Bears of England Read online

  7

  Bears by Night

  In their turn, each tribe of exiled bear headed north, towards the colder counties. Hiked up into the hills and peaks, then went to ground. Made their way down, down into the darkness and settled, in England’s forgotten caves and caverns. Growing still, until sleep came lapping at their ankles. Then deeper sleep came rolling in.

  They slipped into the deepest, darkest hibernation, where circulation slows to a near-stasis and, finally, life itself hangs by a thread. Thus suspended, the bears abided, among the solid rock and the cold, cold stone. And the days began to spin, until they’d spun themselves into stillness. And the stillness fixed upon everything.

  *

  Up above, history slowly unfolded. The bears were oblivious – were cradled in the void. But, one winter’s day, an age-old voice came struggling through the rock towards them.

  Bears of England … came through the rock to them.

  Some ancient winch flinched. Some rusty cable tightened. Tightened and began to turn. And the bears were slowly drawn back up the well towards their waking. The years … decades … centuries fell away. Until enough weary blood pushed and shunted round their aching bodies for them to blink an eye … swallow … raise their heads. And the bears slowly brought themselves upright. Began to make their way towards the light.

  At the cave entrance the bears sat and looked out at the landscape. Nothing but snow all the way to the blinded horizon – filling the valleys, smothering the woods. The bears sat and stared, and let the light restore them, so that, after all those years of being fixed in darkness, they now found themselves fixed by light instead.

  For that whole first day the bears just sat and waited, until the winter sun eventually fell behind the hills. Then they heaved themselves up and slowly set out across the pristine fields – no more than twenty bears in total, leaving nothing but twenty sets of prints in their wake.

  The snow had fallen for four days solid, then drifted, obliterating all the walls and fences, erasing the roads. So that every home became its own tidy prison, and whole families gathered round the fire, and fretted about how much food they had in their larder, how many candles, how much fuel.

  As the night pressed on and the darkness deepened the bears picked up momentum. They headed out towards the east. Spent the whole night quietly marching, until the sky began to lighten. Then they rested, high on a moor, in the ruins of an abandoned cottage – bowed their heads, out of the freezing winds, until the light failed. Then raised themselves up and headed east again.

  The next night their number more than doubled when they were joined by other bears, close to the cave where they’d spent their own endless hours of hibernation. And within three days every other last faction had been located, and quietly incorporated. Then that great battalion of bears swept around the valley and turned towards the south.

  They followed the old ways – the old tracks and pathways. They let the mighty stars guide them home. And that age-old voice kept reaching out to them. Kept occurring to them.

  Come, the Great Bear told them, Bears of England, come.

  On the fourth night they came across a tiny church on its own small hillside, apparently empty. So the bears crept in and spent the daylight hours sheltering there. Perhaps a church has cave-like qualities. Perhaps it is something to do with stone. Whatever the reason, at the end of the next night’s march they managed to track down another remote church and spent the day there, resting among the pews.

  But at the third church, around midday, the bears were woken by a persistent thumping. The sound came juddering through the walls and floor. The bears lifted their heads and looked about them as, outside, old Mrs Earnshaw kicked her boots against the porch wall to clear the snow from them. It had been almost a week since her last visit and, barring illness and bad weather, she liked to call in at the church every couple of days.

  The bears heard the clatter of the latch as it lifted – heard the creak of the hinges on the old oak door. Then Mrs Earnshaw entered, closed the door behind her, shuffled in, past the font and the shelves of hymn books, and slowly headed down the central aisle. Quite by chance, the pew she chose to sit at was completely empty. A couple of bears lay under the pew behind her and three more were laid out under the pew in front. Mrs E. leaned forward, rested her elbows on her knees and lowered her forehead onto her folded fingers. For nearly a minute she barely moved an inch. The occasional whispered word spilled from her lips, but her eyes remained tight-shut the whole time, as if to contain her prayers and help them on their way.

  The bears stayed low. One or two stole a glance at the intruder. Others looked over towards the door, to see if any other ladies might be coming along behind. Then Mrs Earnshaw said ‘Amen’ out loud, sat back and had a look around her.

  She sniffed the air. ‘Musty,’ she thought, and made a mental note to open up the doors and get some fresh air through the place just as soon as things warmed up a bit. She looked up at the stained glass (the Lamb … the Apostles), the roof, the pulpit – all as familiar to her as the fittings and features of her own living room. Then she got to her feet and headed for the altar, before banking to the right, towards the harmonium.

  Half a dozen bears had been sleeping in the choir’s stalls. They were awake now – stock-still, listening. Could smell the soap Mrs Earnshaw had used to wash her hands and face that morning, along with the bacon she’d had for breakfast and the whiff of mothballs that clung to her coat. She lifted the harmonium lid, made herself comfortable, pulled out five or six stops and began pumping away at the pedals with her feet.

  Some people hike. Some people go cycling. Mrs Earnshaw liked to play the harmonium. Her boots went back and forth with formidable industry, producing all manner of squeak and wheeze and creak, until, having worked up sufficient steam, she set both hands down on the keys and the opening chords of ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus …’ filled the church.

  A palpable jolt shot through the bears in their various hiding places. They were filled with a powerful urge to break cover – to run … to roar. But they held fast. They gritted their teeth and kept their heads down, wondering only what strange assault they were being subjected to.

  ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy …’ was not so dramatic. ‘A Pilgrim through this lonely world …’ had a sweeter melody. And by the time Mrs Earnshaw got around to ‘In full and glad surrender …’ and ‘All the past we leave behind …’ some of the bears were beginning to find the experience strangely soothing, especially when the old lady’s left hand reached down towards the lower keys and the whole church seemed to resonate in a warm and kindly way.

  Mrs Earnshaw was quite at home with each hymn’s first two or three verses, but by the time she reached the fourth or fifth her conviction would sometimes falter, and her singing would give way to periods of humming, until she found her bearings again.

  The only potentially awkward moment arose about thirty minutes into her recital. She was midway through the second chorus of ‘The day is past and over …’ – admittedly, one of the quieter hymns in her repertoire – when she thought she heard something like a sigh behind her. A sigh, but not necessarily human. More like the groan of a large dog as it lies before the fire. She lifted her fingers and glanced over one shoulder. Then the other. She turned and surveyed the entire church. Most peculiar, she thought. Then she shrugged, turned back, did a bit more pumping and returned to her unwitting bear-serenade.

  Mrs Earnshaw finally went on her way an hour or so later, and as soon as the sky began to darken the bears went on theirs. In the days that followed the thaw continued, which encouraged more people to venture out. And, having resolved to avoid the churches the bears were now obliged to find ever more obscure places to hide away during the daytime and wait until later in the evenings before setting out.

  *

  Every bear understood the nature of their pilgrimage. They saw no need for communication; had no desire to draw attention to themselves. Bu
t three days short of their destination, at the end of a long night’s walk, with the sky in the south-east already shifting from black to blue, the bears happened to pass within half a mile of a block of kennels, where a pack of hounds was already up and waiting for their first feed of the day.

  Within moments, bears and dogs sensed each other’s presence. The bears stopped, turned, then headed over to the west. But it was too late. The dogs had caught their scent and were jumping at the fence, wild with excitement. Their master, Mr Stevens, had never seen the dogs in such a state.

  Who knows what ran through the fellow’s mind that morning? Perhaps he thought there was a fox at large. Perhaps, having saddled his horse and with the meadows still covered with untouched snow, he was looking for an excuse for an early morning ride-out. Whatever his reasoning, it seems quite likely that the dogs’ excitement somehow got the better of him. For, without a word to his wife, he opened both gates and let the dogs go.

  He never had a hope of keeping up with them. They were away and over the first fence before he had a foot up into a stirrup. For the first few minutes he just about managed to keep them in his sights – a mass of hound, three fields ahead of him. Then four. After that, he was simply chasing their tracks and their delighted yelps as they receded. By now he was riding flat-out himself, but he could hear how they were still getting away from him. Until, at the very point when they were almost inaudible, there was a sudden frenzy of barking and roaring and squealing. He pulled his horse up and listened, quite terrified. The awful noise continued for another couple of moments. Then abruptly ceased.

  Five minutes later, he found the dogs at the edge of a forest, all ripped and rent apart – not a single one with a breath left in it; their blood and guts cast, steaming, across the snow. And coming upon them, Stevens’s first thought was that this must be the work of some devil – some night-time demon that had somehow strayed into the light.

  *

  The bears pressed on. And all the while the call grew stronger.

  Bears of England, come, the voice declared.

  They did their best to avoid the towns and villages. They kept to the woods and the deeper shadows – kept their noses to the wind. But they eventually reached a river which struggled with all the water that had come off the thawing hills and fields. And for a while the bears had no choice but to walk along beside it, until they saw the bridgetown up ahead.

  Unknown to the bears, the village was completely divided – had effectively been cleaved in two. The river had risen by six feet and was still rising. And whilst the bridge across it had managed to stand for three long centuries, the local constabulary, in the form of PC Harkins, was concerned that if some tree, ripped from the bank five miles upriver, should come hurtling down the torrent and strike the bridge’s footings, then that tree, together with the water’s force and debris already piled against it, could quite conceivably bring the whole lot tumbling down.

  So, the day before the bears arrived, the bridge had been closed, for public safety. Which meant that, not only did every van and lorry have to add another twenty miles to its journey, but any villager who happened to find themself on the wrong side of the water was now effectively homeless and obliged to fall back on the hospitality of friends.

  For the first couple of hours people gathered at the bridge, in festive spirit, and called out to each other across the river’s roar. And one clever dick had announced through cupped hands that he was short of a loaf of bread. Since most of the shops were on the north side, another villager had duly gone up the road, bought a bloomer and, on his return, done a reasonable job of hurling it over to him. But, towards the end of its flight, less than six feet from the outstretched hands of its intended target, the wind got a hold of it and sent it sailing down into the threshing water. And the villagers on both sides leant over the wall and watched it bounce between the rocks and foam, before finally going under and failing to come back up again.

  A little later, someone had the bright idea of flinging two ropes across the bridge and knotting them together, to form a single giant loop. Then they attached an old crate to it and filled it up, like a Red Cross parcel, with some of those items that the villagers were in need of on the other side. And in this way, they managed a couple of successful deliveries – under the watchful eye of PC Harkins who, despite his best efforts, could see no good reason to intervene.

  But on the third trip, just after it passed the halfway mark and began its slow descent towards the south side, the wooden crate hit a ridge of ice and toppled over. And the bottles of milk and loaves were tipped out, along with a small stack of post.

  Everyone immediately turned to look at Eric Whalley, the postman, who had been most reluctant to hand over the letters in the first place and had only done so under extreme duress. His face was red and getting redder. He looked as if he was about to burst into tears.

  In fact, the letters were in no immediate danger – they were bound together with an elastic band and pinned to the ground beneath a two-pint milk bottle. Even so, they were now neither in his sack nor on the addressee’s doormat, which, as far as Eric Whalley was concerned, amounted to some sort of postal limbo, which was a state quite capable of costing him his job.

  At this point, PC Harkins finally stepped in, insisting that no one should either touch the rope or make any attempt to retrieve the crate. And not long after he put up a sign on his side of the river strictly forbidding access under any circumstances and called out to a couple of fellows on the other side to do the same.

  Most people slipped away not long after, and by the time the sun had set the remaining villagers drifted home themselves. When, twenty minutes later, PC Harkins turned to go, Eric Whalley grabbed him by the elbow.

  ‘Where’re you off to?’ Eric asked him.

  ‘Where do you think?’ PC Harkins replied.

  ‘But you can’t leave the bridge unmanned,’ said Eric.

  PC Harkins told him that indeed he could – that he was not about to spend the whole night getting frostbite on the off-chance that some halfwit tried to creep across it, since if they did then that would be entirely their lookout, and nothing to do with him.

  He placed a reassuring hand on the postman’s shoulder, in a manner that was not altogether different to how he might arrest a man.

  ‘Trust me, Eric,’ he said. ‘Those letters’ll still be there in the morning.’ His expression brightened. ‘And if the water’s dropped we’ll maybe open up the bridge.’

  But the postman wasn’t reassured in the slightest. The only point at which he envisaged feeling any improvement was when those letters found their way back into his sack. He wouldn’t sleep a wink that night, he knew it. And he told PC Harkins as much. But this didn’t stop Harkins heading off. So Eric headed home himself, made a flask of tea, grabbed a couple of blankets and a chair from the kitchen, then returned to the bridge.

  For the first couple of hours Eric just sat and looked out from his huddle of blankets – a vigil interrupted only by him getting up at regular intervals to stamp some blood back into his feet and check that the letters hadn’t blown away. But soon after midnight he observed how his thoughts were starting to wander and how his breathing was starting to slow. Curiously, he found that the further he strayed from consciousness the warmer his body became, as if sleep brought with it its own intoxicating heat. But his mind was so utterly fixed on that small clutch of envelopes that, even though he desperately craved sleep and seemed almost powerless in the face of it, he was incapable of fully surrendering to it, jerking awake at the last second, to find himself back among the blankets. Each time, he would look around, quite startled. Then, a minute later, slowly start to slip away again.

  On at least half a dozen different occasions Eric watched as some fellow came creeping across the bridge towards him. Saw the stranger stop by the crate and reach down towards the envelopes. And each time Eric would jerk awake, heart racing, to find the bridge quite empty, and all the cold night air wo
uld suddenly come rushing back in again.

  The same vision occurred and re-occurred with such frequency that he began to consider creeping out onto the bridge himself, despite PC Harkins’s orders. Began to think that the risks – of the bridge collapsing and him drowning – might well be worth it, just so that he could retrieve the letters and go home and pull the sheets up around his ears.

  He considered this option for so long and with such fervour that, in the end, he simply cast aside the blankets and went down on all fours and did indeed creep out onto the bridge and reached those letters – took them up, tucked them inside his jacket – only to jerk awake again.

  Mercifully, not long after, he slipped into some sort of stupor – a strange and dreamless interim, in which he was aware only of his own formless soul floating out among the elements. Neither bliss nor fear. Just being. And he had a sense of movement all around him – a wave of animal warmth slowly washing by him on both sides, as if it might carry him away with it. And he was perfectly at peace until, from the very depths of himself he heard a voice inform him, quite matter-of-factly, that he was now at the brink of extinction and that if he didn’t wake up immediately, his heart would give out, his blood grow cold and that would be the end of him.

  He was still debating whether he had the strength to drag himself back to consciousness, aware of the excruciating pain that would be waiting for him there. And he had yet to make up his mind, one way or the other, when he thought he picked out, in the furthest possible distance, the chink of milk bottles. And suddenly his will was restored and he drove himself back to the bridge and the blankets, and forced his eyes to open up.