“If Zero doesn’t like the smell I shan’t burn it in here anyway,” he decided.
He lay on his bed studying the book that accompanied the Tarot cards. The whole thing seemed very complicated. There was little doubt that any futures Jack foretold would be based upon pure guesswork, with or without the benefit of the Tarot cards.
There was a tap on his door and his mother and Zero came in together. The latter leapt on the bed and licked Jack’s face, then jumped off and stood by the scone with the incense stick in it, sniffing rapturously.
“There’s a queer smell in here,” began Mrs Bagthorpe, “and what—”
She noticed the incense stick and Zero. She took a deep breath and Jack knew this meant she was going to be very calm and reasonable despite strong urges to be the opposite. It was part of her Yoga.
“Quite a nice smell,” she said determinedly forcing a slight smile. “Jasmine, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“There’s several flavours,” he told her. “Sandalwood and amber and rose and stuff.”
“Was that what you went into Aysham for?” she asked. “Or perhaps you went for that model glider you’re saving up for?”
“I’m going to wait before I buy that,” he said. “There are more things in heaven and earth than gliders and I had to spend my money on priorities.”
“Which are …?”
“These –” he waved the Tarot pack – “and those!”
He jerked his head towards the dowsing rod and the box containing the crystal ball. The box said CRYSTAL BALL FIRST QUALITY on it, so she could see at a glance what it was. She sat down suddenly.
“Sometimes,” she said, half to herself, “I think I ought to give up other people’s Problems and concentrate on my own. I think I fail you.”
“You mustn’t worry about me, Mother.” Jack could not help feeling guilty. He wanted to be a Phenomenon and a Prophet all right, but not if it was going to upset her too much. “I expect it’s just a passing phase I’m going through.”
She clutched gratefully at this straw.
“Yes, I expect that’s it. After all, you’re a growing boy. You’re bound to have passing phases.”
“I think everyone gets them sometimes,” said Jack wisely. He was enjoying this unaccustomed philosophical discussion. “Probably you do as well.”
“Do you know, I think I do,” she agreed.
“And Grandma certainly does,” said Jack with conviction.
“Oh dear – and that’s another thing. She’s still in bed. Oh, and that Danish girl – such a commotion.”
“Mrs Fosdyke said she was crying when she got here,” Jack said. “Perhaps it was Uncle Parker’s driving that had upset her. It can be pretty frightening if you’re not used to it.”
“Do you know, that’s exactly what your father said. He said it was enough to reduce anyone to tears. You know how he talks – but he could be right.”
“How is he?” asked Jack.
“Oh, and that’s another thing. He’s like a caged beast. He’s up and dressed now and pacing round and round his study. It must be terrible to have all that creativity bottled up inside you. I don’t think any of us realise what he suffers.”
“Zero probably does,” said Jack. “Zero suffers a lot.”
“And of course Tess is dreadfully upset,” continued Mrs Bagthorpe on her own tack. “You know how she was looking forward to Atlanta coming.”
“Atlanta!” said Jack scornfully. He felt much the same as Grandma did about this name, and Mrs Fosdyke had already flatly stated that she was not calling anybody by that name, ever.
“She doesn’t seem to understand much English, either,” went on Mrs Bagthorpe worriedly. “I understood that she was more or less bilingual.”
It later transpired that Mrs Bagthorpe’s fears were justified. Atlanta was, indeed, bilingual, but the languages involved were Danish and Portuguese. Her command of English was negligible. It did not even amount, as Mr Bagthorpe said, to a smattering. She could say “please” and “sank you” and “yes” and “no”. She could also say, “Plees haf you change for a pound,” and, “I haf an aunt who lifs in Bournemouth,” and count up to ten. None of which, he further pointed out, was going to take her far in the English social scene.
As it turned out, Atlanta did not need to speak English in order to become the centre of a social whirl. All she needed to do was appear. She was, once she had stopped crying and the swelling of her eyes and nose had subsided, devastating. She was Mrs Fosdyke’s worst fears come true, the prototype of every Danish au pair she had ever seen in films.
At this stage, of course, none of this had emerged. As yet the Bagthorpes knew only that they had a seventeen-year-old Danish girl with a blotchy face sobbing her heart out in the guest room and not seeming to understand a word that was said to her. Next door Tess was crying too, but not so noisily.
“Jack, dear –” Mrs Bagthorpe rose. “Could you go along and see if your grandparents want lunch? I shall have to go and have another word with Atlanta.”
Grandpa wanted lunch but Grandma refused, saying she didn’t want any lunch and didn’t feel as if she ever would again. Atlanta stayed in her room and Tess stayed in hers in sympathy. Jack felt annoyed with Atlanta before he had even set eyes on her. She was disrupting a household he had been all set to disrupt himself. At the moment it did not seem as if there was going to be room for both of them.
Mr Bagthorpe was at his bitterest at lunch. He had not written a single word that morning, not even a page or two he could tear up, which was in fact all he did some days.
“Not that it matters, of course,” he said, chasing peas left-handed round his plate. “The English language will soon become extinct. There are already signs of it. I shall see it in my lifetime.”
“Nonsense, dear,” said his wife.
“Even my own children reject it in favour of debased and hybrid continental lingos,” he went on. “Why did you say that girl was crying?”
“I didn’t,” she told him. “None of us can find out.”
“If she’s got hysteria as a result of being driven in Russell’s car, she’ll have to get over it as best she can,” he said. “Take aspirin or something. I’m not having that doctor in my house again.”
“Had any Visions or anything this morning?” William asked Jack, changing the subject before Mr Bagthorpe took right off. Jack pretended not to hear. It suddenly occurred to him that if he pretended not to hear half the things that were said to him, particularly if they were awkward or sarcastic things, this would create the impression that he was in Another World in a very painless and effective way.
“I’m getting on quite well with my portrait of Grandma,” Rosie said, contributing her bit towards the brisk and lively interchange of ideas and opinions that was supposed to characterise Bagthorpe mealtimes. “It’s much easier without her there.”
“Lovely, darling,” said Mrs Bagthorpe encouragingly. Then, “Mother hasn’t eaten a thing all day,” she told her husband.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he returned. “I’m having to force my own food down. After what’s gone on in this house in the last forty-eight hours nothing would surprise me, not any longer. It wouldn’t surprise me if the heavens opened and it began to hail mothballs.”
Startled, Jack recognised a totally unexpected cue, a real bonus, and from his father, of all people.
“… the heavens opening …” he murmured, fixing his eyes on the remainder of his lamb chop. “The sky …” he fumbled for the third Key Phrase, and found it – “… a Giant Bubble …”
“Oh my God, here we go again!” Mr Bagthorpe flung down his fork and his peas scattered.
“I have made up my mind,” came Grandma’s voice unexpectedly, “that I shall take up Yoga.”
Everyone at the table, with the exception of Grandpa, turned towards the door.
“You – will – do – what?” Mr Bagthorpe left quite a long space between each word, which was
a bad sign with him. It meant his control was running out.
“There’s no need to space your words out at me like that,” Grandma told him. “I’m perfectly compos mentis, thank you.”
“In that case,” said her son, “you’re about the only person left round here who is. You’re what?”
“For someone who is supposed to be a writer,” said his mother, purposely ignoring the question, “you don’t use the language at all well. You have no grace of expression.”
Grandma could usually rely on a good argument with her son when she really felt like one, and was now in her goading stage. Once goaded, he was usually a match for her.
“Look at this! Look!” Mr Bagthorpe waved his solid white arm above the table. “Do you know what this means?”
“It means,” returned Grandma, “that you were silly enough, at your age, to attempt a headstand in order to show off, and that you reaped your just deserts.”
“We’ll leave personalities out of it, if you don’t mind,” said Mr Bagthorpe, who was a fine one to talk. “That was an objective question I asked you. This, Mother, is a broken limb.”
“So I understand.” She sat now in the rocker, which made an irritating creak when she rocked it.
“Just the one limb,” said Mr Bagthorpe, waving it again. “Now, if you take up Yoga – and I still wonder whether I heard you aright – you will break all your limbs. You will break every limb in your body, or fracture it. You will end up, in fact, looking like a replica of an Egyptian mummy.”
“Thank you,” said Grandma calmly.
“Your face might perhaps show,” he added, “but that’d be all.”
“I have been Breathing all morning, you know,” said Grandma, addressing herself to Mrs Bagthorpe now, in the certain knowledge that this would goad Mr Bagthorpe still further.
“Lovely, Mother,” said Mrs Bagthorpe encouragingly.
“Unavoidable, I should have thought,” said Mr Bagthorpe.
“I have been reading one of your books, Laura,” Grandma went on. “In many ways I think it would be a good thing if we all took up Yoga. The whole family.”
“Tess is certainly interested,” agreed Mrs Bagthorpe.
“I wouldn’t mind trying,” piped up Rosie.
“Now, listen here,” said Mr Bagthorpe, abandoning his peas and beginning to gnaw his chop while holding it in his left hand. “If I am going to be driven beyond human endurance for the next few weeks, as I undoubtedly am, with my right hand in hock, if all you lot are going to sit around all day looking blissful and Breathing, I’m getting out. I shall just clear out.”
“But it would be an ideal time for you to take it up too, dear,” said Mrs Bagthorpe unwisely. “What do you think, Mother?”
This was the point at which Grandma’s goading paid off. Mr Bagthorpe smelled, he said, a conspiracy. It was a conspiracy, moreover, to make him into what he called “a creative eunuch”, though nobody knew what he meant by this. If he had been born to sit around breathing, or lying on his back with his legs folded in the air, then he thought that by now he would have discovered this vocation for himself. He further thought it unlikely that anyone would pay him for doing this, while at the present the BBC, however unwisely in the eyes of his own family and so-called friends, were paying him very high prices for his scripts – above the going rates. Which was lucky, he said, for the lot of them, who would not now be sitting stuffing themselves with lamb cutlets and living generally off the fat of the land were it not for his prodigious creative output. And so on, and so on …
Jack, sitting forgotten, his Giant Bubble quite pricked, could see Grandma’s entrance at that particular moment only as a form of miracle – of the intervention, at any rate, of some kind of Higher Power. The present tirade would undoubtedly have been directed at himself and Zero had it not been for her timely arrival.
His Bubble did have a comeback of sorts later in the day, however, when the furore had died down. Not that any furore ever quite died down – the Bagthorpes lived, one might say, in a perpetual state of simmer. Luckily, they all thrived on it, with the exception, perhaps, of Jack, though even he was beginning to feel the adrenalin flow, to taste the delights of living dangerously.
The way the Giant Bubble came up again was this. After lunch Jack crept off, fetched Zero from his room and slunk out the back way. He did not escape the eye of Mrs Fosdyke because he had to nip stealthily into the kitchen to fill his pockets with biscuits, the ones Zero liked. He was spotted in the act. He moved off sharply.
“Where are you off to?” she called after him, but he pretended he had not heard. He was beginning to discover too the advantages of being SD.
Where Jack was off to was a small, private meadow he knew of, one with plenty of maythorn thickets and high, waving hedges. The reason he was going there was because he was positive that the previous day he had achieved a breakthrough with Zero in the stick-fetching business. There had been something about the look in Zero’s eyes, for that fraction of a second after Jack had finally ducked down and come up with the stick between his teeth. The look he had caught had, he felt certain, been dawning comprehension, or, at the very least, a glimmer.
Jack realised that if he wished to pursue his career as a Prophet and Phenomenon he must never be observed, especially by any of the Bagthorpes, with a stick between his teeth. (He was no longer afraid of committal to an asylum. From the things Dr Winters had said the previous evening, if anyone got committed, it would be Mr Bagthorpe.)
The little meadow was still and sunlit and patched with dandelions and cow parsley and seeded plantain. It seemed a forgotten place. Jack never saw anyone there. He lay on his back in the warm grass for a while. He had managed a substantial lunch while the others were having their furore. Zero too slumped in the shade of a maythorn and dozed. At length, reluctantly, Jack pulled himself up.
“Come on, Zero,” he said. “Good boy. We’re going to play Fetch.”
Zero lifted his head and thumped his tail.
“And this time,” Jack told him, “you’re going to Fetch. Get it? Not me. You. Good boy.”
Zero’s tail thumped harder than Jack had ever seen it. Jack knew that this was a crucial moment, a turning point. He had a sudden inspiration.
“We’ll have a race,” he told Zero. “See who fetches it first. I’ll throw the stick, then we’ll see who can pick it up first. Right?”
From the way Zero was dancing and wagging his tail Jack would have sworn he had understood, word for word.
Jack held the stick high.
“Ready?” he cried, then, “Fetch!”
He dropped instantly on to all fours and began to scramble hell for leather in the direction he had thrown, and the next thing he knew he was face to face with a panting, prancing Zero with the stick held between his teeth.
Very slowly Jack rose to his knees. He stared, awestruck, into Zero’s hopeful brown eyes.
“Oh, good boy!” he managed. “Oh, good boy,” but he hardly did manage it because tears, ridiculously, were stinging his eyes and choking up his voice. He reached into his pocket and wordlessly held out a handful of Grannie’s Cookies and Zero, after a moment’s hesitation, dropped the stick and wolfed them down. As he did so Jack was patting his tousled fur, stroking his head.
“Oh, Zero,” he said. “You good boy. I told you. I knew you could do it. Good boy. Good old boy.”
The two of them spent a long, happy afternoon in the meadow. By the end of it there was no need for Jack to get down on all fours himself, there was no need even for him to reward Zero with biscuits (which had run out, anyhow). All he had to do was stand there, shout, “Fetch, Zero!” and hurl the stick. Within sixty seconds flat the stick would be back in his hand.
“Right,” he told Zero at last. “And now we are going to show that lot what’s what.”
He walked back over the fields with a new spring in his step. Zero walked ahead and it seemed to Jack there was a spring in his step now, as well, and his ears ha
d pricked up almost unrecognisably. Jack marched straight into the sitting-room and announced without ceremony,
“I’ve got something I want you all to see. All come out here a minute.”
The assembled Bagthorpes, and as it so happened, they were all assembled, literally boggled at him. The ring of his voice was something quite new. Was this ordinary Jack, Jack with no Strings to his Bow, Jack who seemed only by some freak of nature to be a Bagthorpe? So stunned were they that they obeyed, without question. Even Mr Bagthorpe levered himself out of his chair and followed the others, albeit muttering inaudibly under his breath.
“All right, everybody.”
Jack turned and faced them.
“Now you’re going to see something.”
“The heavens opening?” enquired Mr Bagthorpe, not sufficiently nonplussed to have lost his usual style.
“No,” said Jack. “Not the heavens opening. Something better.”
He lifted the stick he held in his hand and Zero sat panting, his gaze fixed on it.
“Oh no!” he heard his father exclaim. “Not that again. I can’t stand it!”
Then, “Fetch, Zero!” Jack yelled, and hurled the stick as hard as he could.
All you could hear was the thudding of Zero’s paws on the turf and then, as he returned, stick between his teeth, his panting. Jack bent and took the stick from him. He patted Zero’s head.
“Good boy,” he said. Again he felt his voice tremble. “Good old boy.”
He turned then and faced the family.
“Well?” he demanded. “What about that?”
“My sainted aunt!” he heard his father say. “There will be a Giant Bubble. It’s a miracle. It’s a ruddy miracle!”
Ordinary Jack Page 10