“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 disastrous Birthday Party when Daisy had hidden under the table with two boxes of crackers and one of fireworks.
“She doesn’t go in for fires any more,” said Uncle Parker.
“Oh?” Mr Bagthorpe was not comforted. “So what does she do now for kicks? Poisons people, perhaps – something like that?”
“She is in a very interesting Phase at the present,” said Uncle Parker. “She is doing all kinds of things.”
“Can she come, Father?” begged Rosie. “I think she’s really sweet. I’d look after her.”
“I shouldn’t think the question will arise, Rosie,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “I should hardly think your uncle will have the gall to accept this prize.”
“Why’s that?” enquired Uncle Parker, tipping back his chair with the air of careless ease that particularly aggravated Mr Bagthorpe.
“It’s a moral issue,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “You have never eaten a SUGAR-COATED PUFFBALL in your life.”
“I have not,” conceded Uncle Parker.
“There you are then!” Mr Bagthorpe had the air of a man clinching an argument.
“I don’t get your drift,” said Uncle Parker. “Nothing in the small print says anything about eating the wretched stuff. All one had to do was buy a packet and pick up a leaflet. I did both these things. It will, of course, be glorious for Celia and myself, cruising in the Caribbean. I expect, Henry, you wish you had the chance yourself.”
“I wish no such thing!” snapped Mr Bagthorpe. “There is nothing I can think of I would hate more. Given the choice between the salt mines and the Caribbean, I’d plump for the former any time.”
“Someone might be running a competition for the salt mines,” suggested Uncle Parker. “You must keep your eyes open.”
“Luckily,” said Mr Bagthorpe, “I have work to do in life. Luckily, I have a service to give to my fellow men and do not have to fill in my pointless existence wafting round among palm trees drinking gin and tonic by the bucketful.”
“Hallo,