Sebastian (3 page)

Chapter 5: The Singing Chef

Crash! The filing cabinet drawer shot open like an express train. The light was brilliant. I hadn't time to say good-bye to Jacko - or even to get a proper look at him - because I was hauled out by my left ear.

“You might as well see round today,” said the boy, “because I'll soon have your cupboard ready and then I only get you out once a month for inspection, and every year for dry-cleaning.”

Dry-cleaning! What a terrible thought - to be going round and round in those dreadful machines with little round windows.

“And moth balls every winter,” added the boy.

So that was the funny smell inside the filing cabinet last night!

The boy took me into the next room and I had to wait while he finished his bread and jam and coffee.

There was a knock at the door and a little man with a bow tie came in.

“Your paper, Master Philippe,” he said, and laid it out next to me on the window seat.

I was just about to watch him go out to see whether he had long tails on his coat, when I caught sight of a picture on the front page of the paper that I recognised.

It was me! Well, it was a photograph of my portrait - the one the artist had painted the day before. In large letters it said:

VALUABLE BEAR STOLEN IN MONTMARTRE

A rare English Teddy bear was stolen yesterday while its portrait was being painted by Gaston Delaunay, the well-known artist. The bear was on a visit to the Capital and was staying with the family of Sergeant Hector Pigeau of the Paris Sûreté.

The boy noticed me looking at the paper and snatched it up.

“Well, what a find,” he giggled. “So you're valuable. I must alter the entry in the computer. I only put you at 10 francs.”

He treated it as though it was a great joke, and I had hoped he might have been scared - reading about Sergeant Pigeau. But I suppose he was too conceited.

“They will never find you here, of course,” he said, reading my thoughts. “We're 20 miles from Paris, and anyway no-one is allowed through the gates.”

He finished off his breakfast, dipping chunks of bread into his coffee and making sucking noises.

“Come on then,” he said, grabbing me by the jersey. “You can see my collection.”

We started with the A's and worked on right through all the cupboards until we reached X. There were all sorts of things - some I'd never even heard of, like Pterodactyls and Gnus, and Duckbilled-Platypussies - as well as the usual selection of dogs, cats, pandas, mice, donkeys and so on.

We hurried past X.

“There's just nothing beginning with X,” said the boy crossly. “I've looked everywhere and nothing is X-something. I suppose you wouldn't know ...”

I didn't. And I wouldn't have told him anyway.

He frowned so hard that his eyes got lost inside his thick spectacles.

“X-something. X-elope or X-osaurus or an x-apotamus. There must be a word.” He parked me on the edge of his computer desk. “Perhaps if I feed in all the names of all the animals, and then all the letters of the alphabet, and then mix them all up I might get the answer,” he said. “Yes, yes, I might find a new animal altogether that no-one's even discovered yet!”

He went pink with excitement and clicked the switches and started to type. Tickets began to pop up everywhere. One of them shot out and hit me on the nose. It was just enough to tip me over the edge of the table, and before I could say ‘Help' I was in the waste paper basket. (Upside-down again, of course).

The boy went on rattling away at his computer and never seemed to notice I'd gone. Papers of all kinds began to shower over me and soon I was quite covered up.

I started thinking - as you do when you're upside-down in a waste paper basket - about my emergency things that Amanda had given me. Sticking plaster, reel of cotton, treacle toffee - but they would all have been useless. And I supposed that Géraldine would have eaten the toffee by now anyway.

Just then some striped trousers with shiny black shoes appeared in front of my nose and a voice said something I couldn't quite catch.

“Yes, yes, take it away,” I could hear the boy shouting above the noise of his typewriter.

Suddenly I was shot up in the waste paper basket just like a lift and carried off by the man in the striped trousers. We went down some steps and through a door that led outside the castle. There was a clanging of metal and I was shot out of the basket. Another clang and it was dark. Of course I knew exactly where I was. I had often heard the bin men at home, but I never expected to end up in one of their bins.

There was a kind of smell symphony inside: cabbage, onions, garlic, carrots, old puddings and such things. I suppose little dogs would have enjoyed it, but it wasn't to my taste at all. I'd hardly had time to think what to do next when the lid opened and an avalanche of potato peelings fell over me.

“Mamma Mia!” said an astonished voice. “What is this?”

It was a dark-looking man in a white overall. He picked me up and dusted off the peelings, and pulled a half-eaten carrot from my ear.

“What are you doing in there?” he asked.

I could have told him but it would have taken too long to explain.

He put me in the empty bowl he was carrying and we went through into the castle kitchens. There was a terrible din going on inside - somebody was singing at the top of his voice and big cauldrons were bubbling away on stoves. It was all full of steam and I could only just make out the cause of all the noise.

“It's Signor Spaghetti, the chef,” said the man carrying me. “He's the greatest chef in all France: at least, that's what he told me.”

“Franco! Franco!” roared the chef when he saw us. “What you do with a bear in a bowl? You want him cooked, eh? You want bear pie?”

He went off into peals of laughter, slapping his big wooden spoon against his leg. It didn't seem a joke to me - I half thought he meant it.

After he had wiped the tears from his eyes with his enormous white apron, he picked me up, straightened my bow tie, and set me on a marble slab.

“Magnifico! Such a bear you don't see in Italy. Eh, Franco?”

“No, never. No,” said Franco, after being prodded in the ribs with the wooden spoon.

“But wait,” said the chef. “This face I see somewhere else!” He frowned in concentration while the soup boiled over on a neighbouring stove. “Ecco! The paper. He was in the paper this morning. Stolen! That was it. He ... was ... stolen. It's that little brat in there.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the door leading into the castle. “Now what you think, Franco? If he's stolen, there must be ... a reward!”

“A reward,” nodded Franco.

“We got to think of a plan to get the bear from here, back to Paris.” I almost squeaked with relief. Escape already! “My brothers. That's the way. My brothers come tonight, like every summer.”

Franco was looking a bit puzzled.

“Stupido! My brothers in the travelling circus, of course. They can take him back and we can all share the reward.”

“How many brothers you got?” asked Franco.

“Seven brothers. Now let's say a 1000 franc reward, that's ...”

They went off into calculations, writing with a stick of macaroni on some flour that Signor Spaghetti had spread out on the table.

“It would be easier with three brothers,” said Franco at length.

“No, no. I got seven brothers. Seven!” bellowed the chef.

“All right, all right. Let's say 900 francs instead. Seven brothers and me and you into 900 francs go 100 francs each.”

A bell rang out suddenly and the chef padded over to an ancient-looking telephone.

“Yes, of course, Monsieur le Comte. Yes, at once, Monsieur le Comte.”

He replaced the phone looking very agitated. “Quick, Franco. The Count is coming to inspect the kitchens. We got to tidy up. Get your shirts out of the cooking pot and put those bottles of wine back in the cellar.”

Franco scuttled round the kitchen, knocking things off the tables in his agitation. The chef crammed all the dirty pots and pans into a big cupboard, mopped the floor and returned to the boiling soup, which he began to stir with his wooden spoon. Franco came back from taking his dripping shirts and bottles of wine down to the cellar. They both tried to look casual, but Franco's knees were knocking together and the chef looked hot under his tall hat.

Footsteps sounded outside the door, when suddenly the chef noticed me still sitting on the table.

“The bear, hide the bear quick,” he hissed at Franco.

Franco snatched me off the table with a trembling hand and pushed me into the first cupboard he came to.

When I saw all the frost and ice inside, I realised what sort of cupboard it was. Toots used to say that if you didn't open the refrigerator for several weeks, polar bears and things would come and live there. It was all right for polar bears, of course, but my sort of bear needed the sun. What if I turned into a snowman or something? Or got so cold my fur went blue?

Once more there was no way of escape. I wished Amanda had thought of things like being upside-down in waste bins, and waste paper baskets, and being locked in refrigerators. I had a compass for being lost in a desert, and a reel of cotton for a maze - and I hadn't come to either of them yet.

Time seemed to drag on very slowly in the refrigerator. I could feel my fur going all brittle like a hedgehog, and icicles started to grow from my ears and nose. I discovered that I was sitting on a large block of ice cream, which didn't make things any better.

Just as I'd decided to play a game of imagining faces on all the eggs in the rack in front of me, I heard a terrible bellowing noise outside.

“Fool! Idiot! Stupid kitchen plate-scraper! Son of a cabbage! You must have put him somewhere!”

I could hear Franco mumbling apologies, and the chef whacking him with his spoon. Then all the cupboard doors in the kitchen started banging, one after the other. At last it was the turn of the refrigerator.

“Santo Cielo!” said the chef when he saw me. “He has turned into a polar bear!” Tears ran down his cheeks. “We must thaw him out before my brothers come,” he said to Franco.

Franco looked pained, and spread out both arms. “How we do it, chef? No fires, no heating.”

The chef patted me on the head, causing a snow shower from my ears. “We think of something,” he said in a soothing voice.

“Ah!” said Franco, suddenly looking intelligent. “The oven!”

Oh dear, I thought, remembering the story of King Alfred and the burned cakes.

“But what is the temperature for thawing a bear?” pondered the chef. “Puddings - number 1. Fruit cake - number 3. Roast lamb - number 5.”

“I think pudding,” said Franco firmly. “We don't want him to catch fire.”

So I was put on a meat dish and carefully placed on the bottom shelf.

“A little sugar and nutmeg?” said the chef with a broad smile, and then nodded at me and closed the door.

Every so often they looked in to see if I was done. Franco even poked me with a fork - just in fun (I hoped).

After fifteen minutes they agreed that I was thawed out and the chef fetched a brush and comb to tidy me up.

His brothers arrived just as it was getting dark - all jolly men of different shapes and sizes with turned-down moustaches and broad-brimmed hats.

“Magnifico! Magnifico!” they all agreed when the chef introduced me. He explained about the reward and how they would have to smuggle me out of the castle, and gave them the newspaper cutting about me.

Luigi took charge of me - he was the eldest and strongest brother.

“He is the weight-lifter,” said the chef proudly.

Luigi picked up a marble-topped table in one hand with me in the other just to prove it.

“Bravo, bravo!” shouted Franco.

“And there is Sandro,” went on the chef. “He is the smallest and funniest, so he is the clown. Vittorio is the lion-tamer, Alberto and Enrico work the trapeze, Renato trains the horses, and Ugo plays the big drum.”

They all bowed in turn and I felt quite honoured.

“Now, my brothers,” said the chef, wiping a tear from his eye. “You will have to go. The Count is in a very bad temper and he is not in the mood for visitors.”

They all nodded sympathetically and hugged the chef in turn and slapped Franco on the back.

Outside on the castle drive the caravans were waiting - all brightly painted but no horses like the picture books, which was sad. They were really big lorries with trailers. There was a lot of shouting and waving and weeping as we moved off.

Luigi put me beside him on the driving seat.

“Well, Sebastino,” he said. “For three months you are going to be the mascot of my circus. You see, we don't come back to Paris till the autumn, and we need somebody to bring the circus good luck.”

We turned out of the drive and on to the open road.

I felt a thrill of excitement trembling through all my stuffing as though it was going to come alive. Circus bear! How magnificent!