The Bagthorpe Saga: Absolute Zero. Helen Cresswell

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      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.

      The woman who won it was on the row in front, further along, and Grandma glowered at her innocent back.

      “Ridiculous!” she snapped. “I’ve only five numbers on my whole card yet. Isn’t he going to do something about it?”

      “Sometimes they do win quick,” said Mrs Fosdyke, whispering in the hope that Grandma would lower her voice too.

      “I thought you said there was no cheating allowed?” Grandma said loudly and distinctly.

      “There isn’t!” hissed poor Mrs Fosdyke. People were beginning to look at them. “Sshh – he’s starting again – you might win the whole game yet.”

      Grandma did not win the whole game, though it was not for want of trying. She adopted the tactic, whenever she did not hear a number properly, of marking off one of her numbers at random anyway. She probably thought this was fair. There was no vice in Grandma. It was simply that she couldn’t stand losing.

      The second game was about to get under way when Grandma rose in her seat. Jack shrivelled inside his skin.

      “Young man!” she called. “Young man!”

      The caller, a balding man wearing a cream jacket and red-spotted bow tie, glanced about looking puzzled. Grandma picked up her umbrella and waved it.

      “Here!” she called. “Here, young man!”

      He placed her, and said into his microphone:

      “What’s up, then, Madam?”

      “Would you mind not talking into that loudspeaker thing,” called Grandma. “I can hear you much better without it.”

      A murmuring broke out in the hall, and it was getting increasingly difficult for anyone to hear anything.

      “Ssshh!” hissed the caller into his microphone, and his clients immediately stopped their chatter.

      “I simply want to say,” Grandma told him, in her clear, ringing tones, “that I am not likely to win this game the way it is being played at present.”

      A deathly hush settled on the hall. Nothing like this had ever happened before, nothing remotely like it. Sometimes the odd drunk would get up and start shouting and have to be hustled out, but Grandma obviously did not fall into this category.

      “To begin with,” she said, “I would rather you did not use that loudspeaker. If you just call the numbers loudly and distinctly in your normal voice, as I am speaking now, it will be quite sufficient.”

      The bald man’s mouth was slightly ajar now.

      “The next thing is,” she resumed, “that I would like you, please, to refrain from adding these peculiar ‘clickety clacks’ and ‘doctor’s orders’ to the numbers you call. We were not taught our numbers like this when I was at school. Also, I am only a learner, and I am not familiar with them. I am perfectly familiar with the numbers up to a hundred, however, and if you would kindly call them in an undecorated form, I think I shall do very well.”

      She paused. The caller looked as if he thought he was having a nightmare, aghast and astounded at the same time, and when his mouth started to move, at first no sound came out. At last he managed, very faintly:

      “Is that all?”

      “I think so,” said Grandma. “Oh – there is one more small point. I am, as I have told you, a beginner. Until I have had a little more practice I would appreciate it if you could call the numbers more slowly. I think you are going too fast. Possibly others here feel the same?”

      She looked enquiringly about her and met with total non-confirmation. The regulars gaped back at her with blank, stunned faces.

      “Perhaps those who do feel the same, would like to raise their right hands?” she suggested. No one moved. Jack noticed that two large men in uniforms had appeared at either end of the row where they were sitting. They would, he realised with horror, bundle Grandma out at a nod from the caller.

      Over my dead body, he thought, and tried not to imagine the details.

      On the rostrum there were signs that the caller was beginning to collect himself.

      “I must apologise for this interruption, ladies and gentlemen,” he said into the microphone.

      “Oh, and do accept my own apologies too,” chipped in Grandma. “I think I have said all that I wanted to say. Thank you.”

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