The Bagthorpe Saga: Absolute Zero. Helen Cresswell

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      “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.

      “Morning,” he said. “How’ve they taken it, then?”

      “I think you should have waited a bit longer before coming round,” Jack told him. “They haven’t got over it yet.”

      “Green as grass, are they?”

      “Greener,” Jack told him.

      “Your father’s hardest hit, I take it?”

      “He’s livid,” Jack said. “He says you can’t string half a dozen words together.”

      “Didn’t have to,” said Uncle Parker cheerfully. “Only five words in my slogan.”

      “What was it?” enquired Jack with interest. It suddenly occurred to him that he could string five words together, at a pinch.

      Uncle Parker cleared his throat.

      “Sounds a bit silly in cold blood,” he said, “even to me. But here goes: Get Tough with Sugar Puff.”

      There was a silence.

      “Is that all?”

      “That’s it.”

      “Well, I’m bound to say,” said Jack at last, “that it doesn’t sound much. You’re pretty lucky to have won a prize with that. If you don’t mind my saying.”

      Jack was endowed with the Bagthorpian honesty but was not so ruthless with it as the rest. He tried to temper it a little.

      “You are absolutely right,” agreed Uncle Parker. “I would not have given anyone a bar of chocolate for that slogan. I wouldn’t have given them a handful of peanuts. But in their wisdom, Messrs SUGAR-COATED PUFFBALLS have decided I deserve a Caribbean holiday for it, and who am I to argue?”

      “Father’s going to argue,” said Jack. “Come on, Zero.”

      He got up and followed the car to the house, to be sure not to miss anything. Uncle Parker was in the kitchen trying to persuade Mrs Fosdyke to give him a cup of coffee. None of the family was yet in evidence though they soon would be. The way Uncle Parker drove, nobody could be unaware of his arrival.

      “When Mrs Bagthorpe comes out of her Problems I shall make coffee,” Mrs Fosdyke was saying firmly. (Mrs Bagthorpe did a monthly Agony Column under the name of Stella Bright, and it took a great deal of her time. It also took a great deal out of her.)

      Mr Bagthorpe appeared.

      “Morning, Henry,” Uncle Parker greeted him. “Script coming along, is it?”

      “What was that slogan, then?” demanded Mr Bagthorpe, dispensing with the niceties.

      “It was a bad slogan,” Uncle Parker told him, “but the others were evidently worse. The more people ask me to repeat it, the less I enjoy doing so. You tell him, Jack.”

      “Get Tough with Sugar Puff,” said Jack.

      Mr Bagthorpe sat down. He shook his head long and hard.

      “It’s a reflection on the society we live in, of course,” he said at last.

      “Oh, it is,” Uncle Parker agreed. “I deplore it.”

      “Hullo, Uncle Park!” Rosie ran in now. “You are clever winning that prize. And when you and Aunt Celia are away, can Daisy come and stay with us?”

      Rosie was the youngest of the Bagthorpe children, and in the position of having no one to look down on. She looked down on Jack, up to a point, although he was older, but Daisy was only four and three quarters and much more easily impressed.

      “If that child comes here,” said Mr Bagthorpe, “it will be up to you, Russell, to pay extra fire cover on the house, and take out policies on all our lives.”

      “Including Zero’s,” put in Jack.

      Not many months previously Daisy had gone through a Pyromaniac Phase. She had started nine fires in one week, three of them serious. The Bagthorpe dining-room was still only partly restored after Grandma’s СКАЧАТЬ