get priority. I’ll bang the claim in first thing this morning.”

Jack sat down. Nobody took any notice of him, including Mrs Fosdyke, who evidently thought he had breakfasted sufficiently already. Everyone but him got orange juice and toast. He began to feel depressed. He began to wonder whether the whole Campaign was not a mistake, and whether to call it off before it even started. Out of a fog he heard his mother’s voice:

“… all right, Jack, dear?”

“What? What’s that?”

“I said, are you feeling all right. You look a bit pale and funny.”

“Oh – yes, oh, I do feel queer!”

His heart began to race. He had done a Mysterious Impression without even trying! He concentrated hard on looking faraway rather than delighted, and must have done it quite well because Mrs Bagthorpe said something about delayed shock.

“I just – just feel sort of faraway,” Jack said. He moved his gaze over his mother’s left ear and encountered William’s stony eyes. Hastily he moved his gaze again over William’s ear, and then met Rosie’s interested stare.

“You do look queer,” she said.

Then Mrs Fosdyke put her oar in.

“And no wonder,” she said deflatingly. “A fry-up like that first thing. I should’ve felt queer, a plateful like that. I did tell him, Mrs Bagthorpe – a grapefruit’s what you want. I told him, and get your vitamings.”

Jack could have killed her.

“Oh, well, perhaps that’s it.” Mrs Bagthorpe sounded relieved. “There’s enough to worry about – nobody else feels as if they’ve got delayed shock, do they?”

“I do,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “So what are you going to do about it?”

He was ignored. He did not mean it. He was just making dialogue, as he did in his TV scripts, and as nobody else in the family was paid for doing this, they did not see why they should play his game. The remark at least drew attention off Jack, who, despite Mrs Fosdyke’s untimely intervention, began to feel that he had established some sort of interest in his condition.

When Mrs Bagthorpe said, “You three help Mrs Fosdyke clear and wash up – Jack, you sit where you are and have a nice hot cup of coffee,” he decided to mark up his performance as the first authentic Mysterious Impression of the day.

The second was equally difficult to achieve. Jack had always known that his family was an unusually active one, even overactive, but he had never before realised how difficult it was to pin one of its members down and look him or her in the eye. It is very difficult to look someone in the eye when they are reading Voltaire or trying to contact a radio ham in Puerto Rico or painting a portrait. (Rosie had already begun on a second attempt at a Birthday Portrait of Grandma. Grandma had said she had better, because the way she felt, she didn’t think she would see another birthday.)

Mr and Mrs Bagthorpe were going to inspect the damage to The Knoll, and Mrs Fosdyke, as Jack now knew, was a congenital non-receiver of Impressions, Mysterious or otherwise.

He opted in the end for trying Rosie and Grandma because both of them seemed basically bored by the idea of the sitting, and would be more likely to spare a glance for himself.

Grandma had opted for having her Portrait painted with the burnt-out shell of the dining-room as a background. Mrs Bagthorpe had protested that this was morbid and unnatural, but Grandma was adamant.

“It was a Sign,” she said. “You can’t just toss it aside as if it were a mere bubble in the wind. I think I was meant to have my Portrait painted in there. If I were not, it wouldn’t have burned down.”

The logic of this was at the same time hard to follow and irrefutable, and Mrs Bagthorpe had let it go. There was certainly no time to argue with Grandma today. She and her husband had driven off to The Knoll, the latter fulminating.

“It’s all go,” he said. “Yesterday a fire, today a fire, and on Monday a funeral.”

“A funeral!” shrieked Grandma. “Whose?”

“Daisy’s,” he replied, “if I’ve anything to do with it.”

The sitting began. Jack sat very quietly to begin with. Grandma, against advice, was sitting on the one remaining dining-chair. It had only just survived, and was very charred up and shaky, so Grandma was sitting gingerly. She definitely looked as if she were sitting on a chair she expected to collapse at any moment. In some ways Jack could see this was a good thing because it gave her a more than usually wide-awake expression.

When Rosie had been sketching for a while he peered over to look. He saw that Rosie was getting plenty of the burnt-out background in. She had liked this idea as well as Grandma, and said it would give the portrait atmosphere and make it stand out. As yet Grandma’s face had no features and it still looked like the one that had gone up in flames. It was hard to think of anything to say about the portrait in its present state but Jack thought he had better try in case his silence was misconstrued as disapproval. He did not, however, attempt anything like a critical appraisal.

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