Paddington Here and Now (8 page)

But Mr. Gruber wasn’t letting on. “It is something I have always wanted to do, Mr. Brown” was all he would say.

Mrs. Bird was equally tight-lipped on the subject, and for most of the journey everyone else was kept so busy trying out the various gadgets they hardly noticed where they were going anyway.

When they eventually drew to a halt Jonathan pressed the button again, and as the curtains parted he and Judy joined Paddington at one of the windows.

“Guess what!” said Jonathan.

“It looks like a bicycle wheel to me,” said Paddington.

“It’s called the London Eye,” said Judy.

“We’re all going for a ride on it,” explained Mr. Gruber.

“We’re going for a ride on a bicycle wheel!” exclaimed Paddington. “I hope we don’t get a puncture!”

“There’s no fear of that,” said Mr. Gruber. “If you take a closer look, you will see there are lots of cabins all around the rim. We shall be traveling in one of those.”

“They look as though they are made of glass,” said Judy. “They aren’t, of course, but it does mean you can look every which way while you are going around.”

“And you can stand up and walk around,” added Jonathan.

“Thirty-two of them,” said Uncle Pastuzo, helping the others disembark from the car. “Each one holds twenty-five passengers. That is nearly eight hundred people. I book through your friend at the oyster shop,
sobrino
, and I pay extra so we have a whole one to ourselves. He is so pleased he say any time you want a holiday you go see him.”

“Mrs. Bird’s right,” whispered Jonathan. “Bears
do
fall on their feet.”

“I fix everything,” said Uncle Pastuzo, as a hostess came forward to greet them. “We take what is called the VIP trip. Tee hee!”

“Tee hee?” repeated Mrs. Brown.

“Ought to be VIB—Very Important Bears!”

Doubled up with laughter at his own joke, Uncle Pastuzo followed on behind their escort.

The timing was exactly right. As they arrived at the starting point, an empty capsule arrived. The doors slid open, and as they stepped aboard, the sun began to disappear behind the Houses of Parliament.

For the first few minutes, as the wheel slowly
revolved and they gathered height, Mr. Gruber pointed out many of the important landmarks still visible in the gathering dusk to Paddington’s uncle: Big Ben; Buckingham Palace; the Tower of London; St. Paul’s cathedral; the many parks and lakes; and the British Telecom Tower, silhouetted like a pencil against the skyline.

Paddington had visited many of them over the years, but somehow, as London began to unfold before his eyes, they seemed to take on a different life,
the buildings evolving into tiny scale models of the real thing, the streets peopled by ants and model cars going hither and thither everywhere he looked.

“Is the only way to see the world,” said Uncle Pastuzo, pleased at everyone’s reaction. “From on high and away from the crowds.”

As darkness fell still further and the capsule gradually rose higher and higher, lights began appearing all over London. Floodlit buildings came into view, and Christmas lights twinkled in the night sky.

They even had a brief glimpse of ice-skaters on the far side of the river farther around to their right.

There was one slight hiccup almost at the end of its journey, when Uncle Pastuzo called them all together to see what he called “something special,” but by the time they had formed themselves into a group, the moment had passed.

It had been one long series of magical moments, and in the rush to disembark, nobody noticed Uncle Pastsuzo disappear for a minute or two. In any case they had grown used to his sudden comings and goings.

On the journey home Paddington joined in the general agreement that it was the best treat they’d had for a very long time.

All the same, Mrs. Bird couldn’t help noticing that in between whiles both Paddington and his uncle were unusually quiet.

She couldn’t help wondering if all the talk about going around the world and now the trip on the London Eye had given Paddington itchy paws, but for the time being she kept her thoughts to herself. There was no sense in spoiling everyone else’s pleasure.

Uncle Pastuzo dropped Mr. Gruber off first.

“You have been a good friend over the years to my
sobrino
,” he said, shaking him warmly by the hand. “For that I bless you.”

Somehow as Mr. Gruber waved good-bye, it all seemed very final.

The Browns’ housekeeper had difficulty in getting to sleep that night, and the result was she woke rather later than usual the next morning. Even so, the house felt strangely quiet.

Slipping into a dressing gown, she was making her way downstairs when she happened to glance out of the landing window and realized Uncle Pastuzo’s car was no longer in the driveway.

Her heart missing a beat, she hastened back upstairs to Paddington’s room.The duvet was pulled back and there was a hollow in the mattress where he must have lain, but it felt cold to the touch.

On the way down again she found two envelopes lying on the front door mat.The one marked “
Señora
Bird” she put into her apron pocket for later; the other was marked for Mr. and Mrs. Brown.

Soon the whole household was awake to her calls, and everyone came rushing downstairs to see what the excitement was about.

The note to Mr. and Mrs Brown was typically short.

“Been there, done that, now is time to go home,” read Mr. Brown. “So,
amigos
, it is time to say
adiós
and
gracias
.”

“That’s nice,” he said, once he had got over the initial shock. “Somehow
adiós
sounds better than good-bye; it’s not quite so final.”

“And
gracias
is so much better than a simple ‘thank you,’” agreed Mrs. Brown.

“The thing is,” said Mrs. Bird, searching for the right words and hardly able to find the right ones to say what was uppermost in her mind. “Where’s Paddington?”

Something in the tone of her voice caused a ripple of apprehension to run through the others.

“He was out in the garden the last time I saw him,” said Jonathan. “I think he was doing some early-morning digging.”

One glance through the dining-room window was enough.

Paddington nearly dropped his seaside spade with surprise when he suddenly found himself surrounded by the rest of the family.

“I was looking for some buried treasure,” he
announced. “Uncle Pastuzo left me a map he made.

“He doesn’t like good-byes, so he slipped it under my door last night after I went to bed.” He held it up for the others to see. “I thought I’d better get up early in case Mr. Curry saw me and wanted to know what I was doing.”

“
X
marks the spot where you start,” said Jonathan, looking at the roughly drawn map.

“It says ten paces north,” said Judy. “Then five paces east.”

“The trouble is,” said Paddington, “I’m not sure which is north.”

“I’ll get my spade,” said Mr. Brown, by now as excited as the rest of them.

Having followed the instructions, he ended up in the shrubbery. That’s my prize buddleia,” he said. “It can’t be under that. At least, I hope it isn’t.”

“It’s probably a case of bear’s paces,” said Mrs. Brown. “They’re not as long as ours. You’d better let Paddington have a go.”

Having first been pointed in the right direction, Paddington set out while the others counted the steps as he went.

Sure enough, this time the trail ended in the middle of a flower bed. Mr. Brown brushed aside a pile of leaves to reveal a freshly dug patch of earth, and after a few prods with his spade he struck metal.

“Brilliant!” exclaimed Jonathan.

“I don’t know about that,” said Mr. Brown. “It’s the box I keep my golf balls in. I hope they’re all right.”

“Do hurry up, Henry,” called Mrs. Brown. “Paddington’s waiting.”

“Why don’t you have a go then,” said Mr. Brown, handing him the spade.

Paddington needed no second bidding, and in no time at all he prized the box out of the ground and had the lid open.

The first thing he came across was a canvas bag with his name on the tag. Pulling on the drawstrings, he felt inside and discovered it was full of foreign coins.

“Uncle Pastuzo must have collected them while he was traveling around the world,” said Jonathan, taking a closer look. “I bet they’re worth a fortune!”

Underneath that, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, were seven large glossy photographs of the whole family taken inside the capsule on the London Eye.

“So that’s where he disappeared to,” said Judy. “I saw a notice on the way in saying if you pose at a certain point a picture is automatically taken, ready to buy when you get off.”

“What a very kind thought,” said Mrs. Brown. “We must have ours framed, Henry. It can have a
place of honor on the mantelpiece.”

“I shall put mine by my bed,” said Mrs. Bird.

“We can take ours with us when we go back to school,” added Judy.

“And I shall put mine alongside Aunt Lucy’s picture,” said Paddington. “I’ll give Mr. Gruber his
tomorrow. I expect he would like it for the shop.”

“We shall miss Uncle Pastuzo,” said Mrs. Brown on the way back to the house.