Helen Cresswell - The Bagthorpe Saga - Absolute Zero

“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.

fn1See Ordinary Jack .

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 would 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.