Looking for Bear

by Holly Webb

  For Byron

  And for Robin and William,

  who first found the bear trap,

  and met the pirate builders

  Contents

  Cover

  Half Title Page

  More Books by Holly Webb

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Back Ads

  About the Author

  Copyright

  “When are they coming?” Ben asked, stirring his cereal and watching the milk swirl chocolatey.

  “Today! You know it’s today.” Dad looked round from the toaster. He had that early-morning look, with his hair standing up a bit and his face all creased. “I did tell you.”

  “Mmmm.” Ben ate a couple of spoonfuls. “How many will there be?”

  Dad caught the toast as it popped up, and yelped, and then threw it on to Cassie’s plate, shaking his fingers.

  “It always comes out hot,” Cassie told him, shaking her head. “Silly Daddy.”

  “Watch it, or I’ll eat it for you.” Dad sat down between them, smiling. “You know, Ben, I’m not absolutely sure. I think just the two of them. I met them both, when they came to see the house. They’re very nice.”

  Everyone jumped as the doorbell rang. They hadn’t lived in the new house all that long, and the bell was particularly loud, like an alarm clock. It surprised them every time.

  “They’re keen.” Dad let out a whistle of surprise. “I didn’t think they’d arrive before school. Still, that’s good.”

  He got up and hurried down the hall to the door. Ben and Cassie looked at each other for a second, and then abandoned breakfast and rushed after him.

  The builders were standing outside the front door, but with Dad in the way, it was hard to see what they were really like. Ben and Cassie tripped each other up trying to peer round Dad, but they only caught a glimpse of two men grinning at them, and a truck parked out in the street.

  “Have you brought a cement mixer?” Cassie demanded, hanging on to Dad’s trousers and leaning out of the door. Ben stared at her. She was never shy. He wished he could ask people things like that, without worrying about what to say.

  “Not today. But we will, I promise.” The man sounded as though he was laughing.

  “Good.” Cassie nodded, and disappeared back to finish her toast.

  As they walked to school, Ben wondered what the house would look like when they got home. The builders had been unloading tools when they hurried out of the house, after a frantic last-minute hunt for Cassie’s reading book. The same hunt happened almost every day, and Ben usually found it for her. It had been in her washing basket this morning, and Ben thought she ought to have been a bit more worried about it. But she had raced madly down to the corner just as she always did.

  Ben was excited about having a new bedroom – he didn’t mind sharing with Cassie that much, but she did leave stuff everywhere. It made it hard for his friends to come round, if they had to climb over Cassie’s bears to get to his Lego. And she kept borrowing the Lego too, which was extremely annoying.

  If he had his own bedroom, Ben could build the most enormous Lego space station that went up and down his bookshelves, and he wouldn’t go to the loo and come back and find a small bear sitting in it.

  But it was still weird thinking about the house changing. Even though they’d only lived in it for three months, since just before the summer holidays, Ben really loved it. Mostly because of the garden. It was massive compared to the one at their last house. It had a long, thin lawn (which usually needed cutting, and had quite a lot of toys half-hidden in it), and a patio that was big enough for a table and chairs. Further down the garden, opposite each other, were a greenhouse and a shed, both full of lots of interesting things left by the previous owners. Ben had persuaded Dad to keep the cracked pots for a while, in case something exciting turned out to be growing in them, but there wasn’t. There were loads of fat, stripy snails, though.

  In the summer holidays, they’d eaten outside a lot. Sometimes breakfast, still in their pyjamas. Even the most boring cereal (the chocolatey ones never lasted very long in Ben and Cassie’s house) tasted better outside.

  From the house, the garden didn’t look as big as it really was, because the end of it was full of trees. It was like having a wood of their very own, and it was one of Ben’s favourite things about his new home. It was fantastic for playing hide-and-seek, and there were all sorts of interesting holes where he was sure things were living. Most of the trees were big old ones that were a bit too tall to climb still, but Ben wasn’t giving up. Once he’d worked out how to get up the trees, he was going to build a tree house, and take Dad’s binoculars up there with him. His grandpa had taken him bird-watching, but Ben had found it a bit slow. He was planning something more exciting. It would be better to watch for badgers, or squirrels, or maybe even bears. The trees were definitely big enough for bears to lurk behind. He liked the thought of stretching out on a platform, high in the trees, spying on the bears as they lumbered past. He’d have a sketchbook, too, and draw their portraits.

  The trees towered over the greenhouse, which was still a bit battered and spidery, but full of plants now. Dad had taken them to the garden centre, and they’d bought some tomato plants, and pumpkins, because Cassie wanted to grow one for Halloween. The tomatoes had shot up to the glass roof, and the pumpkin plants were like some sort of vegetable-y alien. They had grown all round the inside of the greenhouse, armed with tangly little coils that attached themselves to anything. There was actually a pumpkin, but it was only big enough to fit a birthday candle in. Cassie sang to it, a silly song about spooky castles that she’d learned in Reception. Over and over and over. She said it was to encourage it to get bigger in time.

  Dad wanted to do all sorts of things to the garden, but he was too busy with work – he was an accountant, which basically meant he sorted out other people’s money for them.

  Occasionally very worried-looking people came for meetings in Dad’s office (which would have been the biggest bedroom, in most houses) carrying large plastic bags full of bits of paper, which they would give Ben’s dad with apologetic looks on their faces. Being a very good accountant (who never told anybody off about the bits of paper) meant that Dad was working all the time that Ben and Cassie were at school, and even when they were in bed. And Ben was pretty sure he was thinking about work a lot of the rest of the time as well, when he was cooking the dinner, or doing the vacuuming.

  It made him quite hard to play with sometimes. Dad was actually very good at Lego, and excellent at computer games. He could join in with dressing up Cassie’s bears, if she told him exactly what to do. But he didn’t often have time, and even when they did make him play (Cassie was very good at ambushing him with a dressing-up costume, so he didn’t have a choice) he never lasted long before he had to go and answer an email, or call someone at once. Ben had tried to draw him, sometimes, too, but Dad never sat still long enough for Ben to finish a picture.

  Cassie skipped back down the pavement towards Ben and Dad. “Will the house still be all there when we get home?”

  Dad grinned. “They aren’t knocking any of it down, Cass!”

  “Aren’t they?” Cassie sounded disappointed.

  “Well, they’ll have to knock a hole through for the staircase. But not until the loft’s nearly ready. Until then they’ll just go up and down the scaffolding.”

  “Knock a hole in the f
loor?” Ben asked, amazed. It sounded a bit – drastic. A bit dangerous. “What if the whole house falls down?”

  “Will it?” Cassie asked excitedly. “It isn’t that I want it to,” she added quickly. “But if all my bears got squashed, I could have new ones.”

  “More bears!” Ben rolled his eyes, and Cassie drew in a breath to tell him off.

  “You’ll have to choose what colour you want your rooms painted,” Dad put in hurriedly, before Cassie and Ben could start fighting.

  Cassie’s eyes widened. “Any colour?” she said at last, hopefully. “Pink? With stripes?”

  “Er… We’ll think about it…”

  “Could I paint mine myself?” Ben asked, staring pleadingly at Dad. “I mean, I’d paint it all white, and then I could draw on it?”

  He half-closed his eyes, seeing pictures behind his eyelids, spread out all over the white walls of a whole room. It would be brilliant – and then, when he’d covered it all, he could just get some more white paint and start all over again.

  Ben frowned. Actually, though, what if he wanted to keep any of the stuff he had drawn? Perhaps he’d be able to just paint over bits of it.

  “I’ve never had a stripy bedroom,” Cassie was twittering to Dad beside him. “Or maybe I could have it all covered in flowers? And a bear asleep in them? Can I have a blue ceiling with clouds on it?”

  Ben thought Dad looked quite relieved once they got to school and Cassie disappeared into the heaving mass in the playground.

  “The house will be all right, won’t it?” he asked Dad as they stood waiting for the bell to ring.

  “It will. It’ll be fine. I’ll be there to make sure, Ben.” Dad gave him a quick one-armed hug. “You can come back and see what they’ve done this afternoon.”

  Ben was usually one of the last people in his class to get out into the playground after school. There always seemed to be something he had to find, like his water bottle, or his jumper. But today he stuffed everything into his backpack and raced out.

  “Ben! Ben!” Cassie was standing with Dad, jumping up and down and waving to him. “Come on! The builders will leave at five, Dad says. We haven’t got much time to see what they’re doing.”

  “But remember, you mustn’t get in their way,” Dad warned her. “Hey, Ben. Want me to take anything?”

  Ben handed Dad his coat and they set off, with Cassie buzzing round Ben and Dad like an agitated fly. “We should have brought our scooters, it would have been faster. Walk quicker, Ben!”

  Cassie ran ahead of them all the way up the road, darting in and out of the other families walking home and then suddenly appearing like a little fair-haired terrier in front of them, panting crossly.

  “Wow,” Ben gasped as they came round the corner of their road. He was a good bit taller than Cassie, and he could see the house when she couldn’t.

  “What is it? What is it? Are you teasing me? Oooh!” Cassie stopped and stared at the scaffolding that had grown up the side wall of the house since they’d been gone, like some strange, silvery creeper.

  Ben looked at it thoughtfully. “Are we allowed to—”

  “No!” his dad said quickly. “Absolutely not. Ever. In fact, I had to promise the builders solemnly that you wouldn’t.”

  “It looks like the climbing frame in the playground,” Cassie argued as they reached the house and stood looking up at the scaffolding.

  “But it’s twice as tall,” Dad began to explain, when another voice broke in.

  “And if you fall off it, you’ll fall on the concrete path, or the patio. And I’m not scraping you up like strawberry jam. Not in my contract.”

  The voice came from up above them. There was a flapping tarpaulin thrown over one of the scaffolding bars, and they hadn’t seen that there was someone behind it on a wooden platform. Now he leaned over the bars to look at them, and they eyed him cautiously.

  “Exactly,” Dad said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “So no. This is Dave, and he’s in charge. You need to listen to him, all right? And Les.”

  Another man came walking along the wooden platform that ran round from the back of the house, with a big mug in his hand.

  Cassie drew in her breath with an excited gasp as soon as she saw him, and Ben knew why. Les had long, greyish hair, a grey beard and a gold earring in one ear. He was wearing a baseball cap on backwards, but if he’d changed it for a spotted bandanna tied over his head, he would have looked exactly like a pirate.

  He waved, and called, “Hey, you two.” But Ben was too shy to say anything back, and Cassie was awestruck. They scuttled into the house, dumping their coats and bags, and then Cassie tugged Ben into the living room.

  “He’s a pirate!” she whispered frantically as soon as she’d shut the door.

  “No, he isn’t,” Ben told her, in the special older-brother voice he kept just for times like this. “Don’t be silly. Pirates are only in books.”

  “No!” Cassie shook her head firmly. “They used to be real, didn’t they? They’re history.”

  “The thing about history is that it doesn’t happen any more!” Ben said, rolling his eyes. “That’s because it’s history, Cass. Really old. Ancient. There aren’t any pirates now.”

  “He looks like a pirate.” Cassie marched over to the door and glared at Ben. “He’s got an earring. And his hair’s right. He definitely is. I’ll prove it.”

  Ben followed her as she trotted back into the hall. The carpet was covered in a strange sort of sticky stuff, like the sticky-backed plastic they were supposed to put over their homework books now that they were in Year Three. There was so much fuss now. Sometimes he wished he was back in the Infants, like Cassie. She was only a year younger than he was, but no one ever seemed to tell her off about anything.

  “Where are you going?” he called after her.

  Cassie didn’t bother answering; she just thundered up the stairs to their bedroom, and Ben hurried behind her.

  “Do you want a snack?” Dad called from the kitchen, but neither of them answered.

  “Look, I thought so.” Cassie leaned on their bedroom windowsill. “The scaffolding comes round the side of the house.”

  “So what? The window looks out at the garden,” Ben objected. “We won’t be able to see them.”

  “But we can listen,” Cassie whispered dramatically. “We can see if they talk about pirate things.”

  Ben snorted with laughter. “Like where to buy the best parrots?”

  Cassie shook her head and sighed. “You’ll see. Just because you didn’t think of it.” She opened the window a little, and then stationed herself determinedly on the end of her bed, kneeling up with her elbows on the windowsill and her chin on her hands.

  Ben shook his head and settled down on the floor, drawing a house with scaffolding in the biggest of his drawing pads. It was his favourite one, with the wire spiral binding and the fat paper. He only got it out for the best drawings. He smiled to himself as he flicked through to a clean page. The last drawing he’d done was one of Cassie, playing hide-and-seek in the trees at the end of the garden. He’d added a bear creeping up behind her.

  There were faint noises coming from out on the scaffolding. Clangings and mutters. And someone humming. But no discussion of treasure, or the high seas. Cassie began to droop a little, and eventually, with a shifty look at Ben, she wriggled off the end of her bed and started to play with her family of tiny bears.

  Ben considered teasing her, but didn’t. Even if he didn’t believe there were such things as pirates these days, it would have been very cool to have a pirate building his bedroom. He was almost a little bit disappointed too.

  The humming floated through the window, and then changed to whistling – a tune Ben thought he knew – and then a few of the words:

  “What shall we do with the drunken sailor? What shall we do with the d
runken sailor? What shall we do with the drunken sailor, ear-ly in the morning?”

  Ben and Cassie looked at each other for a second, wide-eyed, and then they scrambled up to get to the window.

  “I told you so!” said Cassie, her eyes sparkling excitedly.

  “It doesn’t mean he’s a pirate,” Ben said, gripping the windowsill tightly as they craned their necks to try and see round the side of the house.

  “It’s a pirate song!” Cassie glared at him.

  “Why would a pirate be working on our house?” Ben pointed out. “We don’t even live near the sea.”

  Cassie wrinkled her nose thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s retired. Or his ship sank! If he didn’t have enough treasure, he might have had to get another job.”

  Ben shrugged. That did sort of make sense, and there was no point arguing with Cassie sometimes. She was just never going to listen.

  Ben mooched around the playground at break, thinking to himself. The builders had arrived just as they had left for school that morning. They had been standing in front of the garage door, drinking mugs of tea. They’d waved to Ben and Cassie, and the children had waved shyly back. Cassie didn’t usually have any trouble talking to people, but she wasn’t sure how to ask Les if he was actually a pirate. It was making her silent. She just stared at him instead, with wide, fascinated eyes.

  She had elbowed Ben hard as they went past them. “Stripy socks!” she hissed to Ben, as they followed Dad out on to the pavement.

  “Dad has stripy socks, you know. And I do. So do you!”

  Cassie flounced off after Dad. She seemed to think that Ben was being deliberately difficult, but he wasn’t really. He didn’t want her to get all excited and then find out the truth and be miserable. Like when she discovered that the fairy princess who did storytime at the library was actually Miss Atkins the librarian dressed up. She had refused to ever go back.

  Suddenly he flinched as a football flew past his ear, and he watched it bounce away towards the fence.