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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 (#ulink_8a6e256c-3f0e-5662-ae15-ffa85e1729b8)
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 single 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.
They stayed on quite a while after the fire was out. They sat round in the kitchen and told the Bagthorpes a lot of interesting things about arson and so on, and before they left Rosie got all their autographs. They seemed quite flattered by this. Rosie told them the autographs were more of a gamble than anything, just in case one of them ever died rescuing someone from a burning building, and became a national hero and got a post-mortem award on the television. Soon after this the firemen left.
When they had gone, Mrs Fosdyke (who came in daily to do for the Bagthorpes, but refused to sleep in) said she thought they had all looked too young and inexperienced to be proper firemen. She did not believe they had been a proper Fire Brigade at all, and said that her carpet and her furniture would not now be in the state they were in if a proper Brigade had been sent in time. People were too easily deceived by uniforms, she said. (Mrs Fosdyke had missed the actual moment when the tablecloth went up in the air and was naturally bitter about this.)
Nobody did anything about cleaning up after the fire that night. They all sat round and talked about it till quite late. At around ten o’clock Mr Bagthorpe went out to close his greenhouse for the night and fell over Zero, who had not been seen since the Party. Jack had even feared him lost, and had had a quick look among the debris for signs of bones, though he was not certain what exactly a burned bone would look like.
“That infernal hound’s back,” Mr Bagthorpe announced and Zero crept in behind him. He was still shaking. Jack stood up.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. Zero always slept in his room and he looked as if he needed a rest.
“Nobody’s sung ‘Happy Birthday’ to me yet,” Grandma said. “My birthday’s nearly over. I shan’t be having many more. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Nothing really matters.”
“Oh, darling, of course it matters. We’ll all sing it now, this very moment, won’t we, everyone?” cried Mrs Bagthorpe. “But what a shame about the candles.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_5a206911-0f1a-599f-961a-8387f5e0c56d)
Jack wondered whether Zero’s legs looked wobbly because of the chilliness or because they had still not picked up after last night. Zero had certainly not wanted to go with Jack when he went to have a look at the scene of the disaster in daylight, or rather, dawnlight. It was not yet six o’clock. The gutted and blackened state of the dining-room had shaken Jack himself. The tattered curtains swung to and fro in the shattered windows. It looked more like a scene out of a film than home.
Jack and Zero were padding together over the fields towards The Knoll, Uncle Parker’s house. (He had wanted to call it “Parker Knoll” but Aunt Celia had said she would leave him if he did.) Jack had not slept too well. He had not been thinking especially about the fire, though he had once or twice been tempted to go down and make sure that there wasn’t anything still smouldering. Mrs Fosdyke had been very definite about the dubious credentials of the firemen who had come, and they had certainly been jumpy. But what was really exercising his mind was Uncle Parker’s idea. He had obviously thought of a way that he, Jack, could become immortal and keep up with the rest of the Bagthorpes. He had been, maddeningly, on the very brink of imparting it on the previous afternoon.
“If I get immortal, old chap,” Jack told Zero now, “I’ll make sure you do as well. I’ll work you in on the act somehow.”
He made quite a few other similarly encouraging remarks to Zero on the walk, because his self-confidence must have suffered a severe setback last night, and Mr Bagthorpe, for one, wouldn’t let him forget it in a hurry. (Jack was right about this. Quite often in weeks and even months to come he would say things like, “Look to yourself – here comes that incendiary hound again,” or, “If that animal’s stopping, the house insurance’ll have to go up again, you realise that”.)
Jack was going to The Knoll so early partly because he was impatient to hear the idea and partly because he knew that this was Uncle Parker’s best time of the day. Uncle Parker spent his whole time apparently lounging around and led a life of ease, but he had long ago confided to Jack that this sort of thing was by no means as simple as it looked. He rose at six, summer and winter alike, did a workout and then jogged for three miles round the fields. He then went home, took a cold shower, prepared orange juice, toast and coffee and retired into his study with the morning papers, which he paid an extra fifty pence a week to have delivered early. What he did then, or so Jack gathered, was something to do with stocks and shares. In the village opinion ranged from suspecting him of being the compiler of The Times crossword (which would explain why Aunt Celia was so good at it) to his being an Enemy Agent (this by people who had had particularly narrow escapes from Uncle Parker’s car). He stayed in the study till about ten answering letters and making telephone calls, and then the rest of the day was free.
This infuriated other people who were mystified as to what Uncle Parker actually did in life to maintain, for instance, the kind of car he drove round in, terrifying the life out of everyone else. They were also irritated by the way he looked so lean and fit while apparently inviting flab and liver trouble by lounging around sipping gin and doing crosswords.
“I am an idle devil,” Uncle Parker once told Jack. “But at least I work at it.”
Jack could see him now, at a distance, clad only in shorts and vest, jogging along in a shower of spray. He shouted and Uncle Parker waved and veered in his direction.
“Up early,” he called. “House hasn’t gone up again, has it?”
“They’re all asleep. I couldn’t sleep.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Uncle Parker, drawing up to him. “No more could I. And the thing that kept coming at me all night was those allfired mottoes.”
“Mottoes?”
“In all those crackers. We’ll never know what they were, now. I use ’em, you know, at dinner parties, as conversation-stoppers. The minute they start on about politics, out I come with one of my little mottoes. To tell you the truth, I collect them. Got a little book full of ’em. I wonder who thinks them up.”
“Nobody, I don’t suppose,” Jack said. “I should think they’re handed down through the generations. They’re immortal. And that reminds me …”
“I know, I know.” Uncle Parker raised a silencing hand. “You jog along back with me, and I’ll tell all.”
“I don’t know if Zero’s up to jogging.” Jack eyed him dubiously. “Do his ears look droopy to you?”
“He’s not much of a livewire at the best of times.” Uncle Parker in turn surveyed him. “On the other hand, he did have a bit of a raw deal yesterday. If he had any spirit, he’d take a piece out of Daisy’s leg.”
“He’d never!” Jack was shocked.
“To be frank –” Uncle Parker started jogging and Jack kept up – “I was about ready to take a piece out of her leg myself. All those mottoes!”
“What about being immortal, then?” Uncle Parker would keep going off on different tacks if he were not pinned down.
“Ah. Well. What I’ve hatched up for you, young Jack, is going to shake that family of yours to its foundations. To its core.”
“It is?”
“What you are going to be,” Uncle Parker told him, as they entered the field that was the home straight to The Knoll, “is a prophet.”
Jack was struggling to keep up. He was a full foot shorter than Uncle Parker and what was a jog to him was an all-out striding for Jack.
“You mean—?” He was bewildered. “Make a profit? Be in business? But I said nothing to do with figures.”
Uncle Parker stopped so suddenly that Jack was several yards past him before he realised, and had to turn back.
“What I mean,” he said, “is that you are to become a mystery, an enigma, a mystically gifted being beyond all ken. Beyond anybody’s ken.”
There was quite a long silence then, which allowed Zero to catch up.
“It was what you said yourself, yesterday,” Uncle Parker said. “About going into a trance.”
“Oh, I wasn’t in a real one,” Jack assured him hastily. “All I meant—”
“I know you weren’t in a real one,” said Uncle Parker. “But what if you had been?”
They looked at one another.
“What,” said Uncle Parker pregnantly, “if you’d been having a Vision?”
“B-but I never do have visions. I’ve never had one in my whole life. I—”
“From now on,” Uncle Parker told him firmly, “you will have Visions. Frequently. You will also hear Voices.”
“W-will I?”
“You will receive,” said Uncle Parker, “Messages.”
