Paddington Complete Novels

by Michael Bond

  One morning, soon after the visit from the driving examiner, Paddington was pottering about in the garden doing some testing of his own in order to make sure Mr Brown’s fruit was properly ripe, when he happened to glance through a knothole in the nearby fence. As he did so he nearly fell over backwards into the raspberry canes with astonishment at the sight which met his eyes.

  The fence belonged to the Browns’ neighbour, Mr Curry, and in the normal course of events there was seldom anything of any great interest to see. Gardening wasn’t one of Mr Curry’s strong points. Apart from one or two shrubs and a couple of old trees, most of the ground was given over to what he called ‘the lawn’, but which in reality was nothing more than a patch of rough grass.

  For once, however, it was looking unusually neat and tidy. In fact, overnight it had undergone nothing less than a transformation. The grass had been newly mown, the bushes pruned, and the trees had been lopped of their lower branches. There was even a small table in the centre of the lawn on which had been placed a tray with a glass and a jug of what looked like orangeade.

  Paddington rubbed his eyes and then took a closer look through the hole. Now that he thought about it, he remembered hearing the sound of sawing the day before. At the time he hadn’t taken much notice of it, and never in his wildest dreams had he pictured it coming from Mr Curry’s garden.

  The Browns’ neighbour had obviously been busy, but it wasn’t the view of his actual garden, nor the orangeade that caused Paddington’s astonishment; it was the sight of something very odd suspended between the two trees. At first glance it seemed to be a cross between a very large hairnet that had been hung out to dry, and some overgrown knitting that had gone sadly wrong; in fact he couldn’t remember having seen anything quite like it before in the whole of his life.

  It was all very strange and Paddington was about to go indoors in order to tell Mrs Bird about it when he had his second shock of the morning.

  Having rubbed his eyes once more so as to make doubly sure he wasn’t dreaming the whole thing, he opened them again in order to take one last look, only to find to his surprise that the scene had disappeared. Something or other was now covering up the knothole.

  Paddington was not the sort of bear to be beaten by such trifles. After finding a suitable cane from among the pile in the raspberry patch, he bent down again and poked it through the hole as hard as he could in order to remove the offending object. A second later the cane fell from his paw like a red-hot poker as a yell of pain rang round the garden.

  “Bear!” roared a familiar voice. “Is that you, bear? How dare you!”

  Paddington scrambled to his feet and gazed mournfully at the sight of the Browns’ neighbour as he bobbed up and down on one leg on the other side of the fence.

  “That was my shin you poked, bear!” howled Mr Curry. “What were you doing? Spying on me? Mark my words … I shall report you for this!”

  “Oh no, Mr Curry,” gasped Paddington. “I wasn’t spying. I wouldn’t do that. I was only trying to see what was going on. There’s something hanging from your trees and I wondered if you knew about it.”

  “What’s that, bear?” Mr Curry hopped closer to the fence and gave a snort as he peered over the top. “Of course I know about it. I put it there. There’s no need to go around telling everyone.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t going to tell everyone, Mr Curry,” said Paddington earnestly. “Only Mrs Bird.”

  “Mrs Bird!” For some reason best known to himself, Paddington’s words had a strange effect on Mr Curry. He stopped rubbing his leg and drew nearer the fence. “Come now, bear,” he said. “There’s no need to do that. It’s only a hammock. Haven’t you ever seen one before?”

  “A hammock, Mr Curry?” repeated Paddington. “No, I don’t think I have.”

  “Hmm.” Mr Curry looked somewhat relieved by Paddington’s reply. “Well, bear,” he said, in a slightly better humour, “a hammock is what sailors used to sleep in on board ship. Nowadays they have bunks, but people still use hammocks in their gardens. They’re ideal for relaxing in. There’s nothing nicer on a warm summer afternoon than a quiet doze in a hammock. Provided,” he added meaningly, “there are no unseemly interruptions from the neighbours!”

  Paddington looked most surprised as he listened to all Mr Curry had to say on the subject of hammocks. “I’ve never heard of a bed with holes in it before,” he exclaimed. “Is it safe?”

  “Safe?” Mr Curry gave another snort. “Safe? Of course it’s safe! Why shouldn’t it be? What’s wrong with it?” he demanded.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean yours wasn’t a good one, Mr Curry,” said Paddington hastily, anxious to make amends. “It’s just that it looks rather old. I … mean … have you had it very long?” he added lamely.

  “Er … well, I …” Mr Curry broke into a loud cough. Once again he seemed anxious to change the subject. He glanced around to make sure no one else was about and then stared thoughtfully at Paddington.

  “How much do you weigh, bear?” he barked.

  Paddington was taken by surprise at the question. The Browns’ neighbour had a habit of turning matters to his own ends and it was sometimes difficult to follow what he had in mind. “I don’t know, Mr Curry,” he said, cautiously playing for time. “Sometimes I weigh a lot — sometimes I don’t. It depends on how many marmalade sandwiches I’ve eaten. Mrs Bird says it must be over a tonne sometimes after Sunday lunch.”

  “Hmm.” Mr Curry considered Paddington’s answer for a moment and then came to a decision. “Look, bear,” he said, as he removed a piece of the fence in order to make room for Paddington to climb through, “you can do me a little favour if you like. I’m just going upstairs to change. I shall only be five minutes, but while I’m gone you can test my hammock for me as a treat … just to make sure it’s sa … er … comfortable.

  “But make sure you do it properly,” he continued, as he helped Paddington through the gap in the fence. “And no helping yourself to my orangeade while I’m not looking. I’ve marked the jug, so I shall know at once.”

  Mr Curry broke off and took a closer look at Paddington’s whiskers, several of which had some suspiciously red stains on them. “While you’re at it,” he said, “you might like to gather a few raspberries for me. If you do I may let you have a proper go with the hammock later on … after I’ve finished with it for the day.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr Curry,” said Paddington doubtfully. “I shall look forward to that.”

  He gazed unhappily after the retreating figure of the Browns’ neighbour. Doing favours for Mr Curry was something which had long ago lost its appeal; more often than not things went wrong. For a moment or two he toyed with the idea of climbing back through the fence and going to see Mrs Bird first, but he hastily changed his mind as Mr Curry turned and gave him a final glare before disappearing down the side of his house.

  Pushing his doubts to one side, Paddington turned his attention to the hammock. He was the sort of bear who liked anything new, or, at least, anything which was new to him; for seen at close quarters, the hammock looked, if possible, even older than it had from a distance.

  Although, as Mr Curry had explained to him, the hammock was meant to have holes, some of them looked far larger than they had started off as originally, and all in all Paddington decided he didn’t much like the look of it.

  But it was when he actually tried to climb into it that his troubles really began, for he soon discovered that looking at a hammock is one thing; getting into one is quite another matter.

  To start with it was rather higher off the ground than he would have liked, and not for the first time Paddington found himself wishing bears were born with longer legs, for when he tried to lift one of his up in order to climb in, it didn’t come anywhere near the edge.

  Trying a different approach, Paddington grasped the hammock from underneath with both paws, then taking a deep breath he heaved both legs off the ground in the hope of getting them round the middle and gr
ipping it from either side like a pair of pincers.

  The first part of his manoeuvre went very well indeed, and for several moments he hung suspended beneath the hammock while he took stock of the situation. It was when he tried to carry out his next move that things started to go wrong, for without Wellington boots his claws got stuck in the rope mesh and try as he might he couldn’t free them. In the end he had to let go with his paws and hope for the best. For a moment or two he hung upside down with his head a few inches from the ground until there was a sudden ‘ping’ and the string broke.

  Paddington was very glad he’d been wearing his hat, for Mr Curry’s lawn felt decidedly hard. As it was, the marmalade sandwich he usually kept there in case of an emergency went some way towards breaking his fall, and for a moment or two he lay where he was gasping for breath while he tried hard to think of some other way of tackling the problem.

  Without a book of instructions it was very hard, and in the end he decided the only answer was to take the bull by the horns and make a run at it. Crossing to the far side of the lawn he took another deep breath, pulled his hat down over his ears, and then hurried towards the hammock as fast as his legs would carry him. As it loomed up in front of him he took a tremendous leap in the air, and clutched blindly at the first thing which met his grasp.

  Paddington wasn’t quite sure what happened next. He was vaguely aware of a feeling of relief as his paws met with rope, which he clung to as hard as he could, then to his relief he felt the rest of him land in something soft. After that everything became a blur. Almost at once he started spinning round and round like a top. Gradually, however, the spinning slowed down until at last he came to a stop with only his head poking out. The rest of him had the appearance of a tightly-trussed chicken; one moreover which was not only oven-ready but practically ready to serve up for Sunday lunch. Far from being relaxed in the way Mr Curry had described, Paddington felt more like a sailor who had just rounded Cape Horn during a particularly bad storm.

  But the worst was yet to come. He hardly had time to free one of his paws in order to make sure his hat was still on when he felt himself start to spin in the opposite direction, slowly at first, then with ever-increasing speed, until he was suddenly ejected from the hammock like a stone from a catapult, only to land on the ground a moment later in almost the very same spot as before.

  This time he lay where he was for rather longer, while he considered his next move. Paddington wasn’t the sort of bear to be beaten by trifles. In fact, the more things went wrong the more determined he usually became to put them to rights.

  It was as he lay gazing up at the sky while he pondered the matter that he suddenly caught sight of something dangling overhead, and as he did so another idea gradually entered his mind.

  In his haste to clear a space so that he could erect the hammock between the two trees, Mr Curry had left a rope tied to one of the upper branches.

  Paddington came to a decision. Mr Curry’s fruit trees were old and rather gnarled and just right for climbing. Having made up his mind, in no time at all Paddington was up one of the trunks and sitting astride a main branch ready for action. Grasping it firmly with his legs he reached over to grip the rope and then began lowering himself gently down it to a point where he was directly over the middle of the hammock.

  Feeling very pleased with himself, Paddington paused for a moment in order to mop his brow before continuing. As he did so he noticed a particularly juicy-looking apple only a few inches away. He licked his lips. Climbing trees was hard work and he felt sure that even Mr Curry wouldn’t begrudge one small apple from so many in the circumstances.

  Hastily stuffing the handkerchief back into his duffle coat pocket he reached out his paw and was about to remove it from the branch when an upstairs window in Mr Curry’s house suddenly shot open and the familiar face of the Browns’ neighbour appeared. As he caught sight of Paddington his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets and his face started to go a funny colour.

  “Bear!” he bellowed. “What are you doing now, bear? How dare you pick my apples without permission. Get down off that rope at once!”

  “Oh dear, Mr Curry,” gasped Paddington. “I wasn’t climbing your rope — I was coming down. I …” In his confusion Paddington tried to let go of the apple with one paw and raise his hat with the other. A moment later, and for what seemed like the umpteenth time that morning, he felt himself falling through space.

  Paddington closed his eyes tightly and braced himself for the shock, but in the event it came rather later than he expected. The delay was only for a fraction of a second, but it was accompanied by a very ominous rending sound indeed, one moreover which caused Mr Curry’s face to go an even deeper shade of purple than it had been before. If the Browns’ neighbour had found it hard to believe his eyes when he’d first seen Paddington up his tree, he found it even more difficult as he gazed at the gaping hole in the middle of his hammock through which Paddington had just passed. For once he seemed totally at a loss for words.

  “Bear!” he spluttered at long last. “Bear! What have you done to my hammock? Come back at once, bear!”

  But Paddington had disappeared. Without even bothering to look back he dived through the hole in the fence as if his very life depended on it. He’d had quite enough of hammocks for one day — especially ones which belonged to Mr Curry.

  Mrs Bird gave a snort as she listened to Paddington’s tale of woe later that same day. “His hammock, indeed!” she exclaimed. “The cheek of it. That’s our old hammock. Mr Brown came across it when he was clearing out the garage the other day.”

  “It’s been in there for years,” agreed Mrs Brown. “No wonder you went straight through it. It was as rotten as they come.”

  “Mr Curry ought to think himself lucky he didn’t go through it,” said Judy. “I bet we should never have heard the last of it if he had.”

  “Dad put it out for the dustmen yesterday morning,” explained Jonathan. “Mr Curry must have seen it and taken it away before they arrived. The old scrounger.”

  Paddington listened to the conversation with growing surprise. Although he’d often been in Mr Brown’s garage he’d never come across the hammock before; not that he would have known what it was if he had found it. Now he rather wished he’d been able to have a proper go when it was all right to use.

  “Perhaps,” he said hopefully, “I could sew some holes together and make you a new one. Bears are quite good at that sort of thing.”

  The Browns exchanged glances. “Shall we tell him?” asked Jonathan.

  Judy glanced out of the window. “Let’s,” she said. “I think Daddy’s almost ready.” And without further ado she led the way into the garden.

  Paddington looked more and more mystified as he followed on behind.

  “There!” said Judy when they were all outside. And she pointed towards the middle of the lawn.

  Paddington nearly fell over backwards with surprise again as he received his third shock of the morning. For there, in the middle of the grass, was another hammock, suspended between two poles of a large frame.

  “It’s a special stand,” explained Jonathan. “That means it’ll be easier to climb into …”

  “And much safer once you’re in,” added Judy.

  Mr Brown stood back in order to admire the result of his labours, then he turned to Paddington. “If you like,” he said generously, “you can be the first to test it.”

  Paddington considered the matter carefully for a moment or two as he approached the hammock and took a closer look at it. Then he stood back and held out his paw.

  “No, thank you, Mr Brown,” he announced politely. “After you!

  “In fact,” he added hastily, in case the others insisted, “After everyone!”

  Paddington’s friend, Mr Gruber, chuckled no end when he heard about the goings-on with Mr Curry’s hammock.

  “There’s many a slip ’twixt cup and lip, Mr Brown,” he said. “Or, in this case, ’twixt the
hammock and the ground. I think I shall stick to my old horsehair sofa.”

  Paddington nodded his agreement from behind a cloud of cocoa steam. It was good to be back in the comparative safety of Mr Gruber’s antique shop, enjoying a chat over their morning elevenses.

  “Mind you,” continued Mr Gruber, as Paddington handed him a bun from his morning supply, “I must say all this talk of hammocks takes me back to the days when I was a boy. Many a happy hour I spent in the garden during the school holidays, munching an apple and reading a book as I swung to and fro in the sunshine.” Mr Gruber gave a sigh and a dreamy expression came over his face as he cast his mind back. “It’s probably only my imagination, Mr Brown, but the summers always seemed longer and warmer in those days — especially in my native Hungary.”

  Paddington nearly fell off the sofa with surprise at Mr Gruber’s words. As long as he’d known him his friend had always seemed the same — neither young nor old, and it was hard to picture him looking any different.

  Mr Gruber chuckled again as he caught sight of the expression on Paddington’s face.

  “All that was many moons ago, Mr Brown.” He waved his hand in a circular motion over his head to take in the contents of the shop. “In those days lots of the things you see around you here were ordinary everyday objects such as you or I would use — or throw out when we’d finished with them. Now, people pay ten or even a hundred times what they cost in the first place.”

  Paddington took another bite out of his bun and then gazed around Mr Gruber’s shop. He was so used to the scene he rather took for granted all the various items of gold and silver and copper and bronze; the pictures, and the piles of bric-a-brac which sometimes filled it full almost to overflowing. The thought that once upon a time people had actually used some of Mr Gruber’s antiques had never really occurred to him before and it made him see everything in a new light.