“Nonsense, Henry,” said his wife. “It’s just a minor setback. I shall take both yourself and Father into Aysham this afternoon and he shall be fitted for a new aid, and you shall choose a new microphone.”
“Don’t you put me in the same category with him,” said Mr Bagthorpe ungratefully. “I’m not completely helpless yet, thank you.”
“Atlanta and I are getting on beautifully,” Tess now said. “Aren’t – we – Atlanta?”
Atlanta nodded and smiled and said, “Ja, ja, beautiful,” and William stared at her with a forkful of stew halfway to his mouth.
“Why don’t we get a muzzle for that hellhound while we’re at it?” Mr Bagthorpe rarely listened to anyone else’s brisk and lively interchange of views and opinions. “Now he can fetch sticks, which for Pete’s sake so can any other dog in England, he’s worse than when he couldn’t. It’s gone to his head. God knows what he’ll fetch next if he’s not curbed.”
“Perhaps you could look into your little crystal ball and tell us?” said William to Jack.
“How do you know about that?”
“Saw it,” replied William. “Your room’s not sacrosanct, you know. And pooh – what a smell in there!”
“How extremely rude of you,” Grandma told William, “to go and pry into Jack’s private belongings. Jack, dear, I believe you have some incense sticks. Could you lend me one or two possibly? I have read about them somewhere and feel sure they would help me with my breathing.”
“Of course,” Jack said gratefully, not even quibbling about how anyone could repay a burnt-out incense stick. “You can choose whichever flavours you like.”
“Thank you, dear. And Rosie, if you haven’t filled in the background of my Portrait, could you perhaps paint me breathing with an incense stick burning each side of me?”
“I’ve done the burnt-up dining-room,” said Rosie. “You said you wanted to be done in there. And I think it’ll make it stand out.”
“Could you not add the sticks?” persisted Grandma. “It would be very effective to have the smoke swirling mysteriously about me. And this may be my last Portrait. I think my wishes should be respected.”
“I suppose so,” said Rosie. “I’ll try.”
In the end five of them went to Aysham that afternoon. William had somehow managed to intimate to Atlanta that he would like to show her round the historic castle there. They drove off, with Mr Bagthorpe muttering something about it being a relief to get out of that house, and leaving Tess to sulk because there had been no room for her to go too. She went off to her room and banged the door loudly. Grandma went up to have a nap. Rosie set off across the meadow towards the village for a swim. She went with Mrs Fosdyke, whose half-day it was. Jack watched them go, wondering whatever they would find to say to one another.
The house was very quiet. Jack went up to his room, where Zero was lying by the pile of comics with his ears drooping again.
“It was rotten luck, old chap,” Jack told him, patting him, and feeling sorry now that he had reproached him earlier on. “And at least you’re not sly. It’s pretty sly to go hiding in long grass talking into microphones.”
Zero wagged his tail feebly. Jack felt depressed too. The victory of yesterday had already turned to ashes. At a stroke, it seemed, it had become a defeat.
It’s no good, Jack thought. If I want to make any impression round here, I’ll have to press on with the Prophet and Phenomenon thing.
He was almost tempted to take out the crystal ball. He just did not quite dare risk it. He took out the Tarot cards and played idly with them for a while, but didn’t feel that anything special was happening. He remembered that he had pulled in not one Vision or Mysterious Impression all day. He felt thoroughly discouraged and in need of moral support.
I could ring Uncle Parker, he thought. Both telephones were clear, with Mr Bagthorpe and Mrs Fosdyke safely out of the way. But this scheme was still not without its dangers. If either Daisy or Aunt Celia were to answer the telephone, the consequences could be awful. Uncle Parker might wash his hands of him for ever, and he would be alone, without an ally in the world but Zero.
No entries to make in the Campaign, even, he thought.
There was only one thing left to do. He delved to the bottom of the pile and read back numbers till he heard the car return, when he hastily stuffed them back in position and went down. Zero he left behind.
Every dog has its day, he thought, and Zero’s, it seemed, had already come and gone.
Chapter Eleven
Surprisingly, Jack managed to pull in a couple of unexpectedly good Mysterious Impressions that same evening. He had been determined on creating at least one, because he felt he should not let the sun go down on a totally non-productive day. If anything, it had been up to that point counter-productive.
After tea Grandma had gone to her room to breathe and asked Jack if he could bring along some incense sticks. He went up, tapped and entered. At first sight Grandma’s room did not look like a bedroom so much as a photographic studio. The walls and all possible surfaces were crowded with portraits and snapshots. There were pictures of Grandma and Grandpa on their wedding day, both looking distinctly apprehensive, Jack thought, of Mr and Mrs Bagthorpe Junior on their wedding day, and of all the young Bagthorpes as babies. What there was most of, though, was Thomas. Thomas seated on Grandma’s lap, her shoulders and feet. Thomas up trees, curtains and drainpipes. Thomas washing his ears, tail and toes, and Thomas, most of all, glowering, and looking toothy in a way that other cats never look toothy.
Grandma was sitting in an upright chair with a large old brass compass of Grandpa’s on her lap.
“This is to line me up with the magnetic poles,” she explained, seeing his surprised look. “That sort of detail is important.”
She sounded like J. E. Fern of MYSTERIES. Next thing, she would probably find out about the electromagnetic fields of the earth as well, and start going round barefoot. She had selected two amber incense sticks and put one on each side of the dressing-table nearby. Jack lit them as Grandma composed herself in her chair.
“I’m quite excited,” she told him. “You never know what might happen.”
She closed her eyes, and began to inhale and exhale very slowly and very noisily. It was like Zero snuffing, only in very slow motion. The thin spirals of smoke began to drift towards her in the slight draught from the window.
“Aaaaah!” She let out a long, rapturous sigh.
Jack was rather disappointed in Grandma. He honestly thought she was too old for this kind of thing. He knew and accepted that his grandma would never be wise and calm like other people’s, but he had never thought she would go to these lengths. He stared at the reflection of the incense. The dressing-table had a triple mirror and so it looked as if Grandma were wreathed in incense, as she had been in the smoke from her doomed birthday candles. Watching the slow whirl and spiral behind her he could see how easy it would be to go off into a trance if you kept watching long enough.
“What if I go off into a trance and can’t come out of it!” came Grandma’s alarmed voice.
It was as if she were voicing his own thoughts. Jack, still watching the threefold spiralling of the incense behind her left ear, did not reply, thinking she was speaking to herself, or at any rate that the question was merely rhetorical. Nor did it occur to him that she would have opened her eyes, since it was hardly two minutes since she had shut them.
There came a high, piercing scream. Grandma had shot right out of her chair and was staring into the dressing-table mirrors. Her own distraught face was in there now, veiled in the swirling incense.
“What is it?” she shrieked. “What do you see?”
Now Jack had not meant to do an MI on Grandma. But as she was already in as much of a lather as if he really had, there seemed no point in wasting an opportunity. Even if he said he had seen nothing, she wouldn’t have believed him.
“I saw – swirling, like clouds drifting,” he said slowly and
to some extent truthfully, still staring into the mirror. Then, embroidering, “It is as if the heavens were opening!”
“Ooooooh,” moaned Grandma. Then, “You don’t see any faces. Tell me you can’t see any faces!”
Jack shook his head.
“No faces,” he told her. “Definitely. I’ve never seen a face – not yet.”
“Nor a hooded figure?”
Jack shook his head again.
There was a tap on the door and William poked his head in. Grandma sat down again suddenly.
“Anything up, Grandma?” he asked. Then, “Poo – that horrible smell!”
“I think we had better put them out,” Grandma told Jack. “You can take them back. I’ve changed my mind.”
“I’m not surprised,” William said. “Who was that screaming just then?”
“I heard no screaming,” replied Grandma without batting an eyelid. “Perhaps you imagined it?”
Jack was astonished. It is an unusual thing to catch one’s own Grandma out telling a fib.
“I don’t imagine things,” said William. “There’s something rum up.”
He sounded just like Mr Bagthorpe. Jack was annoyed by his inquisitorial manner.
“It could have been a disembodied voice,” he suggested. “Funny we didn’t hear it.” (He decided that as Grandma had fibbed it was not only OK for him to do so too, but more or less his duty to back her up.) A flicker of uneasiness did momentarily pass over William’s face.
“After all, there are such things.” Jack pressed his point home. “You spend half your time listening to disembodied voices.”
“Disembodied my foot,” said William. “It’s radio. It’s different.”
“I don’t think it is,” Jack said. “I think it’s exactly the same. You never see any of these people, you only hear their voices. So how do you know they’re real?”
“They – they’ve got numbers,” William said. “They’re in a book – you can look them up.”
“Not Anonymous from Grimsby, you can’t.” Jack felt he had him now. “Funny the way he hasn’t got a number and you can’t look him up in the book.”
“He’s a pirate,” said William.
“Or a disembodied voice,” said Jack.
“Go away!” Grandma stood up again and flapped her hands at them. “Go away, both of you! I don’t want to hear any of it. And tell Rosie I want her!”
“Sorry, Grandma,” Jack said as he took his incense sticks. “I didn’t really see anything much.”
In the corridor outside Jack said thoughtfully:
“Funny the way that Anonymous from Grimsby is always talking about Intelligences in Outer Space.”
“What d’you mean, funny?” demanded William.
“I mean – funny,” said Jack, in what he hoped was an ominous tone.
“Go away, I said!” came Grandma’s voice from behind the door. “I can still hear you!”
Jack went back along to his room and shut the door.
The second MI was also accidental. Jack found his eyes being constantly drawn to the box labelled CRYSTAL BALL FIRST QUALITY. Uncle Parker had had to pay a hefty deposit on it, and in a way it was probably the best prop Jack had. It would be a pity for it to have to go back to MYSTERIES without having had an airing. Jack admitted to himself that he did not much want to stare into it all on his own in his room, particularly in the evening. On the other hand, nor did he feel like taking it downstairs and planting it in the middle of a table and giving a public performance with it. He had not had any practice at this. There were all kinds of other arguments against this too, not least among them the possibility that Mr Bagthorpe would seize it and hurl it into the fireplace or somewhere, so costing Uncle Parker his deposit and Jack up to a year’s pocket money.
He decided on a compromise. He thought that if he were out of doors he would probably be able to bring himself to stare into it. He did not know why it would feel safer to gaze out of doors, but he was sure it would.
I’ll take Zero, he thought. Then if he stiffens and his hairs stand on end and he starts off howling, I’ll know to pack it in.
Accordingly he sneaked out with Zero at his heels and took the box into the shrubbery beyond the back lawn. He took it only just inside the shrubbery, and not too far from the house. He remembered J. E. Fern’s sepulchral warnings about “dabbling”.
“I promise I’m not dabbling,” he said out loud as he squatted behind a rhododendron and gently lifted the crystal ball from its box. He hoped whatever was in the ball had heard him. He repeated the words. “I’m definitely not dabbling,” he said. “I’m dead serious.”
The crystal ball looked very fragile and unearthly lying on the leaf-strewn ground by a laurel, with the lowering rays of the sun striking off it. Jack’s knees were beginning to wobble so he changed from a crouching to a sitting position. (He had been crouching in much the way runners do in a race, poised to get off to a good start.)
“Lie, Zero!” he commanded. Zero lay immediately. He had been on the point of doing so anyway.
Jack was not certain exactly what procedure to adopt. He did not know how long he was supposed to gaze into the ball, whether he was supposed to make his mind go blank, and whether he should actually cup the ball in his hands. He decided against the last. He had vague recollections of seeing pictures of people gazing into crystal balls and they were usually on a table, a round one, and covered with a green velour cloth. The people looking into them had never, so far as he could remember, been children, which was a relief. Nine times out of ten they were female and swarthy and wore fringed shawls over their heads.
“They’re definitely on tables,” he decided, “not in people’s hands.”
He felt sure that if anything did appear in the crystal ball he would drop it, and run. He sat cross-legged, because it seemed more respectful and businesslike than sitting just anyhow, and began to gaze steadily into the crystal ball, only a couple of feet away on the ground.
He was very conscientious about keeping his gaze fixed absolutely non-stop on the ball because he knew this was essential if it were to have a chance to work. He began to feel rather queer once or twice, but he persisted. For a second he thought something was coming but then he blinked and it was gone.
“What you doin’, Zack?” enquired a high voice right by his ear.
He jumped nearly out of his skin. If he had been holding the ball, he would certainly have dropped it. The reason why the voice had been right by his ear was that it belonged to Daisy Parker who was only about three and a half feet high.
“What’s that?” she pointed. “I want to play with that pretty ball.”
She went forward with the intention of picking it up, but Jack grabbed her.
“No!” he cried. Then, carefully, “No, Daisy. You see, the ball is magic.”
“Mazic?” Her eyes widened. “Has it got a deathray?”
“Well, no,” he told her. “At least, I can’t say for sure. You never know.”
Daisy edged backwards.
“Dai-sy! Dai-sy!” They were the high, trailing tones of Aunt Celia.
Jack groaned. In the distance he could hear other voices too.
“Mummy, Mummy, come quick!” Daisy pushed aside the rhododendron. “Come and look! Zack’s got a mazic ball!”
Jack sat back and waited for the inevitable.
“I was playing hide-and-seek from you and I found Zack and Zero and a mazic ball!” Daisy was burbling. Now it was Jack’s turn to feel like taking a piece out of her leg.
He looked up to see the tall swaying figure of Aunt Celia. Her eyes were riveted alarmingly on the crystal ball. Jack actually took another quick look into it himself, so sure was he that she was seeing something.
“Oooooh, oooooh,” she moaned. “I see … oh …”
“What the devil’s going on?” demanded Mr Bagthorpe’s voice. “Get that fire-raising child out from among my shrubs.”
“Come on, you lot!” It was William’s voice.
“Jack’s having a Vision!”
When Jack next looked up there were four or five pairs of eyes peering round the rhododendron. There he sat with his crystal ball under a laurel, in broad daylight. It was ludicrous, even he could see that. If he had possessed the power to sink into the ground, even if never to return, he would have used it.
“I was practising,” he said defensively. “You have to practise.”
He noticed that Uncle Parker was walking away, supporting the leaning figure of his wife. Daisy had stopped to see the fun. Someone might get struck by a deathray.
“Jack, darling!” His mother pushed her way so hastily past the others that for one awful moment he thought she was going to overshoot and kick the crystal ball. He shut his eyes.
“Gypsy Petulengro, I believe?” said William in his sardonic voice. He was in a bad mood because Atlanta had not wanted to see the castle when she got to Aysham, and had gone off on her own, shopping instead. He was also still sore about Jack’s insinuations about his Anonymous from Grimsby.
“Tell us, O Seer, what do you see?” he went on.
Right! Jack thought.
The situation could not possibly be worse, so he might as well turn it to the best use he could. If you do get caught looking into a crystal ball in such circumstances, at least you look less silly if you are actually seeing things in it. He fixed his eyes on the ball. A hush fell. He could hear his mother breathing heavily above him. Her Yoga always seemed to let her down when she most needed it.
“I see … I see …” He found the tone of his voice changing as he spoke, and actually felt a tingling in the nape of his neck. He really did think he saw …
“I see … I see … a sky … cloud … a Sign from above …”
Not a twig snapped in the Bagthorpe shrubbery. You could have heard a match strike.
“I see … a Giant Bubble, Bearing Tidings …” His voice trailed off. Damn, he thought, I’ve gone and got it mixed up with Vision One. As it happened, it was an inspired mistake.
Ordinary Jack Page 12