The Bagthorpe Saga: Ordinary Jack. Helen Cresswell

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      “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!”

      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

      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:

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