Sebastian (2 page)

Chapter 3: Portrait of a Bear

By the light that came through the window from the street lamps below, I could see Géraldine's animals sitting in their various places around the room. Well, there were certainly some very queer-looking things. One especially was bright yellow with black spots all over it - I hoped it wasn't suffering from measles.

The cause of the ‘plop' was a wooden soldier who had landed on his head next to the bed post. He had a red tunic and black trousers, and wore a little painted beard, which probably made him look rather sinister when he was the right way up.

I was pleased to see that I was taller than any of them. There was even a little grey mouse that wasn't much bigger than my paw. It had a very bright face though, like most mice, and sharp eyes. It was standing up on its back legs and it shouted out in a voice like a needle that went right through my head.

“What sort of bear are you?”

A fine way to open a conversation I thought, and said “Well, I'm a Teddy Bear.”

“What is a Teddy Bear, please?”

Absurd mouse, I thought. Doesn't even know what a Teddy Bear is. “Well, I suppose you've heard of the President of the United States of America?”

Yes, they all had.

“Well, the President a long time ago was Mr Theodore Roosevelt - Teddy for short. He owned the very first bear in the world, and all other bears were called after him. So you see,” I went on, as modestly as possible, “we bears are all related to the President of the United States.”

There was an awed silence.

“Of course,” I went on, “my own name is Sebastian and I'm a sort of travelling bear. Today I arrived from England, and - well - I expect I shall stop for a little longer. But I'm really going all round the world.”

I hadn't actually thought of going all round the world, but it seemed quite a good idea now I had said it.

“How far is it round the world?” said the mouse.

I'd never measured the world myself, but I did some rapid calculations. “About a million miles,” I said. I knew Auntie Vi lived a mile away, and a million times as far and you were sure to have gone round the world at least once.

It was the turn of the black-spotted yellow thing then.

“Hello, hello!” it chortled, with its foot bent round its head and standing on one leg.

Very funny, I thought. Of course, it was easy when you were made of rubber.

“I'm Brussel,” it said. “I'm very good at tricks as you can see.”

“Once he tied himself into so many knots,” said the wooden soldier gloomily, “that Géraldine had to fetch a sailor to undo him.”

“Of course, I'm
knot
always getting into trouble,” said Brussel. “Géraldine sometimes uses my left foot for rubbing out her homework. In fact,” he went on, “I only have two toes left now.”

I couldn't see that it really mattered about his toes - his feet were so big he would never miss them.

“And this is Aristide the Ant-eater,” said the wooden soldier. “The trouble is, though, he can't talk.”

“Pzwmkldylydo,” said Aristide.

I could see what the soldier meant.

“It's on account of his nose,” said the soldier. “He will talk down it, and being so long the letters all get jumbled up and only nonsense comes out.”

What was the use of an Ant-eater, though, when you were four floors high above the street? He must have been very hungry.

On the bed I noticed a curious cat - all head and no body. It had a zipped-up tummy - for eating the nighties and things, I supposed. Amanda's cat, Muffin, would have found a zipper-tummy very useful with all the tins of food she used to get through.

I was about to go into my lecture on the history and habits of bears - to enlarge their education of course - when I suddenly fell asleep. I knew I must have fallen asleep, because I can only remember waking up in the morning, and I suppose you can only do that if you've fallen asleep first.

Géraldine had whisked me out of bed and was tripping round the room in a kind of French whizzle, or circular dance. We ended up on the floor with Géraldine out of breath and the room still going round and round.

“We're off to do some sightseeing,” she said. “So you'll need your telescope and compass. And I think we'd better change your jersey.”

Zwoop! My jersey had gone in a flash, and probably my ears with it. WOOSH! A fresh jersey. It was the red one with ‘Sebastian' embroidered in white wool across the front.

“Mmm ...” said Géraldine. “I think ... yes - I think a bow tie.”

She dashed into one of the bedrooms and reappeared a minute later with a blue bow tie.

“There,” she said, after snapping the elastic rather painfully around my neck. She held me up to the dressing table mirror.

Well, I must admit, I did look rather smart and began to get excited about sightseeing.

“First we go to Montmartre and later to the Isle de la Cité and you can see Notre Dame,” Géraldine explained as we clattered down the stone stairs. “Oh, and I must get some bread for Maman.”

It was early in the morning but everyone seemed to be up. There were lots of cafés with brightly coloured canopies, and the tables and chairs were outside on the pavement. What a funny idea to have a café and then bring all the furniture outside. Like having a house and living in the garden. Well, nobody was taking any notice so I supposed it was another of those curious French customs. Most of the people sitting at the tables were drinking coffee and eating bread and jam. What fun, I thought, to be able to eat jam in the morning instead of having to wait until tea time.

As we walked along the road was getting steeper and steeper, and narrower and narrower. A stream of water came swishing down the gutter and I could just see with one eye (Géraldine's sleeve was covering the other) that some jolly-faced nuns were cleaning the pavements. They seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves and called “Good morning!” to us as we passed - and one of them added, “Good morning Monsieur Bear,” which made me feel quite pleased.

“Here we are,” said Géraldine at last. “The Place du Tertre. It's very famous - where artists come to paint.”

All the shops in the square had pictures and postcards hanging outside, which suddenly reminded me that I had to write to Toots.

“Would you like to send a postcard?” said Géraldine, reading my thoughts. “Let's go and look.”

There were all kinds of cards, some bigger than I'd ever seen before - in brilliant colours - some all long and thin. The one I liked best was of the Eiffel tower, all lit up at night.

“How about the Eiffel tower?” asked Géraldine.

She paid the lady in the shop and we went and sat on a little wooden chair that didn't seem to belong to anyone in particular.

“Now,” she said, planting me firmly on her knees and holding a pen between my paws, “who do you want to write to? We've sent Amanda a telegram, so I suppose you'll want to send a message to one of your friends. What's the name of that other little bear that makes a jingling noise when you turn him upside-down?”

I was just about to say ‘Toots', when she said, “Ah! I remember, it's Zoots.”

Well I couldn't really contradict her, so Zoots it was.

Dear Zoots

Today it is fine and I am wearing my best jersey. Géraldine is taking me sightseeing.

Wish you were here,

Sebastian

Very higgledy-piggledy writing I thought.

“Now I'll go and post it, and buy the bread for Maman while you sit here,” said Géraldine, briskly arranging me and the telescope and compass on the slatted chair. “Don't go away!”

She was soon lost in the crowd and I hoped she would remember where she had put me. A stuffed bear is at a great disadvantage when it comes to moving around. And what if it rained? I looked up apprehensively, but the sky was quite blue and I began to feel rather pleased with things. There were artists everywhere just as Géraldine had said. Most of them had beards - so that people would recognise them I supposed - and wore very untidy clothes. I was just wondering why it was that bears never seemed to grow beards, when somebody said in a deep voice.

“Ah! But it is impossible!”

A shadow fell over me and looking up I could see a big, bearded face (not unlike a bear, actually). It was studying me intently.

“But it is extraordinary,” he went on. “This I have never seen. A stuffed, golden bear.”

He bent down and tweaked my ears and patted me on the head with a very heavy hand.

“I must paint you. Yes, yes, yes!”

His eyes were glowing and he looked quite ecstatic through his thick beard and spectacles. Fancy never having seen a bear before! Did he mean to paint
me
though, or my picture?

It was a relief when he brought along his easel and box of paints and little stool.

“Now my little bear, I arrange you so ... and so. Hmmmm.” He stood back and examined me critically. “I think ... I think. Yes, a beret! Pardon Monsieur - may I?” He snatched the beret from the head of the old gentleman sitting next to us, and before he could protest pulled it over my ears at a rakish angle. “Voilà! It is perfect,” he said in an admiring tone. “Now for the portrait.”

Whistling and singing and burbling to himself, he squeezed some beautifully coloured paints from tubes and mixed them all up on his palette with a little knife.

The portrait began to take shape. Not exactly right for the nose I thought, but it was artist's licence, as Amanda used to say. As long as he made both ears the same size I wouldn't mind.

Quite a crowd had gathered round us, including Géraldine who was smiling at me encouragingly. Everyone was jostling everyone else to get a look at the picture. My joints were just beginning to get stiff when the artist made a flourish with his palette knife and said, “Voilà! It's finished!”

“That's a great picture, Mac,” said a tall man in a pale grey suit. “I'll give you a hundred dollars for it.”

“Ah, but Monsieur,” said the artist, “this portrait is unique. Never have I seen such a bear.”

They went on arguing with Géraldine chipping in saying the portrait really belonged to her because it was
her
bear, when all of a sudden somebody grabbed me from behind the chair and in a flash I was being rushed through the crowd. I couldn't see who it was, but I could hear shouts of “Stop thief! Police! Help!” It was no use. Whoever was carrying me was running so quickly that soon the shouts died away and we were alone.

Chapter 4: Captured

I objected most strongly to being stolen as though I was a handbag or something, but I couldn't say a thing - being upside-down again - and being jogged about so much that I began to see double.

We were in a very queer part of Paris with enormous flights of stone steps every so often, and faded-looking buildings. Suddenly we turned into a dark entrance with an iron sign over it called METRO, and went down some stairs into a long tunnel, then through a door at the end on to a platform like a railway station with shining rails disappearing each side into more tunnels.

In a few minutes, with a rattling and squealing like a thousand old bicycles, the strangest looking train I'd ever seen came hurtling along the rails and stopped with a kind of groan. Some of the coaches were painted red, some green. There was no engine so I couldn't imagine it knew where it was going. Perhaps it was off to the underworld and I should see Pluto and all those other people I'd heard about.

We got in and I was propped up in the corner of the seat. At last I could see my captor. It was a boy, about Géraldine's age, dressed in a fancy blue suit with very short trousers. He had a mean face (as I expected), and wore large, round spectacles.

“Let me see,” he said, taking a little index book from his pocket. “B is for bear.” And opened it at B. “What's your name, bear?”

I certainly wasn't going to tell him that, so I looked as though I hadn't heard.

“Ah! S-e-b-a-s-t-i-a-n,” he said, turning his head on one side and reading the name on my jersey. He wrote it carefully in his book. “You're the 97
th
in my collection,” he said casually. “Only three more to go and I shall have a hundred.”

A hundred what? I wondered. Not bears, surely. I shouldn't have thought there were a hundred bears in the whole world. After what seemed hours of travelling through tunnels and different stations we arrived at the very end of the line.

“All change!” they shouted, and the boy picked me up in a sticky hand. Outside the station a big, black car was waiting with a man in uniform, who saluted the boy and opened the door. It all smelt of leather and cigarettes inside.

“I see you've bought another toy for your collection, Master Philippe,” said the chauffeur, smiling respectfully.

No, he certainly didn't buy me, I felt like saying. I wasn't for sale anyway - only my picture. He kidnapped me. I was glad I'd thought of the right word. Or, perhaps on second thoughts it should have been ‘bear-napped'.

“Oh, yes,” replied the boy, yawning indifferently. “I had to fill up the B's with something.”

We drove through twisting country lanes until at length we came across some enormous iron gates guarding the entrance to a drive. A sleepy-looking man, rather like a gnome, shuffled out of a tiny house alongside and took off the chains, and unlocked the gate with a big, rusty key. We swept off up the drive and soon came to a sort of fairy castle, with pointed grey towers, just like in a picture book about giants. There was no drawbridge - which was a bit of a disappointment - and no giants that I could see. All the doorways were too small for them anyway - and I
had
hoped they would help me to escape. The only occupant of the great castle seemed to be a tall, thin man with a sad expression who turned out to be the boy's father. He took a little magnifying glass from his pocket and put it to his eye to examine me.

“Another one, eh?” he said, in a mournful voice.

“Yes, for the B's,” said the boy. “I hadn't got one for the B's.”

His father grunted and gave up trying to focus on me and walked off across the marble entrance hall.

“Come on,” said the boy. “I have to enter you in my records.”

We went up a wide staircase and down a long gallery with mirrors on one side and gloomy oil paintings in gilt frames on the other.

“That's my great uncle,” said the boy, pointing to a portrait of a man with long moustaches and a high collar. “He was a big-game hunter. He used to catch real bears.”

Well, he was welcome to
them
, that's all I could say. From what I had seen of them at the zoo, they spent all their time begging for buns and lumps of sugar - something a stuffed bear would never dream of doing.

I could see myself in the mirrors as we walked along. In some I looked all stretched out like a rubber bear, and in others all squashed up with eyes like a Chinaman.

“They are special mirrors,” said the boy. “One of them makes me ten feet tall.”

We came to a door labelled ‘Nursery'. At last, I thought, I'd have somebody to talk to. But when we went in there was nothing but a strange-looking desk all covered with dials and little lamps, and rows and rows of filing cabinets round the walls. Each cabinet had a letter of the alphabet painted on it.

The boy sat at the desk and clicked some switches and there was a whining noise.

“Now I must feed you into the computer,” he said, in a matter-of-fact voice.

I had never felt so terrified. My squeaker went all twisted inside and my stuffing seemed to turn to jelly. What a dreadful fate - to be fed to some starving beast. I wished I'd never become a travelling bear at all.

“Your particulars, I mean, of course,” the boy went on, giving me a funny look. “So that I've got a record of you.”

I'd hardly stopped trembling when he parked me on the desk by the side of a kind of typewriter, and began to tap the keys.

“We know you're a bear, so we'll put in B-E-A-R to start with. Then you're a quadruped - that means having four feet - Q-U-A-D-R-U-P-E-D. And you're also a plantigrade - that means walking flat-footed. P-L-A-N-T-I-G-R-A-D-E.”

All the time he was typing, the lights were flashing and the machine was making whistling and glugging noises.

“Name - SEBASTIAN. Address - NOT KNOWN,” typed the boy. “Colour - GOLD. Height ...” He took out a tape and measured round my feet, tummy, nose and ears; and then carefully tapped out the results. “Now... special peculiarities: LOOSE STUFFING. RIGHT EAR BIGGER THAN LEFT EAR. NO FUR ON CHEST.” Then, after jabbing a bony finger in my tummy, “SQUEAKER WORKING.

“There,” he said, after the machine had digested it all and had gone quiet. “You're now stored in my hard disc.”

I can't say that I was impressed, and I didn't feel any different, even if I was stored in his hard disc, whatever that was.

“All right then,” he said, noticing my scornful look. “I'll show you just how clever it is.” He clicked a lot of switches and the machine started bubbling again. “I'll ask it a question. Let's say: ‘Who has no fur on his chest and one ear bigger than the other?' Or should it be ‘one ear smaller than the other'?”

He tapped it out anyway and pressed a button. Everything went quiet - while the machine was thinking I suppose - and then it rattled away at great speed and shot out a piece of paper.

Just like Amanda's conductor's outfit. It said on it:

QUADRIBEAR STUFF-I-PED

“Oh dear!” said the boy, looking quite disappointed behind his spectacles. “It's got mixed up. Let's try again.”

And he typed in: ‘What walks on four feet with loose stuffing in its left ear?'

I didn't have time to point out that it was my paw with the loose stuffing, when the machine shot out another piece of paper:

QUESTION NOT UNDERSTOOD. PLEASE CORRECT

The boy went rather pink. “Silly old computer,” he said. “I expect its valves are getting worn out. All right then, let's try this: ‘Who squeaks, has four legs, two ears and whose name begins with S and ends with N'.”

The computer thought a bit and then produced another ticket:

A MOUSE CALLED SAMPSON

The boy looked puzzled. “I'm sure I haven't got a mouse with that name,” he said. “Moles, mammoths, monkeys but no mouse of that name. Oh, well, I'm tired anyway.” And he clicked off all the switches and the lights went out. “You'll have to spend the night in the Ms,” he said. “Till I've got your filing cabinet ready.”

He took me over to the rows of grey metal cabinets, opened a drawer marked M and popped me in.

At first I couldn't see a thing, then slowly the light began to squeeze through the cracks and I could make out lots of cards standing upright at the back. They were all marked with the letter M.

“For all his toys beginning with the letter M,” said a small bright voice coming out of the darkness near the bottom of the stack of cards.

I was quite taken aback - but whatever it was sounded friendly.

“I'm a monkey - “M, you see - and my friends call me Jacko. Not very original, but I've got used to it.”

I could just see his eyes twinkling.

“Surely,” I said, “he doesn't just keep you all in drawers?”

“Some of us have never seen daylight for years,” said Jacko. “He's spoilt, you see. His father is a millionaire and he has whatever he wants. I suppose you've been put in his computer?”

I told him what a shock it gave me.

“He spends ages just asking it silly questions. And it does all his homework.”

“Perhaps one day he'll ask a question it can't answer, and it will blow up in a rage,” I said.

“What fun that would be,” sighed Jacko, as though he didn't believe it possible.

Just then there was a pattering noise and a faint squeak. A mouse popped in through a crack in the corner of the drawer. It sniffed my foot, and then trotted over to Jacko and sniffed his paw. Then it squeaked again and went out the way it had come.

“It must be very small,” I said, “to be able to get through such a tiny hole.”

“Very
thin
you mean,” said Jacko. “he's on a diet you see.”

“You mean it's slimming?” I'd never heard of a mouse slimming. Auntie Vi, yes. Auntie Vi was always refusing sugar for her tea, but it never seemed to make any difference.

“Not that sort of diet,” said Jacko. “It won't eat anything but cream buns, and they only have them on Sundays.”

He chattered on about all the happenings in the castle, and about the other animals that lived in the various drawers. Gradually the light failed and it went velvet black and we nodded off to sleep.