Ordinary Jack

by Helen Cresswell

  “You do not, I take it, see either of these things?” he asked.

  “No, Doctor,” replied Jack truthfully.

  “He sees,” said Mr Bagthorpe, “which is a good deal worse, I think, a Lavender Man Bearing Tidings.”

  “A Lavender Man Bearing Tidings?” said the doctor with irritating calmness. “Let’s have a look then, shall we?”

  The doctor opened his bag and the Bagthorpes watched respectfully while Dr Winters went through the whole performance of looking into Jack’s ears, throat and eyes, with particular emphasis on the latter. He also took his temperature and pulse. He then turned and faced his audience.

  “There is nothing I can discover,” he said carefully, “that would indicate any kind of departure from normal.”

  “Thank heavens!” Mrs Bagthorpe stepped forward and embraced Jack.

  “There what?” exploded her disbelieving husband. “You mean to tell me—”

  “It was your arm we were called out to examine, I believe,” interrupted Dr Winters, preparing to mount his own high horse. “Shall we take a look at this arm?”

  Mr Bagthorpe, realising that his whole scriptwriting career might hang upon Dr Winters’ goodwill, gave up.

  “All right,” he said meekly.

  “How did it happen?” enquired the doctor.

  “I fell over at tea-time,” replied Mr Bagthorpe.

  This explanation had already been mutually agreed upon by the Bagthorpes. They had decided that so phrased it was the truth without being the whole truth. The Bagthorpes always stuck together at times like this. News of Mr Bagthorpe’s disastrous gymnastics would never reach the outside world from Bagthorpe lips. Mrs Fosdyke was another matter. They had long ago given up trying to train her in loyalty.

  Dr Winters did not query this explanation. He duly examined the arm and pronounced that it needed to be taken to the nearest hospital, at Aysham, to be X-rayed.

  “Tell me the worst,” demanded Mr Bagthorpe. “Is it all over?”

  “Is what all over?” asked the confused Dr Winters.

  “With my career.”

  With unaccustomed patience Mr Bagthorpe explained that his livelihood, his raison d’être, his whole existence depended on the efficient functioning of his right hand, which in turn, he pointed out, depended upon his right arm.

  “Most unlikely,” Dr Winters snapped his bag shut. “Might be in plaster for a few weeks, that’s all.”

  “In plaster? For weeks?” Mr Bagthorpe fell back again. “It will kill me,” he declared.

  “Nonsense,” said Dr Winters. “Do you good. Give you a chance to catch up on your reading.”

  “You’re not exactly Milton, you know, Father,” Tess said unwisely. “It’s no good pretending your scriptwriting is ‘that one talent it is death to hide’.”

  “If I am not Milton,” returned Mr Bagthorpe, “nor is he me, and can’t be expected to know how I feel. If Milton were living at this hour, he would be writing TV scripts, let me tell you. And Dickens. And Shakespeare. And Tolstoy. Go and practise your oboe.”

  Tess stayed where she was.

  “Perhaps you could try writing with your toes?” suggested William.

  “And type with them as well, I suppose?” said Mr Bagthorpe.

  “Now then.” The doctor made an effort to terminate his visit. “Are you going to drive your husband to the hospital, Mrs Bagthorpe, or do you want me to arrange transport?”

  At that moment there was a violent scream of brakes and a churning of the gravel under the window that could only mean the arrival of Uncle Parker. Jack’s heart began to race. None of the others took much notice.

  “I can take him, of course,” Mrs Bagthorpe was saying, “though it will mean my missing the Parish Council meeting.”

  “Which is of infinitely greater consequence than my entire writing career, of course,” said Mr Bagthorpe, who had evidently decided to stop being brave and make an all-out bid for sympathy instead.

  At that moment in breezed Uncle Parker.

  “Hello, all!”

  The Bagthorpes turned. There was silence. Uncle Parker was attired in an elegant suit, complete with waistcoat, of palest lavender. He wore a purple bow tie and black patent shoes.

  “News,” he announced, “I’ve got news!”

  The Bagthorpes boggled. Then, one by one, they swivelled their gaze to Jack himself, as if they expected to see him in some way changed, transmogrified, now that his prophecy was fulfilled. Jack wondered briefly whether he should do his trance performance again, but decided against it. He had, after all, denied all knowledge of having said anything about a Lavender Man Bearing Tidings. In any case, he had done enough acting for one day.

  Still the Bagthorpes were transfixed and even Dr Winters was visibly shaken and looking at Jack again, as if for something he had missed in his first examination.

  There came into the hush a high, dismal, prolonged howl. The already shocked Bagthorpes now positively froze.

  “What … what on earth …?” began Mrs Bagthorpe faintly.

  The howl came again.

  “It’s a werewolf, I think,” said Rosie in a small voice and shuffled up to her mother.

  “Crikey! It’s Zero!”

  Jack dashed from the room. Zero, who had been patiently guarding the pile of comics for a full two hours now, evidently needed urgently to leave the house. When Jack opened his bedroom door he was practically knocked sideways as Zero hurled himself forward and shot down the landing.

  “Sorry!” yelled Jack after him. He himself leapt down the stairs two at a time and into the sitting-room. He could not afford to miss anything. By now the Bagthorpes, to some extent recovered, were beginning to find their tongues.

  “Didn’t expect to find you here, Doctor,” Uncle Parker was saying. “No one ill, I trust?”

  “Only me,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “Started any good fires lately?”

  “Mr Bagthorpe has injured his arm in a fall,” replied the doctor. “We were just discussing the problem of transport to the hospital for X-rays.”

  “No problem,” said Uncle Parker. “I’ll take him.”

  “At the moment,” said Mr Bagthorpe, “I have only what I suppose in the profession is termed a minor injury. I have no wish, thank you, to arrive at the hospital either crippled for life or a case for the coroner.”

  Uncle Parker was used to this kind of remark about his driving and took it gracefully.

  “As you like,” he said, “but you’ve only to say the word. Sorry about the arm. How did it happen?”

  “He fell over at tea-time,” said several Bagthorpes in unison. Uncle Parker, as one of the family, would hear the truth later, but not now, in the presence of an outsider.

  “A Lavender Man Bearing Tidings!” Grandma said dramatically and pointed an accusatory finger at Uncle Parker. “That man, the one who ran poor Thomas over, is the Lavender Man.”

  The other Bagthorpes slowly nodded their heads. There seemed no escaping this conclusion.

  “When did you buy that suit?” demanded Mr Bagthorpe. “And where did you get it? Not round here. You don’t see suits like that round here, thank God.” (Mr Bagthorpe himself usually wore denim as most of his friends at the BBC did and made a point of looking down-at-heel and interestingly dishevelled.)

  “Last week. The West End. D’you like it?” Uncle Parker pirouetted for their benefit.

  “It’s super,” said Tess. “I wish you’d get one like that, Father.”

  “It’s horrible,” said Mr Bagthorpe, “but that’s beside the point. The point is, it’s lavender.”

  “Unusual, I thought,” agreed Uncle Parker.

  “Fortunately,” returned Mr Bagthorpe. “And wait a minute – what about the tidings?”

  “Tidings?” repeated Uncle Parker. He did it beautifully, Jack thought, just a shade of puzzlement – not too much, not too little.

  “The Tidings you’re Bearing!” Mr Bagthorpe was beginning to shout again.

 
“I think perhaps I had better explain, Mr Parker,” said Dr Winters. “As a matter of fact, we have all just witnessed a most interesting phenomenon.”

  “You didn’t,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “I did. Twice. And you said there was nothing wrong with him.”

  Dr Winters ignored the interruption and explained the matter as he understood it much more clearly and briefly than any of the Bagthorpes could have done. Uncle Parker listened admirably. Jack felt that if whatever he did between 8 and 10 a.m. in his study ever fell through, he could easily take up acting instead.

  “By Jove!” he exclaimed. “How fascinating. Well, you’re a dark horse, young Jack, and no mistake. So we’ve got a prophet in our midst, have we?”

  “A prophet?” repeated William disbelievingly, and a shade jealously. “Anyway, the prophecy or whatever it is hasn’t come true. You’re not Bearing Tidings.”

  “Ah, but I am,” said Uncle Parker. “It’s why I came over. I’ve heard from the Brents.”

  “About my Danish girl!”

  “About my au pair!”

  Mrs Bagthorpe and Tess exclaimed simultaneously. They both had reason to be delighted. Tess had decided to make Danish another String to her Bow, and it was not on the syllabus at school. Mrs Bagthorpe wanted someone to live in and help with various things Mrs Fosdyke either wouldn’t or couldn’t do – driving the car, for one thing.

  “All fixed up,” nodded Uncle Parker. “She arrives tomorrow. Coming in on the 10.59 at Aysham.”

  “I cannot understand,” said Grandma, “why anyone should wish to call a child Atlanta. I am not altogether happy about this arrangement. I am beginning –” with a sideways look at Jack – “to have my doubts about all kinds of things.”

  “It’ll be marvellous,” Tess said. “We’ll be able to talk Danish all day long. But—”

  “So there’s your Bearing Tidings,” interrupted Mr Bagthorpe. “Is anyone going to do anything about getting me to hospital?”

  “Come along,” said his wife, “I shall take you. Tess, dear, will you ring Mr Boland and give him my apologies for this evening? And could you, Russell, possibly stop till I get back, and keep an eye on things?”

  “We don’t need babysitting, you know,” said William.

  “I know, dear. It’s just that, with one thing and another, I’d be happier, at the moment.”

  In case I have another trance, thought Jack gleefully. It’s worked. It’s all worked.

  Mrs Fosdyke poked her head in.

  “I’m off,” she said briefly. “I’ve swep’ up my Dresden and put the bits in a cereal bowl. It’ll never mend.”

  She shot Mr Bagthorpe a final baleful look, and was gone.

  “I can stay for a while,” said Uncle Parker, “but I don’t want to leave Celia on her own too long.”

  “Oh – poor Celia – I never asked, how is she?” cried Mrs Bagthorpe. “That fire coming so close after the other – she must be quite unnerved.”

  “She was unnerved,” said Uncle Parker. “Now, she’s practically unhinged. In fact –” he addressed Dr Winters – “I was in two minds whether to call you and get something to calm her down.”

  “Whatever’s happened now?” asked Mrs Bagthorpe.

  “That child’s set fire to her school, I expect,” said Mr Bagthorpe.

  “Some lunatic,” said Uncle Parker, “was making anonymous phone calls the whole afternoon. Someone was ringing up and breathing into the phone and then hanging up.”

  “How ghastly!” Mrs Bagthorpe clasped her hands. “I get this sort of thing, you know, among my Problems. Some poor creatures are hounded to the brink of suicide.”

  “Really? Tell us more.” You could see that Mr Bagthorpe, bad arm or not, was itching to make notes.

  She clapped a hand to her mouth.

  “No, I mustn’t. I can’t tell. I can’t say.”

  “What I can say,” Uncle Parker duly said, “is that if ever I catch who it was, blood will be shed.”

  Jack could not look at Uncle Parker. He felt his face burn.

  “When I was walking in the garden earlier I saw a hedgehog,” stated Grandpa.

  “Lovely, Father!” shouted Mrs Bagthorpe encouragingly.

  “It was dead,” he went on. “I hate to see a dead animal. Unless it’s a wasp.”

  “I’ll never forget the day my darling Thomas was killed,” began Grandma, “it was—”

  “Come on,” said Mr Bagthorpe, and got up. “The rest of you, don’t let him –” indicating Uncle Parker – “out of your sight. He’ll start another fire if you do. He’s hooked on it.”

  He went off to have his arm X-rayed and Jack went to call Zero back in.

  Chapter Seven

  After Mr and Mrs Bagthorpe and Dr Winters had left everybody started quarrelling. They did not do so immediately, but after Uncle Parker had referred to Jack as The Prophet for about the fifth time.

  “What do you mean, Prophet?” demanded William. “There aren’t such things nowadays.”

  “It was just a fluke, you coming up when you did in that suit,” said Tess.

  “All right, if you’re a prophet,” said Rosie, “tell us what the weather will be like on Sunday when I go to Debbie Beach’s open-air swimming party.”

  “What an ignorant lot you are,” Uncle Parker told them, saving Jack from the necessity of taking up Rosie’s challenge. “There are more things in heaven and earth, let me tell you, than playing tennis and oboes. Young Jack here is, quite clearly, a highly gifted being. Phenomenally gifted, gifted beyond all ken.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said William flatly.

  “My own theory,” continued Uncle Parker, “is that this latent faculty was triggered off by the shock of yesterday’s fire. I have done some reading on the subject, and this is quite often the way it happens. In fact I think I may say that I am proud that my own daughter was in part responsible for this marvellous flowering.”

  “He’s not going to start seeing ghosts, I hope,” said Grandma. “Because if he is, I might have to leave here and go and live somewhere else.”

  “He may well see apparitions,” nodded Uncle Parker. “Or he may not. None of us yet know the full extent of his powers. It will be a privilege for us all to be able to watch them as they develop.”

  Jack felt very odd indeed sitting there and hearing himself discussed like this. It all sounded like somebody else.

  “There are no such things as ghosts,” Tess said.

  “Indeed there are,” returned Uncle Parker. “I had an aunt who had visitations almost nightly from a monk who had been buried alive centuries before approximately in the spot where her wardrobe now stood.”

  At this Grandma said she was off out, and left the room.

  “I have always felt,” said Uncle Parker thoughtfully, “that young Jack here had a kind of – presence. An indefinable power.”

  “Well, I haven’t,” said William. “I suppose there’s an explanation. That alien intelligence Anonymous from Grimsby was talking about. Perhaps Jack’s been taken over by that.”

  “Trust you to get your everlasting Anonymous from Grimsby in,” said Tess scathingly. “Personally, I’m beginning to wonder if he even exists. I think he’s a figment of your overheated imagination.”

  So the row developed. The only one not involved was Jack himself, who sat quietly stroking Zero. One by one the Bagthorpes went stalking off and banging doors were heard in all parts of the house. An oboe started up and a very loud radio signal bleeping. Only Grandfather, Uncle Parker and Jack were left.

  “Better do a test,” said Uncle Parker. “Can’t be too careful. Test if he’s being SD …”

  He raised his voice to a pitch just above normal.

  “Come on, Grandpa,” he said. “Let’s go and stick into those stuffed eggs now.”

  Grandpa, who was watching a TV film with the volume turned right off, did not bat an eyelid.

  “Right,” said Uncle Parker, all at once businesslike. “What about those phone
calls then?”

  “It was the only way I could think of,” said Jack. “I’m sorry, I really am.”

  “If ever you do a thing like that again,” Uncle Parker told him, “I shall skin you alive. Your Aunt Celia has been lying in a darkened room since your last call. She may not write a poem or throw a pot for another month now. Her whole delicate make-up has been rudely shattered.”

  “I really am sorry,” said Jack again. “I never realised it would have that effect on her.”

  He was evidently forgiven because all at once Uncle Parker’s face brightened and he said, “Hey, how about the Lavender Man, then? How about that?”

  “It went a bomb,” agreed Jack. “Though I had a bit of trouble earlier on with the Mysterious Impressions. I couldn’t seem to pin anyone down. I ended up having to do two on Father.”

  “Do him good,” said Uncle Parker heartlessly. “How did he really do his arm?”

  Jack told him.

  “It’s the blight of this whole family,” said Uncle Parker when he heard. “Attention-seeking. Exhibitionism. Present company excepted.”

  “He’ll certainly lose his hair if his arm gets put in plaster,” said Jack gloomily. “He’ll take it out on us. Especially Zero. Does he look better to you than this morning? I’ve been setting him tasks, to develop responsibility and self-respect.”

  Uncle Parker gave Zero a cursory glance.

  “Looks all right to me,” he said. “But you’ll never make a silk purse out of a cow’s ear. Now look, I’ve got the next move planned. Two moves. Got your notebook?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “I’ve got it concealed in a foolproof hiding place. Only Zero and I know its whereabouts. Shall I fetch it?”

  “Haven’t time. Any of that lot could be back at any minute. You’re going to have to memorise it, I’m afraid. Now. The first thing we have to do is Consolidate. Get that?”

  “Consolidate,” repeated Jack.

  “Write that in your book when you go up, and underline it. What it means is, you want a few more stares past people’s ears in the next day or two. Right?”

  “Right,” said Jack.

  “I should give Grandma a miss,” Uncle Parker told him. “She’s getting jumpy.”