Absolute Zero

by Helen Cresswell

  Zero was completely thrown by this incomprehensible behaviour and went and hunched right up next to Jack and squeaked a little and kept wetting his lips.

  The whole morning was spent like this. After lunch the director asked:

  “Is there anything that really excites that dog? Does he ever get eager?”

  “He does in the woods, sometimes,” Jack told him. “He get eager when he sees squirrels.”

  The unit trekked on foot, carrying all their equipment, to the woods. There, indeed, Zero did become excited. He seemed to forget what he was there for, and bounded off and started barking non-stop at the squirrels, as he always did. Jack was pleased.

  “He can get excited, you see,” he told them.

  “The only trouble is,” said the director wearily, “that he’s looking up in the air. I can’t see any way he’s going to turn up BURIED BONES in the air.”

  Someone had brought along two large mutton bones.

  “If we can cover them up with soil, and get him sniffing after them, we’ll be halfway there,” said the director.

  Unfortunately this did not work. It was hard to tell why Zero did not want to sniff these bones out. He might just not have been very hungry, or he might have been over-excited by the squirrels. Whatever the reason, he did not sniff.

  The film unit all sat down and had a think.

  “We’ve got to think this thing through,” the director told them. “We must have that dog. We could get a trained alsatian to make this film in ten minutes flat. But we must have that dog.”

  He sat a long time thoughtfully watching Zero as he made his futile lunges after squirrels running a full thirty feet above him.

  “What we’ve been doing,” he finally announced, “has been all wrong.”

  No one contradicted what seemed a self-evident truth.

  “I’m going to turn the whole idea upside down on its head.”

  A respectful silence ensued.

  “I am deliberately trying to keep my voice calm and controlled,” he went on, “because I have just come up with the most stupefying and sensational idea that I believe has ever been used in advertising. And I am dazed and shattered by the pure and immaculate simplicity of it.”

  They all sat and waited. In the distance Zero barked on a high monotonous note.

  “What would your reaction be,” went on the director, “if I told you that we are going to film the truth?”

  He held up a hand.

  “No. Don’t answer right away. Take your time. Think about it. Just take in the sheer enormity of the concept. We are going to make a true commercial.”

  Jack took a quick look around. Everyone present was looking very concentrated and wise, and he made an effort to assume a similar expression himself.

  “That dog,” went on the director discerningly, “is not clever. He’s a numbskull. He’s a great, clumsy, stupid, lovable numbskull. You get the key word? Lovable. Now there is nothing lovable about being clever. Even if we did spend six months getting that dog to sniff and turn up BURIED BONES, nobody would love him for it. He’d just be another ordinary, smart dog on a commercial. No. What we do, we ditch the whole script, and we capitalise on his assets.”

  This is what happened. The BURIED BONES people went away and came back the following day with not one but two film units. Then the second unit filmed the first one trying to get Zero to sniff. Everyone went down on their hands and knees again and sniffed and snuffed, and Zero just looked hopeless and was the only one not sniffing.

  The director had written a new commentary. This time, the voice said:

  “We wanted to show Zero digging up a packet of BURIED BONES. But Zero is never going to play Hamlet. He can’t act. We can’t even get him to understand what we want him to do. Sniff! Come on, boy, sniff! You see? Hopeless. But there’s one thing Zero doesn’t have to act. He really does like BURIED BONES. Here, Zero – good boy!”

  At this point Zero never quite managed to capture the look of keen interest one might have expected. He had by this time had enough of filming, and it was beginning to show. He crunched the BURIED BONES biscuit all right, but only in a resigned, world-weary kind of way. He definitely looked as if he were doing it for the fifth time in an hour.

  To Jack’s surprise, however, the director seemed enchanted by Zero’s performance.

  “My God!” he exclaimed after the final take. “Just look at him!” (meaning Zero). “I’ve never seen anything so understated in my life. He just threw the whole thing away. Olivier could take lessons from him when it comes to understatement. The whole thing is brilliant.”

  He turned out to be right about this. After the first showing of the BURIED BONES commercial the lines of Borderland TV were jammed all night with calls from people who wanted to give Zero a home. He had apparently given the impression of being orphaned and sad, and half England, it seemed, wanted to make him happy.

  After the third or fourth showing the telephone enquiries were mainly about where one could get a dog exactly like Zero. Everywhere little children were sobbing themselves to sleep because they wanted one so badly, and their parents were trying to get hold of one for Christmas. They would pay anything, they said.

  Breeders began to ring up, begging for details of Zero’s parentage. They came and examined him and tried to work out the various strains that had come together to produce him. There was a fortune awaiting the man who could breed Zeros. No one seemed very hopeful about this.

  “My guess,” said one of them gloomily, “is that it’s taken centuries of unbridled cross-breeding to produce that. This is the biggest single blow ever struck at the Kennel Club. It could even be mortal. No one wants our dogs any more.”

  BURIED BONES had posters made of Zero at his most bewildered-looking, and gave one away for every ten packets of their product bought. People with five children thus had to purchase fifty packets at one go, and the sight of people trundling through supermarkets with trolleys piled high with BURIED BONES became a familiar one.

  Owing to popular demand a Zero Fan Club was founded, called Zero Worshippers, and people got their photographs autographed with a large paw-mark, and badges saying ‘I am a Zero Worshipper’ or ‘Absolute Zero’ or ‘Zero is the Most’.

  None of this had any real effect on Zero. If anything, he became more dislocated than ever because of the habit people now had of suddenly diving at him in the street or in shops, and shouting, and causing crowds to form. These were friendly crowds, but could not have seemed so to him. Jack tried to fend them off by denying Zero’s identity, but no one ever believed him. Sometimes Zero would be patted for half an hour on end. It was lucky, as Mr Bagthorpe pointed out, that whatever Zero’s other shortcomings, he was not the sort that bit.

  “If he was,” he said, “then this country would be clean out of tetanus shots.”

  His own attitude towards Zero did not change much. If anything, it was the same attitude as before, but now tinged with professional jealousy. Most weeks Zero commanded more viewing space than Mr Bagthorpe, and he was certainly better known. No crowds formed when Mr Bagthorpe went into town.

  Grandma and Daisy got recognised, though, particularly when the former wore the outfit she had used for her BLUE LAGOON and GENERATION GAP advertisements. Once she persuaded Daisy to wear her outfit as well, and the pair of them signed hundreds of autographs and a policeman had to come and control the crowd. Grandma talked about this a lot when she wanted to goad Mr Bagthorpe into a really first-class row.

  “What a pity you are not photogenic, Henry,” she would say, or:

  “To advertise toothpaste, one has to show one’s teeth, of course. People who never smile cannot expect much interest to be shown in them.”

  At this Mr Bagthorpe would almost invariably bare his teeth.

  “You and Daisy,” he would say, “are novices. Within three months people will be sick of the sight of you. Have you not heard of overexposure? Why do you think I curb myself as I do? I could have a script on ever
y night of the week, if I wanted.”

  “People will never get tired of Daisy and me,” Grandma replied. “We are originals.”

  (The man from GENERATION GAP had told her this, though at the time, of course, he did not know about the near-identical BLUE LAGOON campaign.)

  “Amen to that,” said Mr Bagthorpe grimly, and he left the room abruptly, because Grandma could cap anything – even the last word.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mr Bagthorpe did not, after all, have a whole ten days at the Health Farm feeling his way back into becoming human again.

  The zealous BURIED BONES, by way of advance publicity, managed to get going a news story about The Dog Insured for One Hundred Thousand Pounds. When Mr Bagthorpe opened his newspaper at orange-juice time and saw Zero gazing at him, he immediately shut his eyes, and kept them shut for a full two minutes. While his eyes were closed he thought frantically that he should have consulted his doctor before coming to the Health Farm.

  How do I know, he wondered in anguish, whether I’ve got permanent brain damage? All that lettuce and carrot juice is not natural. Anyone creative should not tinker with his metabolism. Even if I open my eyes and find that hound isn’t there, after all, I shall go home. I’m frightened.

  When he had taken in the fact that a large photograph of Zero was indeed contemplating him mournfully from page four of his newspaper, he read the caption and, with mounting incredulity, the story.

  He then told the Director of the Health Farm that he would have to return home immediately as there was a crisis in the family – which, if not strictly true, soon would be. When Mr Bagthorpe got home there was going to be a crisis.

  He did not telephone his wife to warn her of his impending arrival. He wanted to catch everybody out at whatever they were up to the moment his back was turned and he himself weakened, probably permanently he felt, by a diet of nuts and water. This way he could also, of course, make a really effective entrance. He arrived home just as Grandma and Daisy were being Happy for the Borderland Television people. PJ had wanted them to be Happy separately, but Grandma refused.

  “I can only be really Happy with Daisy,” she told him. “And even then I will have to work myself up to being Happy first.”

  “And how will you do that?” he enquired.

  “There is only one way,” she replied.

  This turned out to be a filmed lecture by herself in the form of a guided tour of the photographs of Thomas in her room. There were dozens of these, all showing him at his worst – up a drainpipe baring his teeth, for instance, or practising unsheathing his claws, or staring malevolently into the lens or just looking plain Satanic. Grandma intended to wax exceedingly lyrical about him and if possible get him posthumously into a pet food advertisement, though she did not of course admit to this ulterior motive. PJ resisted the whole idea for as long as he could but in the end Grandma won.

  “I am an old lady,” she said, “and I think my wishes should be respected.” (She admitted to being old when it suited her, and then retracted later.)

  PJ eventually gave in, consoling himself with the thought that Thomas would be a strong candidate for pride of place on the cutting-room floor, despite keen competition for this.

  Once Grandma had warmed up to being Happy by dwelling on the life and times of the late Thomas, she came downstairs and allowed herself to be arranged for filming in the sitting-room with Daisy. The latter was given Rosie’s china doll’s tea set and asked to pretend to have a tea party with Grandma. This looked like a good idea until Daisy started pouring cups of tea for Arry Awk.

  “’Ere you are, Arry,” she said, plonking down a cup and saucer in a space to her left. “I’ve put you lots of sugar in; I’ve put four lumps, would you like five?”

  “Daisy, dear,” said Grandma rather edgily, “Arry Awk isn’t at this party. There are just you and I, dear.”

  “And Arry,” replied the incorrigible Daisy. “He’s a bad boy and jus’ came without me asking.”

  “I would like another lump of sugar, please,” said Grandma jealously. Daisy dropped one in and it splashed Grandma’s frock but she did not remark on this.

  “This is a delicious cup of tea, Daisy,” she went on, gamely sipping at her mixture.

  “You’re not really s’posed to drink it, Grandma Bag,” Daisy told her. “It’s all fings mixed up.”

  Grandma uttered a little choking cry but kept her cool admirably, aware that the cameras were still turning.

  “The chocolate biscuits are real, I think,” she observed. “I would like one of those, please.”

  “I don’t fink there will be any left,” Daisy told her. “They’re Arry Awk’s favourites.”

  She thereupon crammed two in her own mouth and leaned over to put three on Arry Awk’s plate and lost balance and knocked the teapot into Grandma’s lap.

  “Ooooh!” squealed Daisy. “You bad boy, Arry Awk!”

  “I think,” said Grandma dangerously, “that Arry Awk had better go home. I think I may be getting near the end of my tether.”

  “Cut!” shouted PJ “In the name of heaven, madam, can you not humour the child? It is the child’s tea party, and you are supposed to be her indulgent grandmother being Happy with her.”

  Grandma drew herself up.

  “I contracted,” she told him distinctly, “to look Happy with Daisy. There was no mention of a third party. I think I acted as Happy as anyone could reasonably have been expected to act, under the circumstances. It is not you who have to live with Arry Awk.”

  “Am I to understand,” said Mr Bagthorpe, who had been watching the scene unnoticed, “that Arry Awk is still with us?”

  PJ turned and favoured him with a cool glance.

  “Do you mind, sir?” he said. “We are involved in a very difficult scene.”

  “As long as you remain in this house,” Mr Bagthorpe told him, “there is no way you are going to be able to avoid being involved in difficult scenes. This house, incidentally, being mine.”

  “Henry never did have any sense of timing,” put in Grandma, hiding her delight at his reappearance.

  “Aaaah!” Comprehension dawned on the face of PJ. “Mr Happy Bagthorpe himself, I take it?”

  “I am not happy,” returned Mr Bagthorpe curtly. “Nor have I ever claimed to be.”

  “But you said you wished you were, Father,” Jack reminded him. “You said you wished we could be happy like other families.”

  “So I did,” agreed Mr Bagthorpe heavily. “Did you ever hear of a story called The Monkey’s Paw?”

  Now that Mr Bagthorpe was home the chances of the family acting Happy for Borderland Television decreased hourly. Grandma felt Happy, but was careful not to show it. Grandpa was Happy too, but then he always was, which was why nobody ever took much notice of him. He went quietly on leading his own Happy life side by side with the rest of the family, running on a parallel track, as it were, with only occasional junctions. In the end there was quite a lot about Grandpa in the Christmas Day film because he was the only one (Daisy apart) who came over as genuinely Happy. All the others were overacting.

  The hardest thing of all for PJ to achieve was to get Mr Bagthorpe to do his little piece. Mr Bagthorpe, to do him justice, had originally intended to make an effort to co-operate. What had changed his mind was the subtle but definite alteration in his appearance that had been effected by his stay at Tallbuoys. Mr Bagthorpe had been lean and rangy to start with and had not needed to lose weight. It seemed, however, as the Director of the Health Farm had explained, that the process of draining poisons from anybody’s system involved, necessarily, a loss of weight.

  Mr Bagthorpe, then, was now hollow-eyed and interesting-looking as never before. He had not failed to remark this while shaving, and was on the whole pleased about it. He often wondered whether people took either himself or his work seriously enough. Now that he had a distinct touch of the consumptive about him, and was to appear on television, he thought that if perhaps he acted drawn
and struggling with a daemon, his reputation would take a sharp upward turn.

  Mr Bagthorpe and PJ therefore became locked in a deadly battle of wills, the former having the advantage because he was distinctly mettlesome after his period of fasting, and the latter approaching a state of stupefaction after a pounding week spent with Mr Bagthorpe’s relatives.

  When PJ, after a particularly haunted session in the study, shouted “Hell, man, you’re not the dying Keats!” Mr Bagthorpe was satisfied that he had struck the right note, and kept to it from then on. He tried acting in this pale and interesting way with his family as well, even when Borderland TV were not there, but cut no ice with them. In any case, he could only keep it up so long as he was not being goaded, and most of the time people were goading him.

  Uncle Parker and Aunt Celia came round to collect Daisy after her abortive tea party. Mr Bagthorpe smiled wanly at them and tried to look short of breath.

  “Good God!” exclaimed Uncle Parker.

  “What is it, Russell?” asked Mr Bagthorpe faintly.

  “You smiled! See that, Celia? There you are then – all they say about those places – it’s all true! They’ve done a sterling job on you, Henry. Do it again.”

  “Very funny.” Mr Bagthorpe was beginning to snarl already.

  “They say,” mused Uncle Parker, “that a strictly vegetarian diet lowers the aggressive impulse. Are you going to stick on it, now you’ve made a start?”

  Mr Bagthorpe resisted rising to this, though a comment on the effects a vegetarian diet had had on Aunt Celia rose to his lips and was stifled only with difficulty.

  Uncle Parker moved smoothly into top gear.

  “And what about Zero, then, Henry?” he drawled. “Made a bit of an error in our calculations there, didn’t we?”

  Mr Bagthorpe abandoned being the dying Keats and went into an unusually long and prosy piece about the values of modern society, ending up with the declaration that Zero would never, ever, add up to anything.

  “You can quote me on that,” he said. “You can have it in writing.”