Paddington pressed his nose against the door of the Brightsea Imperial Theatre and peered at a notice pinned to a board on the other side of the glass.
“I think we’re in time, Mr. Brown!” he exclaimed excitedly. “It’s called ‘Bingo Tonight,’ and it’s on for two weeks.”
Mr. Brown joined Paddington at the door and looked in at the darkened interior of the foyer. “That’s not a play,” he said. “It’s a game.”
“You know,” said Jonathan. “All the sixes, clickety-click.”
“All the sixes, clickety-click!” repeated Paddington. He had no idea what the others were talking about, but he didn’t like the sound of it at all.
“It means they’ve closed the theater down,” exclaimed Judy. “It’s been turned into a Bingo Hall.”
The Browns gazed at each other in dismay. It was Paddington’s summer birthday, and as a treat they had decided to take him to see a show. The day had dawned bright and sunny, and on the spur of the moment they’d set off to visit Brightsea, a large town on the south coast, where plays were often tried out before being put on in London.
Paddington had talked of nothing else all the way down, and the news that he was to be done out of his treat was, to say the least, a bad start to the day.
“Perhaps you’d like to go and see the gnomes in Sunny Cove Gardens instead?” suggested Mrs. Brown hopefully. “I did hear they’ve all been repainted this year . . .” Her voice trailed away as she caught sight of the expression on Paddington’s face. Even the brightest of gnomes was hardly a substitute for a visit to the theater, especially when it was a birthday treat.
“We could go down to the beach while we think about it,” said Judy.
Mr. Brown hesitated. “All right,” he replied. “We’ll get some ice creams on the way to be going on with.”
Paddington brightened considerably at Mr. Brown’s remark, and after casting one more glance at the deserted theater, he turned and followed the others as they made their way along the road leading to the promenade.
Although he was disappointed about the play, Paddington wasn’t the sort of bear to stay down in the dumps for long, and when they came to a halt alongside a van and Mr. Brown ordered six ice creams, including “a special large cone for a young bear who’s just suffered a disappointment,” he felt even better.
Clutching the ice cream in one paw and his suitcase in the other, Paddington followed the rest of the family as they trooped on to the beach. His suitcase was full of birthday cards, a good many of which he hadn’t really had time to read properly, and he didn’t want to let them out of his sight before he’d been able to go through them all again.
Mr. Brown put some deck chairs near the water’s edge, and while Jonathan and Judy changed into their costumes, Paddington made some holes in the wet sand with his paws and then let the incoming waves smooth them over again. It was all very pleasant, for the sea was warm, and calm enough to paddle in without getting the rest of his fur soggy.
It was while he was in the middle of making a particularly deep hole that he happened to glance up hopefully in order to see if there were any more waves on the way, and as he did so he suddenly caught sight of a speedboat. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as it shot past. In fact, if his paws hadn’t been firmly embedded in the sand he might well have fallen over backwards with surprise.
It wasn’t the boat itself that caused his astonishment, for the sea was alive with craft of all shapes and sizes: it was the fact that just behind it there was a man skimming along the surface of the water on what seemed to be two large planks of wood. But before he had a chance to take it all in, both boat and man had disappeared from view behind the pier.
Paddington sat down on the beach in order to consider the matter. It looked just like the kind of thing for a birthday treat, and he wished he knew more about it. But Mr. Brown had settled down behind his newspaper for a pre-lunch nap, and Jonathan and Judy were having a swimming race and had already gone too far to ask. For a moment or two he toyed with the idea of mentioning his idea to Mrs. Brown, but she was busy helping Mrs. Bird with a knitting problem. In any case, he had a feeling in the back of his mind that she might not entirely approve, so in the end he decided he would have to do his own investigations.
Mrs. Brown eyed him nervously as he stood up and announced his intention of taking a stroll along the promenade.
“Don’t be too long,” she warned. “We’ll be having lunch soon. And I should take your duffle coat. It looks rather stormy.”
Mrs. Bird nodded her agreement. Since they’d arrived in Brightsea, a change had come over the weather, and the sky was now more than half-covered by clouds, some of which looked very dark indeed.
“You’d better have my umbrella as well,” she said. “You don’t want to be taken unawares.”
Mrs. Bird followed Paddington’s progress up the beach. She was never very happy when he went off on his own, especially when he was wearing one of his faraway looks.
“Perhaps he wants to stretch his paws after the long car journey,” said Mrs. Brown, with more conviction than she actually felt.
The Browns’ housekeeper gave a snort. “He’s much more likely to be looking for the ice cream van again,” she remarked.
All the same, Mrs. Bird looked noticeably relieved when she turned and saw him peering at a row of posters on the promenade.
On the way down to the beach, Paddington had spotted quite a number of advertisements, and although he hadn’t actually read any of them he felt sure there must be at least one which would provide an answer to his question.
As he made his way along the front, he stopped and examined several of them very carefully, but as far as he could make out, all they dealt with were things like band concerts and mystery coach tours: none of them so much as mentioned boats let alone where he could buy any planks of wood.
Paddington had often noticed that whenever he went to the seaside, all the really good events were due to happen the following week, and it wasn’t until he was well past the pier that he suddenly came across the one he had been looking for.
It showed a man standing on the crest of a wave behind a large red speedboat. With one hand he was hanging on to the stern of the boat, and with the other he was pointing to a sign which said QUEUE HERE FOR SIGNOR ALBERTO’S INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF WATER-SKIING.
There was some more writing underneath, most of which had to do with a special crash course for beginners, in which not only did Signor Alberto guarantee to get any of his pupils, regardless of age, out of the water and onto their skis in only one lesson, but he promised to present them with a special certificate afterwards to show their friends.
It all sounded very good value indeed, and Paddington was about to go down on the beach to where Signor Alberto’s boat was moored, when he caught sight of yet another notice hanging from a nearby post. It said, quite simply: GONE TO LUNCH—BACK SOON. Feeling somewhat disappointed, Paddington turned to retrace his steps. As he did so, he saw some figures waiting on a bench a little way along the promenade. The bench seemed to belong to the skiing school as well, for as one of the occupants shifted his position, he caught a brief glimpse of Signor Alberto’s name chiseled into the wooden back rest.
In his advertisement, Signor Alberto had said that he catered for anyone, no matter what their age, but as far as Paddington could make out, some of his clients looked as if they would be hard put to make it to the boat, let alone climb inside. As he hurried along the front to join them he began to get more and more excited. He felt sure that if they were able to water-ski, he would have no trouble at all.
“May I join you?” he enquired, raising his hat politely.
The nearest man gave him an odd look. “I don’t suppose it’ll do any harm,” he said grudgingly.
“The more the merrier,” agreed the one sitting next to him as he shifted up to make room. “It’ll help keep us all warm.”
Paddington thanked them both very much and then squeezed in at the end. He waited for a moment or two, but no one else spoke. Indeed one man at the other end of the bench looked as if he was in great danger of falling asleep at any moment.
“Do you come here often?” he asked loudly, in the hope of livening things up a bit.
The man next to him nodded. “I’ve been here every day for the last six years,” he said. “Come rain or shine. Mind you,” he added, “you ’as to wrap up a bit on days like today.”
“Wouldn’t do to catch a chill,” agreed his friend.
“You mean I can keep my duffle coat on?” exclaimed Paddington.
“Bless you, yes,” said the first man encouragingly. “It’s a free world. You do as you like.”
Paddington settled back again with a pleased expression on his face. He’d been wondering what he could do with his belongings.
“Does it take you very long to get up?”
The man gave him another funny look. “About ten minutes,” he replied. “But once I’m up, I’m up. Mind you, that includes shaving.”
“Shaving!” exclaimed Paddington, nearly falling off his bench with surprise. He looked at his acquaintance with new respect. He’d been most impressed by the picture on the poster of the man hanging on to a rope with only one hand, but shaving at the same time was quite a different matter.
“I hope we don’t have long to wait!” he exclaimed excitedly.
“I’ve been here since nine o’clock this morning,” said a third man gloomily. “I got here at nine o’clock and I’ve been here ever since.”
Paddington’s face fell. Four hours sounded a very long time to wait for a skiing lesson, and he was just trying to make up his mind whether to go back and tell the Browns where he was and risk losing his place, or stay on for a little while longer in the hope that the queue would begin to move, when he felt a dig in the ribs.
“Watch out!” warned his neighbor. “Here comes the man in charge.”
Paddington stared at the approaching figure. From the drawing on the poster he’d expected Signor Alberto to be large and bronzed, whereas the person coming along the promenade seemed quite the reverse. In fact, he was rather like a walking advertisement for indigestion tablets, and from the look on his face as he caught sight of Paddington it seemed as though he was just about to have another bad attack of his complaint.
As he drew near he held out his hand. “Right,” he said grumpily. “Where’s your book?”
“My book?” repeated Paddington. “But I haven’t got one.”
“Hah!” said the man triumphantly. “I thought as much. I daresay that explains why you’re here. You probably can’t read either.”
Paddington gave him a hard stare. “I do a lot of reading!” he exclaimed hotly. “I always read a story under the blankets at night before I go to sleep. Mrs. Bird gave me a torch specially.”
“I’m sorry,” said the man sarcastically, “but we don’t provide blankets here. I shall have to ask you to move on. Unless,” he added, “you’re over sixty-five?”
“Over sixty-five?” Paddington stared at the man as if he could hardly believe his ears. Although he had two birthdays a year he felt sure his latest one hadn’t caused him to look that much older.
Already several passersby had stopped to watch the proceedings, and some of them started to join in.
“Fancy wanting blankets,” said one. “Don’t know what it’ll come to next.”
“Mollycoddling, I calls it,” agreed another.
“Let him be,” called a woman somewhere near the back. “We’ve all got to go that way sooner or later.”
“Shame!” shouted someone else.
“That’s all very well,” said the man. “But I ’as my job to do. Suppose I let every Tom, Dick, and Harry sit here, what then?”
“Tom, Dick, and Harry?” repeated Paddington. He looked most upset. “I’m not one of those, Signor Alberto. I’m a Paddington.”
“You’re a Paddington?” echoed the man. Scratching his head, he turned to the crowd for sympathy. “What is he on about?”
The man who’d been sitting next to Paddington rose to his feet as light began to dawn. “I think I know,” he said.
He pointed to a notice on the back of the bench and then turned back to Paddington. “This isn’t a queue for Signor Alberto,” he explained. “This is a special bench for senior citizens. This gentleman’s Alf, the deck-chair attendant.”
“Alf, the deck-chair attendant!” exclaimed Paddington, as if in a dream. He gazed at the newcomer indignantly. “Do you mean to say I’ve been waiting all this time for nothing?”
“Not for nothing,” said the attendant, taking a ticket machine triumphantly from his inside pocket. “For ten pence. If you can’t produce your old-age pension book on demand you ’as to pay ten pence an hour or else.”
But he might just as well have saved his breath. Out of the corner of his eye Paddington had seen some activity around the ski boat, and taking advantage of the argument, he stuffed Mrs. Bird’s umbrella inside his duffle coat and crawled through a gap in the crowd while the going was good.
He felt sure that if ever there was a time to take to the water this was it, and, hurrying down the beach towards the boat, he approached a sweater-clad figure bending over the outboard motor.
“Excuse me, Signor Alberto,” he announced, tapping him urgently on the shoulder. “I should like to take one of your crash courses in skiing, please. Starting now, if I may!”
The Browns gathered in a worried group on the promenade as they exchanged notes. There was so much noise going on—bursts of cheering alternating with loud groans—that it was difficult to make themselves heard; all the same it was obvious that in their search for Paddington they had drawn a blank.
“We’ve been to both ends of the promenade,” said Jonathan.
“We’ve even tried the amusement arcade on the pier,” added Judy. “There isn’t a sign of him anywhere.”
“I do hope he’s not doing the undercliff walk,” said Mrs. Brown anxiously. “There isn’t a way up for miles and he’ll be most upset if he misses lunch—especially today of all days.”
“Perhaps we could try asking the deck-chair attendant?” suggested Judy. She pointed to a figure a little way along the front. “I bet he’s good at remembering faces.”
The deck-chair attendant was hovering on the edge of a crowd who were leaning on the railings watching something that was taking place far out to sea, and he didn’t look best pleased at being interrupted.
“A bear?” he said. “Wearing a duffle coat and carrying an umbrella. I expect that’ll be the one I moved on about half an hour ago.”
“You moved him on!” exclaimed Mrs. Bird severely. “I’ll have you know it’s his birthday!”
“I daresay,” said the man, wilting under her gaze, “but I never intended to move him on that far.”
He pointed to a spot beyond the end of the pier, where a speedboat was bobbing up and down in the water. As the Browns turned to follow the direction of his arm, there was a roar from his engine and the boat moved off. Almost immediately a small, but familiar figure rose up out of the water a little way behind. It hovered on the surface for a moment or two and then, to a groan of disappointment from the crowd, slowly disappeared into the sea again.
It was only a fleeting glimpse, but brief though it was, the Browns gasped with astonishment.
“Good gracious!” cried Mrs. Bird. “What on earth’s that bear doing now?”
Mrs. Bird’s question wasn’t unreasonable in the circumstances, but it was one which even Paddington himself would have been very hard put to answer. In fact, he’d been asking himself the very same thing a number of times over the last half hour. Although he had to admit that he’d enrolled for one of Signor Alberto’s special “crash” courses, he hadn’t expected there to be quite so many crashes. As far as he could make out, every time he tried to do anything at all it ended in disaster.
But if Paddington was taking a gloomy view of the proceedings, Signor Alberto looked even more down in the mouth. The change in the weather had brought about a big enough drop in his takings as it was, but with what seemed like the whole of Brightsea watching his attempts to teach Paddington to water-ski he was beginning to think that trade might never pick up again. As he sat huddled in the back of the boat he looked as if he very much wished he was back on the sunny shores of his native Mediterranean again.
“Please,” he called, making one last despairing effort, “we will try once more. For the very last time. Relax. You are toa da stiff. You ava to relax. You are like a stick in zee water.”
Listening to Signor Alberto’s instructions, Paddington suddenly realized that one of his problems was the fact that he still had Mrs. Bird’s umbrella under his duffle coat, so while the other’s back was turned he hastily withdrew it, made some last minute adjustments to the tow rope, and then lay back in the water again with the skis pointing upwards as he’d been shown.
Signor Alberto looked back over his shoulder, but if he felt any surprise at seeing Paddington’s latest accessory, he showed no sign. In fact, he looked as if nothing would surprise him ever again.
“Now,” he called. “When I open zee throttle and we begin to move, you ’ave to pull on zee rope and push with your legs into zee water. Remember, whatever you do . . . watch zee ’eels.”
Paddington looked most surprised at this latest piece of advice. He’d never actually seen a real live eel before, and as the boat moved away from him and took up the slack, he peered into the water with interest.
Slowly and inexorably the boat gathered speed as Signor Alberto pushed home the throttle. Suddenly the rope tightened, and for a second or two it seemed as if he was about to be cut in two. Then gradually he felt himself begin to rise out of the water.
He’d never experienced anything quite like it before, and grasping Mrs. Bird’s umbrella, he began to wave it at Signor Alberto for all he was worth.
“Help!” he shouted. “Help! Help!”
“Bravo!” cried Signor Alberto. “Bravo!”
But there was worse to follow, for no sooner had Paddington become accustomed to one motion than there was a click and a sudden tug; and to his alarm Mrs. Bird’s umbrella suddenly shot open, and he felt a completely new sensation as he rose higher and higher into the air.
The promenade loomed up and then disappeared as they turned at the very last moment and headed out to sea again. The cheers from the watching crowd almost drowned the noise of the engine, but Paddington hardly heard, for by that time there was only one thing uppermost in his mind—and that was to get safely back onto dry land again.
Mrs. Bird had said that he might need her umbrella in case he got taken unawares, but as far as Paddington was concerned, he’d never been taken quite so unawares in the whole of his life, for as he glanced down, he saw to his horror that the sea, which a moment before had been skimming past his knees, was now a very long way away indeed.
Mrs. Bird opened and closed her umbrella several times. “They certainly knew how to make them in those days,” she said with satisfaction.
“I bet they never thought it would be used for a bear’s parachute skiing,” said Judy.
“Perhaps Paddington could write a testimonial?” suggested Jonathan.
“I think we’ve had quite enough testimonials for one day,” said Mrs. Bird.
The Browns were enjoying a late lunch in a restaurant overlooking Signor Alberto’s skiing school.
Paddington in particular was tucking in for all he was worth. Although he was looking none the worse for his adventure, there had been a moment when he’d thought he might never live to enjoy another meal, and he was more than making up for lost time.
He’d fully expected to be in trouble when he got back, but in the event the reverse had been true. The Browns had been so relieved to see him safe and sound they hadn’t the heart to be cross, and Signor Alberto had been so pleased at the success of his lessons he’d not only refused any payment but he’d even presented him with a special certificate into the bargain. It was the first time anyone in Brightsea had seen parachute skiing, and if the size of the queue on the promenade was anything to go by, there would be no lack of customers at his school for some time to come. Even a man who ran an umbrella shop nearby had come along to offer his congratulations. Despite the fact that the sun had come out again, he was doing a roaring trade.
“What beats me,” said Mr. Brown, “is how you managed to stand up on the skis at all. I didn’t think you’d ever make it.”
Paddington considered the matter for a moment. “I don’t think I could really help myself, Mr. Brown,” he said truthfully.
In point of fact, he’d wrapped the rope around himself several times just to make sure, but he’d had such a lecture from Signor Alberto afterwards about the dangers of doing such a thing ever again he decided he’d better not say anything about it, and wisely the Browns didn’t pursue the matter.
“Perhaps you’d like to round things off with a plate of jellied eels?” suggested Mr. Brown, some while later as they took a final stroll along the promenade.
Paddington gave a shudder. What with the ice cream, the water-skiing, and an extra large lunch into the bargain, he decided he’d had quite enough for one day, and eels were the last thing he wanted to be reminded of.
All in all, he felt he would much rather round off his birthday treat in as quiet a way as possible.
“I think,” he announced, “I’d like to sit down for a while. Perhaps we could all go to Sunny Cove Gardens. Then you can watch the gnomes while I read my birthday cards.”
