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William stood up.
“Sorry. I told you – a veil of secrecy must be preserved. I think I’ll go and see if he’s there now, actually. Might’ve got something new.”
Jack watched him go.
One day I will punch him when he says that, he thought.
“Better get back myself.” Tess stood up now. “I want to finish my Voltaire. And you’d better finish that Birthday Portrait of Grandma –” this to Rosie. (Rosie’s second string was portraits.)
When they had all gone Jack lay back on the warm grass and shut his eyes. He decided to try to go into a trance and get some inspiration that way, since ordinary straightforward thinking never got him anywhere. Uncle Parker, however, evidently misinterpreted this action.
“No good just lying back and giving up, you know.”
“I haven’t given up. I’m trying to go into a trance.”
“Hmmmmmm.”
There was silence for a while. Jack became conscious of the nearby humming of bees and flies, and the effect was hypnotic and he really did begin to think he was on the verge of a trance when Uncle Parker shouted, “I’ve got it!”
Jack shot up as if stung. His head went fizzy and black.
“You have?” He was still half hypnotised.
“I most certainly have.”
“Jack! Russell! Tea!”
He turned. His mother was standing by the rose arch, waving.
“Damn,” he said. “How long was I in a trance?”
“In a trance? You, young Jack, were in a trance my elbow,” said Uncle Parker severely. “Asleep, that’s what you were. There’s got to be a bit of diligence and application if we’re going to do anything with you, I can see that. Coming, Laura!”
He unfolded himself from the deckchair, all six foot four of him, and looked down at Jack.
“You may as well come and have some tea,” he said. “Get some energy up. You’re going to need it.”
Jack scrambled up and hurried to keep pace with him.
“It’s nothing sporting, is it?” he asked. “I said not sporting.”
“It’s not sport. How old did we say the old lady was?”
“Seventy-five,” Jack told him. “And Grandpa’s eighty-five. Not today, though. I hope I don’t get as deaf as that when I’m old.”
“Your grandfather,” said Uncle Parker, “is not as deaf as you all fear. He’s what I call SD – and you can be that at any age.”
“What’s SD? Stone Deaf?”
“Selectively Deaf. You hear, in effect, just as much as you wish to hear. And I am bound to say that if I were married to a lady who talks like your grandmother does, I should be SD – very much so.”
“I don’t think you ought to say that, on her birthday,” said Jack. “I mean, I know what you mean, but it’s not very kind to say it. Not on her birthday.”
“Sorry. No offence.”
They trudged companionably up the terrace steps and went through the French windows and into the Birthday Party.
Grandma was sitting at the far end of the table, though all that was visible was the odd wisp of white hair, because she was behind a large cake on a high stand. The cake was forested with candles. Jack had no intention of counting them. He knew for a fact that there would be seventy-five. His mother did not believe in doing things by halves. She would light the candles when the time came, and the icing would start melting while she was halfway through and by the time all the candles were lit the icing would be hopelessly larded with multicoloured grease and the whole top slice of the cake would have to be cut off and thrown to the birds. It happened every year. Mr Bagthorpe thought the practice dangerous and unnecessary, and said so, but was ignored. He even said that the birds ought to be protected, but no one took any notice of that either – least of all the birds, who sorted the crumbs with lightning dexterity and left the greased icing to seep, in the course of time and nature, into the lawn, with no apparent detriment to the daisies.
“Hello, Grandma,” said Jack. “Happy Birthday.”
He went down the table past the bristling cake and kissed her. Her skin was very soft and powdery and smelled unaccountably of warm pear drops.
“You are a good boy,” said Grandma.
“What about me?” enquired Uncle Parker, delivering his own peck.
“I know perfectly well who you are,” said Grandma. “You are that good-for-nothing young man who married Celia and ran Thomas over.” (Thomas was an ill-favoured and cantankerous ginger tom who had unfortunately got in the way of Uncle Parker’s car some five years previously, and whom Grandma had martyred to the point where one always half expected her to refer to him as “St Thomas”.)
“That’s me,” said Uncle Parker mildly. “Sorry about that, Grandma. Nice old cat that was. Just not very nippy on his feet.”
“He was a jewel,” said Grandma. “He was given me on my fourth birthday, and I was devoted to him.”
No one contradicted her. Clearly, no ginger tom in history had ever survived sixty odd years, with or without the intervention of Uncle Parker’s deplorable driving. But today was Grandma’s birthday and she was not to be contradicted. (She was rarely contradicted anyway. It was a whole lot of trouble to contradict Grandma. If Grandma said seven sixes were fifty-two, you agreed with her, as a rule. The odds against convincing her otherwise were practically a million to one anyway, and life was too short.)
“He was a jewel.” Grandma repeated her observation a trifle argumentatively. Grandma liked arguments and got disappointed when nobody else wanted them.
“You’re a jewel,” said Mr Bagthorpe diplomatically. He dropped a kiss on her head and pulled out a chair for his wife and the danger was temporarily averted.
Jack, seated between Uncle Parker and Rosie, cast a speculative eye over the table. All the customary Bagthorpe birthday trimmings were present, he noted with satisfaction. The sausage rolls (hot), salmon and cucumber sandwiches, asparagus rolls, stuffed eggs, cream meringues, chocolate truffle cake and Mrs Fosdyke’s Special Trifle – all were there, and the eyes of all Bagthorpes present were riveted upon them. There was a pause. Jack’s eyes moved to the top of the table. Grandma, thwarted of her argument, was hanging fire on purpose, he guessed, to pay them back. They waited.
“For what we are about to receive,” she eventually remarked, eyes piously closed, “may the Lord make us truly thankful.”
On the last two words her eyes blinked open like a cobra’s and a hand went rapidly out to the nearest pile of stuffed eggs.
“Amen,” gabbled the company, with the exception of Uncle Parker who said loudly and cheerfully, “Hear, hear!”
The food began to vanish at an astonishing rate.
“Well, darlings,” said Mrs Bagthorpe. “What is there to tell?”
Babel was instantly let loose as all present with the exception of Grandpa, Uncle Parker and Jack, began to talk with their mouths full. Mrs Bagthorpe believed that meals should be civilised occasions with a brisk and original interchange of views and ideas, but as none of the younger Bagthorpes were prepared to talk at the cost of stuffing themselves, they invariably did both at the same time.
“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!”
