Love from Paddington Read online

  CONTENTS

  A Letter from Michael Bond

  Preface

  Letter No. 2

  Letter No. 3

  Letter No. 4

  Letter No. 5

  Letter No. 6

  Letter No. 7

  Letter No. 8

  Letter No. 9

  Letter No. 10

  Letter No. 11

  Letter No. 12

  Letter No. 13

  Letter No. 14

  Letter No. 15

  A Letter from Aunt Lucy

  Back Ad

  Books by Michael Bond

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  A LETTER FROM MICHAEL BOND

  Dear Reader,

  In a world that has rapidly accustomed itself to communicating by email, Paddington is equally rapidly becoming something of an oddity, for he steadfastly remains wedded to what has become jocularly known as SNAIL MAIL; and long may it remain so, for there is nothing quite so heartwarming as a hand-written letter.

  In Paddington’s case, being a bear, the use of a keyboard is too tedious for words because each stroke of a paw embraces a half-dozen or so characters, which is no use to man nor beast. Short of pressing each key down with the aid of a pencil, which is too tedious for all but the shortest words, there is no way out of the problem.

  Luckily, nearly all his letters are written to his Aunt Lucy, who lives in the Home for Retired Bears in Peru. Luckier still, being a wise old bear, she has kept them all, for she foresaw how valuable they would become with age.

  If you are new to Paddington, then you will find lots of fresh stories to read and enjoy. If you have encountered them all before, then they will still make fun reading, for they are Paddington’s take on his many adventures, which are not necessarily the same as that of the other characters involved.

  Either way, there is something for all who simply enjoy a good read.

  Yours truly,

  Michael Bond

  PREFACE

  One night, many moons ago, the ocean liner SS Karenia left the Peruvian port of Lima in South America and set sail for Europe.

  There was nothing unusual in that, for it was a regular crossing carrying as many passengers as it could take, along with a full crew to look after their every need during the voyage.

  However, on this particular occasion, unbeknown to the captain, they had a stowaway aboard. He had been smuggled onto the ship at the very last moment by his aunt, and he was hiding under a sheet of tarpaulin in one of the lifeboats.

  “Now, promise me you will write,” she said as the liner’s siren gave an impatient wail that echoed round the harbor.

  “I promise to write as soon as I get the chance,” said the bear.

  “I’ve filled your suitcase with jars of marmalade for the journey,” said his aunt. “And I have paid one of the crew to make sure you never run short of drinking water.”

  While she was talking, she tied a large label round her nephew’s neck. “I’ve knotted the string twice over,” she said, “so it shouldn’t come apart. But you may find it very useful, so do take care of it.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Lucy,” said the bear, raising his hat. “You are very kind.” He would have preferred cocoa, but he was much too polite to say so.

  In any case, there was no time for more, as the gap between the Karenia and the quay began to widen, and his aunt had to make good her escape by sliding down a rope.

  She only just managed to avoid falling into the harbor, and by the time she had righted herself, a wall of darkness separated her from the lifeboat.

  She wiped away a tear as she waved a last good-bye into the pitch-black night. “I hope I’ve done the right thing,” she said when she arrived back at the Home. “It feels as though I have lost a part of myself.”

  “Of course you’ve done the right thing,” said the oldest inhabitant. She stopped knitting and set her rocking chair in motion to emphasize the point.

  “This is no place for a young cub full of the joys of spring. That bear needs to go out into the world. We shall hear more about him before the year is out . . . you mark my words.”

  “I wish I’d given him a good book to read,” said Aunt Lucy.

  “You will need one yourself by the time the Karenia reaches the end of its journey,” said another bear.

  “It’s always worse for the one who stays behind,” she added.

  And she was right, for Aunt Lucy soon lost count of the number of raffia table mats she made while she awaited news. Luckily it was the tourist season, so they soon disappeared from the stall permanently outside their building.

  Then one day a postman arrived brandishing an envelope, the front of which was festooned with blue labels and strange-looking stamps.

  It was addressed to Aunt Lucy, c/o The Home for Retired Bears, Lima.

  By popular request, Aunt Lucy dropped the table mat she was working on and began reading the contents of the letter out loud to the other bears.

  “Dear Aunt Lucy, I . . .” she began, before pausing for a moment as the next word seemed to have been crossed out for some reason.

  “I eggspect expect this will come as a great surprise to you, but not only have I arrived in England, but I have an address!

  “I’m staying at Number 32 Windsor Gardens, and it isn’t at all like the Home for Retired Bears. You may not believe this, but it’s very near the Portobello Road, which you have often talked about when you suggested I might like living in London.

  “I have been taken in for the next day or two by a nice family called the Browns, but I’m hoping it will be much longer than that because I am very happy here. I have my own bed, so I am on my best behavior, which isn’t easy because I have already flooded their bathroom by mistake, and a lot of the water went through their downstairs ceiling. The trouble is, I’m used to sitting in a puddle after it rains, and I had never been in a bath before.

  “Luckily the drips landed on their two children, Jonathan and Judy, who came to my rescue.

  “But then, as I said to Judy when I first arrived, ‘Things are always happening to me. I’m that sort of bear.’

  “In fact, it is Judy who is typing this letter, because she noticed straightaway that my spelling isn’t very good. Also, using Mr. Brown’s computer isn’t easy with paws, as I can’t help touching several keys at the same time. This is an example of what happens when I try to type the letter ‘i’: uhiyg . . . !”

  Aunt Lucy held up the letter for the others in the room to see.

  “I find using a pencil to poke the keys is the best way to do it,” she read. “But that takes much longer.

  “I wrote several letters to you while I was in the lifeboat on the way over. That took even longer because I used marmalade chunks instead of a pen, so the writing wasn’t very clear. I put them one by one inside the empty marmalade jars, screwing the tops on tightly before throwing them into the sea. I expect they might turn up one day, but you won’t have missed much if they don’t.

  “All I could think of to say was ‘I hope this doesn’t find you as it leaves me,’ and there aren’t any signposts in the middle of the ocean, so as I had no idea where I was at the time, they aren’t very interesting.

  “Jonathan is sending this note by something called AIR MAIL, so you will get it as soon as possible. I will write again tomorrow, because I have another big surprise for you. Love from PADDINGTON.”

  Aunt Lucy had trouble with the last word. “I don’t know what that means,” she said, “but someone else has added a bit more at the end.”

  “Hello Aunt Lucy,” she read. “And a big hello to everyone else in the Home for Retired Bears. We have been hearing all about you. Don’t worry. We w
ill look after him, and the odd-job man is already working on the ceiling. Judy.”

  As she reached the end, all the other bears applauded.

  The sound was not unlike the gentle lapping of the sea as it entered the harbor, for paws are not really meant for clapping.

  “If only my nephew could hear it,” thought Aunt Lucy. “He would be pleased. I must send him a postcard straightaway.”

  32 WINDSOR GARDENS, LONDON W2

  Letter No. 2

  Dear Aunt Lucy,

  Thank you very much for your postcard showing Lima harbor with the tide coming in, which arrived yesterday. I’m sorry if my letter made you ankshush (anxious – Judy). The funny word you came across at the bottom and you didn’t understand is my NEW NAME! I hope you are sitting comfortably so that I can tell you how it came about.

  When I arrived in England, I had no idea where I was or which way to go, so I waited in the lifeboat until all the people on the Karenia had disappeared. Then I stowed away on a train marked to LONDON, which is where you hoped I would end up.

  I sat very still, and when the man who collects the tickets came round and saw the label you tied round my neck, he must have thought I was a parcel.

  It’s lucky bears are good at stowing away, because when the train reached London, it couldn’t go any farther, and I found myself on a strange railway platform near the Lost Property Office.

  It was very busy. Everybody else was in a hurry, and they seemed to know where they were going, so I sat on my suitcase and waited for something to happen.

  Which was how I met Mr. and Mrs. Brown.

  They were there to meet their daughter, Judy, who was coming home for the school holidays when Mr. Brown spotted me. Mrs. Brown didn’t believe him at first, but when she saw my label and read the words PLEASE LOOK AFTER THIS BEAR. THANK YOU!, she said at once I must come home with them. I think your adding the words “thank you” must have made all the difference, because if they had left me where I was, there would have been nothing to thank them for.

  After all, they could have left me in the Lost Property Office or left me where I was and gone on their way, but they didn’t do either of those things.

  Mr. Brown asked me what my name was; but when I told them, Mrs. Brown had trouble saying it, so she decided to call me after the place where we met, which is how I came to have such an unusual name for a bear, because PADDINGTON is the name of the station.

  I like it myself, so I hope you do too. Mr. Brown says it sounds important, and Judy’s brother, Jonathan, told me I might have ended up with a name like CHARING CROSS or WAPPING, which are nowhere near as nice.

  Another thing, Aunt Lucy, it’s good that you taught me to speak English when I was small, because not many people in England speak Peruvian.

  I went on an Underground train yesterday for the very first time. We were going on a shopping expedition, so I asked everyone in the carriage if they spoke Peruvian, and no one did. Mind you, not many of them spoke English, either!

  Mrs. Brown bought me a dark-blue duffle coat to keep out the cold, and Jonathan gave me something called an INK PAD so that when I write a letter to anyone, I can make a paw mark to show it is genuine. I don’t suppose many bears have their very own ink pad.

  I think perhaps it means I might be staying with them for more than a few days. I do hope so. Judy hopes so too. She says, WATCH THIS SPACE!

  32 WINDSOR GARDENS, LONDON W2

  Letter No. 3

  Dear Aunt Lucy,

  The drawing at the top of this letter is what Jonathan told me will one day be called an HISTORIC DOCUMENT if it isn’t already, and I thought you might like to have a copy before I am very much older. There is another one to go with it.

  The original was made by a friend of the Browns, and it shows me taking a picture of the whole family group on a very old camera. It’s called a “plate camera,” and I expected it to be a dinner plate, but it’s what the picture showed up on before they invented film.

  It’s only a back view of the Browns, I’m afraid, but it will give you a good idea of what they look like.

  It’s a good job you can’t see Mr. Brown (he’s the one in the middle), because I was having trouble focusing the camera, and he was cross because by then they were sitting in his bed of prize petunias; but I had to get it right first time, because there was only one plate left, and you can’t get them anymore.

  Well, it wasn’t just that. Jonathan suggested I used a piece of string to measure the distance, and I tied the far end onto Mr. Brown’s ear by mistake. (I thought it was one of his petunias until I pulled it tight!)

  The one on the left is a lady called Mrs. Bird. Judy told me she has a bun in her hair. I thought it was in case she got hungry—a bit like me keeping a marmalade sandwich under my hat in case I have an emergency—but apparently she does the cooking, and she likes it tied up out of the way. I expect it stops it falling into the saucepans.

  The one next to her is Judy. Then, on Mr. Brown’s right, there is Jonathan, and last of all, Mrs. Brown.

  I had to put my head under a black hood at the back of the camera in order to take the picture, and all I can say is it’s a good thing you don’t have to take pictures on a plate anymore, because as you can see in the other sketch, I lost my way and nearly fell in some rosebushes.

  Mr. Brown said, “Can you picture what the world would be like if everyone taking pictures with their camera had to wear a black hood?”

  He was looking at me while he said it.

  Anyway, there was a happy ending, because when he took the camera into a photographic shop, the man was so pleased he put it in his window with a notice saying it was owned by LOCAL BEAR GENTLEMAN, and he promised to make some copies of the photograph, so you will get to see what they all look like when you see them the right way round.

  32 WINDSOR GARDENS, LONDON W2

  Letter No. 4

  Dear Aunt Lucy,

  Judy asked me why I number my letters to you instead of dating them. I told her it’s because bears don’t have calendars. I hope that’s right. I said if you are a bear, one day is very like another, and we go by seasons. It’s either hot or it’s cold. (Except in England where it never seems to be the same two days running.)

  She also asked me how I keep the postcards you send me in the right order. I explained I have an elastic band, and she said, “Everybody has their methods!”

  But this is a special letter, so I think you may want to pin it up on the notice board along with the week’s dinner menus, because it might turn out to be HISTORIC like the last one.

  Mr. Brown has made up his mind at long last. I am here to stay! Best of all, I shall be moving out of the guest room, and I shall have a room all to myself at the top of the house. You could say it’s like living in a tree as I did when I was small, but this time it has a wall on all four sides and a door.

  Mr. Brown said he is doing it up specially. All the bits and pieces arrived in a van this morning, and the driver very kindly took them upstairs for us instead of leaving them in the hall.

  There is a big can of whitewash, some paint, several rolls of wallpaper with flowers on it, and a big bucket for the paste, lots of different brushes and a folding table.

  When I asked him what they were all for, he gave me a funny look and said, “It’s what’s known as Do-It-Yourself, gov.,” and he wished me best of luck.

  I don’t think he had met a bear before, because he drove off very fast.

  That was last week; and Mr. Brown, who is something in the city, has been keeping what Jonathan says is called “a low profile,” and he hasn’t had a chance to touch them, so the other day when I was at a loose end and everyone else was out of the house, I thought I might help him out by “Doing-It-Myself” instead.

  It seemed a good idea at the time, and I really don’t know what went wrong; it all happened so quickly. First of all the wallpaper wouldn’t stay up. Every time I tried fastening a sheet to the wall it fell off and landed on top of me. On
e thing led to another, and by the time the others returned home, I was completely covered.

  Jonathan was first up, and he said, “Crikey! I bet you put too much water in the paste! I’ve never seen such a mess.” I think he was wishing he’d done it himself instead of me.

  Judy took one look and said, “Awesome!”

  Mrs. Brown was asking everyone where something called “smelling salts” had got to, and Mrs. Bird said it ought to teach them all a lesson never to leave me alone in the house again.

  I expect you are wondering who Mrs. Bird is. Well, she is a distant relative of Mrs. Brown. She lost her husband in a war, and instead of living on her own, she looks after the family.

  She can seem a bit fierce at times, but I think she likes me, and she also knows all there is to know about bears. The first thing she said when she heard I might be staying for a while was “I had better get some more marmalade in.” I expect that’s because I raised my hat and she likes polite people. Most people in England don’t wear a hat these days, so it probably doesn’t happen to her very often.

  Anyway, she sent me off to have a bath before my fur set hard; and to my surprise, one way and another, instead of being cross with me, everyone seemed very pleased.

  Judy said although it was awesome, I shouldn’t worry, because Mr. Biggs, the odd-job man, has promised to put things right while he’s here to repair the ceiling, and she was to say “thank you” on his behalf because he needed the work, and he gave me what he called “a little something.”

  Mrs. Brown gave me some extra pocket money because the room was about to be done properly at long last.

  Mr. Brown added to it when he came home because he hadn’t really wanted to do the job in the first place.

  Mrs. Bird said she wasn’t at all surprised because bears usually fall on their feet.