Two large white cloths were then spread over the food to protect it while the games were going on. They did not get off to a very good start because so many people were opting out. Grandma elected to sit on a chair facing the wood, keeping a sharp lookout for the imminent second coming of Thomas. Mr Bagthorpe said that his head and his arm were aching, and flung himself full length on the ground in a Greek pose, looking mean and moody. Grandpa made a game attempt but obviously could not hear half the instructions that were bawled at him. A portable wireless had been brought out for musical chairs, and Grandpa just seemed to be sitting when the fancy took him, regardless of whether or not the music had stopped.
None the less those who were participating in the games became increasingly excited and giggly and no one took any notice of Mr Bagthorpe, who kept looking at his watch, and then at the covered table.
“Would it be very antisocial,” he said at last, “as I am precluded by my injury from taking part in the merriment, if I went and fetched a book? It is not in my nature to sit idling around, and I could be doing some serious reading.”
No one objected, and off he went. The games continued, reaching a climax with Blind Man’s Buff, in which William put his foot down a rabbit hole and was so put out at looking silly in front of Atlanta that his unfeeling relatives were reduced to near-hysteria. Mrs Fosdyke had joined in one or two of the quieter games, but now kept taking quick peeks under the cloth to see how her food was bearing up.
“I do think, Mrs Bagthorpe,” she said eventually, “that tea should be served, if we don’t wish icing melted, and such.”
“Of course!” Mrs Bagthorpe clapped her hands. Everyone ran to the table and sat down and the covers were taken off.
The meal was a triumph. In no way had aesthetic considerations been allowed to interfere with the gastronomic aspect of the food, as had been feared in some quarters. Mrs Fosdyke was showered with crumb-choked compliments. She herself sat down with them at Rosie’s right hand; and really seemed, just for the moment, a member of the family.
Everyone, even Grandma and Tess, seemed to have forgotten entirely the Giant Bubble and the Great Brown Bear. Uncle Parker seemed relaxed and flippant and did not catch Jack’s eye once, even though he was sitting diagonally opposite.
He can’t have forgotten, Jack thought. It was his idea in the first place.
If he had forgotten, it seemed to Jack that he might have to leave home, taking Zero with him. The time for pulling the crackers came and still nothing had manifested.
“There’s a couple spare!” exclaimed Uncle Parker, holding them up. (They all had two crackers each, to make up for the disaster at Grandma’s party – and to provide, of course, double the number of mottoes.)
“Henry!” cried Mrs Bagthorpe. “He hasn’t come back!”
None of the Bagthorpes had noticed his absence up to this point – surprisingly, really, because his presence was of the kind that was usually felt – and correspondingly missed.
“He went to fetch a book,” she said. “I expect he became engrossed in it. Poor Henry.”
“We may as well pull his crackers for him,” suggested Uncle Parker. “He may not want to pull them left-handed.”
“No,” said Rosie with unexpected firmness. “Leave them alone. They’re his.”
Uncle Parker obediently replaced them by the empty plate. There were shrieks and bangs for quite a long time then, and right in the middle of it all Jack felt a sharp kick on his ankle.
“Ouch!” he exclaimed. “What—?”
Uncle Parker opposite frowned warningly, then jerked his head. Jack followed the direction of his gaze.
“Crikey!” he said, though nobody heard him, being so involved with crackers and all reading mottoes at the tops of their voices.
Floating gracefully just above the tips of the trees was a huge red and white striped air balloon. It came serenely and silently in the blue, in a world apart, it seemed, from the noisy, earthbound Bagthorpes. Jack gaped. He could see the flames of the gas, and, above the edge of the basket, not one, but two Great Brown Bears. Still he stared.
There was a piercing scream.
“Look!” screeched Tess. “Look at Jack! He’s seeing something!”
“Nonsense, darling,” Mrs Bagthorpe started to say and then her voice trailed off. She too was staring, and all the party turned their heads in the direction of her gaze, with the exception of Grandpa who was blissfully putting away what it seemed could very well be his last ever stuffed egg.
In the hush that followed all that could be heard was the hissing of the gas as the Giant Bubble approached.
Uncle Parker rose to his feet.
“Jack,” he said solemnly, “I take my hat off to you.”
“Oh, Mummy,” whimpered Rosie, and ran from her chair. “Look – there’s two enormous bears!”
“Now, darling.” Mrs Bagthorpe’s voice trembled ever so slightly. “Keep calm. I think they may be friendly. Look – yes, they’re waving.”
“They’re definitely not Thomas!” Grandma sounded sad and suddenly old. She was not scared, just really disappointed. “Oh, Thomas!”
The bears were not only waving but scattering what looked like visiting cards over the far side of the meadow as they left the wood behind. The Bagthorpes sat mesmerised. Slowly the balloon drifted towards them. It seemed to be losing height.
“If they land,” quavered Tess, “I shall just shut my eyes and hope to die. I can’t bear it.”
“So dangerous … not really …” murmured Aunt Celia who, oddly, seemed not nearly so distraught as might have been expected. Only Jack noted this, however. The others were all too busy being distraught themselves.
Atlanta was jabbering away excitedly in Danish and pointing to the balloon and then at herself. She seemed to be trying to tell them that it was herself it was coming for.
“Look,” said William to Jack, “can you tell them to go away?”
Jack stood up.
“I might,” he said, not really knowing.
“You can speak to Anonymous from Grimsby any time you want to.”
“Thanks.” Jack was not really listening. He now had the impression that something was wrong in the Giant Bubble. The Great Brown Bears had stopped dropping visiting cards and were scuffling about inside the basket and shouting in what sounded suspiciously like human voices. The balloon was losing height. It looked rather as though it was going to land right in the middle of the table.
“If they land,” William said, “I shall go up this tree and take Atlanta with me.”
“B-b-bears c-can climb trees,” Tess quavered.
“I’m glad those photos got took, anyway,” came Mrs Fosdyke’s small voice.
The basket was rocking now and bags were being thrown out of it. The hissing of the gas seemed fainter, though the balloon was up close now, a bare hundred yards away.
At this point Uncle Parker cupped his hands and bawled:
“Keep up! Keep up! What’s the matter with you?”
Another couple of bags fell with a thud. The Great Brown Bears were so close now that you could see the whites of their eyes, almost. They looked very worried bears, so far as Jack could judge.
“For crying out loud!” bawled Uncle Parker. “What’s the game?”
There was a final, sighing hiss, a gentle folding and settling of the Giant Bubble, and the whole thing came down. The basket rocked wildly and the Bagthorpes rose as one and prepared to run. Uncle Parker was the only one present who kept his cool. He advanced towards the basket, where the two Great Brown Bears were scrambling out and now stood upright, brushing down their fur.
“Hail, O Great Brown Bears,” he greeted them.
“Oh! Isn’t he brave!” gasped Mrs Bagthorpe.
Uncle Parker gave a kind of half-bow in salute and the Great Brown Bears did likewise in a clumsy kind of way.
“I think they might be tame,” whispered Tess.
“You have come with a Message?” Uncle Park
er asked the question in a loud, ceremonial voice such as is used at coronations and the opening of Parliament.
The two Great Brown Bears nodded portentously.
“You have come, perhaps, to tell us who is the Chosen One?”
Again they nodded.
Uncle Parker turned.
“Quick – Jack – here!”
Jack advanced doubtfully.
“Can you identify who is Chosen?” asked Uncle Parker.
The larger of the two Great Brown Bears lifted a huge furry paw and pointed. The other, after a moment’s hesitation, followed suit. They were pointing, unmistakably, to Jack.
To say that the Bagthorpes were struck all of a heap would not be to do justice to their state. They were used to excitement in large doses. They were about as hardened as any family in England could be to chaos and catastrophe and even the downright impossible. But this was too much. It seemed as if they might have remained rooted for ever when a shout came from behind them.
“Here! Here! What—?”
Wisely, none of the Bagthorpes removed their eyes from the Great Brown Bears. They recognised the voice well enough.
“Get them!” yelled Mr Bagthorpe. “Grab hold of those bears before they make off!”
The Bagthorpes ignored this mystifying instruction. Everybody, including the Bears, seemed fixed now in a kind of tableau. The only movement was the gentle billowing of the red and white balloon. The only sound was the thudding of Mr Bagthorpe’s feet on the turf. He thundered, astonishingly, right past the lot of them, past Uncle Parker and Jack, and came to a halt nose to nose, almost, with the Great Brown Bears, who actually backed away from him.
“Oh, Father!” breathed Tess ecstatically.
“Henry!” Mrs Bagthorpe stepped forward with a faint cry.
“You get those damn-fool heads off!” Mr Bagthorpe was yelling. “You hear me? Get those heads off. Let’s see who you are!”
Some kind of game was apparently up. The Bears seemed to be looking enquiringly at Uncle Parker, who was slowly nodding his head. In unison four clumsy paws went up and two great furry heads were lifted clean off. A bald-headed man and one with a beard stood awkwardly holding their erstwhile heads under their arms.
“Sorry, Russell, old chap,” said the one with the beard. “Gas ran out. No wind. One of those things.”
At this point Atlanta rushed forward and amazingly embraced the bearded man and began babbling excitedly in Danish.
“Oooh,” said Mrs Fosdyke. “I think I’m going to faint.”
She refrained from doing so probably only out of curiosity. The account she would give later in the Fiddler’s Arms ought not to have any gaps in it.
Mr Bagthorpe turned now to face Uncle Parker and Jack. He had something in his hand.
“What about this then?” he shouted. “What about all this?”
He flung whatever it was he was holding at Jack. It fell right at his feet. It was a small red loose-leafed notebook. It was the Plan of Campaign. Jack dared not raise his eyes.
“Whose neck under whose heel?” yelled Mr Bagthorpe.
Then, miraculously, one of the two visitors let out a yell.
“Fire! Hey, look – fire!”
The Bagthorpes whirled about. From the direction of the summer house thick blue smoke was issuing above the trees. All hell was instantly let loose. Everyone present, even Aunt Celia, started at top speed in the direction of the smoke. Mrs Fosdyke brought up the rear, saying over and over again:
“Threes – things always go in threes. Threes – things always go in threes.”
(She did not, of course, know that Daisy had lit a good many more fires than three – she was by now well into double figures and getting better all the time.)
Jack, alone, picked up the little book and set off slowly after them. Daisy, again, had saved the day. But for how long?
Epilogue
When the final reckoning came to be made, Jack did not emerge so badly as he had feared. It turned out that his greatest inspiration had been to conceal the Plan of Campaign in the pile of despised comics. Indeed, had Mr Bagthorpe been a less impulsive man, he would have taken thought before rushing down to the meadow brandishing the incriminating evidence he had found. He had, after all, found it only because he had been steadily wading his way through the back numbers of Jack’s comics.
Having the entire Bagthorpe household aware of this took the wind to a very great extent out of his sails. He was never, indeed, quite allowed to forget it. In unmasking Uncle Parker’s and Jack’s plot, he had at the same time made an eternal rod for his own back. He quietened down a lot. He shouted less. The rest of the Bagthorpes did not fail to notice this softening of his character, and were accordingly grateful to Jack.
It had, when all was said and done, been only boyish mischief. This was what Mrs Bagthorpe said when she had bewilderedly collected the whole story. She even said how imaginative and bold it had all been. She did not say this till several days later, but after that she said it quite a lot, and even told Jack that she was, in a way, proud of him.
Grandma, though disappointed at the non-reappearance of Thomas, had on the whole enjoyed the whole charade. She said that at her age you didn’t get frightened of things any more. You have seen everything, she said, and what had taken place in the meadow had been, so far as she was concerned, simply another warp in the web of life’s rich pattern. She stated that she was speaking for Grandpa as well when she said this, and as he himself never alluded to it, perhaps she was.
Rosie, in retrospect, became overweeningly proud that her Birthday Party had been the greatest and best Bagthorpian party of all times, leaving even Grandma’s débâcle nowhere. She had used the rest of her film taking photographs of the Giant Bubble and the Great Brown Bears, both with and without their heads. She had also collected a lot, though not all, of the visiting cards they had dropped, which turned out to be pieces of white card with the words JACK BAGTHORPE APPOINTED PROPHET printed on them. These she had had signed by the two Great Brown Bears and then pasted into her autograph album. All in all, she had had a very gratifying day as far as keeping records was concerned.
Mrs Fosdyke had at first marched off to write a letter giving in her notice. But when she came out to give it to Mrs Bagthorpe, she had found the fire put out and the whole party reassembled round the table, having not yet lit the candles and sung ‘Happy Birthday’ to Rosie – an obvious piece of unfinished business. The two bears had then paid her such fulsome compliments about her food, and tucked into it with such gratifying enthusiasm, that she stuffed the letter back in her pocket and decided on this occasion to give the Bagthorpes the credit of some very dubious goings-on. She later said in The Fiddler’s Arms that she thought the two bears had been “proper gentlemen” and gave it out that the real culprit was Uncle Parker, who was also, she said, cold-blooded and with a very queer sense of humour indeed.
“Nobody,” she opined, “after goings-on like that – and a fire to crown all – would’ve else been crawling about like a two-year-old on his hands and knees picking up mottoes out of crackers, I ask you!”
Mottoes out of crackers, she went on to say, were not even funny, whereas Uncle Parker decidedly was – in the head.
Uncle Parker himself, of course, was quite able to cope with this kind of adverse opinion, and was on balance highly satisfied with the way the whole thing had passed off. He was also able to explain a few otherwise incomprehensible things, like why the men in the balloon had to be disguised as bears. It was, of course, because of that Danish girl. She had been staying with old Brent, and knew that he had a balloon, and he couldn’t risk her spilling it out and ruining the whole thing.
“She did, actually,” Jack told him. “I remember now. But luckily, she did it in Danish.”
“Only one cracker motto missing,” Uncle Parker told him cheerfully, “and given the whole lot of ’em something to think about.”
“It’s all over with the Prophet and Phenomenon t
hough, isn’t it?” said Jack.
“It is, yes. But there you are – all for the best. You wouldn’t have wanted to keep all that stuff up for ever, would you?”
Jack agreed that he would not.
“I prefer being ordinary Jack,” he said. “Except that I don’t think I’m quite as ordinary as I was before, do you? Thank you, Uncle Parker.”
“Don’t mention it,” Uncle Parker replied gracefully. “It was a pleasure. Your father – locked away up there all afternoon reading back numbers of comics! It’s you, old chap, who have done me a favour. I have a trump card that will never fail. The last word to end all last words.”
And so gradually life in the Bagthorpe household returned to normal, or as near normal as it was ever likely to be, and Jack and Zero (who could at least now fetch sticks) lived happily for several weeks after. They lived, that is, more happily, because Prophet and Phenomenon or not, Jack was not, for the time being, thought of as ordinary. He was an equal. And that made Zero equal too.
COLLINS MODERN CLASSICS
Click on the covers to read more
The Bagthorpe Saga
Ordinary Jack
Absolute Zero
Bagthorpes Unlimited
Bagthorpes V. the World
Bagthorpes Abroad
Bagthorpes Haunted
Bagthorpes Liberated
Bagthorpes Triangle
Bagthorpes Besieged
Bagthorpes Battered
About the Publisher
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Ordinary Jack Page 17