by Holly Webb
He shook his head, hurrying closer to the boats and refusing to allow school to spoil the weekend too. He loved the way they moved so slowly, sauntering gently between the banks, getting overtaken by the ducks. There was time to watch things. No hurrying.
“Oh, look at this one…” Cassie called back to him. “It’s called Midnight. Look at the stars. It’s like a pirate boat. The sort of boat a pirate would live on when he’d retired from proper pirating.”
The boat was black, with her name in silver and gold paint. Most of the other canal boats had flowers painted on them, roses and bright patterns. But this one was decorated with silver stars swirling around her name and scattering out down the sides of the boat.
“I wonder who lives on it,” Ben murmured. He was quite sure it wasn’t just a holiday boat, as some of them were. There was a cat on it, for a start. A fat black one to match the paintwork, with a spotted handkerchief tied round its neck for a collar. It was sitting on the roof of the boat, in the middle of a coil of rope, gazing down at the children with round green eyes and a superior expression.
“Oh, I wish we could stroke it,” Cassie said, stretching up a hand to the cat, who ignored her. “It’s beautiful.”
Dad laughed. “Don’t talk so loud, Cassie. You’ll wake the owner up, look.” He pointed to a deckchair, set in the stern of the boat. A man was fast asleep, with a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. Dad put his finger to his lips. “Come on. Let’s go and get some lunch.”
Cassie ran after him, waving goodbye to the cat, but Ben lingered, staring at the boat and its owner. Dad and Cassie hadn’t seen – they hadn’t looked as closely as he had. The man in the deckchair had an earring, and long grey hair, and he’d winked at Ben as Cassie hurried away.
It was Les.
After that, it was much easier to believe that Les was a pirate. A retired pirate, maybe, who’d given up sailing the high seas and hunting treasure for a quieter sort of life. And if Les really was a pirate, then surely the other stories were true too? Which meant there really were bears living at the bottom of Ben and Cassie’s garden. Ben had wanted to believe they were there before, but now he was almost convinced.
When they got back home, Ben went out into the garden to search for evidence. If there really were bears living in the little thicket of trees, there had to be proof.
The sausage rolls that Cassie had left as bait the day before had gone, but all sorts of creatures could have taken them. Next door’s cat would eat anything, although a whole packet of sausage rolls might have been a bit much. Only a much bigger animal could have eaten them all – and what was bigger than a bear? Ben crouched down, peering at the damp earth. Maybe he could find a paw print. It was good that it had rained last night – tracks wouldn’t show on dry soil.
“What are you doing?” Cassie asked, right behind him, and Ben jumped, nearly overbalancing into the flower bed.
“Don’t creep up on me like that!” he gasped. “I was looking for prints.”
Cassie blinked. “Fingerprints? Why?”
“No…” Ben looked at her sideways. “Paw prints. Bear prints.” He shrugged. “All the sausage rolls have gone.”
Cassie nodded excitedly. “Yes! The paw prints will be enormous. It was a huge bear, I told you.” She knelt down beside him on the grass, peering in between the straggly plants. “I can’t see anything,” she said at last, in a doubtful sort of voice.
Ben sighed. “No. Me neither. All I’ve found is ants. And I bet they like sausage rolls too.”
Cassie sat down on the grass next to him and patted his shoulder, the way Dad did when Ben was upset. “I think it would take an awful lot of ants to carry a sausage roll,” she pointed out seriously. “Even if it didn’t leave any footprints, I bet anything it was a bear.”
“What did you do to your arm?” Ben asked, watching Les shovel sand into the cement mixer after school on Monday. He’d stopped being shy round the builders now. Besides, anyone who lived on a boat like that was worth listening to, Ben thought. He hadn’t told Cassie who lived on Midnight until they got back home – it was his secret just for a little while. Now, of course, Cassie was absolutely convinced that she’d been right all along, and Les was a pirate. And the cat had been his ship’s cat, before he retired.
Les stopped shovelling and looked at the long scratch. It went from his elbow almost down to his wrist. He shook his head sadly and looked sideways at Cassie. “The parrot bit me.”
“You’ve got a parrot as well?” Cassie squeaked. “Doesn’t your cat chase him?”
“He wouldn’t dare.” Les shook his head. “He’s pretty fierce, old Captain. He’d have Sampson’s whiskers out, or worse.”
Ben grinned. He had one of his drawing pads balanced on his lap – he was sitting on the back step, so as to watch Dave and Les mixing up cement on the patio – and he turned over a new page, blocking it out into squares for a comic strip. He was quite good at drawing cats, but he didn’t think he’d ever drawn a parrot – the beak was tricky.
“Oh, that’s really good.” Cassie leaned over to see. “Look, Les! Ben’s drawn your cat, and Captain!”
Les came and stood next to them – he was smiling, but when he looked down at the sketchbook, his face changed from just being nice to really being impressed. “That is good,” he said admiringly. “Looks just like Sampson. You’re really good, Ben. You should look at this, Dave!”
Ben shrugged, but it felt nice to have someone say so.
“Can I see the rest of the book?” Dave asked, crouching down beside him on the step. “You drawn any of us?”
“A couple,” Ben admitted, going red, as Dave flicked over the pages. Somehow, Cassie going on and on about pirates had made him want to draw them. When he’d seen Les on Midnight, it had seemed so right to come home and draw him on a pirate ship, a black one with starry sails. And then he’d just kept drawing, not really thinking, until the pirate ship lifted off the page and went sailing up into the sky.
“That’s a bit silly, that one…” he said, shrugging, as Dave and Les stared at it.
“Not silly at all. You’re an artist, Ben.”
“You should make a book out of them,” Dave said, shaking his head. “All those ideas bursting out of you; you’re so lucky.”
Ben stared at him. He didn’t think he was lucky at all. “No one else thinks they’re any good,” he muttered. “And they’re all I’m any good at.”
“Don’t your friends at school like your pictures?” Les asked, looking surprised. “I’d have thought they’d all be wanting you to draw them!”
Ben shrugged. “No one thinks drawing’s cool. They’re all into football, and nothing else matters. They’d say drawing was for girls.”
“What’s wrong with girls?” Cassie demanded. “Girls are better at everything. I hate that boy James in your class. He’s stupid, and he’s mean. He pushed Claudia over – he just walked past her and pushed her out of his way. He didn’t even stop and say sorry! We told Mrs Mason, and she said it was an accident and we were just making a fuss.”
Ben sighed. “He never gets in trouble.”
Cassie wriggled her arm round Ben’s waist. “You’re much nicer than all of them. Will you draw me, Ben, please? Me in a pirate costume? A pirate dress?”
Ben was very good at drawing Cassie, because she made him do it so often. He put her in the crow’s nest at the top of the mast of a pirate ship, looking out across the sea with a telescope. It was odd, drawing with an audience. Dave and Les were looking over his shoulder, laughing, and talking about his picture. He felt like he was on a stage. It was actually very exciting – although it definitely made it harder than just drawing on his own, curled up on his bed.
“Look at that – you’ve got the hair exactly right,” Dave murmured admiringly. Cassie’s hair was curly, and it stuck out everywhere. Ben had drawn it springing out fr
om underneath a big skull-and-crossbones pirate hat, with Cassie frowning at the telescope, the way she always did when she was thinking hard about something.
Ben finished the drawing and held it out for them all to see.
“I’m much nicer looking than that,” said Cassie. “But it’s quite good.”
“I don’t suppose you’d sell it, Ben?” Les reached into his pockets. “For fifty pence and a Werther’s Original? All I’ve got on me at the moment…”
Ben flushed scarlet. “You’d really want to buy it?”
“You have to sign it first, though. Ten years’ time when you’re famous, I have to be able to prove it’s a real Ben Daunt.”
Carefully, Ben wrote his name in the corner, then tore the page out and accepted the sweet and the fifty pence. “Thanks. I’m saving up for a new football. My old one’s a bit squishy and I’ve got to practise.”
“You practising for a special match, then?” Les asked as he carefully laid the picture on top of the bags of screws in his huge metal toolbox.
Ben shook his head, staring down at his feet. “Not really.”
“No one at school lets him play,” Cassie called. She was dancing around on the patio with a bottle of bubble mixture, twirling the bubbles round her head. “They said he isn’t good enough at football.”
Ben felt his face burning, and the blood seemed to rush and swirl suddenly in his ears. He hadn’t realized that Cassie had noticed what was going on. She’d never said.
“If I practise I’ll get better,” he muttered, furiously slapping at a bubble that had come too close.
Les nodded slowly. “That matters, then. You’ve got to be good?”
“Yes,” Ben whispered, suddenly feeling that he never would be. Not like the others. “I have to go and practise,” he said sharply, standing up and letting his sketchbook tip off his lap, pages fluttering wildly as it fell in the dust. He ran away from them up the garden, shoving past Cassie and her stupid bubbles. He ignored her furious squeak and dodged round behind the shed, between the fence and the trees. He was half-hoping that Cassie would follow him so he could yell at her, but the other half of him wanted to be left alone. So everyone knew! Even people in the Infants knew that Ben Daunt was useless. He dragged his sleeve across his eyes and gulped.
His football was in the shed somewhere. He peered round the corner and saw that Dave and Les had gone. Cassie had gone with them to say goodbye. She liked standing on the doorstep and waving people off. Ben yanked the shed door open, looking at the tangled mess of stuff inside. All the garden tools and lots of random junk had been dumped in here when they moved.
Ben lifted up the saggy paddling pool and found his football underneath it, with a water pistol and an old Frisbee he’d forgotten about. He picked the football up reluctantly. It wasn’t as much fun, kicking the ball about on his own. It would have been better if Sam could have come round and they’d practised together. But neither of them had asked for the other to come round this week. It just hadn’t felt right. It would have been too difficult not to talk about what was happening at school, and they certainly didn’t want to do that.
Ben walked out on to the grass, his shoulders sagging. He dropped the ball down in front of him and tried to feel excited about improving his football skills. But the ball just sat there in the too-long grass, and he didn’t want to play at all. He sat down next to it, cross-legged, and stared at it miserably. He ought to just take a pad and pencils out into the playground and not care if people said drawing was stupid. But he did care. It was too hard.
There was an odd rustling noise from the greenhouse, over on the other side of the narrow garden, which made Ben jump. He could see the pumpkin plants at the back moving. Ben shook himself crossly. No, they weren’t. That sounded like one of those horror comics Sam liked. Mutant pumpkins. Alien plants. But now Ben looked closer he saw the plants weren’t moving at all. Something was in the greenhouse, shaking the leaves about.
It was probably Cassie. Except Cassie had gone to say goodbye to Dave and Les; she wasn’t in the garden.
Ben stood up. He knew one of the big glass panes at the back of the greenhouse was missing – maybe a cat or something had got inside? He stomped firmly over to the greenhouse, thinking that if there was anything in there – a fox? a rat? – his heavy footsteps would scare it away.
It was as Ben pushed open the heavy sliding door that he suddenly realized what it might be. The pumpkin plants had grown all across the back of the greenhouse, like a tiny patch of jungle. A jungle big enough to hide a bear.
There were pale pastry crumbs scattered over the cement floor of the greenhouse, and the dark, slightly hairy leaves of the pumpkin plants were still shaking.
Stop it, thought Ben. Don’t be silly. It was only Dave and Les making up stories to tease Cassie. The bears were only as real as the pirates. But now Ben had seen the canalboat, and the ship’s cat, and Les’s parrot-scratched arm. It had to be true. And there was something in his greenhouse. He stood clutching the door and peering at the shivering leaves and wishing it would come out so he could see it, but also hoping that it wouldn’t… What if it was huge like Cassie had said?
There was a flurry of movement among the leaves and a scratchy, scraping noise. The greenhouse shook a little, and a dark, gleaming eye looked out at Ben between the leaves. Then he caught a glimpse of golden-brown fur, as something largish hurried away from him to the shelter of the trees.
Ben stared after it.
It had to have been a bear. What else could it have been? Ben breathed out. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath.
Dave and Les had been right. His own bear… A bear who lived in the greenhouse. It made sense now he thought about it. It would be much warmer sleeping in there than outside on the ground, or in a cave. Actually, Ben couldn’t think of any caves close to where they lived. And none of the trees at the end of the garden were hollow enough to house a bear.
And of course it would have just picked up the sausage rolls and gone back to its den. It probably curled up under those huge leaves – or on the bag of compost; it was softish, a little bit cushiony. It wouldn’t have been at all interested in the bear trap when it had somewhere nice like a greenhouse to sleep.
Ben wished he hadn’t frightened it away. It would come back, wouldn’t it? There were still sausage rolls in the fridge, although they might be a bit out of date. He hoped the bear wouldn’t mind. He had a feeling bears weren’t fussy about food, though. He raced back down the garden, almost tripping over the football, and hurled himself through the back door into the kitchen.
“What’s the matter?” Dad asked, turning round from the oven. He was making tea. Ben chewed his lip. No way was Dad going to let him have sausage rolls if he was cooking tea already. He might just about stretch to an apple “if you’re desperate” but Ben couldn’t see the bear coming back for that. Besides, if it liked fruit and vegetables, it would have eaten the pumpkin, wouldn’t it?
“Nothing… Just running.” He looked meaningfully at Cassie, who was sitting at the kitchen table trying to learn her spellings. She was supposed to be covering up the list and then writing the words out, but she kept peering quickly under the magazine and then pretending to herself that she hadn’t. She frowned back at him, making a what? face.
Ben rolled his eyes and gripped his stomach, miming being sick. Then he stared at her pleadingly.
Cassie folded her arms and glared at him. Then she held one hand out – how much would he pay?
“Go and get your hands washed for tea, Ben,” Dad murmured. “It’s nearly ready.”
“A box of Smarties I’ve got hidden in our room,” Ben whispered to her, and Cassie considered, and nodded.
“Dad!” she wailed. “Dad-deeee! I’m going to be sick!”
“Oh no…” Dad moaned, quickly turning the hob off and hurrying her towards the loo.
“Really? Are you sure? Not again…” Cassie claimed to feel sick quite often. Ben was never sure quite how much she actually needed to be sick. But it was the perfect way to distract Dad.
Ben whipped the fridge door open and grabbed the sausage rolls, keeping half an eye on the kitchen door in case Dad came back. But Cassie was wailing in the downstairs loo, claiming that her stomach hurt and she was going to be really, really sick. She’d better not be too realistic or she wouldn’t get tea, Ben thought as he slipped out of the back door.
As Ben raced past the bear trap he realized he didn’t actually want to catch the bear. He just wanted to see it properly. But maybe he’d rather see it from their bedroom window. Just in case.
Most of all, he wanted to have a bear living in their greenhouse. No one else at school had a bear that slept under their pumpkin plants. Who cared about football when you had a pet bear? Ben scattered the sausage rolls carefully over the dirty floor of the greenhouse and stared hopefully at the pumpkin vines. But they didn’t move.
The bear would come back, Ben told himself hopefully. Bears couldn’t resist sausage rolls. Everyone knew that.
At bedtime, Ben wondered about asking Dad if he could camp in the back garden. He desperately wanted to see the bear again.
But it was probably too late for Dad to agree, seeing as they were already in bed. Plus if he camped out, Cassie would want to as well, and she’d told Dad earlier that she was feeling horribly sick and perhaps dying. Although she had then eaten enough spaghetti bolognese for a small army, so Dad hadn’t been very convinced. He still wouldn’t let her camp out all night though.
Of course, if the bear was really hungry, it might come and see if whatever was in the tent was edible. And what if it could tell the sausage rolls had gone off the day before? Ben’s tent was made of very thin material. It definitely wouldn’t keep out a bear, particularly one with a stomach ache from bad sausage rolls. Maybe watching from the garden shed would be better. It was just across the grass from the greenhouse, and it even had garden chairs in it. It would almost be cosy.