In fact, taking things all round he was beginning to wish he’d never started on the job in the first place.
Apart from Mr James’s blowlamp and a large number of tools from Mr Brown’s garage, the floor was strewn with odd lengths of pipe, pieces of solder and several saucepans, not to mention a length of hosepipe which he’d brought up from the garden in case of an emergency.
But it wasn’t so much the general clutter that caused Paddington’s gloomy expression as the amount of water which lay everywhere. In fact, considering the pipes had been completely frozen when he’d started, he found it hard to understand where it had all come from. The only place in the whole of the bathroom where there wasn’t some kind of pool was in a corner by the washbasin where he’d placed one of his Wellington boots beneath a leaking pipe in the hope of getting enough water to fill Mr Curry’s hot-water bottle.
Paddington was particularly anxious to fill the bottle before Mr Curry took it into his head to get up. Already there had been several signs of stirring from the direction of his bedroom and twice a loud voice had called out demanding to know what was going on. Both times Paddington had done his best to make a deep grunting noise like a plumber hard at work and each time Mr Curry’s voice had grown more suspicious.
Paddington hastily began scooping water off the floor with his paw in order to help matters along, but as fast as he scooped the water up, it soaked into his fur and ran back up his arm. Hopefully squeezing a few drops from his elbow into the Wellington boot Paddington gave a deep sigh and turned his attention to the book Mr James had lent him.
The book was called The Plumber’s Mate by Bert Stilson, and although Paddington felt sure it was very good for anyone who wanted to fit pipes in their house for the first time there didn’t seem to be a great deal on what to do once they were in and frozen hard. Mr Stilson seemed to be unusually lucky with the weather whenever he did a job, for in nearly all the photographs it was possible to see the sun shining through the open windows.
There was only one chapter on frozen pipes and in the picture that went with it Mr Stilson was shown wrapping them in towels soaked in boiling water. With no water to boil Paddington had tried holding Mr Curry’s one and only towel near the blowlamp in order to warm it, but after several rather nasty brown patches suddenly appeared he’d hastily given it up as a bad job.
Another picture showed Mr Stilson playing the flame of a blowlamp along a pipe as he dealt with a particularly difficult job and Paddington had found this method much more successful. The only trouble was that as soon as the ice inside the pipe began to melt, a leak appeared near one of the joints.
Paddington tried stopping the leak with his paw while he read to the end of the chapter, but on the subject of leaking pipes Mr Stilson was even less helpful than he had been on frozen ones. In a note about lead pipes he mentioned hitting them with a hammer in order to close the gap, but whenever Paddington hit one of Mr Curry’s gaps at least one other leak appeared farther along the pipe so that instead of the one he’d started with there were now five and he’d run out of paws.
For some while the quiet of the bathroom was broken only by the hiss of the blowlamp and the steady drip, drip, drip of water as Paddington sat lost in thought.
Suddenly, as he turned over a page near the end of the book his face brightened. Right at the end of the very last chapter Mr Stilson had drawn out a chart which he’d labelled ‘Likely Trouble Spots.’ Hurriedly unfolding the paper, Paddington spread it over the bathroom stool and began studying it with interest.
According to Mr Stilson most things to do with plumbing caused trouble at some time or another, but if there was one place which was more troublesome than all the others put together it was where there was a bend in the pipe. At the bottom of the chart Mr Stilson explained that bends shaped like the letter ‘U’ always had water inside them and so they were the very first places to freeze when the cold weather came.
Looking around Mr Curry’s bathroom Paddington was surprised to see how many ‘U’ bends there were. In fact, wherever he looked there appeared to be a bend of one kind or another.
Holding Mr Stilson’s book in one paw Paddington picked up the blowlamp in the other and settled himself underneath the washbasin where one of the pipes made itself into a particularly large ‘U’ shape before it entered the cold tap.
As he played the flame along the pipe, sitting well back in case he accidentally singed his whiskers, Paddington was pleased to hear several small cracking noises coming from somewhere inside. In a matter of moments the crackles were replaced by bangs, and his opinion of Mr Stilson went up by leaps and bounds as almost immediately afterwards a loud gurgling sound came from the basin over his head and the water began to flow.
To make doubly sure of matters Paddington stood up and ran the blowlamp flame along the pipe with one final sweep of his paw. It was as he did so that the pleased expression on his face suddenly froze almost as solidly as the water in Mr Curry’s pipes had been a second before.
Everything happened so quickly it all seemed to be over in the blink of an eyelid, but one moment he was standing under the basin with the blowlamp, and the next moment there was a hiss and a loud plop and before his astonished gaze Mr Curry’s ‘U’ bend disappeared into thin air. Paddington just had time to take in the pool of molten lead on the bathroom floor before a gush of cold water hit him on the chin, nearly bowling him over.
Acting with great presence of mind he knocked the hot flexible remains of the pipe and turned it back into Mr Curry’s bath, leaving the water to hiss and gurgle as he turned to consult Mr Stilson’s book once more. There was a note somewhere near the back telling what to do in cases of emergency which he was particularly anxious to read.
A few seconds later he hurried downstairs as fast as his legs would carry him, slamming the front door in his haste. Almost at the same moment as it banged shut there came the sound of a window being opened somewhere overhead and Mr Curry’s voice rang out. “Bear!” he roared. “What’s going on, bear?”
Paddington gazed wildly round the snow-covered garden. “I’m looking for your stop-cock,” he exclaimed.
“What!” bellowed Mr Curry, putting a hand to his ear to make sure he’d heard right. “Cock! How dare you call me cock! I shall report you to Mrs Bird.”
“I didn’t mean you were to stop, cock,” explained Paddington desperately. “I meant…”
“Stop?” repeated Mr Curry. “I most certainly will not stop. What’s going on? Where’s Mr James?”
“You’re having trouble with your ‘U’ bends, Mr Curry,” cried Paddington.
“Round the bend!” spluttered Mr Curry. “Did I hear you say I’m round the bend?”
Mr Curry took a deep breath as he prepared to let forth on the subject of bears in general and Paddington in particular, but as he did so a strange look came over his face and before Paddington’s astonished gaze he began dancing up and down, waving his arms in the air.
“Where’s all this water coming from, bear?” he roared. “I’ve got ice cold water all over my feet. Where’s it all coming from?”
But if Mr Curry was expecting an answer to his question he was unlucky, for a second later the sound of another front door being slammed punctuated his remarks, only this time it was the one belonging to number thirty-two.
