Preview of Gatwick Bear and the Secret Plans, by Anna Cuffaro

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1 Homeless

It was early one Thursday morning when security first spotted a bear cub roaming around London Gatwick Airport over their CCTV system. They couldn’t believe their eyes. But, there he was, in the departures area, as large as life trundling around a big box on wheels, tied up with red rope, and a small blue Edwardian case with rusty catches and an even rustier big lock. He was wearing a navy blue waistcoat done up with a row of shining golden buttons. Security couldn’t make out whether the bear was coming or going. Did he just land and get lost? Was he about to catch a plane? They didn’t know that the bear had actually lived at Gatwick Airport for some time and that he wasn’t a passenger. Oh, no! He was homeless. And, all he had in the world was in that luggage.

Security decided not to catch him straightaway. They pointed their camera on the bear and spied on him to see what he was up to. They saw him park his luggage and then he rode on baggage trolleys jumping from one to the other while they were moving. He had this idea that if he kept moving around he wouldn’t get caught, and he knew full well that you’re not supposed to live at an airport. But he had nowhere else to go. Anyway, he soon got fed up with riding around, so he started window shopping at the airport stores. The bear had never bought anything, of course, he had no money. At the coffee shop, he usually found some leftover coffee, cold but drinkable, and scraps of chocolate muffins. Sometimes he found muffins on or under seats or in the bins, but today he had to crawl under a table to get one. He so adored chocolate muffins.

Next the bear made his way to the pizza hut. There were always scraps there, too. Then, like he always did after breakfast, he went to the men’s toilets, gave himself a quick wash all over, brushed his fur nicely but only down the front, he couldn’t reach round the back. He was very proud of his fur, though it was often a bit ruffled because it just wouldn’t stay down.

Gatwick Airport was the best place in the world. It was clean, warm, safe and shiny. But his favourite place, his very favourite place in the whole airport was the broom cupboard. Every night, when the last planes left and night fell over the airport, the bear slept there snuggling up to the biggest mop, who he thought must have been some distant relative of his. He would run and hide under the mops when he saw a police officer or anyone else in uniform.

At night when he couldn’t sleep, sometimes the bear would have fun sorting out the cupboard for the cleaners. He loved the coloured liquids. All the reds on the top shelf, all the yellows in the middle, and all the greens at the bottom – just like traffic lights. The cleaners knew all about the bear cub. They had often seen him in the cupboard. But the cleaners didn’t tell security. The cleaners called him Gatwick. He became their mascot and they were very fond of him. To repay the cleaners for their kindness, Gatwick kept the cupboard tidy; he rearranged the mops for them when they threw them in the cupboard after use. Gatwick would place all the yellow mops in the left-hand corner, all the blue ones in the right-hand corner, all the brooms at the back against the wall, and the buckets in a high stack in the middle, and he’d even fold up all the dusters.

The cleaners should have told on him but, if they had done that, Gatwick would have been turned out onto the streets. Sleeping in the cupboard also meant he wouldn’t be shone on by those big neon lights fixed to the ceiling all over the airport. Such horrid things, they were on all night and used to stop him sleeping before his cupboard days. Gatwick himself didn’t know how long he’d lived at the airport. In fact, he didn’t know if he’d been born there, if he’d been lost there, or even if he’d been found. He didn’t know much about himself at all really, except that he knew for sure that he had no family. He also knew that he was not like anyone else he’d seen at the airport. No, he was certainly different. Much more hairy for a start.

Every night before he switched the light off in his cupboard, he took out his map of the airport. When he found a piece of muffin, he would draw a muffin in the spot where he had found it. That night he drew a muffin under the table at the coffee shop. Gatwick had a feeling that there were lucky places in the airport, and he wanted to remember where they were. He had already drawn five muffins on the map.

Security were now ready to deal with him. The dreaded Miss Acid, Head of Security, set out on his trail. Her nails were pointed and varnished black with silver tips – more like claws, really, which were as sharp as her eyes. Her hair was worn in a painfully tight bun which stood up straight on her head. It was so tight that it drew all the skin on her face upwards and distorted her ugly face. She terrified everyone at the airport. She wore flat shoes and was thick around the hips. She had to keep discipline in the airport - maximum discipline. Let me tell you if you don’t behave, she’ll throw you straight into a prison cell. Just don’t argue or be cheeky

to her. There were rumours going round that she threw furry creatures in the cement mixer on the building site next door: cats, dogs and mice who wouldn’t stay away from Gatwick Airport. Miss Acid only liked feathered creatures: especially eagles, vultures, hawks and ravens. One day, she caught a gigantic raven using her bare hands and a strong brown net used by hunters: “Let me out! Let me out!”, the raven squawked. But Miss Acid whisked him up and shut him up in her locker. There he would stay until she had time to buy a cage. He was now her pet and she named him Jet. Gatwick knew this because he had seen it all with the eyes in his head and heard it all with his furry ears.

Well that was it. Gatwick was cornered too. Miss Acid looked at him with dreadful suspicion: “Hey, little fellow, and where do you think you’re going?”, she asked with her voice rising dangerously to an incredible squeaking pitch. Gatwick stood there with his serious round face and watery eyes. His ears stood to attention as he stammered out in his little voice:

“I... I... don’t know exactly... where...” Without giving him time to finish she shrilled:

“Get out of the airport this second. You are nothing but a detestable furry creature”.

’What did she mean by that?’ thought Gatwick.

Whatever it was, she didn’t sound pleased to see him. She didn’t like his fur. ’Maybe I should brush it all in the other direction’, Gatwick thought looking down at his ruffled paws. No matter how much he brushed his fur down, it did insist on sticking upwards, on end. So Gatwick began to feel... quite odd.

‘Maybe I don’t belong here. In future, I will just have to keep moving around even more to avoid being caught. I will have to hide behind newspapers or under the seats in departures’, Gatwick thought.

Anyway, she marched him to the door and, as she threw him out in the dark and the rain she shouted: “And, don’t come back again!” But Gatwick Airport was his home! That night he slept on a hard wooden bench in the scary pitch black and hollow bus shelter. The rain bucketed down sideways, and all his fur got soaking wet.

2 Departures

Always the happy chappy, Gatwick would not let Miss Acid get him down. The next morning, he sneaked back into the airport wearing a pair of sunglasses and fake sideburns. Everything Gatwick had, he’d found in or around the airport. And he crammed all these items in his luggage.

He’d never been abroad before though he’d lived in departures all his life. The time had come to get away from Miss Acid and fly away somewhere. Gatwick looked up at the departures board. ‘Hmm!’, he thought. ‘I’d quite like to go to the mountains’.

‘Let’s see’, he scratched his head, ‘yes, Switzerland. They have big mountains there called the Alps. I want to climb to the top of one of those’.

In the brochures scattered around the airport, Gatwick had seen the Alps  they looked as if they’d had icing sugar sprinkled over them through a mega-gigantic sieve. They looked so good to him because he had such a sweet tooth. After all, he was just a cub. And, the chocolate they made in Switzerland also looked so scrumptious. He would like to try some of that.

The flight to Lugano City, Switzerland was open for check-in. ‘Sector B’, indicated the board:

‘Oh, dear! Where’s that?’

He looked all around him until a big letter ‘B’ caught his eye.

‘That must be it’, Gatwick thought, putting his finger on his chin. He did that when he was thinking.

“Can I check in for this flight, please?”, he asked politely.

“Do you have a ticket?”, the young woman at the desk asked.

“Yes, of course”. Gatwick gave her the travelcard he’d found in one of the bright shiny bins. He loved those bins, a treasure chest of things he needed.

“Well, I’m afraid this ticket is not valid for travel on our airline”.

“Could you tell me which airline accepts travelcards, please?”

“No airline will accept your travelcard, I’m sorry”, she answered back.

In his ever-so polite voice, Gatwick pointed out that she had said that her airline wouldn’t accept his travelcard, so it meant that some other airline would accept it.

So Gatwick went off, wandered round and round some more, until he found a young woman in a different colour uniform. She looked very friendly. She might let him on her plane. No, she wasn’t friendly at all. She wouldn’t let him on her plane either. When, lo and behold, Gatwick saw another furry creature! It was dangling from the hands of a little girl. Her family was walking towards Passport Control. He followed them, maybe if he got to Passport Control they would give him a ticket. There was a notice saying he had to get his passport ready at the page showing his photo. Gatwick did have a passport – well, it was a photocopy of one, really. He had found a real passport one day, so he photocopied every page, cut around the edges carefully, coloured the cover in dark red crayon, then he pressed his face on the glass of the photocopy machine and reproduced his head. It was a big photocopy and didn’t fit in the passport, so he carried that separately.

The official checked the family’s passports and then asked if Gatwick was with them.

“Yes!”, cried the young girl.

“OK, you can go through”, said the official. Without looking at Gatwick’s picture, the official ushered Gatwick through without giving him a chance to ask for a ticket. The little girl wanted to keep Gatwick; her father firmly said: “No”. She had enough bears to look after as it was. Anyway, Gatwick didn’t want to belong to anyone. Being stuck on a book shelf gathering dust was not his idea of fun. He wasn’t a member and the president of the Freedom for Bears Club for nothing. Gatwick felt so sorry for the bear hanging from the girl’s hand. She was a cub, too. A very sweet-looking bear: all white with red ears, a cherry-red, heart-shaped nose, red soles on her paws, and a red dickie-bow round her neck. She was so beautiful! He was sure she was his little sister.

Gatwick found himself in front of a tall metal archway with red and green lights flashing every now and then. He thought that was splendid - a game of some sort. People were taking their shoes off, and their belts, and their jackets while drinking water and then aiming their bottles into big bins. As usual, Gatwick was only wearing his navy blue waistcoat. At Christmas, he also wore a red neck-tie. But it wasn’t Christmas now. Gatwick went through the archway. Red lights started flashing fast and a loud buzzer sounded. Sheer joy! He must have won a prize.

“Could you remove your waistcoat please, sir? I think your brass buttons are setting the alarm off”. So it was his buttons that had won him the prize! They were beautiful buttons, no doubt. The buttons had FBC, for Freedom for Bears Club, engraved on them. But Gatwick couldn’t take his waistcoat off because it was sewn on him. The officer tugged and tugged until he finally realised it was no use carrying on. So he gave up and let Gatwick through.

Now Gatwick was faced with another man: “Let’s open your case, please, sir”. Gatwick opened his suitcase. The Customs man took out Gatwick’s green, yellow and red fishing rod, his wooden spoon and his other waistcoat. His spare waistcoat was red. Spare didn’t mean that he wore it when he washed his other waistcoat because he never washed it. Oh, no; it meant that he would wear the red one, if he ever ruined the blue one.

“Did you pack the case yourself, sir?”.

“Yes, I did”.

“Has anyone tampered with your luggage?”

“No, they haven’t”.

“Are you travelling on business?”

“No, I want to climb mountains and fish in sparkling blue lakes”, he answered happily.

“Excuse me, sir, do you mind my asking you a personal question?”

“No, of course not. Fire away”.

“Why are you taking a wooden spoon with you?”

“For stirring and for all sorts of emergencies”, Gatwick explained. The customs officer scratched his head and let Gatwick through.

What a cool place this was! Even on this side, there were shops. People were sitting around in armchairs drinking coffee out of small cardboard buckets. Gatwick was thirsty. Mmmm. No, he didn’t want coffee. A fizzy drink would be better. He saw a queue and joined it. When it was his turn, he couldn’t make up his mind what colour fizzy drink he wanted. The girl behind the counter started to roll her eyes upwards with impatience.

“Could I have an orange fizzy drink, please?” he asked. “But I haven’t got any money”.

“Look, if you haven’t got any money, you’re just wasting my time”, she answered.

She gave him a small cardboard bucket of ice and ordered him to get out of the way so she could serve the next customer. Gatwick held the bucket in his furry paws, until all the ice melted, and it was ready to drink.

3 Arnold

Gatwick went to sit next to a Polar Bear in a big white tie. He was going to the North Pole on business. His name was Arnold. Arnold told Gatwick that he was big cheese in import and export. Gatwick asked him what that meant. “It means”, Arnold began, “that you get things from one place and take them to another. I’m a frontrunner in that, you see?” Gatwick blinked. Arnold got slabs of ice from the North Pole and sold them to businesses all over the world; priced at affordable two shillings for big slabs, one shilling for medium slabs, sixpence for small slabs, and a thrupenny bit for a cube. Arnold was rich and generous:

“Hey, take this”, Arnold said as he tossed a coin in Gatwick’s direction, “let me give you a silver shilling, have a drink on me!”

His city-based company was called North Pole Iced Solutions and sold thousands of slabs. Ice had many applications especially in the building sector: ice bricks got rid of noise pollution and, if ice was placed in a bucket in the middle of a room, it could be used as environmentally friendly air- conditioning.

Arnold’s mobile phone rang, he looked at the number and answered: “Hello, Anton Weiss speaking... Yes, I sent them to you yesterday... it’ll take a few days... I’ll do my best... Goodbye”. Gatwick wondered why Arnold had said his name was Anton Weiss when he answered his phone.

Arnold apologised for the interruption. He was a great electronics fan. He even had an e-pen. There was a transmitter in it. It picked up waves and turned them into strokes on his computer. The pen was linked to his mobile phone and this meant he could transfer all his phone calls into written words on his computer as he spoke. Then he could instantly message these calls to all his colleagues. He was planning on getting optical character recognition so he could transfer pictures too. Gatwick got so bored that he had fallen asleep. Arnold shook him and started telling him how his business might come to an end: “But, the ice-cap is melting now; the sea level will rise, the ice won’t be able to hold back the glaciers, which will flow into the ocean six times faster than now. Small islands will disappear under water. The Larsen ice-shelf has broken off, the Wilkins ice-shelf fell off, and I sold the other ice-shelf to the English bit by bit. The world is getting warmer and warmer. It’s getting so hot that trees and other plants have been growing further up mountainsides to get away from the heat. Some types of plants are now extinct. The ecosystem is really messed up. There are deadly storms and floods, there are incredible forest fires and fatal heat-waves. And when the ocean heats up, a nasty acid builds up and kills sea life. Fish will be left gasping. The Amazon forest will turn into a desert. Tropical insects will breed and breed, and get bigger and bigger. Apart from that, the Climate Change is not as bad as people make out”.

Gatwick had fallen asleep again, but Arnold went on talking.

“We’ve had to cancel our training programme at the North Pole Iced Solutions Training Centre. All my employees will have to be laid off. And you know what that means? It means that the stress in families will lead to violence amongst cubs...” Arnold was interrupted by an airport announcement: “This is the final call for Mr. Arnold White booked on Flight NPA590 to the North Pole. Mr. Arnold White please proceed to Gate 3 immediately. The captain will order closure of aircraft doors in five minutes”.

4 The Refuse Collector

Now Gatwick had to look for his own departure gate. He looked around him, when, all of a sudden, he saw Miss Acid telling some Italians off for playing football at the gates. She took their ball and cut it in half, there and then. On tip-toe Gatwick headed for the nearest pillar. Standing straight up against it, he took a deep, deep breath and pulled his tummy in. He peeped round the pillar to see her checking people’s boarding-cards and passports.

“You were much younger then, weren’t you dear?”, she barked to a middle-aged woman thrusting her passport back at her.

Quickly, Gatwick pulled his head back. Oh me, oh my, she was coming his way. He jumped into the waste bin nearby. Miss Acid couldn’t walk and think at the same time. She wandered around aimlessly for a bit then stopped to think about where to go next. By the time she had worked out that she wanted to look in the waste bin, a refuse collector stepped out in front of her, took out the plastic bag (with Gatwick in it), tied it up in an extra-tight knot, and hurled it into his wheelie bin. Gatwick knew how waste management worked at the airport. He had to escape from that bag before they sorted all the bits of him out for recycling. The sound of the refuse lorry moved closer and closer to his furry ears. The bag containing Gatwick was thrown on a heap. After a few moments, something started tapping on his head. The top of the bag was torn open by the yellow beak of Jet the raven. He was looking for food after a lucky escape. “What are you doing inside a rubbish bag?”, Jet asked.

“I was trying to get away from Miss Acid. And, how did you escape?”

“Well, that’s a long story”, Jet answered. “Miss Acid and other officers were having a party. They’d had a bit to drink and started throwing bottles and cans around. Miss Acid had pushed those who were most drunk to the back of the room. Then a lad started aiming bottles at my cage from a distance. The cage toppled over. When the lad saw the cage on its side, he ran over, lifted it up and tossed it in the air. In a twist of fate, the door opened and I managed to get through it and fly away”.

“How lucky !” Gatwick exclaimed. “But I must rush off now because I’m flying to Switzerland”.

“Really? I’ve always wanted to go there, too. I’ll race you. See you in Switzerland at Lugano City Airport!” Jet pecked a kiss on Gatwick’s chubby cheek. While walking away from Jet, Gatwick turned around and beamed a big smile at Jet: “The first one there waits for the other one. Bye!”

Praise for Gatwick Bear and the Secret Plans

"My son aged 6 reviewed this for me and he loved it! The writing holds your attention, zips along and is funny! The author suggests probably 7-12 is the right reading age for the book but at 6 and 30-something we loved it too!"

Becky Goddard-Hill, Book Reviews for Mums.

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