The Bagthorpe Saga: Ordinary Jack

First published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Ltd. in 1977

First published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

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Copyright © The Estate of Helen Creswell 1977

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Cover illustration © Sara Ogilvie 2017

Helen Cresswell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008211677

Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008211684

Version: 2016-12-20

To Brian, with love

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

The Bagthorpe Saga

About the Publisher

When Rosie, who was only eight anyway, beat him doing ten lengths of the pool, it was the last straw. He didn’t show he cared. He made such a point of sauntering carelessly to the dressing room that he skidded and went flat and everybody laughed. He forced himself to laugh as well, and only found the grazes on his elbows when he was towelling himself.

I got born in the wrong family, he thought, as he trudged back home alone over the fields. The others were still in the water, getting their money’s worth.

Ordinary Jack, that’s me. It’s what they should’ve christened me – Ordinary Jack Matthew Bagthorpe – with an e.

There were four Bagthorpe children, and the other three were always winning prizes and medals, and William, the eldest, had got to the point where he was winning cups, silver ones, for the sideboard, and little shields with his name engraved on them.

You’re immortal if your name gets put on cups and shields, thought Jack moodily. I’ll never be immortal.

William’s cups and shields were for tennis, and were bad enough in themselves, but what really rankled was that tennis was only the second String to William’s Bow. (Most of the family had second Strings to their Bows, and some had three or even four. Strings to Bows were thick on the ground in the Bagthorpe household.) William’s real speciality was electronics. He had put up an aerial thirty feet high in the vegetable garden and was in touch with a whole lot of radio hams all over the world including one called Anonymous, from Grimsby, who wouldn’t give his real name. William said he was a pirate, which sounded fascinating, but he wouldn’t let anyone else speak to him.

“A veil of secrecy must be preserved,” he was fond of saying.

Jack, who would have given anything to be on speaking terms with a pirate from Grimsby, often felt like punching William when he said this.

Uncle Parker was dozing in a deckchair under the apple trees when Jack reached home.

“Hello, young Jack,” he said, without opening his eyes.

There’s another of them, Jack thought. Can even see with his eyes shut.

None the less, he liked Uncle Parker, who was not all that brilliant, and whose main distinction was that the way he drove his car was the talk of the neighbourhood (though he had never yet been prosecuted for it).

“If you could do anything in the world this afternoon, what would you do?” enquired Uncle Parker, his eyes still closed. This was another thing about him that Jack liked. He never said what you expected him to say.

“Be immortal,” said Jack promptly.

“Bit pointless,” observed Uncle Parker. “You’re bound to survive the afternoon anyway, I should say. You can’t be immortal just for an afternoon, you know, old son.”

“I know that,” said Jack, nettled. “It means to live for ever. Anyway, you asked me, and I told you.”

“You won’t get immortal piggling at your father’s pansies,” said Uncle Parker. “That I can tell you. More likely to get cut off in your prime.”

Jack snatched away his hand which had admittedly, though quite of its own accord, been picking off pansy heads.

“It just shows what a nervous wreck I am,” he said. “I already bite my nails, and say ‘touch wood’ all the time, and now I’m piggling pansies. Goodness knows how I’ll end up.”

“I suppose what you’re all steamed up about as usual is not being a genius?”

Jack nodded. The two of them had had this kind of conversation before. Uncle Parker, not being a Blood Relation of the Bagthorpes, merely lucky enough to be married to Jack’s Aunt Celia (who was not only ravishingly beautiful but could also solve