Helen Cresswell - The Bagthorpe Saga - Ordinary Jack

They stayed on quite a while after the fire was out. They sat round in the kitchen and told the Bagthorpes a lot of interesting things about arson and so on, and before they left Rosie got all their autographs. They seemed quite flattered by this. Rosie told them the autographs were more of a gamble than anything, just in case one of them ever died rescuing someone from a burning building, and became a national hero and got a post-mortem award on the television. Soon after this the firemen left.

When they had gone, Mrs Fosdyke (who came in daily to do for the Bagthorpes, but refused to sleep in) said she thought they had all looked too young and inexperienced to be proper firemen. She did not believe they had been a proper Fire Brigade at all, and said that her carpet and her furniture would not now be in the state they were in if a proper Brigade had been sent in time. People were too easily deceived by uniforms, she said. (Mrs Fosdyke had missed the actual moment when the tablecloth went up in the air and was naturally bitter about this.)

Nobody did anything about cleaning up after the fire that night. They all sat round and talked about it till quite late. At around ten o’clock Mr Bagthorpe went out to close his greenhouse for the night and fell over Zero, who had not been seen since the Party. Jack had even feared him lost, and had had a quick look among the debris for signs of bones, though he was not certain what exactly a burned bone would look like.

“That infernal hound’s back,” Mr Bagthorpe announced and Zero crept in behind him. He was still shaking. Jack stood up.

“I’m going to bed,” he said. Zero always slept in his room and he looked as if he needed a rest.

“Nobody’s sung ‘Happy Birthday’ to me yet,” Grandma said. “My birthday’s nearly over. I shan’t be having many more. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Nothing really matters.”

“Oh, darling, of course it matters. We’ll all sing it now, this very moment, won’t we, everyone?” cried Mrs Bagthorpe. “But what a shame about the candles.”

Jack wondered whether Zero’s legs looked wobbly because of the chilliness or because they had still not picked up after last night. Zero had certainly not wanted to go with Jack when he went to have a look at the scene of the disaster in daylight, or rather, dawnlight. It was not yet six o’clock. The gutted and blackened state of the dining-room had shaken Jack himself. The tattered curtains swung to and fro in the shattered windows. It looked more like a scene out of a film than home.

Jack and Zero were padding together over the fields towards The Knoll, Uncle Parker’s house. (He had wanted to call it “Parker Knoll” but Aunt Celia had said she would leave him if he did.) Jack had not slept too well. He had not been thinking especially about the fire, though he had once or twice been tempted to go down and make sure that there wasn’t anything still smouldering. Mrs Fosdyke had been very definite about the dubious credentials of the firemen who had come, and they had certainly been jumpy. But what was really exercising his mind was Uncle Parker’s idea. He had obviously thought of a way that he, Jack, could become immortal and keep up with the rest of the Bagthorpes. He had been, maddeningly, on the very brink of imparting it on the previous afternoon.

“If I get immortal, old chap,” Jack told Zero now, “I’ll make sure you do as well. I’ll work you in on the act somehow.”

He made quite a few other similarly encouraging remarks to Zero on the walk, because his self-confidence must have suffered a severe setback last night, and Mr Bagthorpe, for one, wouldn’t let him forget it in a hurry. (Jack was right about this. Quite often in weeks and even months to come he would say things like, “Look to yourself – here comes that incendiary hound again,” or, “If that animal’s stopping, the house insurance’ll have to go up again, you realise that”.)

Jack was going to The Knoll so early partly because he was impatient to hear the idea and partly because he knew that this was Uncle Parker’s best time of the day. Uncle Parker spent his whole time apparently lounging around and led a life of ease, but he had long ago confided to Jack that this sort of thing was by no means as simple as it looked. He rose at six, summer and winter alike, did a workout and then jogged for three miles round the fields. He then went home, took a cold shower, prepared orange juice, toast and coffee and retired into his study with the morning papers, which he paid an extra fifty pence a week to have delivered early. What he did then, or so Jack gathered, was something to do with stocks and shares. In the village opinion ranged from suspecting him of being the compiler of The Times crossword (which would explain why Aunt Celia was so good at it) to his being an Enemy Agent (this by people who had had particularly narrow escapes from Uncle Parker’s car). He stayed in the study till about ten answering letters and making telephone calls, and then the rest of the day was free.

This infuriated other people who were mystified as to what Uncle Parker actually did in life to maintain, for instance, the kind of car he drove round in, terrifying the life out of everyone else. They were also irritated by the way he looked so lean and fit while apparently inviting flab and liver trouble by lounging around sipping gin and doing crosswords.

“I am an idle devil,” Uncle Parker once told Jack. “But at least I work at it.”

Jack could see him now, at a distance, clad only in shorts and vest, jogging along in a shower of spray. He shouted and Uncle Parker waved and veered in his direction.

“Up early,” he called. “House hasn’t gone up again, has it?”

“They’re all asleep. I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Uncle Parker, drawing up to him. “No more could I. And the thing that kept coming at me all night was those allfired mottoes.”

“Mottoes?”

“In all those crackers. We’ll never know what they were, now. I use ’em, you know, at dinner parties, as conversation-stoppers. The minute they start on about politics, out I come with one of my little mottoes. To tell you the truth, I collect them. Got a little book full of ’em. I wonder who thinks them up.”

“Nobody, I don’t suppose,” Jack said. “I should think they’re handed down through the generations. They’re immortal. And that reminds me …”

“I know, I know.” Uncle Parker raised a silencing hand. “You jog along back with me, and I’ll tell all.”

“I don’t know if Zero’s up to jogging.” Jack eyed him dubiously. “Do his ears look droopy to you?”

“He’s not much of a livewire at the best of times.” Uncle Parker in turn surveyed him. “On the other hand, he did have a bit of a raw deal yesterday. If he had any spirit, he’d take a piece out of Daisy’s leg.”

“He’d never!” Jack was shocked.

“To be frank –” Uncle Parker started jogging and Jack kept up – “I was about ready to take a piece out of her leg myself. All those mottoes!”

“What about being immortal, then?” Uncle Parker would keep going off on different tacks if he were not pinned down.

“Ah. Well. What I’ve hatched up for you, young Jack, is going to shake that family of yours to its foundations. To its core.”

“It is?”

“What you are going to be,” Uncle Parker told him, as they entered the field that was the home straight to The Knoll, “is a prophet.”

Jack was struggling to keep up. He was a full foot shorter than Uncle Parker and what was a jog to him was an all-out striding for Jack.

“You mean—?” He was bewildered. “Make a profit? Be in business? But I said nothing to do with figures.”