by Michael Bond
“How many Bs are there in ‘Garibaldi’?” asked the man as he wrote it down.
“There aren’t bees in a Garibaldi,” said Paddington. “They have currants instead.”
Taking a deep breath, the interviewer reached for his eraser. “This Aunt Lucy of yours,” he continued. “Can you tell me more about her?”
“Well,” said Paddington, “she’s very wise. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here at all. Besides, she taught me all I know.”
“Perhaps you could let me have her address,” said the man. “I’d like to take her on board and make her part of my team. She sounds like just the kind of person we’re looking for.”
“I don’t think that would be very easy,” said Paddington. “She’s living in the Home for Retired Bears in Lima. Besides, she doesn’t play any ball games.”
The interviewer gave Paddington a glassy stare as he reached for his eraser again.
“I had a clean form when I started out this morning,” he said plaintively. “Now look at it!
“I suppose,” he continued, trying another tack, “since your Aunt Lucy is in a home, she’s…er…I mean, is there an uncle by any chance?”
“Oh, yes,” said Paddington. “Uncle Pastuzo. But we haven’t seen him since the earthquake.”
“You mean you’re an earthquake victim?” The man’s pen fairly raced across the page. “Tell me more.”
“Well,” said Paddington, “there’s not much to tell. I was fast asleep in a tree at the time.There was a loud rumble, and the earth began to shake. When I woke up everything looked different. Everyone else apart from Aunt Lucy had disappeared.”
“Even your Uncle Pastuzo?” said the interviewer.
“Especially Uncle Pastuzo,” said Paddington. “I think he must have known it was going to happen, because he went out early that day. But he left his old hat and a suitcase with a secret compartment behind, along with a note to say I could have them if anything happened to him.”
“And you have never heard any more of him since?”
Paddington shook his head sadly. “That’s why Aunt Lucy brought me up. She taught me my tables, and she taught me to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when I’m out shopping and to raise my hat whenever I meet someone I know.
“She also taught me to count my blessings when things look black. It’s the first thing she does when she wakes in the morning. She says nine times out of ten you have more than you think you have.”
“Would that there were more about like her,” said the man. He turned the page. “One last thing before I leave you in peace. What are your feelings about being a blood donor?”
“No thank you,” said Paddington firmly. “I haven’t had my elevenses yet and it might make me go wibbly woo.”
“I shouldn’t let that worry you,” said the man. “You can lie down afterward, and they give you a nice cup of tea in the bargain.”
“I prefer cocoa,” said Paddington. “Bears do, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” said the man, entering the information on his form.
“While we are on the subject of medical matters,” he continued, “if you don’t fancy being a blood donor, how about donating one of your organs when the time comes?”
Paddington considered the matter for a moment or two. He wondered if he ought to mention Jonathan’s mouth organ. It had been a nine days’ wonder at the time, and everybody had breathed a sigh of relief when he took it back to school with him after the holidays.
“I don’t have any myself,” he said.
The man concealed a smile. “Oh, but you must have,” he said. “Everyone has organs.”
“Mr. Curry doesn’t, for a start,” said Paddington.
“Oh, dear,” said the interviewer. “Poor man. What with that and having his pipes frozen, he must be in a terrible state. I daresay he has to be tended day and night.”
Paddington looked over his shoulder. “I don’t think so,” he said, lowering his voice. “He lives all by himself.”
The man followed the direction of Paddington’s gaze. “It gets worse and worse,” he said. “Is that why the curtains are drawn?”
“Mrs. Bird says it’s because he doesn’t like people spying on him,” said Paddington.
“I’m not surprised,” said the man, “if he has no organs.”
“Jonathan had one once,” said Paddington. “But he swapped it with a boy at school for a pencil box.”
The interviewer’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “Jonathan swapped one of his organs for a pencil box?” he repeated. “Do you know which one it was?”
“I don’t know the name,” said Paddington. “But it was very special. It had two tiers. One for ordinary pencils and another one for crayons.”
“I don’t mean the pencil box,” said the man. “I mean which organ. This could be headline news! It’s just the kind of material my editor is looking for.”
“Oh, dear!” Paddington suddenly wondered if he had said the right thing.
“Are you absolutely certain you don’t want to set an example?” said the man. “I wasn’t meaning today, of course. It won’t happen until after you…” He shifted uneasily underneath Paddington’s hard stare. “Well, you know…after you er, um.”
“After I er, um?” repeated Paddington.
“That’s right,” said the man. “It happens to us all at some time.”
“It hasn’t happened to me yet,” said Paddington.
“I can see that,” said the man, looking as though he was beginning to wish it had.
“One last thing,” he remarked casually. “Can you tell me the name of Jonathan’s school?”
“I’m very sorry,” said Paddington, raising his hat politely to show the conversation was at an end. “I’m afraid I can’t.”
“What’s it worth?” asked the interviewer. Taking out his wallet, he fingered some notes.
“More than all the tea in China,” said Paddington, remembering one of Mrs. Bird’s favorite phrases.
“And if this doesn’t work?” asked the man, detaching one of the notes, crackling it enticingly between his thumb and forefinger.
“I have a secret weapon,” said Paddington. “I’ll show you if you like.”
Looking around to make sure nobody was watching, he gave the interviewer one of his hardest stares ever.
The man shuddered as though he had been struck by lightning, and something fell to the ground.
“That’s another thing Aunt Lucy taught me,” said Paddington. “It comes in very useful at times!”
“I think I might call it a day,” said the man, hastily retrieving his pen. He handed the note across the railing. “You’d better have this anyway. It may help you to make your ends meet before Christmas.
“We’re giving them away this week,” he added. “It’s a thank-you present.”
And with that he turned on his heels and disappeared down Windsor Gardens as though he had a train to catch.
Paddington gazed at the note for a moment or two. It didn’t look like any sort of money he had seen before. Instead of the pound sign, there was a picture of an airplane, followed by a lot of words in small print. None of them seemed to make any sense, so he slipped it into his duffle coat pocket for safekeeping and hurried back into the house in case anyone else came along wanting to interview him.
“What do you think ‘er, ums’ are?” asked Mr. Brown.
It was the following day, and he had just arrived back from the station, having collected Jonathan and Judy, who were home for the Christmas holiday.
“You’ve been reading Paddington’s postcard, Henry,” said Mrs. Brown accusingly.
“I couldn’t help it,” said Mr. Brown. “It was lying on the hall table ready to be posted. Anyway, it sounds as though you’ve read it too.”
“It’s addressed to his Aunt Lucy,” said Mrs. Brown. “I have no idea what it means, but he told her not to worry.”
“If you ask me,” said Mrs.
Bird, “a spoonful of castor oil might not come amiss.”
“Poor old Paddington,” said Judy.
“Worse things happen at sea,” said Jonathan cheerfully.
“I don’t know about that,” said Mr. Brown. “Look at this headline!”
He held up the front page of a local newspaper.
ORGAN REPLACEMENT SCANDAL ROCKS LONDON’S WEST END
“I can’t say I’ve felt any tremors,” said Mrs. Bird, reading it out loud.
“I don’t know where they get all these stories from in the first place,” agreed Mrs. Brown. “I can’t believe half of them are true. It doesn’t sound like anywhere around here, thank goodness!”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” warned Mr. Brown. “It’s the same post code as ours—W11.”
He continued reading. “‘Where will it all end?’ asks our man on the spot. Posing as an interviewer, our intrepid reporter Mervyn Doom managed to infiltrate the gang and obtain in-depth information from one of its hammer-carrying members.’”
“He makes it sound like some kind of ball game,” interrupted Mrs. Brown. “Where on earth did you get the paper?”
“In Paddington station while I was waiting for the train,” said Mr. Brown.
“Apparently the person he interviewed was disguised as a jobbing gardener. He gave the game away by saying he was looking for some outward-facing rose buds, not realizing it was long past the normal pruning season.”
He looked up from the paper. “Can you imagine? It shows the type of person the authorities are up against.
“During the course of the interview our informant also let slip the fact that an undercover trade in organ transplants is rife.
“A local schoolboy swapped one of his for a pencil box—the name of the boy and the school have been withheld for legal reasons. Meanwhile, in this outwardly respectable neighborhood, others—bereft of everything that makes them tick—lie behind drawn curtains waiting for help.”
“What is the world coming to?” exclaimed Mrs. Bird.
“And another thing,” continued Mr. Brown, “according to this paper, the gates are about to open on a flood of boat people from Peru.
“Our question is, WHEN WILL SOMETHING BE DONE ABOUT IT? THERE IS NO TIME TO BE LOST!”
“Does it say who’s behind it?” asked Mrs. Brown.
“Apparently the gang-master-in-chief is a woman,” said Mr. Brown. “Notorious for her dumplings, and wielding an iron bar, she so terrifies those around her that the subject of the interview is forced to hide his marmalade sandwiches under his hat.”
The Browns looked at one another. Suddenly it was all starting to sound much closer to home than they had thought.
“You don’t think…” began Mr. Brown.
“Oh, dear, Henry,” said Mrs. Brown. “I’m very much afraid I do.”
“He asked if he could borrow your pruning shears yesterday morning,” said Mrs. Bird.
“He wanted to do some work in the front garden.”
“Don’t tell me he was having a go at my roses?” exclaimed Mr. Brown, the full seriousness of the situation suddenly coming home to him.
“I don’t like the sound of that last bit,” said Mrs. Bird. “If the powers that be get hold of the story, there’s no knowing what will happen. We can await the ring on the front doorbell.”
The Browns exchanged anxious glances. In the beginning Paddington had just sort of happened, but over the years he had become so much a part of the family they couldn’t picture life without him. They had certainly never thought of him as being a refugee, still less the possibility of his being an illegal one.
“I think they’ve starting doing something about things already,” said Jonathan. “I saw an ambulance outside Mr. Curry’s house soon after we got back. There was a terrible row going on. They were trying to tie him onto a stretcher.”
“I suppose they might declare Paddington persona non grata,” said Mr. Brown.
“That means an unwelcome person,” said Judy, for her brother’s benefit.
“Thanks a heap!” said Jonathan. “Who got an A Star in his exams?”
“Anyway,” said Judy. “He’s not a person. He’s a bear.”
“And he’s always welcome,” chimed in Mrs. Bird. “If anyone tries to take him away after all this time, they’ll have me to deal with.”
“Who in the world would want to report him?” asked Judy.
“I imagine Mr. Curry, for a start,” said Jonathan, “if Paddington had anything to do with what happened this morning. Perhaps we could hide him under the floorboards—like the French did with escaped prisoners during World War Two.”
“I shall never go out and leave that bear alone again,” said Mrs. Bird.
“I’m sure he meant well,” said Mrs. Brown.
“They can’t,” said Judy. “Take him away, I mean.”
“There’s no such word in the English language as ‘can’t,’” said Mrs. Bird grimly.
“What shall we tell Paddington?” broke in Mr. Brown, lowering his voice.
“For the time being,” said Mrs. Bird, “I suggest we don’t tell him anything. He’ll be most upset if he thinks the whole thing is his fault.”
“He really will have trouble with his ‘er, ums’ then,” said Jonathan.
“Careful,” hissed Judy, “I think he’s coming downstairs. I was wondering where he’d got to.”
Sure enough, a moment later the door opened and a familiar face appeared around the gap.
“Can anyone tell me what air miles are?” asked Paddington.
“Well,” said Mr. Brown, after he had gone. “That was a conversation stopper if ever I heard one. I wonder what he’s up to now?”
“I shudder to think,” said Mrs. Brown.
“Time alone will tell,” said Mrs. Bird. “I daresay we shall know soon enough.”
Chapter Six
PADDINGTON AIMS HIGH
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, blissfully unaware of the dark cloud that had settled over number 32 Windsor Gardens, Paddington set out soon after breakfast.
Heading in the opposite direction from the one he normally took, he made his way uphill toward a shop he remembered seeing on one of his outings with Mr. Gruber.
It was situated in a busy high street some distance from the Portobello Market, and it stuck in his mind, partly because at the time he had thought Oyster Travels seemed a very unusual name for a shop and also because there had been a large revolving globe in the window. Mr. Gruber had stopped to admire it, and as it went slowly round and round, he had pointed out all the different countries as they went past.
“Since they invented the airplane, Mr. Brown,” he had said, “the world has shrunk. There are very few places left that cannot be reached in a matter of hours rather than weeks. I expect this shop took its name from the old saying: ‘The world is your oyster.’ In other words, ‘It is yours to enjoy.’”
Mr. Gruber had a happy knack of making even quite ordinary things sound exciting, and Paddington’s latest idea was far from ordinary. It had come to him during the night while he had been lying awake trying to think what to get the Browns for Christmas.
The first time he had seen the shop it had been full of people, but as he drew near he was pleased to see that apart from a rather superior-looking man who looked as though he was about to open up for business, there was nobody else around.
“The early bird catches the worm,” the man said approvingly as he held the door open for Paddington.
“I daresay you’ll be after one of our cheap day return trips,” he said, sizing up his first customer of the day. “A day out in Brightsea perhaps? It can be very invigorating at this time of the year. The coach leaves in half an hour, and if the weather forecast is anything to go by, it will certainly blow the cobwebs out of your whiskers.”
Paddington took a quick look at his reflection in the polished glass. “Those aren’t cobwebs,” he said, giving the man a hard stare. “It’s shredded wheat. I ate my breakfas
t in a hurry because I wanted to get here before anyone else.”
“I do beg your pardon.” The man wilted under Paddington’s gaze.
“I was really wanting to inquire about some of the places you have on your globe,” said Paddington. “Mr. Gruber was telling me all about them.”
“My dear sir, you couldn’t have come to a better place.” Leaping into action, the man began washing his hands with invisible soap as he ushered Paddington to a stool opposite one of the counters.
“I happen to be the manager,” he continued, going around to the other side and reaching for a pad and pencil. “As I like to tell all our customers, the world is not only our oyster, it is yours too. We are here to take care of your every need.
“Perhaps you could let me have a few details first, starting with your name and address.”
Paddington did as he was bid, and while the manager was writing it down he glanced around the shop. It seemed full of interesting things. Apart from a number of real oyster shells dotted around the counter, there were some giant plastic ones hanging from the ceiling, and the walls were covered in posters showing vacationers with happy, smiling faces as they bathed in the blue sea or lay back in their deck chairs, enjoying the sunshine. There wasn’t a gloomy face to be seen anywhere, and he felt more certain than ever that he had come to the right place.
“Will it be just for your good self?” inquired the manager. “Or will you be accompanied? We do have what we call our Singles Special.”
“There will be seven of us,” said Paddington. “It’s my treat, and I want to take them somewhere special for Christmas.”
“Seven!” The manager took a firmer grip of his pencil. “Would you mind giving me their names?”
“Well,” said Paddington, “there will be Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Bird. Jonathan and Judy, and I’m hoping Mr. Gruber might be able to come too.”