Читать книгу Paddington Complete Novels - Michael Bond - Страница 20

Paddington gave a deep sigh and pulled his hat down over his ears in an effort to keep out the noise. There was such a hullabaloo going on it was difficult to write up the notes in his scrapbook.

The excitement had all started when Mr and Mrs Brown and Mrs Bird received an unexpected invitation to a wedding. Luckily both Jonathan and Judy were out for the day or things might have been far worse. Paddington hadn’t been included in the invitation, but he didn’t really mind. He didn’t like weddings very much – apart from the free cake – and he’d been promised a piece of that whether he went or not.

All the same he was beginning to wish everyone would hurry up and go. He had a special reason for wanting to be alone that day.

He sighed again, wiped the pen carefully on the back of his paw, and then mopped up some ink blots which somehow or other had found their way on to the table. He was only just in time, for at that moment the door burst open and Mrs Brown rushed in.

“Ah, there you are, Paddington!” She stopped short in the middle of the room and stared at him. “Why on earth are you wearing your hat indoors?” she asked. “And why is your tongue all blue?”

Paddington stuck out his tongue as far as he could. “It is a funny colour,” he admitted, squinting down at it with interest. “Perhaps I’m sickening for something!”

“You’ll be sickening for something all right if you don’t clear up this mess,” grumbled Mrs Bird as she entered. “Just look at it. Bottles of ink. Glue. Bits of paper. My best sewing scissors. Marmalade all over the table runner, and goodness knows what else.”

Paddington looked around. It was in a bit of a state.

“I’ve almost finished,” he announced. “I’ve just got to rule a few more lines and things. I’ve been writing my memories.”

Paddington took his scrapbook very seriously and spent many long hours carefully pasting in pictures and writing up his adventures. Since he’d been at the Browns’, so much had happened it was now more than half full.

“Well, make sure you do clear everything up,” said Mrs Brown, “or we shan’t bring you back any cake. Now do take care of yourself. And don’t forget – when the baker comes we want two loaves.” With that she waved goodbye and followed Mrs Bird out of the room.

“You know,” said Mrs Bird, as she stepped into the car, “I have a feeling that bear has something up his paw. He seemed most anxious for us to leave.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs Brown. “I don’t see what he can do. We shan’t be away all that long.”

“Ah!” replied Mrs Bird darkly. “That’s as may be. But he’s been hanging about on the landing upstairs half the morning. I’m sure he’s up to something.”

Mr Brown, who didn’t like weddings much either, and was secretly wishing he could stay at home with Paddington, looked over his shoulder as he let in the clutch. “Perhaps I ought to stay as well,” he said. “Then I could get on with decorating his new room.”

“Now, Henry,” said Mrs Brown firmly. “You’re coming to the wedding and that’s that. Paddington will be quite all right by himself. He’s a very capable bear. And as for you wanting to get on with decorating his new room… you haven’t done a thing towards it for over a fortnight, so I’m sure it can wait another day.”

Paddington’s new room had become a sore point in the Brown household. It was over two weeks since Mr Brown had first thought of doing it. So far he had stripped all the old wallpaper from the walls, removed the picture rails, the wood round the doors, the door handle, and everything else that was loose, or that he had made loose, and bought a lot of bright new wallpaper, some whitewash, and some paint. There matters had rested.

In the back of the car Mrs Bird pretended she hadn’t heard a thing. An idea had suddenly come into her mind and she was hoping it hadn’t entered Paddington’s as well; but Mrs Bird knew the workings of Paddington’s mind better than most and she feared the worst. Had she but known, her fears were being realised at that very moment. Paddington was busy scratching out the words ‘AT A LEWSE END’ in his scrapbook and was adding, in large capital letters, the ominous ones: ‘DECKERATING MY NEW ROOM!’

It was while he’d been writing ‘AT A LEWSE END’ in his scrapbook earlier in the day that the idea had come to him. Paddington had noticed in the past that he often got his best ideas when he was ‘at a loose end’.

For a long while all his belongings had been packed away ready for the big move to his new room, and he was beginning to get impatient. Every time he wanted anything special he had to undo yards of string and brown paper.

Having underlined the words in red, Paddington cleared everything up, locked his scrapbook carefully in his suitcase, and hurried upstairs. He had several times offered to lend a paw with the decorating, but for some reason or other Mr Brown had put his foot down on the idea and hadn’t even allowed him in the room while work was in progress. Paddington couldn’t quite understand why. He was sure he would be very good at it.

The room in question was an old box-room which had been out of use for a number of years, and when he entered it, Paddington found it was even more interesting than he had expected.

He closed the door carefully behind him and sniffed. There was an exciting smell of paint and whitewash in the air. Not only that, but there were some steps, a trestle table, several brushes, a number of rolls of wallpaper, and a big pail of whitewash.

The room had a lovely echo as well, and he spent a long time sitting in the middle of the floor while he was stirring the paint, just listening to his new voice.

There were so many different and interesting things around that it was a job to know what to do first. Eventually Paddington decided on the painting. Choosing one of Mr Brown’s best brushes, he dipped it into the pot of paint and then looked round the room for something to dab it on.

It wasn’t until he had been working on the window-frame for several minutes that he began to wish he had started on something else. The brush made his arm ache, and when he tried dipping his paw in the paint pot instead and rubbing it on, more paint seemed to go on to the glass than the wooden part, so that the room became quite dark.

“Perhaps,” said Paddington, waving the brush in the air and addressing the room in general, “perhaps if I do the ceiling first with the whitewash I can cover all the drips on the wall with the wallpaper.”

But when Paddington started work on the whitewashing he found it was almost as hard as painting. Even by standing on tip-toe at the very top of the steps, he had a job to reach the ceiling. The bucket of whitewash was much too heavy for him to lift, so that he had to come down the steps every time in order to dip the brush in. And when he carried the brush up again, the whitewash ran down his paw and made his fur all matted.

Looking around him, Paddington began to wish he was still ‘at a loose end’. Things were beginning to get in rather a mess again. He felt sure Mrs Bird would have something to say when she saw it.

It was then that he had a brainwave. Paddington was a resourceful bear and he didn’t like being beaten by things. Recently he had become interested in a house which was being built nearby. He had first seen it from the window of his bedroom and since then he’d spent many hours talking to the men and watching while they hoisted their tools and cement up to the top floor by means of a rope and pulley. Once, Mr Briggs, the foreman, had even taken him up in the bucket too, and had let him lay several bricks.

Now the Browns’ house was an old one and in the middle of the ceiling there was a large hook where a big lamp had once hung. Not only that, but in one corner of the room there was a thin coil of rope as well…

Paddington set to work quickly. First he tied one end of the rope to the handle of the bucket. Then he climbed up the steps and passed the other end through the hook in the ceiling. But even so, when he had climbed down again, it still took him a long time to pull the bucket anywhere near the top of the steps. It was full to the brim with whitewash and very heavy, so that he had to stop every few seconds and tie the other end of the rope to the steps for safety.

It was when he undid the rope for the last time that things started to go wrong. As Paddington closed his eyes and leaned back for the final pull he suddenly felt to his surprise as if he was floating on air. It was a most strange feeling. He reached out one foot and waved it around. There was definitely nothing there. He opened one eye and then nearly let go of the rope in astonishment as he saw the bucket of whitewash going past him on its way down.

Suddenly everything seemed to happen at once. Before he could even reach out a paw or shout for help, his head hit the ceiling and there was a clang as the bucket hit the floor.

For a few seconds Paddington clung there, kicking the air and not knowing what to do. Then there was a gurgling sound from below. Looking down, he saw to his horror that all the whitewash was running out of the bucket. He felt the rope begin to move again as the bucket got lighter, and then it shot past him again as he descended, to land with a bump in the middle of a sea of whitewash.

Even then his troubles weren’t over. As he tried to regain his balance on the slippery floor, he let go of the rope, and with a rushing noise the bucket shot downwards again and landed on top of his head, completely covering him.

Paddington lay on his back in the whitewash for several minutes, trying to get his breath back and wondering what had hit him. When he did sit up and take the bucket off his head he quickly put it back on again. There was whitewash all over the floor, the paint pots had been upset into little rivers of brown and green, and Mr Brown’s decorating cap was floating in one corner of the room. When Paddington saw it he felt very glad he’d left his hat downstairs.

One thing was certain – he was going to have a lot of explaining to do. And that was going to be even more difficult than usual, because he couldn’t even explain to himself quite what had gone wrong.

It was some while later, when he was sitting on the upturned bucket thinking about things, that the idea of doing the wallpapering came to him. Paddington had a hopeful nature and he believed in looking on the bright side. If he did the wallpapering really well, the others might not even notice the mess he’d made.

Paddington was fairly confident about the wallpapering. Unknown to Mr Brown, he had often watched him in the past through a crack in the door, and it looked quite simple. All you had to do was to brush some sticky stuff on the back of the paper and then put it on the wall. The high parts weren’t too difficult, even for a bear, because you could fold the paper in two and put a broom in the middle where the fold was. Then you simply pushed the broom up and down the wall in case there were any nasty wrinkles.

Paddington felt much more cheerful now he’d thought of the wallpapering. He found some paste already mixed in another bucket, which he put on top of the trestle while he unrolled the paper. It was a little difficult at first because every time he tried to unroll the paper he had to crawl along the trestle pushing it with his paws and the other end rolled up again and followed behind him. But eventually he managed to get one piece completely covered in paste.

He climbed down off the trestle, carefully avoiding the worst of the whitewash, which by now was beginning to dry in large lumps, and lifted the sheet of wallpaper on to a broom. It was a long sheet of paper, much longer than it had seemed when he was putting the paste on, and somehow or other, as Paddington waved the broom about over his head, it began to wrap itself around him.

After a struggle he managed to push his way out and headed in the general direction of a piece of wall. He stood back and surveyed the result. The paper was torn in several places, and there seemed to be a lot of paste on the outside, but Paddington felt quite pleased with himself. He decided to try another piece, then another, running backwards and forwards between the trestle and the walls as fast as his legs could carry him, in an effort to get it all finished before the Browns returned.

Some of the pieces didn’t quite join, others overlapped, and on most of them were some very odd-looking patches of paste and whitewash. None of the pieces were as straight as he would have liked, but when he put his head on one side and squinted, Paddington felt the overall effect was quite nice, and he felt very pleased with himself.

It was as he was taking a final look round the room at his handiwork that he noticed something very strange. There was a window, and there was also a fireplace. But there was no longer any sign of a door. Paddington stopped squinting and his eyes grew rounder and rounder. He distinctly remembered there had been a door because he had come through it. He blinked at all four walls. It was difficult to see properly because the paint on the window-glass had started to dry and there was hardly any light coming through – but there most definitely wasn’t a door!

“I can’t understand it,” said Mr Brown as he entered the dining-room. “I’ve looked everywhere and there’s no sign of Paddington. I told you I should have stayed at home with him.”

Mrs Brown looked worried. “Oh dear, I hope nothing’s happened to him. It’s so unlike him to go out without leaving a note.”

“He’s not in his room,” said Judy.

“Mr Gruber hasn’t seen him either,” added Jonathan. “I’ve just been down to the market and he says he hasn’t seen him since they had cocoa together this morning.”

“Have you seen Paddington anywhere?” asked Mrs Brown as Mrs Bird entered, carrying a tray of supper things.

“I don’t know about Paddington,” said Mrs Bird. “I’ve been having enough trouble over the water pipes without missing bears. I think they’ve got an air lock or something. They’ve been banging away ever since we came in.”

Mr Brown listened for a moment. “It does sound like water pipes,” he said. “And yet… it isn’t regular enough, somehow.” He went outside into the hall. “It’s a sort of thumping noise…”

“Crikey!” shouted Jonathan. “Listen… it’s someone sending an S.O.S.”

Everyone exchanged glances and then, in one voice, cried: “Paddington!”

“Mercy me,” said Mrs Bird as they burst through the papered-up door. “There must have been an earthquake or something. And either that’s Paddington or it’s his ghost!” She pointed towards a small, white figure as it rose from an upturned bucket to greet them.

“I couldn’t find the door,” said Paddington, plaintively. “I think I must have papered it over when I did the decorating. It was there when I came in. I remember seeing it. So I banged on the floor with a broom handle.”

“Gosh!” said Jonathan, admiringly. “What a mess!”

“You… papered… it over… when… you… did… the… decorating,” repeated Mr Brown. He was a bit slow to grasp things sometimes.

“That’s right,” said Paddington. “I did it as a surprise.” He waved a paw round the room. “I’m afraid it’s in a bit of a mess, but it isn’t dry yet.”

While the idea was slowly sinking into Mr Brown’s mind, Mrs Bird came to Paddington’s rescue. “Now it’s not a bit of good holding an inquest,” she said. “What’s done is done. And if you ask me it’s a good thing too. Now perhaps we shall get some proper decorators in to do the job.” With that she took hold of Paddington’s paw and led him out of the room.

“As for you, young bear – you’re going straight into a hot bath before all that plaster and stuff sets hard!”

Mr Brown looked after the retreating figures of Mrs Bird and Paddington and then at the long trail of white footprints and pawmarks. “Bears!” he said, bitterly.

Paddington hung about in his room for a long time after his bath and waited until the last possible minute before going downstairs to supper. He had a nasty feeling he was in disgrace. But surprisingly the word ‘decorating’ wasn’t mentioned at all that evening.

Even more surprisingly, while he was sitting up in bed drinking his cocoa, several people came to see him and each of them gave him ten pence. It was all very mysterious, but Paddington didn’t like to ask why in case they changed their minds.

It was Judy who solved the problem for him when she came in to say good night.

“I expect Mummy and Mrs Bird gave you ten pence because they don’t want Daddy to do any more decorating,” she explained. “He always starts things and never finishes them. And I expect Daddy gave you one because he didn’t want to finish it anyway. Now they’re getting a proper decorator in, so everyone’s happy!”

Paddington sipped his cocoa thoughtfully. “Perhaps if I did another room I’d get another thirty pence,” he said.

“Oh no, you don’t,” said Judy sternly. “You’ve done quite enough for one day. If I were you I shouldn’t mention the word ‘decorating’ for a long time to come.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Paddington sleepily, as he stretched out his paws. “But I was at a loose end.”