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of the first order.”

      “I am three years younger,” piped Rosie.

      Uncle Parker turned to her.

      “Kindly do not tell me that again,” he told her. “I have been given that information at least three times in the last hour and am by now in perfect possession of it.”

      “No, Uncle Parker,” said Rosie meekly. “I mean, yes.”

      “Crikey, Uncle P,” said William, “you are in a lather. Anyone’d think Rosie’d beaten you.”

      “I don’t doubt that she could,” returned Uncle Parker calmly. “I am a notoriously bad swimmer, and I dislike getting wet unnecessarily. The only good reason for swimming, so far as I can see, is to escape drowning.”

      “The thing I best remember about that jewel of a cat,” said Grandma reminiscently, “was his extraordinary sweetness of nature. He hadn’t a streak of malice in him.”

      It was, after all, Grandma’s Birthday Party, and she probably felt she was losing her grip on it.

      “That cat,” said Mr Bagthorpe, caught off-guard and swallowing the bait, “was the most cross-grained evil-eyed thing that ever went on four legs. If I had a pound note for every time that animal bit me, I should be a rich man, now.”

      “How can you, Henry!” cried Grandma, delighted that things were warming up.

      “I’d be Croesus,” said Mr Bagthorpe relentlessly. “Midas. Paul Getty. That cat bit people like he was being paid for it in kippers.”

      “There he would lie, hour upon hour, with his great golden head nestled in my lap,” crooned Grandma, getting into her stride, “and I would feel the sweetness flowing out of him. When I lost Thomas, something irreplaceable went out of my life.”

      “Bilge, Mother,” said Mr Bagthorpe. “That cat was nothing short of diabolical. He was a legend. He was feared and hated for miles around. In fact I clearly remember that the first dawnings of respect I ever felt for Russell here began on the day he ran the blasted animal over.”

      “Language, dear,” murmured Mrs Bagthorpe automatically.

      “Not on purpose, of course,” said Uncle Parker.

      “Of course not on purpose!” snapped Mr Bagthorpe. “The way you drive, you couldn’t hit a brick wall, let alone a cat.”

      “It just wasn’t very nippy on its toes, you see,” said Uncle Parker apologetically to Grandma.

      “It nipped me on my toes,” said William. “Bags of times.”

      The rest turned unsmilingly towards him.

      “All right,” he said. “So it wasn’t all that funny. But what about this ‘Pooh!’ business of Uncle P’s? Let’s get back to that. Unless you want to hear what Anonymous from Grimsby told me.”

      “I don’t think you’d better,” said Jack. “It’d be breaking the veil of secrecy.”

      He enjoyed making this remark, but his pleasure was short-lived.

      “I wish you’d learn to use words accurately,” said Mr Bagthorpe testily. (He wrote scripts for television and now and again got obsessed about words, which in his darker moments he believed would eventually become extinct, probably in his own lifetime.) “You can’t break a veil. A veil, by its very nature, is of a fine-spun, almost transparent texture, and while it may be rent, or even—”

      “For crying out loud,” said Uncle Parker.

      “Oh, dearest,” murmured his wife, “must you …?”

      This was the first time Aunt Celia had spoken. She had not even noticed when Uncle Parker had sprayed crumbs at her. The reason for this was that she was gazing at a large piece of bark by her plate. No one had remarked on this because Aunt Celia often brought pieces of bark, ivy or stone (and even, on one memorable occasion, a live snail) to table to gaze on as she ate, even at other people’s parties. She did this because she said it inspired her. It was partly to do with her pot-throwing, she said, and partly her poetry. There was no argument about this since her poetry and pottery alike were not much understood by the other Bagthorpes. They respected it without knowing what on earth it was all about. Also, Aunt Celia was very beautiful – like a naiad, Uncle Parker would fondly tell people – and looked even more so when she was being wistful and faraway. In the hurly-burly of Bagthorpe mealtimes she was looked upon more as an ornament than a participant.

      She had, however, now spoken, and the Bagthorpes were sufficiently surprised by this to fall silent again.

      “Must I what, dearest?” asked Uncle Parker, leaning forward.

      “I was just on the verge … I thought … I was almost …”

      Her voice trailed off. When Aunt Celia did speak it was usually like this, in a kind of shorthand. She started sentences and left you to guess the ends – if, of course, you thought it worth your while. By and large, the Bagthorpes did not. Uncle Parker, however, did.

      “Just on the verge of …?” he prompted delicately.

      “What about my portrait?” demanded Rosie loudly. Having had her swimming feat passed over as a mere nothing, she had no intention of letting her Birthday Portrait go the same way. It was set on an easel just by Grandma herself and no one had commented on it because in the first place they were currently more interested in food, and in the second because it looked unfinished.

      “Where’s her mouth?” demanded Tess.

      “And her nose?” asked Jack.

      “Not to mention her eyes,” added William. “Might come out right, Rosie, but doesn’t look like one of your best. You’ve got her ears wrong. You’ve got ’em too flat. Look – you look – they stick out a lot more than you’ve got them.”

      The entire table turned its eyes on Grandma’s ears. Grandma looked frostily back at them.

      “My ears,” she stated, “are one of my best features. This was one of Alfred’s favourite contentions during our courtship. “I could love you for your ears alone,” he would say, and, ‘Grace, your ears are like petals, veritable petals.’ Isn’t that so?”

      All eyes now turned towards Grandpa who was stolidly making his way through what was probably his tenth stuffed egg. In his rare communicative moments he would sometimes confide that one of the few pleasures left to him in life was stuffed eggs – that and skewering wasps he would say – and the latter was unfortunately seasonal. (A relative of Grandpa’s had once died of a wasp sting and he was convinced that this would be the way he would go too, unless it were under the wheels of Uncle Parker’s car.)

      “Alfred!”

      Grandma leaned forward and jabbed at his arm, determined that he should give testimony. He dropped his egg and blinked blankly at her.

      “Eh? Eh? Happy Birthday, my dear.”

      “SD,” murmured Uncle Parker to Jack. “See what I mean?”

      “I was saying about my ears!” Grandma pointed to her own with either hand simultaneously, thereby taking on a distinctly lunatic look.

      “Ah – my ears!” Grandpa sounded relieved. He picked up his egg and started in on it again. “Aid’s playing up a bit. One of those days. I don’t reckon much to these aids. It’s the weather, you know. They’re affected by the weather.”

      “My ears!” Grandma positively shrieked. Grandpa did not turn a hair. He did not even seem to know she had spoken. He simply went on polishing off his stuffed egg. He had flecks of yolk in his beard, Jack noticed.

      “The candles!” cried Mrs Bagthorpe with tremendous gaiety. She rose and swept theatrically towards the head of the table where Grandma sat fuming behind her porcupine of a cake.

      “I

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