Mrs Fosdyke had been with the Bagthorpes long enough to know about Grandma’s cheating, but was clearly not unduly perturbed.
“She won’t be allowed to cheat,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not allowed.”
“She will,” said Jack. “I bet she would.”
“Can’t.” Mrs Fosdyke shook her head firmly. “They check up, see.”
“She’d tell them they’d checked up wrong,” Jack said.
“You can’t argue,” said Mrs Fosdyke. “There’s no arguing allowed. They’re ever so strict.”
“I think that Grandma would like Bingo,” said Uncle Parker. “You’re absolutely right, Mrs Fosdyke. Spot on. The very thing.”
“I could take her along with me.” Mrs Fosdyke was enchanted. “There’s ever such big prizes – there’s money, of course, and then there’s dinner services and blankets and non-sticks and all sorts. My sister at Pinxton won the Jackpot two weeks back on the day when they all have a link-up over the telephone, and she won 400 pound!”
“Crikey!” Jack was impressed. “I wouldn’t mind a go. Though I’m not much good at numbers.”
“Oh, you don’t have to be that,” Mrs Fosdyke assured him. “There’s no skill. No adding up, or anything. But it does take you out of yourself, you see, and that’s why I thought it’d be the very thing for Mrs Bagthorpe Senior.”
“I shall go and tell her this minute,” announced Uncle Parker. “A million thanks, Mrs Fosdyke. An inspired thought.”
Mrs Fosdyke glowed.
“Come on, Zero,” said Jack, and followed Uncle Parker.
Grandma was sitting on one of the new chairs that had been bought following the fire, contemplating the scene before her. The builders had been in and done some replastering and replaced some burned-up window frames and floorboards, but the room still looked like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock film. Everywhere was blacked up and charred-looking, and tatters of curtain still dangled from the buckled brass poles. Grandma looked as if she were reliving her Birthday Party in all its awful detail.
“Hallo, Grandma,” said Uncle Parker cheerily. “Nice day.”
She did not move her gaze.
“I know you by your voice,” she said. “You ran over Thomas, that shining jewel of a cat. You cut him off in his glorious prime.”
“Sorry about that, Grandma.” Uncle Parker apologised for at least the hundredth time. “I’d offer to get you another, but I knew he was irreplaceable.”
“He was irreplaceable,” said Grandma mournfully. “No cat could equal him for beauty, grace and gentleness.”
(This was a statement that needed challenging. Thomas had been ill-favoured to a degree, and inspired hate and terror in all who knew him. It was lucky that Mr Bagthorpe was not there to point all this out.)
“I think a lot about Reincarnation these days,” Grandma went on to herself. “I like to think who I would like to be Reincarnated as. I can’t decide. I am bound to say I would prefer not to be a Bagthorpe again. I should like to think I would be promoted to a Higher Plane.”
“Got a bit of a treat for you, Grandma,” said Uncle Parker, beavering away at the cheerfulness.
“Life is but a dream,” remarked Grandma vaguely. “Like as the waves make to the pebbled shore so do our moments hasten to their ends.’”
Uncle Parker was clearly batting on a sticky wicket.
“Heard about my prize, Grandma?” he asked.
“What prize?” said Grandma. “When you get old, you don’t get prizes.”
“Ah!” Uncle Parker was triumphant. “But you do! There’s a way you could win prizes the whole time.”
“When I was a little child, I once won a bag of macaroons at a party,” said Grandma wistfully. “Those days will never come again.”
“They will, Grandma,” said Jack. “Honestly. That’s what he’s trying to tell you.”
“I love macaroons,” she said. She seemed, marginally, to be coming back from wherever she had been.
“What would you say,” asked Uncle Parker, “to a blanket? Or some non-sticks, whatever they are, or a dinner service? What would you say to four hundred pounds?”
“Four hundred pounds? Where?” She was with them now all right.
“Yours for the winning,” Uncle Parker told her with sublime confidence. “All you do, you play a game.”
“Oh, I like playing games,” Grandma said. “I always win at games.”
Uncle Parker and Jack exchanged glances. Grandma was evidently right back on the ball again now, because she said:
“I have a natural aptitude for games.”
“You certainly have a natural aptitude for winning them,” conceded Uncle Parker. “One way or another. I’m bound to say none of us are any match for you.”
“This game would be a new challenge, though, Grandma,” said Jack. This was a guileful statement. Grandma rarely could resist a challenge.
“Whatever it is,” she replied, “I shall expect to win.”
“That’s the spirit, Grandma!” Uncle Parker told her. “So you’re on, then? Bingo tonight, is it?”
“Bingo?” repeated Grandma. “Is that a game? Why do the Parkinsons call their dog after a game? I thought it was a name for a dog.”
“Because it’s a good game,” Uncle Parker told her. “You’ll find out. And by the way, I might as well just mention it – I’ve just won a cruise for two in the Caribbean. I won it writing a slogan for SUGAR-COATED PUFFBALLS.”
Grandma favoured him with a long stare.
“If it were not for you,” she said at length, “that beautiful, shining Thomas would at this moment be crooning in my lap. The rain rains on the just and the unjust.”
Jack, while himself thinking very little of Uncle Parker’s winning slogan, none the less felt he deserved better than this.
“It was a national competition,” he told her. “The odds against winning are hundreds of thousands to one. It was pretty good going.”
Grandma rose. She reached the door and turned back.
“Do not quote statistics at me,” she said. “The odds against Thomas being killed in his prime in the drive of his own home were hundreds of thousands to one. He –” she pointed straight at Uncle Parker – “was the Fly in the Statistics.”
She swept out of the charred dining-room having had, as always, the last word.
fn1 See Ordinary Jack.
Chapter Two
During the course of that day the pile of recent newspapers and periodicals that lay on a shelf in the sitting-room rapidly and invisibly levelled down to a mere handful of colour supplements.
The Bagthorpes quite often all got the same idea at the same time, and quite often did not say a word to one another, each imagining him or herself to be the sole recipient of the particular inspiration. Tess playing her oboe, Rosie her violin and William his drums, had each been lacking in their usual total concentration. Visions of Caribbean isles and palm trees danced between them and their semiquavers. Each, in turn, began to think along the same lines.
Mrs Bagthorpe was in her room up to her ears in Problems and was not involved. Nor was Jack, who was in the meadow trying to train Zero to Beg, nor Grandma, who was in the kitchen cross-examining Mrs Fosdyke on the finer points of Bingo. Grandpa had gone away for a few days to play bowls. If he had been present he would certainly not have gone in for Competitions. He was a very Non-Competitive Man, and the younger generation of Bagthorpes got all their drive from Grandma’s side of the family.
Mr Bagthorpe was in his study reflecting bitterly on the unfairness of life. That Uncle Parker, who to all appearances did nothing but sit around doing crosswords or else tear about the countryside putting the fear of God into old and young alike, should actually have won a Caribbean Cruise simply by doodling with a form, was something Mr Bagthorpe just could not take. He himself had already been sitting at his desk for nearly two hours and all he had done so far was tear up five false starts to a script he was supposed to be doing. He w
ould not have minded so much if Uncle Parker had won the prize by putting the right famous eyes into famous faces, or guessing where a football ought to be on a photograph, or something of that nature. It would even have been a fruitful source of sarcasm.
But that Uncle Parker should have won a prize by using words, which were the tools of Mr Bagthorpe’s own trade, and which he felt to be more or less his exclusive province, was a bitter blow. Nothing would do, he decided, but that he himself should win an even bigger and better prize with a shorter and better slogan.
He was not a man to sit around playing with ideas. The minute he got one, he acted on it. (The critics often described his scripts as “monumentally single-minded” or “ruthlessly one track”.) Mr Bagthorpe took these as compliments, and they may have been, of course.
“Lear is monumentally single-minded,” he would point out triumphantly. “Othello was ruthlessly one track. So was Macbeth.”
Mr Bagthorpe, then, abandoned his abortive script and went to the sitting-room to find any magazines that might be running Competitions. He had often noticed them in the past but had thought it beneath his dignity to enter them. He had also, like Jack, thought that nobody ever won them anyway. He was not pleased to find that the magazine shelf had already been rifled, and guessed immediately what was afoot. He did not much like the idea that his offspring were intending to win Competitions too. It was, he knew, possible that he would end up by being a runner-up to one of them – Tess in particular, who was very good with words.
He instantly resolved, therefore, to keep his own Competition Entering secret. He was sure he would win every one he entered, if everything was all square and above board, and he was not pipped by a member of his own family. If, however, the Competitions were rigged (as he felt sure some of them must be, viz. Uncle Parker’s success) and he did not win, then he would avoid loss of face. Mr Bagthorpe was very bad at losing face.
He did get ideas, however, and had one now. Competitions did not appear only in newspapers and periodicals, they also appeared on the backs, tops and insides of grocery packages and tins. Uncle Parker’s own success had depended upon the top of a SUGAR-COATED PUFFBALL carton. He determined to raid the larder. This, he realised, depended on sidetracking Mrs Fosdyke, who was not easy to dodge because she darted hither and thither about the house all day with the rapidity and inconsequential tracking of a hedgehog. She could be in the bathroom one minute, a bedroom the next and then back down the hall, following her own obscure method of housekeeping. He had to think of a way of keeping her out of the kitchen for at least ten minutes while he had a quick sort through the pantry.
He pondered this for some time. He hit upon a solution. It was a neat one – it killed two birds with one stone.
In the kitchen he found Mrs Fosdyke serving coffee to his wife, the only member of the family who appeared to be interested in it. The rest, he surmised, were holed up in their rooms hammering out Slogans.
“Mrs Fosdyke has just been telling me how she has kindly offered to take Mother to Bingo tonight,” she greeted him.
“To what?” demanded Mr Bagthorpe incredulously.
“To Bingo, dear. It will take her out of herself. You know how drawn into herself she has become lately.”
“Laura,” said her husband, “if Mother so much as sets foot in a Bingo Hall there will be a riot. You know there will.”
“Nonsense, dear,” said Mrs Bagthorpe firmly. (She gave so much thought and time to other people’s Problems that as far as possible she tried to pretend that those of her own family were not there, in the hope that they would go away.)
“My mother,” said Mr Bagthorpe, “and she is my mother, and I think I know her as well as anyone ever could, is a congenital cheater at games. No –” he held up a hand – “don’t bother to deny it. You were present, I believe, last week, when she concealed the Q in her handbag because all the Us had already gone, at Scrabble?”
“Oh, she won’t be able to cheat at Bingo, Mr Bagthorpe,” said Mrs Fosdyke positively. “It’s impossible. It’s all done ever so fair and square and businesslike.”
“Is it?” Mr Bagthorpe threw himself into a chair and reached for his coffee. “Think they’ve got it organised, do they?”
“Oh, they have,” she assured him. “They’d never keep going, otherwise. It’s got to be fair.”
“In that case,” he said, “I prophesy – if you will excuse the expression – that whatever Bingo Hall you frequent will be closed down within the week. I also think it possible the police will become involved, and that there will be adverse publicity in the local papers. Probably –” pausing for a gulp of coffee – “in the Nationals.”
“Oh, go on, Mr Bagthorpe!” said Mrs Fosdyke skittishly.
“Henry, dear, you do exaggerate,” his wife told him. “I think it will be the healthiest thing possible for Mother to do.”
“Oh, it’ll be healthy for her, all right,” he agreed. “There’s nothing sets Mother up like an all-out row.”
“Well, let’s just wait and see, shall we,” said Mrs Bagthorpe sensibly. “And thank you so much, Mrs Fosdyke, for your kind offer. We’re most grateful.”
“Ah, and that reminds me, Mrs T – Fosdyke,” said Mr Bagthorpe. He had been about to say “Mrs Tiggywinkle” but stopped himself just in time. “There’s a little favour you might do for me, if you will.”
“Really?” She looked startled. Mr Bagthorpe hardly ever spoke to her at all, and had never in memory asked a favour. He looked at her quite a lot, and she did not much like the way he looked, but he almost never actually said anything.
“If you’ll excuse Mrs Fosdyke, dear,” he said to his wife, “I’d like her to pop down to the village shop for me. I’m in the middle of a very difficult patch with my script, you see, and there’s some material I must have if I’m to get on.”
“Well… certainly I’ve no objection,” said his wife, “if –?”
She looked enquiringly at Mrs Fosdyke who was already wiping her hands on her overall preparatory to taking it off. She was going to enjoy telling them in the shop that she was there on an urgent errand to get something for one of Mr Bagthorpe’s TV scripts.
“What is it you’re wanting?” she enquired.
“It may sound strange,” replied Mr Bagthorpe, “but what I require are current copies of the following magazines: Woman’s Monthly, Mother and Home, Happy Families…”
He rattled off half a dozen more magazines that he felt sure would be rich in Competitions. These he had selected a few minutes earlier from The Writer’s and Artist’s Year Book. They were none of them publications that were usually to be found at Unicorn House.
Mrs Fosdyke looked surprised by this but Mrs Bagthorpe did not.
“I need,” explained Mr Bagthorpe shamelessly, “to get right inside the mind of the woman in the home. Into the mind of a woman such as yourself, for instance, Mrs Fosdyke.”
Mrs Fosdyke positively scooted for her coat and hat on receiving this gratifying intelligence. She told her cronies about it later in the Fiddler’s Arms.
“He’s doing one of his scripts about me,” she boasted. “Said he wanted to get right inside my mind. Researching up on it at the moment.”
On being jealously reminded by one of her friends that she had always pronounced Mr Bagthorpe to be mad, she replied:
“It goes in patches, does madness. He’s in one of his sane spells” – which covered the present situation nicely, and also gave her a loophole whereby she could revert to her former assessment of Mr Bagthorpe if necessary.
Mrs Bagthorpe finished her coffee and went back to her Problems. Mrs Fosdyke, armed with a five-pound note and strong bag, was scuttling towards the village, and the coast was clear.
Mr Bagthorpe took a pair of scissors and went into the pantry. The haul was rich beyond his wildest expectations. There seemed hardly a packet or tin that did not offer the possibility of desirable rewards from motor cars to thousands of pounds, from holiday bungalows to
trips to the Greek Islands. (Mr Bagthorpe was particularly bent on winning this latter, because it had a lot more tone than a trip to the Caribbean.) There were eight tins whose wrappers carried entry forms for this particular prize, and he swiftly removed them all and stowed them in his pocket. The very next batch of tins promised a motor car and also some very attractive runners-up prizes, ranging from stereo equipment to typewriters. These, too, were divested of their wrappers.
All in all Mr Bagthorpe was in the pantry for a full quarter of an hour. He returned to his study a happy man, every pocket stuffed with wrappers and box lids, and hours of enjoyable Slogan Slogging before him. He sorted his pickings into businesslike piles, fetched out a new notebook and prepared a record-keeping system. He made notes of how many bottle tops of certain products he would have to collect and send along with his entries. He wrote the closing date of each Competition in red, and by lunchtime the ground was prepared. All that now remained was the actual solving and Slogan-making – the least part of the thing, it seemed to Mr Bagthorpe, who was not a modest man.
The house was full of Bagthorpes similarly engaged. Rosie was sucking her pencil over a Slogan for After Shave (made difficult by her uncertainty as to what this product was actually supposed to do). In the end she settled for “You may be no saint, but X will make you feel good.” William was writing a letter in not more than five hundred words explaining why he would like a motor caravan, and Tess had already thought of three surefire Slogans for a shampoo, and was now deciding that the best was probably: “You may be no saint, but you will have a halo” (which, given Rosie’s effort, suggested a strong telepathic link between Bagthorpes simultaneously generating ideas).
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