“Well?”
“I think – yes, look! There is – there’s smoke coming out of your house.”
Uncle Parker turned towards The Knoll. From the window of one of the upper rooms was issuing, undeniably, a cloud of smoke.
“My God!” exclaimed Uncle Parker. “It’s Daisy again!”
He leapt up and was off.
“You get back!” he shouted. “You get back and make out you’ve never set eyes on me since last night. Get back quick!”
He was running, not jogging.
“And act natural!” His parting words floated out as he disappeared into the smouldering Knoll.
“Come on, Zero.”
Jack started off back home. It was still only just past seven. He stuffed the notebook deep in the pocket of his jeans.
“Act natural,” he repeated to himself. Then, uncertainly, “Act Mysterious. Stage One, Act Mysterious.”
It was all very confusing.
The first thing Jack did when he got home was to get Vision One to materialise. He found all its ingredients except for the mushrooms, and set about frying them. No one else was down yet, but some of them were up because he could hear the far-off notes of an oboe and also from time to time a bump which was probably Mrs Bagthorpe unwinding herself from a Plough Posture. She had only recently taken up Yoga and was not very good at it but said she felt calmer already. She said she had felt calmer since the very first lesson when they had spent the whole hour just breathing. Jack had not noticed any real change. She certainly had not acted calm at Grandma’s Birthday Party, he reflected. She had been in a fair lather even before the tablecloth took off.
He sat at the table with his fry-up and cut off all the bacon rinds to give Zero. He was just feeding them to him when the kitchen door opened and in came Mrs Fosdyke.
“Here!” she said sharply, without preliminaries. “No feeding at table. You know as well as I do.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot.”
“No one to see, you mean,” returned Mrs Fosdyke. She had not stopped moving since she came in and had already removed her outer clothes to reveal a patterned wrap-round pinafore and exchanged her outdoor shoes for pink fur-edged slippers. (Mrs Fosdyke got cramps in her feet sometimes and the fur was a comfort, she said.)
“Your ma don’t like you frying up,” she observed. She went to the sink and set up a businesslike rattle.
“She likes you to get your vitamings of a morning. Grapefruit and that.”
“I’ll have a grapefruit as well,” Jack offered.
“It’s no good.” Mrs Fosdyke withdrew her hands from the water and wiped them on her front. “I shall have to go and have a look. Never a wink did I have last night. It was as if all my furniture and ornaments was floating round me.”
“I’ve seen it,” he told her. “It’s horrible. I shouldn’t go. It’ll only upset you.”
It was too late. Mrs Fosdyke was halfway across the hall before the words were out. Mrs Fosdyke was a very fast mover. She moved like a hedgehog, Mr Bagthorpe was fond of saying, and was about as much use about the house. This was up to a point true. Mrs Fosdyke had to a fine art the ability to move around fast without actually doing very much. Mr Bagthorpe said a lot of people in the army had this gift, and in the Civil Service, but that it was rare in a Daily.
Mrs Fosdyke was uttering little shrieks and Jack, wiping his plate with a crust, could imagine her in there darting around on the sodden carpet. She came back in.
“Those beautiful chairs,” she said. “Hairlooms. And all my best crystal. I could weep.”
Her voice was actually quite choked and Jack delicately turned his eyes away while she blew into a tissue. A sudden thought struck him. It might be a good idea, he thought, to practise giving a Mysterious Impression on her before any of the others got down. Her eyes were not too good, and she would not be so likely to notice any flaws in his performance.
What I’ll do, he thought, next time she asks me something, I won’t answer. Then she’ll look at me to see what’s the matter and I’ll do the Mysterious Impression. I won’t see bacon and eggs past her left ear, I’ve just had them. I’ll see dinner – roast beef and Yorkshire pud, or treacle tart. Something like that.
He already realised that visions of food were going to produce the required soulful look better than anything else.
“That dog, if it was mine, I’d take a slipper to,” Mrs Fosdyke said. “And that Daisy the same. Little madam her.”
Jack said nothing.
“That mother of hers is only half there,” Mrs Fosdyke went on. “Less than half. There’s no wonder that child’s out of control.”
Still Jack waited. This was not his cue.
“It’ll be months before that room’s set to rights,” continued Mrs Fosdyke. “Months and months. And I suppose you’ll all be eating in the kitchen under my feet till then. Yes. Well, that’ll be nice, I must say. Very nice.”
Jack began to wonder whether Mrs Fosdyke talked like this all the time, whether there was anyone else there or not, asking herself questions and answering them and changing from one subject to another. He began to suspect that his cue never would come up. Another thing was that she was always moving round and half the time he had his back to her. He did not feel that he could create a Mysterious Impression with his back. He got up, and stood waiting around for her to say something else.
“There’s butter gone up again two pence a pound.” Mrs Fosdyke was off on a new tack. She turned from the sink and Jack stepped into her path so that she would have to look at him and notice something faraway about him, but all she did was scoot round him and next minute had her back to him, shaking dusters out of a drawer.
“Mrs Bagthorpe,” soliloquised Mrs Fosdyke, “says there is more actual vitamings in marge than there is in butter. But that’s no comfort, the price marge is.”
Jack was just wondering whether he ought to make a few low moaning noises or something when the telephone rang and Mrs Fosdyke scuttled out to answer it.
“Oh, my good gracious!” he heard her say, followed by a series of disbelieving cries on an ascending scale. Then the telephone was put down.
“Mr Parker!” she poked her head in. “House gone up in flames – oh, would you – oh, I’d best go and tell them!”
She was down again in two minutes and started putting the kettle on and rattling cups and saucers.
“You can’t hardly believe it,” she said. “I thought I should’ve dropped dead when he told me. Sounded cool as a cucumber, mind. ‘Just let ’em know I’ve got my own little blaze going,’ he says, or something like that.”
On she rambled. Jack was by now thoroughly fed up with Mrs Fosdyke. She had refused to look at him and notice that he was doing a Mysterious Impression, and now she was telling Jack a piece of news he already knew – had known over an hour ago. There are few more frustrating things in life than being told something that you already know but cannot admit to knowing.
He decided to go up to his room and practise doing his Mysterious Impression in front of a mirror.
“Come on, Zero.”
He did not want Zero to be lying there looking so comfortable when Mr Bagthorpe came down, because he would probably get irritated by this and start