The Bagthorpe Saga: Absolute Zero. Helen Cresswell

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СКАЧАТЬ mother,” said Mr Bagthorpe, “and she is my mother, and I think I know her as well as anyone ever could, is a congenital cheater at games. No –” he held up a hand – “don’t bother to deny it. You were present, I believe, last week, when she concealed the Q in her handbag because all the Us had already gone, at Scrabble?”

      “Oh, she won’t be able to cheat at Bingo, Mr Bagthorpe,” said Mrs Fosdyke positively. “It’s impossible. It’s all done ever so fair and square and businesslike.”

      “Is it?” Mr Bagthorpe threw himself into a chair and reached for his coffee. “Think they’ve got it organised, do they?”

      “Oh, they have,” she assured him. “They’d never keep going, otherwise. It’s got to be fair.”

      “In that case,” he said, “I prophesy – if you will excuse the expression – that whatever Bingo Hall you frequent will be closed down within the week. I also think it possible the police will become involved, and that there will be adverse publicity in the local papers. Probably –” pausing for a gulp of coffee – “in the Nationals.”

      “Oh, go on, Mr Bagthorpe!” said Mrs Fosdyke skittishly.

      “Henry, dear, you do exaggerate,” his wife told him. “I think it will be the healthiest thing possible for Mother to do.”

      “Oh, it’ll be healthy for her, all right,” he agreed. “There’s nothing sets Mother up like an all-out row.”

      “Well, let’s just wait and see, shall we,” said Mrs Bagthorpe sensibly. “And thank you so much, Mrs Fosdyke, for your kind offer. We’re most grateful.”

      “Ah, and that reminds me, Mrs T – Fosdyke,” said Mr Bagthorpe. He had been about to say “Mrs Tiggywinkle” but stopped himself just in time. “There’s a little favour you might do for me, if you will.”

      “Really?” She looked startled. Mr Bagthorpe hardly ever spoke to her at all, and had never in memory asked a favour. He looked at her quite a lot, and she did not much like the way he looked, but he almost never actually said anything.

      “If you’ll excuse Mrs Fosdyke, dear,” he said to his wife, “I’d like her to pop down to the village shop for me. I’m in the middle of a very difficult patch with my script, you see, and there’s some material I must have if I’m to get on.”

      “Well… certainly I’ve no objection,” said his wife, “if –?”

      She looked enquiringly at Mrs Fosdyke who was already wiping her hands on her overall preparatory to taking it off. She was going to enjoy telling them in the shop that she was there on an urgent errand to get something for one of Mr Bagthorpe’s TV scripts.

      “What is it you’re wanting?” she enquired.

      “It may sound strange,” replied Mr Bagthorpe, “but what I require are current copies of the following magazines: Woman’s Monthly, Mother and Home, Happy Families…”

      He rattled off half a dozen more magazines that he felt sure would be rich in Competitions. These he had selected a few minutes earlier from The Writer’s and Artist’s Year Book. They were none of them publications that were usually to be found at Unicorn House.

      Mrs Fosdyke looked surprised by this but Mrs Bagthorpe did not.

      “I need,” explained Mr Bagthorpe shamelessly, “to get right inside the mind of the woman in the home. Into the mind of a woman such as yourself, for instance, Mrs Fosdyke.”

      Mrs Fosdyke positively scooted for her coat and hat on receiving this gratifying intelligence. She told her cronies about it later in the Fiddler’s Arms.

      “He’s doing one of his scripts about me,” she boasted. “Said he wanted to get right inside my mind. Researching up on it at the moment.”

      On being jealously reminded by one of her friends that she had always pronounced Mr Bagthorpe to be mad, she replied:

      “It goes in patches, does madness. He’s in one of his sane spells” – which covered the present situation nicely, and also gave her a loophole whereby she could revert to her former assessment of Mr Bagthorpe if necessary.

      Mrs Bagthorpe finished her coffee and went back to her Problems. Mrs Fosdyke, armed with a five-pound note and strong bag, was scuttling towards the village, and the coast was clear.

      Mr Bagthorpe took a pair of scissors and went into the pantry. The haul was rich beyond his wildest expectations. There seemed hardly a packet or tin that did not offer the possibility of desirable rewards from motor cars to thousands of pounds, from holiday bungalows to trips to the Greek Islands. (Mr Bagthorpe was particularly bent on winning this latter, because it had a lot more tone than a trip to the Caribbean.) There were eight tins whose wrappers carried entry forms for this particular prize, and he swiftly removed them all and stowed them in his pocket. The very next batch of tins promised a motor car and also some very attractive runners-up prizes, ranging from stereo equipment to typewriters. These, too, were divested of their wrappers.

      All in all Mr Bagthorpe was in the pantry for a full quarter of an hour. He returned to his study a happy man, every pocket stuffed with wrappers and box lids, and hours of enjoyable Slogan Slogging before him. He sorted his pickings into businesslike piles, fetched out a new notebook and prepared a record-keeping system. He made notes of how many bottle tops of certain products he would have to collect and send along with his entries. He wrote the closing date of each Competition in red, and by lunchtime the ground was prepared. All that now remained was the actual solving and Slogan-making – the least part of the thing, it seemed to Mr Bagthorpe, who was not a modest man.

      The house was full of Bagthorpes similarly engaged. Rosie was sucking her pencil over a Slogan for After Shave (made difficult by her uncertainty as to what this product was actually supposed to do). In the end she settled for “You may be no saint, but X will make you feel good.” William was writing a letter in not more than five hundred words explaining why he would like a motor caravan, and Tess had already thought of three surefire Slogans for a shampoo, and was now deciding that the best was probably: “You may be no saint, but you will have a halo” (which, given Rosie’s effort, suggested a strong telepathic link between Bagthorpes simultaneously generating ideas).

      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 СКАЧАТЬ