by Gavin Bishop
TEDDY ONE-EYE has a rough and tumble life. He is dragged around, chewed on, loses an eye and is often left outside at night. But his many patches show how much he is loved. Teddy One-eye’s special powers lead him into some curious situations and exciting adventures.
Scary, funny, heart-warming and magical, this story of love and loss by one of our best-loved writers and illustrators for children is written with with great fondness for the delights of childhood.
To Russell, the best baby
brother anyone could ask for.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
1 OUT OF THE BOX
2 THE BIRDS
3 THE BEAST
4 ROUGH LOVE
5 THE FIRST PATCHES
6 READING LESSONS
7 AFTERNOON STORIES
8 RETURN OF THE BEAST
9 THE POT CUPBOARD
10 A NIGHT ON THE BEACH
11 A YEAR TO REMEMBER
12 A SUNDAY DRIVE
13 A GIRL’S BOOK
14 LISLE STOCKINGS
15 GOOD TIMING
16 THE READER
17 OUT IN THE COLD
18 THE NIGHT VISITOR
19 THE WARDROBE YEARS
20 ON THE MOVE AGAIN
21 NEW LIFE, AGAIN
22 FAMILY SECRETS
23 THE MIST CLEARS
24 TWO BOXES
25 THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
26 THE BACK BEDROOM
27 THE JUNK OF AGES
28 THE BASEMENT
29 TRANSFIGURATION
30 THE GOLDEN YEARS
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
1
OUT OF THE BOX
INVERCARGILL 1950
HE LIFTED ME OUT of the box and hugged me. From that moment on we became best friends. We did everything together. I rode in the back of his trike. I sat next to him at lunch time as he sipped his warm milk. And I lay on the floor in front of the fire and watched him colour in. He showed me how to not go over the edges.
I am not sure where I came from. I remember waking up as a shaft of winter light flooded my box, the box with a logo of four stars and ‘Southern Cross Toys — New Zealand’ printed on the lid. Was that my birth, my beginning? I’m not sure. In fact, I felt not that I’d been born but as if I had woken from a long sleep. I had the feeling I had been somewhere else, and dreaming, and all memories of that time had blown apart like a cobweb in the wind.
My job now, though, was to be a friend to Boy. He had just been given a new baby brother.
‘Your little brother is too small to play with yet,’ I heard his grandmother say. ‘But you can play with Teddy instead.’
That was me, Mr Edward K. Bear, a new teddy bear. A present from the boy’s grandmother. My fur was the colour of sunshine and my eyes were made of shiny brown glass with flecks of gold. They flashed and twinkled when the flames made fiery pictures in the fireplace or when the morning sun came in under the bedroom blind. My perky ears sat straight up on top of my head and listened to everything being said even if it was whispered behind a closed door. And my nose could smell a jar of honey in the kitchen cupboard with the door closed.
The new baby brother, like Boy, had been born in Invercargill, the southernmost city in New Zealand. ‘Nothing between here and Antarctica, except Bluff,’ Boy’s father was fond of saying, shivering as he said so. He came from further up the track in Dunedin, and talked about his hometown as if it were tropical.
But, cold or not, Boy liked Invercargill. He and his mother came down on the train from their home in Kingston to see his grandmother at least twice a year. His dad usually stayed behind. He had a job on the railways, loading and unloading trains that went to and from Invercargill.
Kingston was not much more than a handful of houses, a pub and a school sprinkled along a gravel road at the southern end of Lake Wakatipu. Invercargill was big and exciting. There were shops to visit, playgrounds to have fun in, and a few blocks from where Boy’s grandmother lived were the Number Two Gardens with ‘the birds’.
2
THE BIRDS
AT THE END OF A CRUNCHY PATH by a hedge of macrocarpa was an aviary, a cage of mismatched birds. Canaries flitted from roost to roost; a guinea fowl took dust baths in the sun; a peacock strutted back and forth displaying its tail feathers; and a kea climbed the netting walls with its beak and claws. This was Boy’s favourite place. He took me there as soon as I arrived.
His grandmother hobbled behind as he flew down the footpath on his trike. ‘Be careful,’ called the old lady. ‘Or you’ll be sorry!’ I sat in the back tray of the trike and nearly fell out twice — once when the boy swerved to miss a lamp-post, and once when a back wheel slipped into the gutter. ‘If you lose that teddy bear you won’t get another one like him,’ shouted his grandmother.
Boy wanted to ‘go to the birds’ every day, and most days he did. Even if it was raining his grandmother would follow behind his trike on her arthritic legs, raincoat flapping, calling to him to slow down. I held on tightly in the back. It was fun. It was thrilling in a way I had never felt before: excitement and fear, the perfect mixture for an adventure.
‘Mamma spoils you,’ Boy’s mother would say when we got back to the house.
But soon the holidays were over. It was time to take the new baby home. The boys’ dad had gone back to work in Kingston days ago.
‘We can’t go to the birds today,’ said Boy’s mother one morning. ‘Home today. Train this afternoon.’
‘But I want to go to the birds! And I want to go now!’
‘There is no time. Play with Teddy while I pack our things.’
But Boy did not listen. He threw me into the back of his trike and very quietly rode down the path at the side of the house, past the big rhododendron, to the gate. He lifted the latch. And like a rocket on its way to the moon, he took off down the footpath in the direction of the Number Two Gardens.
Yippeeee! Excitement and fear! We were off on another adventure!
But three blocks away he was spotted. Jimmy Cooke from next door was pedalling home from night shift.
‘Where are you off to, matey?’ asked Jimmy. He blocked the footpath with the front wheel of his bike. Boy had to stop. I looked up from the back tray.
‘I’m going to see the birds.’
‘Not on your own, are you?’
‘Mamma’s busy. Mum’s packing. Dad’s gone home.’
‘What about that new baby brother of yours?’ asked Jimmy. ‘Won’t he miss you?’
‘Nah, he sleeps all the time. He’s not much fun.’
‘Give him a chance. He’ll grow. But listen, you shouldn’t be on your own.’
‘I’ve got Teddy,’ said Boy.
‘He won’t be much help if you get lost.’
I silently shouted that I knew the way to and from the birds as well as anyone, and besides I was enjoying another thrilling ride in the back of the trike.
‘Just a minute,’ said Jimmy. ‘Let’s see what I’ve got left in my lunch tin.’
The birds faded from Boy’s mind as his stomach made a hungry gurgle. Jimmy handed him a slice of fudge cake.
‘All right,’ said Boy, ‘I’ll go home.’
Holding the cake between his teeth, he turned the handlebars of his trike and slowly pedalled his way back along the footpath towards 121 Ettrick Street where his grandmother and mother were calling for him.
‘I’ve been worried sick,’ shouted his mother, grabbing the boy’s arm and dragging him off his trike. ‘Don’t you do that again.’
‘Don’t be angry with him,’ said his grandmother.
‘I’ve got a good mind to give your trike away to Frankie Gibbs!
He’s not lucky like you are. He’d love a trike like yours.’
‘Leave him be,’ said his grandmother. ‘I’ll see to it.’
Boy was bawling. I was still lying in the back of the trike, wondering whether I might be given away or sent back to the toy shop. Was this the end to all the fun we’d been having?
Boy’s mother went inside. I heard her stomp into the spare bedroom and start throwing clothes into a suitcase. This woke the baby, who was sleeping in the same room. He began screaming.
Boy’s grandmother said, ‘Come with me. I’ll make you a piece.’
Still snivelling, Boy picked me out of the back of his trike and followed his grandmother into the kitchen. The old lady cut a slice of bread from the loaf in the bread tin. She grated some cheese onto it and slid it onto a tray in her oven. She switched on the gas and lit it with a match. She poured some milk into a mug with a transfer of a gingerbread man on the side and stirred in two large teaspoons of sugar.
‘There, that’ll sort you out.’
‘Mamma,’ sniffed Boy, ‘will you read me a story?’
‘Aye, by and by, but first I’ve got something to tell you.’
Boy climbed up onto a stool and propped me up next to him. He picked up his drink with both hands and looked over the top of the mug at his grandmother.
Things had quietened down in the bedroom.
‘What do you want to tell me?’
‘Well,’ said his grandmother, ‘around the corner there is a dairy …’
‘I know that, Mamma, I’ve been there lots of times.’
‘Aye, but at the dairy there is something you should know about.’
Boy took a big slurp of his drink. He put his mug down and looked out of the corner of his eye.
‘There is something there you wouldn’t like …’
‘Like what?’ The boy turned and faced his grandmother.
‘A beast!’
‘What sort of beast?’ asked Boy.
‘A nasty beast with dirty claws and teeth like meat skewers!’
‘I’ve never seen him. And I’ve been there lots and lots of times!’
‘Oh, he’s there all right, and if you run away again … he will catch you and eat you up!’
‘Aw, you’re telling fibs!’ Boy grabbed me by the head and ran outside.
‘Your mousetrap is ready,’ called the old lady.
I looked through the back door and saw Boy’s mother come into the kitchen, burping the baby on her shoulder.
‘Where is he now?’
‘Out the back.’
‘He’s not going to take off again, I hope.’
‘I’m pretty sure he won’t,’ said the old lady as she cut the mousetrap into fingers with her sharpest kitchen knife.
3
THE BEAST
THE TRAIN TO KINGSTON was due to leave at 12.30 that afternoon.
‘We seem to be out of milk. I’ll pop around to the dairy to get some. I’d like a cuppa before we leave,’ said Boy’s mother. ‘You can come with me,’ she said to her son. ‘You’ll be sitting for a long time on the train.’
‘Can I ride my trike?’
‘It’s been put away in the shed.’
‘Can I bring Teddy?’
‘All right.’
We set off along the footpath, passed Bubs Wood’s place with her five kids, Jimmy Cooke’s cottage where he lived with his mother, and Miss Frost’s house. As we turned the corner at the end of the street, we almost walked into a painted sign shaped like a hand with a pointing finger. A bit further on, a little brick dairy plastered with advertisements for creaming soda and banana splits stood behind a bed of petunias and a thick concrete curb painted blue.
‘Wait by the door. I’ll only be a minute,’ said Boy’s mother.
‘I want to come in too.’
‘No, you’ll only nag for chews. I’m not buying you any today.’
Boy perched on the edge of the curb. He clutched me tightly and absent-mindedly chewed on my right ear.
There was a movement by the door. Boy looked over, expecting to see his mother with a bottle of milk. Instead, a bulldog came bustling out, his tiny eyes squinting in the bright sunlight. He was snorting loudly, and saliva hung in long strings from his wide turned-down mouth. Boy could not believe it. The beast! It was the beast! His grandmother had not been telling fibs. She was right all the time.
A loud scream pierced the morning air. The bulldog raced around the side of the shop and hid behind a stack of milk crates.
Boy’s mother came running outside.
‘What on earth have you been doing now?’
‘The beast! I saw the beast!’
‘Time we went back to Kingston. You’ll be the death of me,’ said Boy’s mother. ‘That train can’t leave soon enough as far as I’m concerned.’
‘But I saw the beast. He came out of the dairy.’ Boy burst into tears. He dropped me onto the footpath. ‘Mamma said that if I ran away again the beast at the dairy would get me … and here he is.’
‘I can’t see any beast,’ said his mother.
Boy stopped bellowing and opened his eyes.
‘He was just there! When you were in the shop!’
‘You and your imagination,’ said his mother. ‘Come on. Pick Teddy up. The baby will be awake soon.’
Boy hugged me to his chest as we bustled along the street. He whimpered into the back of my neck.
After lunch we got a taxi to the railway station. With a paper bag containing two mutton pies and a cake of milk chocolate for the journey home, we hurried onto the platform. The baby’s pram and our suitcases were lifted into the guard’s van, and Mrs Hedges from the magazine and cigarette shop rushed over to hold the baby while Boy’s mother climbed the steep steps into a carriage.
Boy and I sat beside the window while the train slowly made its way through the outskirts of Invercargill. As it picked up speed, the rhythm of the wheels on the steel tracks fell into a regular beat. Boy grabbed his mother’s arm.
‘Can you hear it?’
The train was talking to him! It was saying the same thing over and over again: ‘the beast, the beast, the beast, the beast … here comes the beast, here comes the beast, here comes the beast …
‘… whooooooOOOOOooooooooooooOOOOooo …’
And when I listened hard, I could hear it too, quite clearly.
4
ROUGH LOVE
KINGSTON 1951
THE BABY BROTHER GREW QUICKLY. By the time he was 11 months old, he wasn’t walking but he could scoot across a linoleum floor faster than a stone on an icy pond. He loved squeezing the cat’s neck or pulling its tail and, if Boy left me within reach, BB pulled me onto the floor and wrestled with me. When he was teething, my paws seemed to offer him comfort, so he chewed them. As his teeth broke through his gums, their little rough edges tore at the tender fabric on the ends of my arms and legs. Boy didn’t like this. He would snatch me from his little brother and hide me carefully in another part of the house.
Most of the time, Boy was good to me. He tucked me up in bed with him at night and brushed my coat. If he ever forgot to be gentle, and swung me around by one arm or jumped on me, it was because we were having fun. We had lots of fun. I laughed and laughed (silently), and was always ready for one of his adventures.
These took place outside, usually in the wheelbarrow, which in Kingston replaced the trike. The wheelbarrow was even more thrilling than the trike. There were wobbly rides across the rough paddocks behind the house or over the bumpy gravel at the sides of the railway tracks. Black Nin, the dog from the pub, would sometimes run along beside us, barking. This added to the excitement. But I was growing to dislike this dog. If Boy was not careful, Black Nin would snatch me from the barrow and run off to a quiet place behind a broom bush or a clump of foxgloves and gnaw on me as if I were a beef bone. When I was finally rescued, my coat was dripping with dog slobber. It was more excitement and fear though, all part of an adventure with Boy.
I usually had the wheelbarrow to myself, but sometimes I had to share it. A heavy tin tractor with knobbly tyres, a nervous cat with sharp claws, or a pile of dirt dug from the vegetable garden was often thrown in with me. The cat didn’t last long. It jumped out as soon as the wheelbarrow journey began. But the truck liked to roll backwards and forwards and bump into me. And the dirt moved and shifted until I was half-buried, with only my nose and one eye poking out.
At bedtime I was dragged from the dirt and given a quick brush. Boy liked to feel me lying beside him in bed. He would tuck one of my arms under his neck and put one of my big glass eyes between his teeth as if it were a lolly. Every night he did this. But by morning, because the boy tossed and turned, dreaming, I suspected, of the beast at the dairy, I was usually on the floor or sitting in the box of comics that Boy kept beside his bed.
Now there was no fear of being returned to the toy shop or given away if Boy misbehaved. After almost a year, my golden coat was bedraggled, my paws were chewed and my eyes were loose. I was no longer a new bear.
5
THE FIRST PATCHES
AT THE END OF THE WINTER when frosts were less likely, Boy’s grandmother came to stay. She slept in the spare bedroom off the kitchen, in a single bed next to the Singer sewing machine. Its folded-down top was just big enough to take her knitting bag, a book, her reading glasses and a tumbler to soak her teeth in. The room was wallpapered with a pattern of tiny pink daisies that she said reminded her of a garden she once knew as a girl, when she lived in Riverton. The heat from the coal range kept her room warm, if she remembered to keep the door open.
In the small brown suitcase slipped under the bed, she had neatly packed two woollen dresses, a pair of black shoes with a sensible heel, and her slippers. There were three floral aprons edged with rickrack made by one of her daughters as a Christmas present. She wore one of these every day to keep her clothes clean and to show she was ready to roll out a batch of scones, slice up some beetroot or pluck a chook. And there were fine woollen singlets from the mills in Mosgiel, which she tucked down well into her bloomers. The bloomers were designed to reach her knees and cover the gap at the top of her lisle stockings that were, by far, her most important items of clothing. ‘A woman is not properly dressed until she has covered her legs,’ she would say. She always travelled with two pairs of stockings. One pair still in its packet — a pair for best; and the other pair, for second-best, to be worn every day, summer or winter, hot or cold, wet or fine. Her lisle stockings were thick and brown. ‘Bullet-proof!’ was the way Boy’s father described them.