Buch lesen: «Paddington Takes the Air»

Chapter One A VISIT TO THE DENTIST

PADDINGTON STARED AT Mrs Brown as if he could hardly believe his ears. “You’ve dropped my tooth down the waste disposal!” he exclaimed. “I shan’t even be able to put it under my pillow now!”

Mrs Brown peered helplessly into the gaping hole at the bottom of her kitchen sink. “I’m awfully sorry, dear,” she replied. “It must have been in the leavings when I cleared up after breakfast. I think you’ll have to leave a note explaining what happened.”

It was a tradition in the Browns’ household that anyone who lost a tooth and left it under their pillow that night would find it replaced by fifty pence the next morning, and Paddington looked most upset at being deprived of this experience.

“Perhaps we could try looking under the cover outside,” suggested Judy hopefully. “It might still be in the drain.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Jonathan. “Those waste disposals are jolly good. They grind up anything. It even managed that everlasting toffee Paddington gave me yesterday.

“It was a super one,” he added hastily, as he caught Paddington’s eye. “I wish I could make one half as nice. It was a bit big, though. I couldn’t quite finish it.”

“Well,” said Mr Brown, returning to the vexed question of Paddington’s tooth, “at least it didn’t jam the machine. We’ve only had it a fortnight.”

But if Mr Brown was trying to strike a cheerful note, he failed miserably, for Paddington gave him a very hard stare indeed.

“I’ve had my tooth ever since I was born,” he said. “And it was my best one. I don’t know what Aunt Lucy’s going to say when I write and tell her.”

And with that parting shot, he hurried out of the kitchen and disappeared upstairs in the direction of his room leaving behind a very unhappy group of Browns indeed.

“I don’t see how anyone can have a best tooth,” said Mr Brown, as he made ready to leave for the office.

“Well,” said Mrs Bird, their housekeeper, “best or not, I must say I don’t blame that bear. I don’t think I’d be too happy at the thought of one of my teeth going down a waste disposal – even if it was an accident.”

“It would have to be Paddington’s,” said Judy. “You know how he hates losing anything. Especially when it’s something he’s cleaned twice a day.”

“We shall never hear the last of it,” agreed Mrs Brown. She looked round the kitchen at the remains of the breakfast things. “I do hate Mondays. I don’t know why, but there always seems to be more dried egg on the plates than any other day.”

The others fell silent. It was one of those mornings at number thirty-two Windsor Gardens. Things had started badly when Paddington announced that he’d found a bone in his boiled egg, but remembering a similar occurrence some years before with a Christmas pudding, the Browns had pooh-poohed the idea at first and it wasn’t until a little later on, when he’d gone upstairs to do his Monday morning accounts that the trouble had really begun.

A sudden cry of alarm had brought the rest of the family racing to the scene only to find Paddington on his bed with a pencil stuck between a large gap where one of his back teeth should have been.

Immediately the whole house had been in an uproar. The bed was stripped, carpets were turned back, the vacuum cleaner emptied, pockets turned out; Paddington even tried standing on his head in case he’d swallowed the lost half by mistake, but all to no avail… it was nowhere to be seen.

It wasn’t until Mrs Bird remembered the episode with the boiled egg that they suddenly put two and two together and went scurrying back downstairs again as fast as their legs would carry them.

But they were too late. Before they were halfway down, they heard a loud grinding noise coming from the kitchen and they arrived there just in time to see Mrs Brown switch the machine off.

The waste disposal was still a new toy in the household. Everything from used matchsticks to old bones was fed into its ever-open mouth, but never in her wildest moments would Mrs Brown have dreamed of disposing of one of Paddington’s teeth and she was as upset as anyone when she realised what had happened.

“I can’t see them taking him on the National Health,” she said. “Perhaps he’d better go to the vet.”

“Certainly not,” said Mrs Bird decidedly. “He’ll have to go as a private patient. I’ll ring Mr Leach straight away.”

Although the Browns’ housekeeper kept a firm hand on Paddington’s ‘goings-on’, she was always quick to come to his aid in time of trouble and she bustled out of the room in a very determined manner.

All the same, the others awaited her return with some anxiety, for although Mr Leach had looked after the family’s teeth for more years than they cared to remember, he’d never actually been asked to deal with one of Paddington’s before. They weren’t at all sure how he would view the matter and their spirits rose when Mrs Bird reappeared wearing her coat and hat.

“Mr Leach will see him as soon as we can get there,” she announced. “He keeps a free period for emergencies.”

Mrs Brown heaved a sigh of relief. “How nice,” she said. “It’s not as if we’ve ever registered Paddington with him.”

“Who said anything about Paddington?” replied Mrs Bird innocently. “I simply said we have an emergency in the house.” She glanced up at the ceiling as a loud groan came from somewhere overhead. “And if you ask me, there’s no one who’ll deny the truth of that! I’d better order a taxi.”

While Mrs Bird got busy on the phone again, the others hurried upstairs to see how Paddington was getting on. They found him sitting on the side of his bed wearing a very woebegone expression on his face indeed. Or rather, the little of his face that could be seen, for most of it was concealed behind a large bath towel. Every so often a low groan issued from somewhere deep inside the folds, and if the news of his forthcoming visit to the dentist did little to raise his spirits, they received a further setback a few minutes later when he was ushered into the back of a waiting taxi.

“’Aving trouble with yer choppers, mate?” asked the driver, catching sight of the towel.

“My choppers?” exclaimed Paddington.

“I only ’ope he’s not a strong union man,” continued the driver as they moved away. “One out – the lot out!”

Mrs Brown hastily closed the window between the two compartments. “Don’t take any notice, dear,” she said. “I’m sure you’re doing the right thing. Mr Leach is very good. He’s been practising for years.”

“Mr Leach has been practising?” repeated Paddington with growing alarm. “I think I’d sooner pay extra and have someone who knows what he’s doing.”

The Browns exchanged glances. It was sometimes very difficult explaining things to Paddington – especially when he had his mind firmly fixed on something else – and they completed the rest of the journey in silence.

However, if Paddington himself was beginning to have mixed feelings on the subject of his tooth, Mr Leach had no such problems when they reached the surgery a short while later.

“I’m afraid I shall have to charge extra,” he said, as the situation was explained to him. “Bears have forty-two teeth.”

“I’ve only got forty-one,” said Paddington. “One of mine’s been disposed of.”

“That’s still nine more than I normally deal with,” said Mr Leach firmly, ushering Paddington into his surgery. “None of my charts cover it for a start. I shall have to get my nurse to draw up a completely new one.”

“I do hope we are doing the right thing,” said Mrs Brown anxiously, as the door closed behind them. “I feel it’s all my fault.”

Mrs Bird gave a snort. “More likely that bear’s everlasting toffees,” she said grimly. “They’re well named. It’s almost impossible to get rid of them. It’s no wonder he’s lost a tooth. He was testing them all day yesterday. I had to throw the saucepan away and there were toffees all over the kitchen floor. I nearly ricked my ankle twice.”

Paddington’s home-made toffees were a sore subject in the Brown household. It wasn’t so much that they had set hard. In fact, had they done so there might have been fewer complaints, but they’d ended up as a pile of large glutinous balls which stuck to everything they came in contact with, and Mrs Bird spent the next few minutes holding forth on what she would like to do with them.

However, it was noticeable that all the while she was talking, the Browns’ housekeeper kept her gaze firmly fixed on the door leading to the surgery, rather as if she wished she had X-ray eyes.

But as it happened, for once Mrs Bird’s worst fears weren’t being realised, for Paddington was beginning to have second thoughts about dentists.

Looking around Mr Leach’s surgery, he decided it was all very much nicer than he’d expected. Everything was gleaming white and spotlessly clean, with not a marmalade stain to be seen anywhere. And although it wasn’t what Mrs Bird would have called ‘over-furnished’, the one chair Mr Leach did possess more than made up for the fact.