Absolute Zero by Helen Cresswell

Author:Helen Cresswell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008211721
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The clearing of the Bagthorpes’ house after Daisy’s Flood lasted approximately till Christmas. It was a complicated operation – the walls needed doing on two separate counts, and other parts of the house too had been subjected to both Fire and Flood. In any event, for the next two months or so the house was never at any given moment free of workmen of one kind or another. They were not called in, however, until the preliminary mopping up had been completed by Mrs Fosdyke and her brigade, who took an unconscionably long time over this and were, Mr Bagthorpe asserted, actively enjoying it.

“They are in their element,” he declared. “They feed on destruction and human misery. Only a corpse discovered in some dark corner could make them happier.”

There were days on which he said he might well be driven to supplying one or two such corpses himself.

He detested Mrs Pye and Mrs Bates even more heartily than he did Mrs Fosdyke, and perhaps the only good thing that came out of the matter for him was that from this time on he did not see Mrs Fosdyke as the ultimate in aggravating and purblind humanity. He had seen worse, his eyes had been opened. He particularly detested Mrs Pye who, he maintained, was upsetting the vibrations of the whole house to the point where he could hardly bring himself to write a single word.

When asked to describe what it was in particular about Mrs Pye that had this effect, he was at a loss to put it into words that convinced anyone else of her direfulness.

“Haven’t you noticed the way she holds her mop?” he would demand. “And have you ever seen anyone scrub the way she does? She scrubs like she was Lady Macbeth outing a damn spot.”

Mrs Bagthorpe dismissed all these allegations as far-fetched and fanciful, though she herself had been irritated by having descriptions of her house relayed to the interested village, and then repeated to herself by acquaintances. Their home had been represented, she said, as a large-scale hovel.

“It is a hovel,” returned Mr Bagthorpe flatly. “It became a hovel within an hour of that accursed infant being left here.”

He absolutely ignored Daisy for the remainder of her stay, and was itching for Uncle Parker to return so that he could tell him what he thought of her, and have the biggest all-out row he had ever conducted with him. He had the advantage, he knew, of having all the ammunition, and also several days in which to compose choice insults and exquisitely worded sneers. He went about the house tripping over brooms and pails, rehearsing these, and also made notes of them while in his study. Jack caught snatches of them, and trembled for Uncle Parker.

At the same time he could not help feeling a certain thankfulness that somebody had done more to invoke his father’s anger than himself. Mr Bagthorpe had certainly taken the loss of the laundry relatively lightly. Beyond remarking

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