“To be frank –” Uncle Parker started jogging and Jack kept up – “I was about ready to take a piece out of her leg myself. All those mottoes!”
“What about being immortal, then?” Uncle Parker would keep going off on different tacks if he were not pinned down.
“Ah. Well. What I’ve hatched up for you, young Jack, is going to shake that family of yours to its foundations. To its core.”
“It is?”
“What you are going to be,” Uncle Parker told him, as they entered the field that was the home straight to The Knoll, “is a prophet.”
Jack was struggling to keep up. He was a full foot shorter than Uncle Parker and what was a jog to him was an all-out striding for Jack.
“You mean—?” He was bewildered. “Make a profit? Be in business? But I said nothing to do with figures.”
Uncle Parker stopped so suddenly that Jack was several yards past him before he realised, and had to turn back.
“What I mean,” he said, “is that you are to become a mystery, an enigma, a mystically gifted being beyond all ken. Beyond anybody’s ken.”
There was quite a long silence then, which allowed Zero to catch up.
“It was what you said yourself, yesterday,” Uncle Parker said. “About going into a trance.”
“Oh, I wasn’t in a real one,” Jack assured him hastily. “All I meant—”
“I know you weren’t in a real one,” said Uncle Parker. “But what if you had been?”
They looked at one another.
“What,” said Uncle Parker pregnantly, “if you’d been having a Vision?”
“B-but I never do have visions. I’ve never had one in my whole life. I—”
“From now on,” Uncle Parker told him firmly, “you will have Visions. Frequently. You will also hear Voices.”
“W-will I?”
“You will receive,” said Uncle Parker, “Messages.”
“But I don’t get them either.”
“Didn’t,” corrected Uncle Parker. “You didn’t get Messages. From now on, you will get them. Daily. Well, no, perhaps not daily, not at the start. If we overdo things, it’ll arouse suspicions. No, to begin with, you will just get the odd Message.”
“What sort of Message?”
Uncle Parker was not even listening.
“And hear the odd Voice. But there again, we don’t want to go overdoing the Joan of Arc bit, not at the beginning.”
“Look, Uncle Parker. I know you’re trying to help. But—”
“I’ve got the first move all planned. As soon as I get back and change, I’ll prime you up. But you realise –” he started jogging again, and Jack had no option but to follow suit – “that there’ll have to be a bit of discipline and hard work.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“I’ve told you. The easier it looks, the harder it is. And to start with, I think you ought to start practising a few basic skills.”
Jack did not bother to ask what these basic skills were because he knew he was about to hear anyway.
“One that occurred to me last night when I was lying there thinking about those cursed mottoes, was water divining. Dowsing. Read an article about that only last week, and there’s definitely something in it. Might even give it a go myself. Just think – you and me waltzing about the place with forked twigs leaping in our hands like live fish – give ’em something to think about that will!”
Jack felt, despite himself, the stirrings of excitement. He too had read about water divining, but had imagined that you had to be the seventh son of a seventh son even to think of taking it up. He said so.
“Pooh!” returned Uncle Parker. “Anyone can do it. Just takes a bit of application. Or else,” he added, “a map showing local underground water courses.”
“You mean …?”
“I mean,” said Uncle Parker, “that we shall both have a good stab at making ourselves into diviners of water. But if all else fails, we shall content ourselves with convincing other people that you, at any rate, are.”
“Oh,” said Jack. “Cheating.”
“Being one cleverer than they are,” corrected Uncle Parker. “Isn’t that what it’s all about?”
“Well, I suppose …”
“Come on, old son, brace up.” They were entering the garden of The Knoll now. “You stop here, and I’ll be back in a jiffy and let you have the lowdown on the whole thing.”
He jogged off over the lawn leaving his footprints in the dew.
“You could try having a ferret round for a dowsing twig,” he called over his shoulder. “Hazel’s best.”
Jack took a look about, but Uncle Parker’s garden was full of flowering shrubs and rambling roses and did not look half wild enough to house dowsing twigs. After a while he gave up looking, and sat on a stone bench and got Zero to sit in front of him while he took a good look at his ears. He was not really satisfied with what he saw, so he spent the time waiting for Uncle Parker to reappear in giving Zero a pep talk. He told him how the whole thing had been Daisy’s fault, how sensible Zero had been to clear right off out of things instead of hanging around waiting to be burned, and how Grandma had said that the carpet and curtains were getting shabby anyway.
“By the time the Insurance have paid up,” he told Zero, “our whole dining-room’ll be better than it’s ever been. And it’s all due to you. Good boy. Good boy.”
He leaned back to survey Zero’s ears and assess how much good his pep talk had done, but just then Uncle Parker came back. He sat next to Jack and produced two loose-leaf notebooks. He passed one to Jack.
“Here,” he said. “Guard this with your life.”
Interested, Jack opened it.
“But there’s nothing in it!”
“Yet,” said Uncle Parker. “There will be. This is for notes and records of the Campaign. Better not to have one, of course, better to commit all to memory – but there you are. With due respect, I don’t think you’ve got the memory.”
“No.” Jack was not offended. He was used to this kind of remark.
“Now, here’s a pen.” Uncle Parker passed one over, the felt-tipped variety. He opened his own notebook and Jack saw that his first page was already full.
“Write down ‘Create Mysterious Impression’,” commanded Uncle Parker. “And underline it.”
Jack obeyed.
“One ‘e’ in mysterious and two ‘esses’ in impression,” said Uncle Parker, “but never mind.”
“What does it mean?” Jack asked.
“It means,” Uncle Parker told him, “that from now on you are to behave, now and then, Mysteriously. What I mean by this is that you are to give the impression, now and again, that your eyes are fixed on things invisible to mortal eyes. That you are, possibly, seeing Visions.”
“How?” Jack asked.
“Watch me.”
Uncle Parker laid aside his notebook and looked with a kind of mad intensity at something just to the right of Jack’s head. It was as if he were trying to look Jack in the eyes to hypnotise him, but