Helen Cresswell - The Bagthorpe Saga - Absolute Zero

First published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Ltd in 1978

First published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

© The Estate of Helen Creswell 1978

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2017

Cover illustration © Sara Ogilvie 2017

Helen Cresswell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008211707

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008211721

Version: 2017-03-17

To Candida with love

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright First published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Ltd in 1978 First published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk © The Estate of Helen Creswell 1978 Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2017 Cover illustration © Sara Ogilvie 2017 Helen Cresswell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books Source ISBN: 9780008211707 Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008211721 Version: 2017-03-17

Dedication To Candida with love

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

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The whole thing started when Uncle Parker won a cruise in the Caribbean for two after filling in a leaflet he had idly picked up in the village shop. The minute the news was known in the Bagthorpe household disbelief, annoyance and downright jealousy began to degenerate into what became, inevitably, an All Out Furore.

The company who had promoted this competition sold SUGAR-COATED PUFFBALLS breakfast cereal. Mr Bagthorpe immediately stated that Uncle Parker should refuse the prize on moral grounds. Uncle Parker, he said, had never consumed so much as a single SUGAR-COATED PUFFBALL in his entire life, and was thus automatically disqualified from reaping a reward for doing so. Mrs Bagthorpe did not agree. Daisy Parker, she said, ate a lot of SUGAR-COATED PUFFBALLS, she ate them every day of her life.

In that case, Mr Bagthorpe said, Daisy should have filled in the competition form. He then turned on his own children.

“Don’t you lot ever eat SUGAR-COATED PUFFBALLS?” he demanded. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I do,” said Jack promptly. “I really like them.”

“So why didn’t you go in for this thing?”

“I haven’t got a leaflet,” Jack said. “And even if I had, I wouldn’t have bothered. Nobody ever wins those things.”

“On the contrary, somebody does win them,” said Mr Bagthorpe in a tight voice. “We know that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me there was a competition?” asked William. “Then I could’ve won a prize.”

“You don’t automatically win by filling in a form, you know,” Tess told him. “Usually some kind of skill is required. And usually the deciding factor is a slogan.”

“So?” said William.

“I’d be better at slogans than you,” said Tess.

She turned not a hair as she spoke. In the Bagthorpe house everybody boasted. It was not called boasting, it was called “having a just pride in one’s own talents and achievements” – a phrase coined by Mrs Bagthorpe, who was very strong on Positive Thinking. The only ones who did not go in for it were Jack and his mongrel dog, Zero. They just kept quiet and lay low, mostly.

“ I ,” interposed Mr Bagthorpe now, “would be better than anybody at slogans, I believe. And how that layabout insensitive parasite managed to string so many as half a dozen words together is beyond me.”

“Perhaps Aunt Celia helped him,” said Rosie. “She can do The Times crossword three times as quickly as you can, Father. And she doesn’t use dictionaries and things.”

Honesty, especially of the tactless variety, was also a common trait of the Bagthorpe family.

“Nothing to do with it,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “Any fool can do crosswords. It’s creativity that counts.”

“But Aunt Celia writes poetry,” said Rosie, who could be as incorrigible as anyone if she chose, even though she was only just nine.

“Aunt Celia writes poetry,” repeated Mr Bagthorpe. “So she does. And does anybody ever understand a single word of it?”

No one answered this.

“I spend my entire life wrestling with words,” went on Mr Bagthorpe. (He wrote scripts for television.) “I live, breathe, sleep and eat words.”

(This was not strictly true. One thing Mr Bagthorpe never did was eat his words.)

The news of Uncle Parker’s win had been conveyed by telephone, and later in the morning he raced up the drive in his usual gravel-scattering style to rub salt in the wound. Jack and Zero were lying on the lawn, the former reading a comic, the latter gnawing a bone. Uncle Parker came to a furious halt and poked his head out of the window.