He pushed open the door of the first café he came to and was met by the rich tempting smell of fried food. He sat down at a table and the waitress came over to him. She wore a dirty apron covered in greasy stains and had a tiny net hat balanced on top of her curly hair.
‘What d’you want?’
‘What d’you have?’
‘Sausages an’ rashers an’ baked beans an’ mushrooms an’ fried eggs an’ fried potatoes an’ fried tomatoes an’ fried bread,’ said the waitress.
‘I’ll take the lot!’ cried Jasper. ‘With toast and a big pot of tea.’
‘Please,’ replied Jasper in a sulky voice.
Before long he was tucking into a monster fry-up, with a shiny brown pot of tea and a great hot haystack of buttered toast. From time to time he slipped the odd bit of food into his jacket pocket: a bacon rind, a crust or two, the end of a sausage. Over the years Jasper had become very skilful at sneaking food to the rats in this way. You could have been sitting right in front of him and you wouldn’t have seen him doing it; he was like a magician.
But Bags and Rags were annoyed because he wasn’t giving them anything like as much food as they wanted. All their lives they had known nothing but prison grub, porridge, and dry bread and hard biscuits. Compared to that, the little tasty-bites they were getting this morning were so yummy! They wanted more.
After he had finished eating, Jasper poured himself a fourth cup of tea and started to think about what he was going to do. When he went into prison he had lost everything. The money in the envelope wasn’t going to last very long. He was going to have to find a place to live and he was going to have to find a job and all of this was going to be a great big problem. Jasper loved luxury and the best of everything, but he hated having to work. He picked up a copy of the local newspaper, the Woodford Trumpet, from a nearby table and turned to the pages where the jobs were advertised.
These are the kind of things he was hoping to find there:
WANTED
SOFA TESTER
Must be very lazy and good at doing nothing for hours on end.
Excellent pay
No experience necessary
Apply to: Sofas 4 U, Woodford.
We are looking for an assistant to the chef in our
FIVE STAR RESTAURANT
The successful candidate will be required to eat lunch and dinner every day and then tell the chef whether or not he’s any good at his job.
This is what he actually found:
INCREDIBLY HARD WORKER WANTED
TO DIG HOLES IN THE ROAD
WHATEVER THE WEATHER.
MUST HAVE OWN SHOVEL.
THE HARDER YOU DIG …… THE MORE YOU EARN!
Washer-upper
wanted for busy hotel.
Must be prepared to start early, finish late, and work all weekend.
No sense of smell an advantage.
There were other jobs too but they all seemed to offer long hours, hard dull work and measly wages. Jasper didn’t like the look of this at all. He called to the waitress to bring him a fresh pot of tea, and as he turned back to the newspaper he saw an advertisement that he hadn’t noticed earlier.
Gardener wanted for Haverford-Snuffley Hall.
Live-in position. Good salary. All meals provided.
Must like bats!
Apply to Mrs Haverford-Snuffley, Haverford-Snuffley Hall, Woodford.
Jasper knew who Mrs Haverford-Snuffley was. She had been an important part of the whole adventure that had led to his being in prison in the first place. He studied the newspaper carefully.
The thing that appealed to him most in the advertisement was the ‘live-in’ bit. Haverford-Snuffley Hall was a gorgeous house, almost as nice as the place in which Jasper himself had once lived. He liked the sound of the good pay and the meals as well. He couldn’t stand bats – nasty black things with their wings and their horrible pointed teeth. Ugh, he thought, they were so creepy! But he could always pretend to like them. Mrs Haverford-Snuffley was a daft old coot, it would be easy to fool her. He didn’t much like the thought of gardening but it couldn’t be that difficult, could it? Even if you didn’t bother to do anything at all to them, flowers and trees kept on growing, didn’t they? Mrs Haverford-Snuffley wouldn’t be able to follow him around the garden, she would be too busy looking after her wretched bats. He could sit and read a newspaper in the greenhouse when he was supposed to be doing the tomatoes, or he might be able to snooze in the potting shed.
He was still thinking about all of this when the waitress came back with a fresh pot of tea.