Sebastian

by Alan Field

  “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 Jac
ko. “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.

  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.