Ordinary Jack Read online

  “I beathja teleths,” came a crumb-choked voice by Jack’s elbow.

  “Told you,” said Jack to Uncle Parker.

  “What was that, Rosie?” enquired Mrs Bagthorpe. “You left what in the bath?”

  “I beat Jack doing ten lengths.” This time Rosie’s voice was shamingly distinct and, what was worse, fell into a rare lull in the general din.

  “Did you really?” exclaimed Mrs Bagthorpe, and “Pooh!” said Uncle Parker simultaneously with such force that morsels of crust flew across the table at his wife.

  Conversation ceased abruptly.

  “Did you say something, Russell?” asked Mrs Bagthorpe.

  “I said ‘Pooh!’”

  “That’s what he said before when I told him,” squeaked Rosie indignantly. “And it’s good – it is! Jack’s three years older than me and I beat him and it is good!”

  “Of course it is, darling,” agreed her mother. “And I’m terribly proud of you. Bad luck, Jack.”

  “Bad luck Jack my foot, leg and elbow,” said Uncle Parker. Everyone stared at him except Grandpa who was being SD and evidently did not realise what he was about to miss.

  “I’ll elaborate,” said Uncle Parker. “In my opinion young Jack here, while being a perfectly good chap and worth ten of most here present, swims with the approximate grace and agility of an elephant.”

  No one contradicted him.

  “The fact, therefore,” he continued, “that young Rosie here, while also being perfectly acceptable in many ways though some might say too clever by half, the fact that she has beaten Jack doing ten lengths seems to me to be an event totally devoid of interest. It seems, in fact, to be a non-event of the first order.”

  “I am three years younger,” piped Rosie.

  Uncle Parker turned to her.

  “Kindly do not tell me that again,” he told her. “I have been given that information at least three times in the last hour and am by now in perfect possession of it.”

  “No, Uncle Parker,” said Rosie meekly. “I mean, yes.”

  “Crikey, Uncle P,” said William, “you are in a lather. Anyone’d think Rosie’d beaten you.”

  “I don’t doubt that she could,” returned Uncle Parker calmly. “I am a notoriously bad swimmer, and I dislike getting wet unnecessarily. The only good reason for swimming, so far as I can see, is to escape drowning.”

  “The thing I best remember about that jewel of a cat,” said Grandma reminiscently, “was his extraordinary sweetness of nature. He hadn’t a streak of malice in him.”

  It was, after all, Grandma’s Birthday Party, and she probably felt she was losing her grip on it.

  “That cat,” said Mr Bagthorpe, caught off-guard and swallowing the bait, “was the most cross-grained evil-eyed thing that ever went on four legs. If I had a pound note for every time that animal bit me, I should be a rich man, now.”

  “How can you, Henry!” cried Grandma, delighted that things were warming up.

  “I’d be Croesus,” said Mr Bagthorpe relentlessly. “Midas. Paul Getty. That cat bit people like he was being paid for it in kippers.”

  “There he would lie, hour upon hour, with his great golden head nestled in my lap,” crooned Grandma, getting into her stride, “and I would feel the sweetness flowing out of him. When I lost Thomas, something irreplaceable went out of my life.”

  “Bilge, Mother,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “That cat was nothing short of diabolical. He was a legend. He was feared and hated for miles around. In fact I clearly remember that the first dawnings of respect I ever felt for Russell here began on the day he ran the blasted animal over.”

  “Language, dear,” murmured Mrs Bagthorpe automatically.

  “Not on purpose, of course,” said Uncle Parker.

  “Of course not on purpose!” snapped Mr Bagthorpe. “The way you drive, you couldn’t hit a brick wall, let alone a cat.”

  “It just wasn’t very nippy on its toes, you see,” said Uncle Parker apologetically to Grandma.

  “It nipped me on my toes,” said William. “Bags of times.”

  The rest turned unsmilingly towards him.

  “All right,” he said. “So it wasn’t all that funny. But what about this ‘Pooh!’ business of Uncle P’s? Let’s get back to that. Unless you want to hear what Anonymous from Grimsby told me.”

  “I don’t think you’d better,” said Jack. “It’d be breaking the veil of secrecy.”

  He enjoyed making this remark, but his pleasure was short-lived.

  “I wish you’d learn to use words accurately,” said Mr Bagthorpe testily. (He wrote scripts for television and now and again got obsessed about words, which in his darker moments he believed would eventually become extinct, probably in his own lifetime.) “You can’t break a veil. A veil, by its very nature, is of a fine-spun, almost transparent texture, and while it may be rent, or even—”

  “For crying out loud,” said Uncle Parker.

  “Oh, dearest,” murmured his wife, “must you …?”

  This was the first time Aunt Celia had spoken. She had not even noticed when Uncle Parker had sprayed crumbs at her. The reason for this was that she was gazing at a large piece of bark by her plate. No one had remarked on this because Aunt Celia often brought pieces of bark, ivy or stone (and even, on one memorable occasion, a live snail) to table to gaze on as she ate, even at other people’s parties. She did this because she said it inspired her. It was partly to do with her pot-throwing, she said, and partly her poetry. There was no argument about this since her poetry and pottery alike were not much understood by the other Bagthorpes. They respected it without knowing what on earth it was all about. Also, Aunt Celia was very beautiful – like a naiad, Uncle Parker would fondly tell people – and looked even more so when she was being wistful and faraway. In the hurly-burly of Bagthorpe mealtimes she was looked upon more as an ornament than a participant.

  She had, however, now spoken, and the Bagthorpes were sufficiently surprised by this to fall silent again.

  “Must I what, dearest?” asked Uncle Parker, leaning forward.

  “I was just on the verge … I thought … I was almost …”

  Her voice trailed off. When Aunt Celia did speak it was usually like this, in a kind of shorthand. She started sentences and left you to guess the ends – if, of course, you thought it worth your while. By and large, the Bagthorpes did not. Uncle Parker, however, did.

  “Just on the verge of …?” he prompted delicately.

  “What about my portrait?” demanded Rosie loudly. Having had her swimming feat passed over as a mere nothing, she had no intention of letting her Birthday Portrait go the same way. It was set on an easel just by Grandma herself and no one had commented on it because in the first place they were currently more interested in food, and in the second because it looked unfinished.

  “Where’s her mouth?” demanded Tess.

  “And her nose?” asked Jack.

  “Not to mention her eyes,” added William. “Might come out right, Rosie, but doesn’t look like one of your best. You’ve got her ears wrong. You’ve got ’em too flat. Look – you look – they stick out a lot more than you’ve got them.”

  The entire table turned its eyes on Grandma’s ears. Grandma looked frostily back at them.

  “My ears,” she stated, “are one of my best features. This was one of Alfred’s favourite contentions during our courtship. “I could love you for your ears alone,” he would say, and, ‘Grace, your ears are like petals, veritable petals.’ Isn’t that so?”

  All eyes now turned towards Grandpa who was stolidly making his way through what was probably his tenth stuffed egg. In his rare communicative moments he would sometimes confide that one of the few pleasures left to him in life was stuffed eggs – that and skewering wasps he would say – and the latter was unfortunately seasonal. (A relative of Grandpa’s had once died of a wasp sting and he was convinced that this would be the way he would go too, unless it were under the wheels of Uncle Parker�
�s car.)

  “Alfred!”

  Grandma leaned forward and jabbed at his arm, determined that he should give testimony. He dropped his egg and blinked blankly at her.

  “Eh? Eh? Happy Birthday, my dear.”

  “SD,” murmured Uncle Parker to Jack. “See what I mean?”

  “I was saying about my ears!” Grandma pointed to her own with either hand simultaneously, thereby taking on a distinctly lunatic look.

  “Ah – my ears!” Grandpa sounded relieved. He picked up his egg and started in on it again. “Aid’s playing up a bit. One of those days. I don’t reckon much to these aids. It’s the weather, you know. They’re affected by the weather.”

  “My ears!” Grandma positively shrieked. Grandpa did not turn a hair. He did not even seem to know she had spoken. He simply went on polishing off his stuffed egg. He had flecks of yolk in his beard, Jack noticed.

  “The candles!” cried Mrs Bagthorpe with tremendous gaiety. She rose and swept theatrically towards the head of the table where Grandma sat fuming behind her porcupine of a cake.

  “I hope you’re satisfied!” she hissed at Mr Bagthorpe as she passed behind him.

  He turned to Uncle Parker for support.

  “I never said a word about her ears,” he protested. “I may have said one or two rather strong things about that blood-crazed animal of—”

  “Ssssh!” Mrs Bagthorpe had just struck her first match and her hiss blew it out. She struck another.

  “The older you get,” observed Grandma dismally, “the more you are trodden down. Life is nothing but a process of being trodden down from the cradle to the grave.”

  “Note the change of tactics,” said Uncle Parker to Jack sotto voce. “She’s not half bad, I’ll say that.”

  Mrs Bagthorpe was now lighting candles with practised rapidity and had signalled Tess to start on the other side of the cake. Grandma kept up a muttered monologue as the conflagration spread before her. Jack could not catch all of it but it seemed mostly to be about graves, and ingratitude.

  “The crackers!” exclaimed Mr Bagthorpe suddenly. He was evidently remorseful and felt bound to do his own share of drumming up a festive air. “By Jove – can’t have the cake cut without hats on!”

  “Where are the crackers?” asked William.

  They looked about the littered table.

  “I put them out – I did! There was one on every side plate!” Tess was frantically darting her hands among the candles as she spoke. “And Daisy helped me.”

  There was a real silence now.

  “Good God,” said Uncle Parker at last. He had gone quite white. “Daisy.”

  “She’s not here,” said Jack unnecessarily.

  “Daisy, Daisy, where – oh where—” moaned Aunt Celia wildly. She pushed away her piece of bark and stood swaying like a reed.

  “I clean forgot. Oh my God. I’ll find her – I will!”

  “But what – where – the lake …” moaned Aunt Celia.

  At Grandma’s end of the table concern for Daisy was not half so strong as concern for the crackers.

  “She was here, I tell you, putting out crackers.” Tess’s face was lit now from below, the cake was sputtering and ablaze.

  “We’ll have to blow the candles – we’ll have to sing – we can’t wait!” shrieked Mrs Bagthorpe.

  “Look – here’s one!” Mr Bagthorpe snatched a cracker from under a crumpled napkin. “Quick – Jack – you pull it with me, and then there’ll be a hat for Grandma.”

  Jack reached over and they pulled hard. Crack!

  Chapter Two

  What happened next was so confusing that even when you put together the different accounts of everyone there present, nothing like a clear picture ever emerged. The Fire Brigade, when they arrived, could certainly make neither head nor tail of it and had never before attended a fire like it.

  In the Bagthorpe family, the incident became known, in course of time, as “The Day Zero Piddled While Home Burned”. (No one actually saw this, but he sometimes did when he got nervous, and it rhymed so well with ‘fiddled’ that it was passed as Poetic Licence.)

  Only a handful of facts – as opposed to impressions, which were legion – emerged. These were as follows:

  Fact the First

  Daisy, aged four, had been sitting underneath the table the whole time the party was going on.

  Fact the Second

  What she had been doing under the table was opening all the crackers and taking out whatever was inside. (After the fire quite a lot of melted plastic was found mixed in with the carpet.)

  Fact the Third

  What was also under the table (mistaken by Daisy for a second box of crackers) was a large box of fireworks which were a surprise present to Grandma from Uncle Parker. He said afterwards he had given them in the hope they would liven things up.

  Fact the Fourth

  Daisy was in the company of a mongrel dog called Zero who belonged to the Bagthorpes in general and Jack in particular. He had just appeared one day in the garden, and stayed. The Bagthorpes had advertised him in the local paper, but nobody seemed to have recognised the description, or if they had, had not come forward. Mr Bagthorpe disassociated himself from Zero and would often pretend he had never set eyes on him.

  “There’s a dog out there on the landing,” he would say. “A great pudding-footed thing covered in fur. See what it wants.”

  It was Mr Bagthorpe who had given Zero his name.

  “If there was anything less than nothing,” he had said, “that hound would be it. But there isn’t, so we’ll have to settle for Zero.”

  The family computers, William and Rosie, had pointed out that mathematically speaking there was a whole lot to choose from that was less than zero, but Mr Bagthorpe had dismissed this as idle speculation.

  “You show me something less than nothing, and I’ll believe you,” he had told them.

  Mr Bagthorpe could be very categorical, and was especially so on subjects about which he knew practically nothing, like mathematics. Anyway, Zero was called that, and Jack sometimes used to wonder if it had affected him, and given him an inferiority complex, because sometimes Zero seemed to drag his feet about rather, and his ears looked droopier than when they had first had him. Jack would spend hours poring over old snapshots of Zero, comparing ears. When they were alone together Jack would praise Zero up and tell him how wonderful and intelligent he was, to try and counteract this. Also, when in public Jack would call him “Nero” so as to give him a bit of dignity in the eyes of others, and as Zero hardly ever came when he was called anyway, it didn’t make much difference.

  So the fact was that Zero was under the table with Daisy, who had probably given him some food to keep him quiet. When she was cross-examined afterwards Daisy said she had taken him under the table with her because she had thought it would be lonely under there by herself. Mr Bagthorpe flatly refused to believe this, and said that Daisy must have plotted the whole thing because if Zero hadn’t been there with her none of the things that did happen would have happened.

  He and Uncle Parker used to have rows about this for weeks afterwards. Uncle Parker would say that while he admitted that Daisy was a genius (she had to be, with a reading age of 7.4 and the way she was always writing her thoughts on walls, and what with having Aunt Celia for a mother) she was too young to have plotted anything as complicated as that. He would also point out that the whole thing had hinged not so much on Zero being under the table as on the moment when a certain cracker was pulled, Mr Bagthorpe being the person who had made this suggestion and connived at its execution. Mr Bagthorpe would retaliate by saying that the coincidence of Uncle Parker’s having bought a large box of fireworks, and of Uncle Parker’s daughter being under the table with them, might strike some people as rather more than coincidence. He would usually end up advising Uncle Parker to take himself and Daisy off to a psychiatrist.

  Fact the Fifth

  When Jack and Mr Bagthorpe pulled the singl
e available cracker, Zero, who was probably already nervous at being trapped so long under a table surrounded by so many feet and legs, had blown his mind. He had sprung forward, got both sets of paws wound in the tablecloth and pulled the whole lot after him, including the cake.

  At the actual moment this happened, of course, no one had any inkling that Zero had been under the table, and the sight of the tablecloth leaping forward and rolling about on the floor had almost unhinged some of them, notably Grandma, Mrs Bagthorpe and Aunt Celia. The latter certainly always referred to it afterwards as a “manifestation” and would refer to how Daisy had been “delivered”. (This also helped make Daisy seem less of a culprit, because it made her seem more a victim, and it was difficult to see her in both roles at once.)

  Grandma herself, with it being her birthday and her cake, had taken the whole thing personally and had thought she was being struck by a thunderbolt. She had miraculously escaped injury altogether, but Rosie’s Birthday Portrait had been one of the first things to go up in flames and always afterwards Grandma saw this as what she called a “Sign”. A Sign of what she didn’t specify, but she always said it very darkly, and when she was feeling low. Sometimes the others, to cheer her up when she got brooding about it, would say that if it were a “Sign” it was clearly a Sign that Rosie’s Birthday Portrait had not been worth a light – so to speak.

  Grandpa had not of course heard the whole lot of cracks and bangs as all the crackers Daisy had dismantled started going off, but had not failed to note that the last remaining stuffed egg had been suddenly snatched from under his very nose. He had risen hastily to grab after it, knocked over his own chair, tripped, and fallen over Grandma and lost his hearing aid.

  When the firemen came they were very helpful and said they would keep an eye open for it, but what with the whole room by then ablaze and the curtains just beginning to catch fire, they didn’t really have time. They were very good firemen but they did seem nervous about bangers still going off and sudden flares of blue or green light. They definitely seemed jumpy. Afterwards, when they were having some beer with the Bagthorpes to moisten their dried-out mouths, they apologised for this. They said that the Bagthorpe fire was not really a run-of-the-mill job or something for which they had been properly prepared during their training.