“I see.” Mr Bagthorpe sounded really world-weary now. “He’s divining. Well, of course that explains everything, I suppose. Where the devil did I leave the other half of this?” He waved the microphone.
“I’ll help you look,” Jack said. “And Zero. Find, Zero!”
Zero did not understand this instruction but the way Jack said it sounded exciting, so he acted as if he did and began prancing about and snuffing.
“Stop him!” yelled Mr Bagthorpe, galvanised again. “I don’t want him finding it. I’ll find it.”
Jack called Zero and they all walked along looking about them as they went. It was not going to be easy to find a portable recorder in grass that long.
“I thought you were doing it in your study,” Jack said. “I wasn’t expecting to fall over you.”
“I told you,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “There are listening ears. I’ve got to have privacy. If you’re a creative writer you need privacy like a cow needs a salt lick.”
“I’m sure nobody was listening,” Jack said. “We were all too busy.”
“I may as well tell you –” Mr Bagthorpe sounded pleased despite himself – “that I have, despite having you go round me in circles all morning with that wand, I have done some work. Quite a lot, in fact.”
“Oh good, I’m really glad.”
“I’ve done some of the best work I’ve ever done. And all my thoughts are in that recorder somewhere in this grass, and that’s why it’s got to be found,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “It’s my last link with sanity.”
In the end it was Jack who spotted it.
“There!” he cried, and pointed.
“Keep that dog back,” ordered Mr Bagthorpe. He advanced and picked up the recorder. He stood there looking at it and all at once Jack could see something was wrong. He watched for a long time as his father stared down.
“Oedipus had it made,” said Mr Bagthorpe dully at last. “Lear was a lucky man. Don’t tell me Hamlet had problems.”
All the spirit seemed to have gone out of him. He began to lurch away in the direction of the house. Jack and Zero followed at a distance.
Mr Bagthorpe did not emerge from his study till the evening. He said later that he had not trusted himself. What had evidently happened was that someone, somehow, had pressed the wrong buttons on the recorder and GREAT THOUGHTS: DO NOT ERASE had, irrevocably, been erased. It was clear that he laid the blame for this at the feet of Jack and Zero. Jack, while sorry it had happened, was not so sure. Mr Bagthorpe was notorious for breaking anything mechanical and had probably already pressed the wrong buttons when Jack fell on top of him. He had probably been pressing wrong buttons all morning and his GREAT THOUGHTS: DO NOT ERASE had not even been recorded in the first place. A man who can break a toaster, a record player and a waste disposal in a single week (Mr Bagthorpe’s all-time record so far) is obviously the kind of man who presses wrong knobs.
Mr Bagthorpe’s brooding presence behind the closed door of the study cast something of a blight over the rest of the household and Jack wished he did not have to do what he still had to do, which would upset everybody still more. But he had a Plan of Campaign, and he had to stick to it.
In the afternoon Rosie said that she wanted to do Jack’s portrait. She had received so much praise for Grandma’s that she was greedy for more. She suggested that the burnt-out dining-room would be a good background for this portrait too, because it would throw Zero’s honey coat into relief. Jack agreed. He squatted on the blackened carpet, which was at least dry by now.
At first things went well enough. No one else was there and as the Bagthorpes tended only to say clever or sardonic things when there was an audience, conversation was normal enough. Jack suggested that Rosie should do a Self-Portrait for her own birthday the following week and she was delighted by this idea.
“What I can do,” she said, “is to do a Birthday Self-Portrait every year as long as I live, and then I can hang them in rows and it’ll be really interesting. I bet nobody’s ever done that before in the whole history of painting. Thank you, Jack.”
She was very happy, humming as she mixed her paints and making little remarks like:
“I think your face has got more interesting since you started having Visions and things. It was a bit blank before.”
It was this particular remark that reminded Jack again of what he had to do before the day was out. He didn’t want to do anything immediately because he didn’t really want to make Rosie his victim if he could help it. He wondered who might be suitable. Grandma and Mr Bagthorpe were both out, and Atlanta too, on the grounds that the language barrier would prevent her from understanding what a Great Brown Bear was. William was not a good prospect because he would probably only sneer and not even bother to tell the rest of the family. He was still pondering when Tess came in.
“Seen Atlanta?” she asked. Rosie and Jack shook their heads.
Tess came up behind Rosie and started looking at Jack and then back to the portrait, assessing the likeness. Quick as thought, Jack fixed his gaze on the blackened wall just behind Tess’s left ear. He could not of course, see what effect this was having, but he heard Tess whisper to Rosie:
“Look! Look at him. Is that how he looks?”
“Oh dear!” Rosie jumped up. “It is, it is!”
Another minute and they would both be out of the room.
“I see … I see …” Jack murmured. “A Giant Bubble. I see red … I see white … and clouds …”
“We’ve had this one before,” he heard Tess whisper. “He’s having the same Vision as yesterday.”
“–and I see … Oh, it is the Age of the Bear. A Great Brown Bear …”
There were two squeals in close succession and Jack removed his gaze in time to catch sight of the rapidly retreating backs of Rosie and Tess.
That’s done, he thought with satisfaction. That’ll soon be round the house.
He was right. He had only just got up to inspect the portrait, which was, fortunately, practically finished, when Mrs Bagthorpe entered. She came straight to him and put her hand on his forehead more from force of habit than anything. She removed it almost immediately.
“It is a hot day, of course …” she murmured.
“What’s up, Mother?” Jack enquired. “Like my portrait?”
“It’s wonderful, darling. A speaking likeness. But oh Jack, what do you mean? What kind of a Great Brown Bear, and where?”
The memory of how quickly the Lavender Man had materialised after Jack’s prediction was clearly still with her.
“Bear?” he repeated. “What bear?”
“Rosie and Tess are in a dreadful state,” she told him.
“Oh. Have I had another Vision?” asked Jack.
“I’m afraid you have. And this time, you saw not only a Giant Bubble, but a Great Brown Bear, apparently.”
She sounded so worried that she would have undoubtedly written a letter to Stella Bright for advice, had the thing been feasible.
Grandma was the next to arrive, and she wanted Jack to describe the bear, because she thought it might have been a vision of Thomas he had been having.
“He wasn’t brown, of course, he was the most beautiful auburn and gold,” she said. “But anyone not very colour-conscious might think he was brown.”
Jack got out of this by saying he had no clear memory of what he had seen.
“I just have this hazy impression,” he said, “and it definitely wasn’t the right shape for a cat.”
Grandma didn’t give up straight away because she had already set her heart on a resurrection of Thomas. The whole of the rest of the day was given over to a thorough examination of Jack’s latest Vision and what its meaning might be. It was as thorough a Bagthorpian Post-Mortem as there had ever been.
The thing was looked at from every conceivable angle and everyone had something to say. Grandma was sticking to her Thomas theory even after Jack had told her that vague as his impression was he was now sure it did not have whisk
ers. William was taken up with the red and white aspect of it, and concocting elaborate theories to do with Yorkshire and Lancashire, despite the fact that none of the Bagthorpes had ever been anywhere near either of these counties. Tess came up with the idea that there was to be an imminent return to an Ice Age, and that the red and white was people’s blood on the snow once the Great Brown Bear got going. The Giant Bubble, she ingeniously explained, was an igloo. Rosie stuck her fingers in her ears while Tess was talking like this. All in all, Mrs Fosdyke was perhaps the most decisive in her reaction.
“The day a Great Brown Bear walks in this house,” she said, “I walk out. You can call it Provisional Notice, if you like.”
Jack went to the trouble of recording this in his Campaign Book that night.
We’ve got it in writing now, he thought.
Chapter Fourteen
Jack had guessed that something was amiss at The Knoll when Uncle Parker had not turned up later in the day to make his offer to Rosie of a Birthday Picnic. He had also guessed it was something to do with Daisy. Once or twice during the evening he had slipped out and stood at the bottom of the garden scanning the skyline for signs of smoke. He was not, however, sufficiently curious to set his alarm for 6 a.m. and go for yet another early morning jog. He decided to get quietly on with his own Prongs and await developments.
The following day got off to a fairly brisk start with Mr Bagthorpe summoning everyone to breakfast. He did this by walking about the house banging on doors and shouting:
“Up! Up, everyone! I want you all in the kitchen in five minutes flat!”
Everyone was there. Grandma need not have been, because there was no reason why she should obey her son’s orders, especially when they were given in so noisy and rude a way. It was curiosity that brought her down.
“Now,” said Mr Bagthorpe, when they were all assembled, “who’s got fewest Strings to their Bow?”
“He has,” said Tess, Rosie and William instantly, pointing to Jack.
“Not counting him,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “Leave him out of it.”
William ticked his off on his fingers, watching Atlanta out of the corner of his eye.
“Electronics, tennis, pure mathematics, drums, and you might say darts. Five.”
“Tess?”
“French, oboe, piano, Judo and Danish coming up. Five.”
“You can’t count Danish,” William objected. “If you do, I’m going to as well.”
“Be quiet,” Mr Bagthorpe told him. “Rosie?”
“Violin, maths, portraits and I think I’m going to have swimming as well.”
“I wonder if you’d be any good at it,” murmured Mr Bagthorpe thoughtfully. “I wonder … Let’s have a look at your hands.”
Rosie, mystified, spread out her hands and everyone took a good look at them and wondered what they were supposed to be looking for.
“They might be big enough,” decided Mr Bagthorpe. “We’ll give it a try. Report to me in my study at nine.”
“What for?”
Mr Bagthorpe now started on his breakfast, the business side of things having been dealt with. He took a slice of toast and pushed it towards Tess.
“Butter this, please,” he said, “and plenty of marmalade. Yes. Well. Yesterday, alone in my study after my trauma in the meadow, I had time for thought.”
“Every cloud has a silver lining, you see, dear,” said his wife. “Normally, you never have time for thought.”
He shot her a hard look and continued.
“I have decided to persevere with the use of that infernal recording machine, despite all attempts at sabotage.”
“They weren’t sabotage,” Jack said. “They were accidents.”
“I owe it to my public,” Mr Bagthorpe said. “I owe it to the BBC. ‘Thou shalt not hide your torch under a bush’ and all that.”
Mr Bagthorpe never normally quoted from the Bible, even inaccurately, and Mrs Bagthorpe looked at him as though she wondered if he could be slowly going the same way as Jack.
“When I have spoken my thoughts into the machine,” he said, “they will have to be typed. I cannot type.”
He waved the arm, which was not such a pure white now. It was showing signs of wear and tear.
“I need someone to type for me. Rosie can have a go.”
“Oh, must I?” Rosie wailed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to. I think my hands are too little.”
“We’ll see,” he said.
“And you’ll shout at me if I make mistakes,” she said. “You know you will.”
Mr Bagthorpe did not reply to this. He clearly did not feel he could give any assurances about not shouting.
“If we’re all going to be devoured at any moment by a Great Brown Bear,” said William, “I don’t see the point in your bothering with any more scripts.”
“Oh, don’t! Don’t talk about it!” pleaded Rosie.
Jack kept his eyes on his plate.
“Calm yourself,” Grandma told Rosie. “Jack thinks he saw a Great Brown Bear, but I am convinced that what he really saw was a Vision of Thomas.”
“For crying out loud, Mother,” said Mr Bagthorpe, “don’t start on about that again. And even if you’re right, I see no comfort in it. Personally, given the choice between a Great Brown Bear and that malevolent ginger brute, I’d settle for the bear any day.”
“I don’t think you realise how hurt I am when you say things like that!” Grandma told him.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” he said, “but it’s the way I feel. If you’re a creative writer, the one thing you must have is honesty. I’ve got to be honest, even when it hurts.”
When Uncle Parker did turn up about an hour later, Rosie was closeted with her father in the study. There were a lot of uneven typing noises going on, and also the first signs that Mr Bagthorpe was going to begin shouting.
Uncle Parker told Mrs Bagthorpe of his plan for the following Wednesday, and she was delighted by it.
“How very kind, Russell,” she said. “Rosie is in the study helping Henry. Go along there and you can tell her yourself.”
Jack went and sat just inside the sitting-room opposite the study, and pretended to read a magazine. He knew that usually Mr Bagthorpe would not let Uncle Parker into his study. He said he upset the vibrations in there. He was very funny about whom he would or would not let go in there, and had once even stopped the vicar from doing so. He said that vibrations build up in a room, and if you are a sensitive creative writer, you have to have the right ones. He must have really believed this because he would not let Mrs Fosdyke clean up in there and actually hoovered it himself about once a fortnight.
“Her vibrations,” he declared, “would play havoc with a saint’s. If she went in there, it’d take six months for the room to settle down again.”
When Uncle Parker tapped on the door and entered, therefore, Jack knew there would be a reaction.
“Morning, Henry.”
“Get back, get back!” Mr Bagthorpe had sure enough leapt forward and was barring the way with arms outspread.
“Sorry, old chap. I forgot. All that vibration stuff. You might be right, of course. All this business of Jack and his Visions, and so forth.”
“Don’t talk to me about Jack or his Visions,” said Mr Bagthorpe coldly.
“All right. I came to have a word with Rosie, here, actually.”
“Did you really?” Rosie, seeing her chance of escape, jumped up from the desk. “What about?”
He told her. Rosie was ecstatic.
“Oh, it’ll be lovely,” she told him. “Thank you.”
“And there will be crackers,” he assured her, less than altruistically. “Two each, to make up for last time.”
“At least there’s less likely to be a fire at this party,” observed Mr Bagthorpe. “Though I wouldn’t put any money on it.”
Reactions to the suggestion varied. William said there were a lot of ants in the meadow and that the grass was seeding and would probably give hi
m hay fever and he would rather have the party in the house.
“We have no dining-room, dear,” Mrs Bagthorpe reminded him.
Grandma said it was a pity Rosie’s birthday came so soon after her own because she did not feel she had completely recovered from that yet. She said she would come to the party if it was fine, and if not would watch it from an upper window through Grandpa’s field glasses.
“I shall be able to capture the spirit of it,” she said. “And I probably shan’t be missed.”
Mrs Fosdyke put in an unsuccessful protest.
“I know I’m not clever like you,” she told the family, “but I don’t see the point in carting food to be eaten in the middle of a field at the bottom of your garden. People that has picnics, usually goes in cars.”
“There is a reason why it should be this particular field, Mrs Fosdyke,” Uncle Parker assured her. “All will become clear on the eleventh.”
“Why not the summer house?” she asked.
“Not big enough,” said Jack quickly.
“Oh well.” She shrugged and gave up. “One thing, it’ll be paper cups and plates. There’s none of my china going down that field, thank you very much.”
Jack managed a few minutes alone with Uncle Parker on the pretext of showing him how Zero could fetch sticks, a feat he had not yet witnessed.
“Take my advice, and stay clear,” was Mr Bagthorpe’s parting word before going back to his study. “There’s nothing that hound wouldn’t stoop to.”
“You’ve done a first-rate job on the Bear stuff,” Uncle Parker told Jack as they sauntered down the garden. “Swallowed it hook, line and sinker, the lot of them. And given Grandma a new lease of life.”
She had confided in him her belief that some time in the near future there was to be a Second Coming of Thomas. She had implored him to approach the house with caution in the future.
“Drive at ten miles an hour,” she had pleaded, “drive at five. Give him a chance this time.”
“I must say I’m not surprised they think I’m barmy,” Jack told Uncle Parker. “It sounds barmy, the whole lot of it. Even to me.”
“All will be revealed on the eleventh,” Uncle Parker said.
Ordinary Jack Page 15