Absolute Zero Page 3

  Jack, meanwhile, was slack and happy in the meadow with his dog. Zero did not really seem to want to sit up and Beg, even when Jack dangled his favourite biscuits above him. The reason Jack wanted him to learn was to increase his standing among the other Bagthorpes. Even now that he could fetch sticks, none of them really thought much of him. It was Mr Bagthorpe who had given him his name. “If there was anything less than Zero, that hound would be it,” he had said. It was not a good name to have to go through life with, and Jack sometimes wondered if it affected Zero, and gave him an inferiority complex. He spent a lot of time trying to build up Zero’s confidence, because he could tell by the way his ears drooped when he was getting sad and undermined.

  This morning, for instance, after each unsuccessful attempt by Zero to beg, Jack had hurled a stick and shouted “Fetch!” and each time Zero had brought it back he was patted and praised and given a biscuit.

  At present Jack was having a rest and wondering how best to tackle the problem. He felt sure that Zero could sit up and Beg if only he, Jack, found the key to how his mind worked.

  He’s got quite thick legs and a very square-shaped sort of bottom, he thought, so there’s no physical reason why he can’t Beg. It must be all in the mind.

  There was, of course, one obvious method Jack could use for getting through to Zero. He had been keeping it as a last resort, because the only other occasion he had used it was one of his most painful memories. It was the most embarrassing moment of his life. Jack had been trying to get through to Zero how to fetch sticks, and in the end had himself dropped down on all fours, crawled after the stick and picked it up in his own teeth. Mr Bagthorpe had caught him in the act. It had been terrible. The only thing was, it had worked.

  And it could work again now, he thought. In fact, it’s probably the only way.

  Unfortunately the thing was not so simple as it seemed. He would need, he realised, an accomplice. Someone would have to hold up a biscuit for Jack to sit up and Beg for. It would, he was convinced, be no use his holding up a biscuit for himself. This would only confuse Zero more than ever.

  Jack slumped back into the grass.

  That’s it, then, he thought. He knew for a fact that none of his family was going to hold up a biscuit for Jack to Beg for. He also knew that he would never ask them. They were all genii, and he was ordinary. To ask them to hold up biscuits would be to invite the fate of being sub-ordinary. He half shut his eyes and squinted through the long, seeding grass and saw the light running like wires. He heard Zero’s steady panting by his ear, and was content. It was a shock to hear Uncle Parker’s voice.

  “Hallo, there. Having a kip?”

  Jack shot up and shaded his eyes against the low autumn sun to stare up at his uncle, six foot four above ground level, and looking amused in the friendly way he had. Jack and Uncle Parker were old conspirators. They understood one another.

  “Not kipping,” Jack told him. “Just having a bit of a think.”

  “Ah.” Uncle Parker sat down himself and pulled a grass to chew.

  Jack explained the problem.

  “Well,” said Uncle Parker when he had finished, “here’s your third party.”

  “You? Would you?”

  “No trouble. Nothing much to holding up biscuits. Got some handy?”

  Jack indicated the bag containing the remainder.

  “There’s just one thing you might do for me,” Uncle Parker said.

  “What?”

  “Go to the Bingo place with Grandma and Fozzy. I’ll give you a sub. Can’t let that pair loose on their own.”

  Jack saw his point. He knew that Grandma was going to cheat, and that when she was found out she would need protecting. Mrs Fosdyke was not the protecting type. She would probably scuttle, like a rat off a sinking ship the minute the police arrived. (Jack, like Mr Bagthorpe, felt sure that the kind of cheating Grandma would go in for would eventually involve the police.)

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll go. Might even win.”

  “Could easily,” agreed Uncle Parker. “Pure chance. No skill. No offence.”

  “Come on, then,” Jack said. “Let’s start the training. Here.”

  He handed up the bag of biscuits. He himself then crouched on all fours beside Zero, who was dozing.

  “Hey, Zero!”

  Zero opened his eyes and his ears pricked up slightly.

  “Now – watch me!”

  Zero yawned hugely and moved to a sitting position. He looked dazed.

  “Now,” whispered Jack to Uncle Parker, “you say ‘Up!’ and I’ll sit up and Beg. If I do it and he doesn’t, you say ‘Good boy!’ and pat my head, and give me the biscuit.”

  Uncle Parker nodded. He delved in the bag and came up with a chocolate digestive which he broke in half.

  “Right.”

  He held the biscuit aloft halfway between Jack and Zero.

  “Up. Sit up. Beg. Good boy – boys, rather.”

  Jack accordingly crouched on his legs and held his hands drooping forward in imitation of front paws.

  “Good boy!” exclaimed Uncle Parker. He patted Jack on the head and held out the biscuit. Jack opened his mouth and Uncle Parker pushed the half digestive into it. It nearly choked him. He looked sideways to see that Zero was looking distinctly interested. For one thing, his eyes were fixed soulfully on the piece of biscuit still protruding from Jack’s mouth, and for another, he was doing a kind of stamping movement with his front paws alternately, like a racehorse impatient to be loosed.

  “Look!” The exclamation came out with a shower of crumbs. “Look at his paws!”

  Uncle Parker nodded.

  “We’re on the right track. All we’ve got to do now is keep on reinforcing the message. How hungry are you?”

  “Not terribly,” Jack told him. “You could break the biscuits in quarters instead of halves. They’ll last longer that way.”

  The training session continued. It was going well. Uncle Parker and Jack became increasingly pleased with themselves and increasingly entertained by Zero’s efforts to raise himself with his front paws up. He had very big, furry paws – pudding-footed, Mr Bagthorpe called him – and he did not seem to have much control over them. Once or twice he toppled over sideways within an ace of success and rolled about growling with annoyance.

  “I wish we’d got a camera,” Jack said. “I’ve never seen anything so funny.” He then added immediately, for the benefit of Zero’s ears, “And it’s jolly good the way he’s catching on. You’re nearly there, old chap. Good old boy. Good boy.”

  He was the only Bagthorpe who ever praised Zero and he had to do a lot of it to keep his confidence and his ears up.

  Had Jack known it, a camera was in the offing. It was going to be used at any moment, just as soon as Rosie could stop stuffing her fists into her mouth to keep herself from giggling out loud, and use her hands to operate the camera instead.

  Rosie was behind a hawthorn bush not six feet from where the training was taking place. The reason why she was there was because she was out to get some shots for a Competition entitled “Me and My Pet”. At first she had passed it over, because she did not have a pet. She was too busy with her maths and violin and Portraits and swimming (which were the four main Strings to her Bow) to have time for a pet. She had then, however, thought of Jack and Zero. She turned back to the Competition and discovered that what was really wanted was something unusual.

  One of the most unusual things Rosie had ever heard of (she had, to her intense annoyance, missed actually seeing it) was Jack on all fours with a stick in his mouth to show Zero how to Fetch. She had afterwards begged him to repeat the performance so that she could photograph it with her new camera. Rosie had a passion for keeping records of things so strong that it could almost have been classed as a fifth String to her Bow. She had even offered Jack her spare pocket calculator to pose like this, but he always refused point-blank.

  “You do it,” he told her, “and I’ll photograph you
doing it.”

  “No,” she said. “I’d look silly.”

  “There you are, then. Anyway, it wasn’t silly, even if it looked it. It was a Serious Scientific Experiment, and it worked.”

  Rosie was now poised ready to take a shot – more than one, if possible – of the present Serious Scientific Experiment, which was funnier, definitely, than the first could possibly have been. A 16mm movie camera complete with tripod, screen and projector, were as good as in the bag.

  “Hold up half a digestive this time,” she heard Jack tell Uncle Parker. “He’s about there. I’m sure he is. They’re one of his favourites.”

  Uncle Parker took the biscuit and poised it between the pair of them.

  “Up!” he commanded. “Sit up! Beg!”

  Jack went through his usual motions, turned his head sideways and saw that Zero too, though rocking alarmingly, was up, tongue dangling, eyes fixed on the digestive.

  No one heard the click of Rosie’s shutter because of Zero’s panting. Solemnly Uncle Parker placed the biscuit in Zero’s jaws.

  “Good boy,” he said, and Jack scrambled up and began patting Zero so vigorously that he spluttered crumbs. Behind her bush, Rosie secretly thanked them all.

  “Oh, it worked, it worked!” Jack cried. “Oh thanks, Uncle Parker! I’d never’ve done it without you. Oh, wait till the rest of them see!”

  Uncle Parker was looking more thoughtful than jubilant.

  “Interesting…” he murmured.

  He was thinking of Daisy, who needed training as much as Zero did – probably more. He was wondering whether he could adopt this kind of technique to deal with her and make her less of a public nuisance. It was true that she did not light fires any more, but Mr Bagthorpe had not been far short of the mark when he had suggested that she was now poisoning people. She was, among other things, going into the pantry and mixing all kinds of things together, like cocoa and gravy salt, for instance, and salt and sugar, and marmalade and chutney. The Parkers and their friends had been getting some truly horrible gastronomic shocks of late.

  Aunt Celia did not take this very seriously, partly because she was a vegetarian and lived mainly on lettuce, carrots, wheatgerm and fresh orange juice. She said that it showed signs of creativity, Daisy’s mixing ingredients together.

  “It is one of the early signs of creative genius,” she said, in an unusually long sentence for her, “to Reconcile the Seemingly Disparate.”

  Uncle Parker did not dispute this. For one thing, he never argued with his wife because he thought she was perfect. Also, she had a very highly strung temperament and must not be crossed. He had put a padlock on the pantry door, however, saying that if Daisy were as creative as all that, she would find other Disparate objects to Reconcile.

  The trouble was, she had. Daisy had embarked on a career of Reconciling the Seemingly Disparate that was shortly to drive the Bagthorpe household to the edge of their endurance while the Parkers were in the Caribbean. Anybody else would have gone right over the edge.

  Meanwhile, Uncle Parker made a mental note to try the Zero technique on his daughter on his return, and dismissed the matter from his mind.

  “I think we ought to do it again, once or twice,” Jack said. “Just to make absolutely sure he’s got it.”

  Rosie, behind her hawthorn, hugged herself and wound her film on. All in all, she got five shots of the repeat beggings. As it turned out, her film and the supply of biscuits ran out together. She remained under cover while Uncle Parker and Jack sauntered over the meadow back towards the house.

  Zero followed, his ears at an unusually jaunty angle. Perhaps he had a deep, canine intuition that before long he was going to be the most famous, most photographed, most sought-after dog in England, if not indeed the world.

  Better still, he was about to show Mr Bagthorpe who was Zero and who was not.

  Chapter Three

  The natural misgivings about Grandma setting off to Bingo with Mrs Fosdyke that evening were not so deeply felt as they might ordinarily have been. The Bagthorpes had something else to think about. They had nearly all added Competition Entering as an Extra String to their respective Bows, and were involved in it as obsessively and single-mindedly as only the Bagthorpes knew how to be. At this stage, each of them suspected what the others were up to but no one could be sure exactly what, so that there was a strong air of guerrilla warfare about the place too.

  It was unlucky for Jack and Zero that the rest of the family were so preoccupied, because it meant that Zero’s new feat did not receive due recognition and applause.

  “What? Oh, he can do that, can he?” was all Mr Bagthorpe had said at lunchtime. “Well, he needn’t do it at me.”

  “I don’t think we want that at table, dear,” was Mrs Bagthorpe’s only contribution.

  The only member of the family who seemed unstintedly happy and admiring was Rosie, gleeful in the knowledge that her camera held film of what must surely be the most unusual ‘Me and My Pet’ shots ever taken. So warm was she in her admiration, so many pieces of meat did she hold up for Zero to take, that Jack, had he been of a suspicious nature, must surely have been suspicious. The Bagthorpes respected one another’s achievements but did not usually wax lyrical about them. They saved the lyricism for their personal successes.

  The one good thing about the lukewarm reception of Zero’s latest String to his Bow was that no one bothered to ask Jack how it had been achieved. He did not really want to describe how it had been done, and felt certain Uncle Parker would not want this information bandied about either.

  Grandma had gone to have lunch and spend the afternoon at Mrs Fosdyke’s, whose half-day it was. The pair of them had gone off looking uncommonly pleased with themselves. They had never been friends before, and it seemed odd to see them trotting down the drive together, Mrs Fosdyke with her black plastic carrier and Grandma wearing her fur coat (though it was unseasonably warm for October) and carrying an umbrella. Mr Bagthorpe had his misgivings about the latter accessory.

  “If she doesn’t win,” he said, “and she won’t, she’ll end up laying about her with that umbrella. You mark my words.”

  None of the others had said anything in reply because it occurred to them that Mr Bagthorpe could be right about this.

  “The only safe game for her to play,” he went on, “is Patience.” (Grandma did play Patience, for hours on end sometimes, and it came out every time.)

  Jack was due to meet the two ladies at the bus stop at a quarter past six to escort them to the Bingo Hall in Aysham. Mrs Fosdyke did not usually play there, and was nervous at the prospect. She usually played at a small hall in the next village of Maythorpe. But there were games there only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Today was Tuesday, and Grandma, once fired by an idea, did not care to be held up by even twenty-four hours.

  On the bus Mrs Fosdyke confided in them that what was really worrying about the hall in Aysham was that it was so big.

  “Used to be an old theatre, you see,” she told them. “Holds hundreds. What I’m afraid is, that if I shout ‘Bingo!’ they won’t hear.”

  “I shall shout with you,” Grandma told her. “I shall shout and attract attention by waving my umbrella.”

  Jack winced. Uncle Parker had given him a pound to play with, but he was now beginning to feel that even if he won the Jackpot it was going to be a high price to pay for sitting next to Grandma at a game she would almost certainly lose.

  “Another thing, of course,” went on Mrs Fosdyke, “there’s a lot more people. Makes the prizes better, of course, but you don’t stand the same chance of winning.”

  “I shall win,” said Grandma with decision.

  The hall was certainly very big and had a lot of gilt moulding and red plush about it. Grandma approved of this decor. She said it “took her back”. They arrived five minutes before the start of play and the hall was already three-quarters full. Mrs Fosdyke spent the time giving Grandma last-minute coaching on how to mark her card.


  “And remember,” she told her, “there’s a small prize for getting a line, up, down or across, or all four corners. But to get the big prize, you have to get the whole lot.”

  “I see,” said Grandma happily. “Is he going to begin?”

  Now Grandma had had it explained a hundred times during the course of the day that this was one game she could not hope to win every time. She had been told it tactfully and tactlessly, gently and rudely. She had been told that it was quite possible that she would not win a single game during the course of the evening. She had not replied to any of this, but she had worn a certain look on her face. It was the look that meant that whatever was being said to her was like water off a duck’s back.

  None the less, Jack had expected Grandma to stay the course longer than the first game. He knew she would not stand for losing many games, but he had expected her to stand for losing one.

  He was wrong. Grandma came nowhere near winning the first game because for one thing she said the microphone was too loud for her to hear clearly. She was also confused by the “legs eleven” and “two little ducks” and “sixty-six clickety click” aspect of things. Mrs Fosdyke had told her some of them, but not all, and it really did hold her back.

  Everyone else there seemed to be an old hand. They were poised over their boards, some of them playing two or more at a time and flashing their hands about with the speed of light. Grandma was seventy-five and sometimes she got rheumatism in her hands, and even when she did get a number it took her so long to deal with it that she missed the next one.

  She then poked Mrs Fosdyke and hissed “What – what was that? Clickety what?” with the result that both she and Mrs Fosdyke missed the next number after that as well. Jack himself was doing quite well, and was only one number short when the first line was called.