by Poppy Harris
PUFFIN BOOKS
Hamilton ran along Bethany’s bookshelves until he found a book called Sea and Shore – the Life of the British Coastline. With such a boring title, Hamilton thought, it deserves to be eaten by a hamster. All the same, he pulled it from the shelf, turned the pages and saw …
… sand. And more sand. Pale sand, dark sand, sand with ripples where the waves had been. Deep, soft sand.
He closed his eyes to imagine it. The thought of all that trickly, grainy, yellow sand made his head spin. When Bethany came back, he tapped the book with his claws and looked up at her.
‘Yes,’ she said, turning the pages. ‘Yes, that’s the seaside.’
Hamilton held out his paw for her mobile phone and tapped out a message.
HOW SOON CAN WE GO THERE?
Have you read all of Hammy’s adventures?
HAMMY THE WONDER HAMSTER
HAPPY CHRISTMAS, HAMMY THE
WONDER HAMSTER
HAPPY HOLIDAY, HAMMY THE WONDER HAMSTER!
POPPY HARRIS
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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First published 2010
Text copyright © Poppy Harris, 2010
Illustrations copyright © Dan Bramall, 2010
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-141-95956-6
To Bracha and Tovi
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Hamilton the hamster was very fond of his human friend Bethany. She looked after him, played with him and chatted to him, but today she puzzled him.
Hamilton wasn’t easily puzzled. He was an amazingly intelligent hamster, who could do crosswords and Sudoku in his head and loved helping Bethany with her homework. This morning he had just woken up from a lovely dream about running for miles in hot desert sand, and all he could see of Bethany was her feet, which were sticking out from under her bed. Why was she crawling about under there? He gnawed on a wooden clothes peg, which was his favourite thing today, and watched until she crawled out backwards, pulling her backpack out with her. Then he scratched at the bars of his cage.
‘Oh, hello!’ said Bethany, pushing trails of dark hair out of her eyes. ‘You’ve woken up!’
Hamilton put his head on one side and looked hard at the backpack. It was the summer holidays, so Bethany didn’t need it for school.
‘Do you want to know why I need this?’ she asked. ‘I was going to tell you, but you were asleep.’
She would have opened Hamilton’s cage, but he was already doing that himself. He stepped on to her outstretched hand and sat up to listen as she stroked his soft white and gold fur.
‘Nan and Grandie – that’s Mum’s parents – live at Kettle Bay,’ said Bethany, ‘by the seaside, and, Hamilton, it’s just fantastic there. You can get straight down to the beach from their house – it’s so close – and it’s one of my favourite places ever. And they’ve invited Sam and me to go there to stay, all next week!’
Hamilton didn’t see what was so good about this. Bethany was going away?
‘Now, Hamilton,’ she went on, ‘Mum said she’d look after you, and so did Chloe, but I don’t want to leave you. Would you like to come on holiday with me to the seaside?’
Hamilton tipped his head to one side to think about it.
‘Mum might be a bit difficult about it, but she’ll get used to the idea,’ said Bethany. ‘So what do you think? Do you want to come on holiday with me?’
Rain began to patter on the window and Mum’s voice called from downstairs: ‘Bethany! Sam! Come and help me bring the washing in!’
‘I have to go,’ said Bethany. ‘Have a think about what I said. And –’ she placed a neatly cut-out square of newspaper in front of him – ‘there’s your crossword.’
Hamilton usually did the crossword as soon as Bethany gave it to him, but today she had asked him to think about going on holiday, so he left the crossword for a little bit and did think, very hard. He was astonishingly good at that.
Hamilton didn’t know why he was so brainy. Neither did Bethany. There was one person who did, and his name was Dr Tim Taverner.
Tim Taverner worked at the university in the nearest town. He was doing some very secret (and illegal) work and had made a microchip packed with artificial intelligence. It was so small it was really only a microspeck, but one dreadful morning he had accidently brushed it into his waste-paper basket along with some sesame seeds, crumbs, bits of apple and a paper aeroplane (making paper planes helped him to concentrate). By the time he realized what he’d done, Mary the cleaner had emptied the bins, shredded the paper and taken it all to Dolittle’s Pet Shop to be used as bedding in the hamster cages. Until then, Hamilton had only been a young gold-and-white hamster waiting for somebody to buy him, but when he nibbled at that paper, the microspeck had become stuck in his cheek pouch. It was still there, firmly embedded.
Hamilton didn’t know about the microspeck in his cheek. He only knew that he loved reading and puzzles, maths, engineering, apples and aeroplanes – and that Bethany was the nicest person in the world.
What Hamilton – and Bethany – did know was that it was very important to keep Hamilton’s great intelligence a secret between the two of them. Bethany knew that if other people found out about it there would be a fuss, with newspaper reporters and television cameras, and sooner or later somebody important would take Hamilton away from her and make him do intelligence tests and have brain scans. She and Hamilton didn’t want any of this to happen, so nobody else knew his secret. Not even Chloe.
Hamilton considered what Bethany had said about a holiday. He’d be bored without her. Chloe was very nice, but she was always calling him Hammy (which was bearable) or Fluffpot (which he hated). Chloe’s hamster, Toffee, would be in his own cage, so he wouldn’t do Hamilton any harm, but he was a bit dim and you couldn’t have a decent
conversation with him. An afternoon at Chloe’s was all right, but Hamilton didn’t want to go there for a whole week.
The only trouble with going to the seaside, Hamilton decided, was the sea. He knew he wasn’t supposed to get wet, but being a brave, inquisitive hamster, he was always having adventures, and some of them had turned out to be wet adventures and a danger to his health. Being a wet hamster was not pleasant. He certainly didn’t want to go into the sea, and didn’t think Bethany should either. But where there was sea there was a beach, and where there was a beach there was …
He shivered with delight at the thought of it …
Sand!
Hamilton had never touched sand, but he knew that hamsters are originally desert animals and the idea of sand fascinated him. He needed to find out more about beaches. His favourite way of finding things out was on the Internet, but he couldn’t use the computer today, when Mum and Bethany’s little brother Sam were around. Pity about that.
Hamilton ran along Bethany’s bookshelves until he found a book called Sea and Shore – the Life of the British Coastline. With such a boring title, Hamilton thought, it deserves to be eaten by a hamster. All the same, he pulled it from the shelf, turned the pages and saw …
… sand. And more sand. Pale sand, dark sand, sand with ripples where the waves had been. Deep, soft sand.
He closed his eyes to imagine it. The thought of all that trickly, grainy, yellow sand made his head spin. When Bethany came back, he tapped the book with his claws and looked up at her.
‘Yes,’ she said, turning the pages. ‘Yes, that’s the seaside.’
Hamilton held out his paw for her mobile phone and tapped out a message.
HOW SOON CAN WE GO THERE?
Mum and Dad couldn’t see why Bethany needed to take her hamster on holiday and told her he’d be happier at home. Bethany knew perfectly well that he wouldn’t. But she couldn’t tell them that she and her hamster had already discussed it.
‘He’ll miss me,’ she said. ‘He’ll pine for me.’
‘It’s only a week,’ said Mum, ‘and you can’t expect Nan and Grandie to put up with a hamster as well as you and Sam.’
‘Why not?’ asked Bethany, and before they could think of an answer she added, ‘I’ll be looking after him, and he’s no trouble, Mum. You and Auntie Sally had guinea-pigs when you lived there, and they never minded that.’
‘That was different,’ said Mum.
‘What sort of different?’ demanded Bethany.
Mum sighed. ‘Different because we were their children, not their grandchildren, and besides, Nan and Grandie were younger then,’ she said. That didn’t make any sense to Bethany.
‘The change might not be good for Hamilton,’ Dad pointed out. ‘It might make him ill. Hamsters are delicate.’
‘I know that!’ she said, trying not to sound cross because that would make things worse. Bethany resented the idea that she wouldn’t know what was best for Hamilton. But there was no point in making a fight of it, so she just shrugged.
‘I’m going to clean out his cage,’ she announced calmly, and left. Bethany was good at quietly holding out for her own way. Patience usually worked.
It worked this time, too. When the phone rang next day, Bethany answered it. It was, as she had hoped, Grandie.
‘We’re looking forward to having you two next week!’ said Grandie. ‘Your Nan’s already filling up the freezer with cake.’
‘We’re looking forward to it, too,’ said Bethany. ‘Grandie, please – can I ask you something?’
‘You can ask me anything, sweetheart!’ said Grandie.
‘It’s about Hamilton, my hamster,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to leave him behind. He might miss me and go off his food, and he’s never any trouble, so, will it be all right if I bring him with me?’
‘Oh, I do hope you will!’ said Grandie. ‘Your mum and Auntie Sally kept guinea-pigs, you know. It’s a long time since we had a little animal in the house! Will you let me hold him?’
So that was that. On Friday evening, Bethany packed some clothes, including lots of T-shirts, sandals, her swimming costume (blue-and-green and very new), sun block, toothpaste, toothbrush, hairbrush, plenty of good books, her sketch book and some apples to share with Hamilton. In a separate bag, she put hamster food, raisins, some Sudoku puzzles from the Internet, a wooden clothes peg for Hamilton to chew and the cardboard tube from a kitchen roll so he had a tunnel to play in.
While Bethany was busy packing for both of them, Hamilton let himself out of his cage and ran downstairs. He found an open window, jumped out and, keeping a sharp eye open for cats, ran to the garden shed where he squeezed under the door. Bobby the bunny, who belonged to Sam, was sitting in his cage eating a carrot.
‘Hello, Bobby!’ said Hamilton, who spoke Rabbit perfectly. ‘How are you this evening?’
‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Bobby with his mouth full. He looked down at the unfinished food in his bowl. ‘Want a carrot?’
‘No thank you,’ said Hamilton quickly. He didn’t want to eat food that had been lying in Bobby’s dish. Besides, he knew that Bobby was only being polite and really wanted to eat the carrots himself.
‘Did you know your Sam’s going on holiday tomorrow?’ asked Hamilton.
‘Yeah,’ said Bobby without looking up. ‘He told me. He said his mum and dad will feed me and keep me clean, so I’m not bothered.’
‘Not bothered?’ said Hamilton, who found this hard to understand. ‘Because, if you do want to come, I’m sure I can get Bethany to talk to Sam and they’ll arrange it all.’
Bobby was so surprised that he stopped eating. ‘What would I want to go for?’ he asked. ‘I’m warm here. I’m fed. I’ve got a run so I can play on the lawn and eat it. I’m not going anywhere.’
Hamilton gave up and went back to Bethany, who was squeezing a packet of mints into a corner of her bag.
‘I won’t sleep tonight,’ she said as he ran on to her knee. ‘I’ll be too excited. Now, Hamilton, there are things you need to know about the seaside. It’s colder than the desert, for a start. Always stay close to me, and remember that the tide comes in very quickly, so stay away from the shoreline. If you burrow too deep, you’ll find that the sand gets damp.’
Hamilton wrinkled his nose at her. Bethany laughed.
‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘You think I don’t have to tell you all this, but I do. I’ve been to the beach before and I know what it’s like, so I have to warn you.’
Hamilton reached out a paw to ask for her phone, tapped out a message then handed the phone back. She read it and laughed again.
‘Yes, I know I’m being fussy,’ she said. ‘That’s because you keep getting into danger – and I don’t want you to be harmed.’
BUT IT’S ALWAYS OK IN THE END, he texted.
However, that wasn’t the point, and Hamilton knew it. Bethany looked at him sternly. But it’s hard to be stern with a very fluffy hamster who’s teasing you, so she laughed.
‘All the same, Hamilton,’ she said, ‘I get very worried about you when I can’t find you, and very very worried when you get wet. You were lucky to survive at Christmas, running out into the snow like that. I thought I’d never see you alive again!’
Hamilton felt sorry immediately. He didn’t mean to worry Bethany. He ran up her arm and nuzzled against her cheek to tell her that he didn’t mean to upset her, and he really was very fond of her, and all those things that people say with a hug and intelligent hamsters say with a nuzzle. So long as he did what Bethany said, he’d be perfectly safe, unless …
He ran to the phone again and asked, R THERE ANY CATS AT THE CSIDE?
‘I’ve never seen one at Kettle Bay,’ said Bethany.
There you are then, thought Hamilton. No problem!
Bethany was woken next morning by Sam jumping on to her bed.
‘Yay!’ he was shouting. ‘It’s sunny! Get up!’
Bethany grabbed at the duvet as he tried to pull it off her, an
d sleepily curled up again. Eventually she got up and dressed, and was ready and impatient for Mum to drive them to Kettle Bay. But even so, it seemed a lifetime before they reached the seaside. Before they could set off, there were still frisbees and Sam’s cricket stuff to pack, and Mum kept remembering things like wellies and insect repellent. Bethany thought they’d never get away. After that, it still took over an hour to drive there. In his cage, Hamilton stood up on his hind legs, straining to look out of the windows, yet in spite of the excitement he did find he was falling asleep. He couldn’t help it. He’d been up all night running on his wheel and pretending to be in the desert.
Even when they got to Kettle Bay, it still seemed to take forever before anyone got to the beach. First, Nan said they should all have lunch together before Mum went home, so Hamilton decided he might as well have another sleep. Then, when he woke up, half the things that had just been packed into the boot were being packed again into a bag for Nan to take to the beach. Why couldn’t people have cheek pouches, like sensible animals? Finally, Nan told Bethany all the important things that Bethany already knew by heart, which were:
Stay where we can see you.
Paddle in the shallows but don’t swim, because there are strong currents further out.
Always take your phone.
While all this was happening, Bethany glanced down and saw Hamilton in his cage, watching and listening with a twinkle in his eye. Yes, I know, she thought as he winked at her, this is just the way I talked to you. Bethany didn’t ask for permission to take Hamilton with her to the beach – even Nan and Grandie wouldn’t have let her do that – but when she took his cage upstairs, she secretly popped Hamilton into her bag with her phone and a packet of tissues.
Nan, Grandie, Sam, Bethany and a hidden Hamilton finally made it out into the sunshine. There was a taste of salty freshness on the breeze, and Bethany could see the rippling blue-grey and sparkle of the sea, and the wide, everlasting stretch of sky and water. Sand dunes, those small, firm, sandy mounds with spiky grass (the kind you don’t touch because it can cut your fingers), led on to an arc of golden and inviting sandy beach. Bethany took off her sandals and sank her feet into the kind, warm sand. The tide was out and the shoreline was firm and golden. Little white shells and pebbles washed smooth by the sea lay in wavy lines where the sea had left them.
