Bears of England Page 5

  The weeks went by. One Trader said he’d heard how much Jimmy had sold the ring for – enough to feed the bears for well over a month. Another said he had it on good authority that Jimmy had upped sticks and headed west. The other bears turned their attention back to their clearing and shovelling, but at night the cheated bear would lie on its ledge and relive every dreadful second until its whole body burned and ached.

  Then one day, quite out of the blue, Jimmy was spotted over in Whitechapel, outside the old Cock and Bottle, having had an ale or two too many and been thrown out for causing a scene. The bear he’d robbed was informed and was over there in a matter of minutes. Managed to clamber up a drain and get its snout right up to street level.

  The bear drew in a deep draught of the East End evening. And in among the hundred other smells, it could clearly pick out that thieving beggar, Jimmy the Hat. The bear pulled back its head, twisted itself round and got a shoulder right up into the culvert. It could hear Jimmy now, sounding off to a taxi driver, and a few moments later insulting a woman who happened to be walking by.

  A boot stepped down into the gutter and was soon joined by its twin. The feet shuffled as they did their best to keep their owner upright. Jimmy was about to head off across the road, but at the last second was obliged to stop as some carriage went flying past him. The bear heard Jimmy curse the driver. Then it reached out and made a grab for him.

  The carriage was gone. Jimmy had finished his shouting. He set off. But something was stopping him – something interfered. He thought perhaps he’d got his boot caught up on something, but when he looked down he saw a great paw clamped round his ankle. Jimmy had drunk many beers and several whiskies, but in that instant he became as sober as a judge.

  He tried to tug his leg away, but it wasn’t moving. He tried to kick at the paw with his other foot but the bear didn’t mind a bit. Jimmy dropped down into the gutter and tried undoing his laces. It would be worth the loss of a boot, he thought. But every time he went anywhere near the laces the bear just shifted its grip, until it had a hold of his shin instead.

  Jimmy began calling out to passers-by to help him – the same passers-by he’d been abusing only minutes before. Most of them just ignored him. The rest took one look at the situation and decided not to get involved.

  With every minute, Jimmy was getting more and more frantic. Below, the bear could smell the bitter panic in his sweat. The other bears gathered round and offered to help – to try and get a hold of the other boot, or to take over for a minute – but all offers were refused. There was only one possible set of circumstances in which the bear would ever consider releasing its grip.

  After half an hour or so, Jimmy collapsed, through sheer nervous exhaustion. This was probably not advisable. For one thing, it allowed the bear to drag his foot deeper into the culvert. For another, it allowed the bear to get a good look at him. Jimmy saw the bear’s eye glinting in the darkness. The bear saw the same eye that had winked at him before making off with that precious ring.

  It isn’t true that Jimmy was eaten alive. It is one of those little legends which seem to gain credence with the passing of time. The fact is that once the bear got enough of Jimmy’s leg down into the gutter, it took a bite or two – just to get him bleeding. After that, the bear was quite happy to hold on and let all the life slowly drain out of him.

  For the last hour of his life Jimmy had quite an audience – they stood on the other side of the street, not saying a word. Just watching, as Jimmy went through one or two periods in which he made quite a fuss and squealed and thrashed about like a trapped animal. Then periods when he grew quite still.

  When he was finally dead the bears dragged the body down into the sewers with them. Bears are practical creatures and will make use of whatever meat happens to be lying around, which is probably where the stories of Jimmy being eaten alive have their origins. He went down bit by bit, until with one last tug Jimmy’s head disappeared into the darkness and all that remained in the gutter was his battered bowler, less than quarter of a mile from where he’d first picked it up.

  *

  For the bears, Jimmy’s comeuppance was a significant victory, but all too soon the daily grind reimposed itself, and the idea of Jimmy held by his ankle began to recede. And it was back to the old routine of trudge and sludge, with just an occasional breather. Then sleep, high up among the brickwork, as if the bears were a part of the city’s very soil.

  At each day’s end the bears would gather by the main gate, where the passage widened before disgorging its contents into the river. Twenty or thirty bears would sometimes sit and stare out over the water, watching the barges. Or gaze up at the stars as they sailed overhead.

  In winter it would sometimes get so cold that chunks of ice formed in the river and one February the Thames froze solid from bank to bank. The warmth of the sewage formed a small pool right by the outlet, but beyond it the only navigation on the water was by foot or skate.

  That weekend there was a Frost Fair, with dozens of different rides and stalls, and it seemed the whole city was marching up and down and drinking beer and falling over, as if the Thames was just any other thoroughfare.

  The bears sat and watched from the shadows, until it was time to take up their hoes and shovels and return to work. But on the Saturday afternoon a young child spotted some movement up the tunnel. He’d taken twenty steps and stopped at the ice’s edge before his mother missed him. She turned and went scurrying after him.

  ‘Did you see them?’ the child asked his mother as she led him back towards the bright lights. ‘Did you see the bears?’

  *

  Three months later a dozen or so bears sat on that same ledge, looking out at the water. The river was still and quiet. Some of the bears were already dozing, when a barge slowly swung into view.

  Something about the boat’s progress caught the bears’ attention. It lacked the decisive nature of most barges: their blunt determination. In comparison, this barge seemed positively aimless. The fact was that its captain, having worked like a dog for two days solid, and having been up and down the river twice already today, and having just picked up his last load of coal and being on his way back to Limehouse, must have relaxed a little – in fact, relaxed to such a degree that his chin now rested on his chest, his eyes were closed and the wheel was doing nothing but support his hands.

  The bears watched as the barge advanced at a sideways angle, then came right at them. They’d seen plenty of barges over the years but none had ever come within twenty yards of them.

  It’s bound to turn, they thought. Bound to turn away at any moment. Until, one by one, those moments all ran out and the bears had to allow that the barge’s collision with the gate was a possibility, then a probability, then imminent.

  If the barge had been empty it might not have made such an impression, but those forty tons of coal ensured that, even after the initial impact, the barge kept on coming – kept on driving right up the tunnel.

  The bars popped out of their footings, the gate went under and was dragged squealing for twenty feet or more. The barge continued – straight up the main drain, until its prow was right among the bears. It paused there for a couple of seconds, as if considering its new surroundings, then slowly withdrew; slipped back into the river and drifted, backwards, towards the opposite bank.

  The captain was awake now, along with every bear in the sewers. Those dozing by the main gate had jumped up at the sound of the collision. But throughout the city’s pipes and drains there was a moment when the bears froze and turned in the direction of the commotion. Then they were all heading towards it as fast as they could.

  The bears had no way of knowing whether the river they’d looked out at all their lives would support them or take them under. It seemed quite reasonable that they would be able to swim, but it was nothing more than an inkling. So having waded tentatively into the water they were mightily relieved to find that the river actually buoyed them up.

  Lon
don continued to go about its business, oblivious. It was late, but hundreds of people still went up and down the Embankment and crossed the bridges of Southwark and Blackfriars. There appeared to be some fuss on the south bank of the river, but nobody spotted the great huddle of bears as it drifted within fifty yards of them.

  The bears instinctively knew that too much movement would only draw unwanted attention. Besides, the tide was on the ebb and so, just as it supported them, it also drew them east, out of the city. And when the river widened the bears finally felt safe enough to do a little paddling of a more concerted kind.

  They came ashore, wet and cold, on Two Tree Island, a few miles short of Southend-on-Sea, and sat on the beach wondering where on earth they were, what direction they should be going and where their next meal might come from.

  On securing its release a creature which has long been imprisoned might suffer a moment or two’s profound anxiety – might experience something which could be misconstrued as misgivings, or uncertainty. But it is nothing more than disorientation. And so it was at Two Tree Island. The moment came and went. The bears got to their feet, brushed themselves down and headed north.

  6

  Civilian Bears

  There have always been rumours of bears living among us. But at the very outset we should make a clear distinction between the subject of this chapter and those wild bears which occasionally stray into a town’s outskirts, upsetting dustbin lids and dogs, not to mention dogs’ owners, when their regular supply of food runs dry. Our only concern here is that bear which, one way or another, deliberately sets out to inveigle its way into society; to dress itself up in such a manner that it might live the same life of unmitigated tedium as the rest of us.

  Such tales of deception often seem to originate in England’s working-class communities. There are reports of bears carrying sides of beef on their shoulder around Smithfield Market, a bear employed as an assistant at a hardware shop in Rishton, Lancashire, and several bears said to have worked as miners in the pits of Durham and Nottinghamshire.

  Two separate reports from the 1920s refer to a man of ‘bear-like appearance’ being employed in hotels in East Anglia – the first at a traditional establishment in Cromer, the other in the kitchen of a guesthouse in Southwold, although why a bear or bears should be drawn towards the catering trade is a mystery, beyond the obvious proximity to large quantities of food.

  We should be somewhat sceptical of the woman in Dorset who, in the 1870s, claimed to have married a bear. As is the case in all these ‘My husband/wife is a bear’ stories, it is much more likely that her spouse simply had about him one or two ursine attributes, such as extra weight around the girth and nether region, a grumpy demeanour or general hairiness. It is also worth noting that the spouses of such ‘bears’ only seem inclined to make such allegations when the relationship has in some way broken down.

  Reports of bear-publicans, bears in academia and bear-vagrants can all, to some degree or other, be dismissed as either fanciful or malicious, along with bear-postmen, prizefighters and pylon-painters. But over the years there have been, even at a conservative estimate, a good dozen or more well-documented instances worthy of consideration, and it is the intention of this chapter to collate all that is known regarding the best-known of these.

  This individual went by the name of Henry Huxley. Little is known of his early years and general upbringing and, in truth, not a great deal more is known of the years that came afterwards. It is as if he simply landed, fully formed, in his deep-sea diving outfit on Brixham Harbour in the spring of 1931. There are no corroborated reports prior to that. There he stood, surveying the scene through the small circular window of his helmet whilst his associate, Jim Stooley, engaged a man in conversation not far away. Of the four or five occasions when one may say for certain that Henry Huxley plied his trade, Jim Stooley is always close at hand. One possible explanation is that Stooley had a better head for management and administration. Another is that he knew enough about deep-sea diving to appreciate the dangers and preferred to have someone else taking the risks, instead of him.

  Whatever their relationship, it seemed to suit both parties. And as Henry Huxley checked his weights and fittings, Stooley and the harbour master went over the particulars of the job in hand. This was no everyday bit of underwater business. Several other private deep-sea diving contractors had arrived, assessed the situation and left without even bothering to give a quote. The problem, in its simplest form, was that some old nets from one of the trawlers had ended up in the harbour and any number of lines and anchors had proceeded to get involved. Unpicking a great granny knot of chain and net and cable was tricky enough, but became potentially fatal when one introduced the possibility of the pipe carrying a diver’s air supply getting tangled in the mess.

  So the advice from all previous parties had been to leave well alone and for the local fishermen to berth their boats across the harbour. Whereas, even now Jim Stooley was shaking hands with the harbour master. Was going over to Henry and putting an arm around his shoulder and taking him off to a quiet part of the dock. According to those present, there was much gesticulation and gazing into the deep-sea diver’s helmet as the breadth and depth of the problem was laid out, along with how they might realistically hope to sort it out.

  Half an hour earlier, a manual air pump, apparently dating from the Middle Ages, had been unloaded and a couple of local lads had been drafted in and made fully cognisant of the two large wheels which cranked it into life.

  ‘Just keep on winding,’ Jim Stooley had told them. ‘I’ll tell you whether to pick it up or slow things down.’

  And now Stooley was down in the harbour, hanging over the side of a rowing boat, not far from the ladder where Henry Huxley had last been seen. In his hands he held what he referred to as his ‘viewing-box’, which was basically just four sides of timber with a piece of glass fitted in the bottom and a brass handle on either side. Half the time he had his head inserted in it, trying to keep an eye on Henry’s progress. The rest of the time he was looking over his shoulder, keeping an eye on the pump’s various valves and dials.

  If the arrows dropped too far to the left he would call out, ‘Wind her right up now, boys. That’s it. Give her some.’

  If they threatened to swing too far to the right he would call out, ‘All right, lads. Now, lay off a bit. That’s it. You lay right back …’

  In this manner the three of them kept the fresh air flowing, whilst in the murk down below Henry Huxley was busy unpicking. He had gone down the metal steps, rung by rung, with nothing but a set of steel-cutters and a bread knife tucked into his belt. When he re-emerged, forty-five minutes later, he had a great chain over his right shoulder. The rest trailed, dripping, into the harbour.

  ‘Nah then,’ said Jim Stooley and turned to the locals. ‘There’s your problem.’

  Stories of Huxley’s formidable strength are confirmed by the locals who watched as he stood on the harbour wall and dragged that chain out of the water, fist over fist. There was some debate as to what might be at the end of it, the majority betting that, judging by the speed it was emerging, there would be very little at all. But they were proved quite wrong when out of the harbour there emerged a sea-mine, quite rusty, but still spiked and lively-looking and swinging perilously close to the wall.

  Within twenty seconds the spectators had vanished – most of them back home, to hide under the kitchen table and the rest up the hill, to get as far away as possible (whilst keeping the harbour in sight so that they might get a decent view of it if the whole lot went ka-boom). The only people left on the harbour were Huxley, Stooley and the harbour master, who would’ve run himself if all the blood in his body hadn’t suddenly gone to his boots.

  There was a brief exchange between Stooley and Huxley, with a fair amount of animation on Stooley’s part. Then Stooley took a few steps back, to give him some room, Huxley got a good grip of the chain and slowly started spinning. Kept on spinning on the heel
of one boot until the mine was flying at the end of its chain, about chest-high. Then, with one final, accelerating spin, Henry leant back, raised his arms and let go, just like a hammer-thrower. And the mine flew out, over the harbour wall towards clear water, like a comet, with its chain for a tail – much to the delight of the locals up on the hill, who were just relieved that the diver had let go at the appropriate moment, or else the sea-mine would’ve been headed straight for them.

  There was no explosion, which was a bit of a disappointment. All the same, the spectators burst into spontaneous applause. The harbour master shook the hand of Stooley and was on his way over to Huxley to do the same when there was an almighty thump, the sea erupted and, a few seconds later, a heavy shower of saltwater descended on the town.

  The whole episode could so easily have resulted in utter carnage. On the other hand, it was dramatic enough to ensure that Stooley and Huxley’s reputation went before them: a reputation, in short, for being prepared to take on the kind of job the rest of the deep-sea diving fraternity had too much common sense to go anywhere near.

  Their next known job was up in Derbyshire. A local landowner had written and asked them to drop by whenever they were passing. He had some caves, he said, that he wanted to ‘open up, for the benefit of the public’, which was another way of saying he had hopes of creating for himself a nice little earner by charging people to have a look around. When Stooley and Huxley arrived and stepped out of their wagon the landowner was slightly surprised to see the diver already wearing his suit and helmet.

  ‘Does ’e not get ’ot in there?’ he said.