John Davis - Fear No Evil

Suddenly, as he was rooting around, his snout full of earth, he smelled something delicious. He eagerly followed his nose, and saw Winnie and Pooh standing on their hindlegs, swiping up into a tree with their forepaws. Bees buzzed angrily about their heads; in a fork in the tree was a hive.

But the hive was well out of the big bears’ reach. Pooh was trying to climb the tree. He lunged at it, chest first, and flung his forelegs around it. He jumped, and for an agonizing instant he clung there, hairy and bulbous, his hind claws frantically trying to find purchase. Then he slid down with a thump. Winnie tried, taking a lumbering run at the tree trunk, hind paws massively scrabbling. Then, crash , down she came too. Smoky looked at all this hirsute activity, and he just knew what to do.

He knew nothing about trees and nothing about honey; but he knew that he could climb a tree to get it. Smoky lumbered around Winnie and Pooh, giving them a wide berth, looking up into the tree, sizing it up; then he bounded.

His claws sank into the bark, and up he went, effortlessly. He was halfway up before Winnie and Pooh realized it, and was into the beehive snout-first, long tongue licking, claws clinging tight. The bees went berserk, swarming about his furry head in a cloud. The smell of honey flooded down to Pooh and Winnie, and they were beside themselves. Smoky was getting stuck into what they couldn’t reach, and Pooh hurled himself at the tree trunk with anguish and came crashing down again, grunting and thumping. Pooh tried to paw Smoky down out of the tree by jumping and swiping. Winnie joined in, and they bumped into each other in their agitation, but their paws whistled harmlessly beneath Smoky’s rump. The bees were zapping furiously into his nose, his ears and his deep shaggy fur, but it would have taken strong machinery to pry Smoky out of that tree.

He clung tight, his heart thumping joyfully, his eyes screwed up and his snout stretched out, his pink tongue slurping in and out of the beehive. There was honey all over his chops and face and drooling down his neck, and it was absolutely delicious. His nose was a big black sticky swollen mass of stings, he had swallowed scores of bees, but Smoky did not care. Now honey was running down the tree in thick long drools, and Winnie and Pooh were pawing at the trunk, their long pink tongues gratefully licking the bark.

None of them had ever been happier.

Elizabeth jerked, eyes wide, hand to her throat.

‘Oh! Hello …’

‘Hi.’ Big Charlie squatted self-consciously five paces away. ‘Sorry.’

‘How do you move so quietly?’

‘Sorry. Where’s Davey?’

She pointed down the glen, her heart still palpitating. ‘He went down there about an hour ago. I think I offended him.’

Big Charlie shook his head slightly. She did not know whether it was in denial, in regret, or even perhaps in sympathy. But right now, the less said the better. She had shot her mouth off with that impetuous remark about God’s instrument—she’d had him talking, and she had blown it. She found herself nursing the hope that if she shut up and stuck with them long enough they would simply not have the heart to reject her. Then she could do some good, when she had won their confidence. O God, she wished it would get dark quickly.

‘Did you find anything up there?

Big Charlie shook his head. ‘No, Dr. Johnson.’

‘Please call me Elizabeth.’ Big Charlie looked embarrassed. She added, ‘We’re all in this together.’

Charlie looked uneasy. He picked up a twig and fiddled with it; then said, ‘We’re going soon, Dr. Johnson. You won’t be able to keep up with us.’

She took a big breath and closed her eyes.

‘Let me worry about that. I’m a big strong girl, haven’t you noticed?’ She tried to make a brittle joke: ‘Maybe too big, you think, hmm?’

Big Charlie smiled, and blushed. ‘I didn’t mean you’re too big.’

She had him talking.

‘Yes, you did—too fat.’

‘You’re not too fat, Dr. Johnson.’

‘Just fat, huh?’

Big Charlie squirmed in smiling embarrassment. ‘You’re just right for me.’ Then he looked horrified, as if he wanted to slap his hand over his mouth. ‘I mean—for my liking.’ He floundered. ‘I mean … I think you’re great like you are,’ he ended, covered in confusion.

She smiled and felt tears burn for a moment.

‘Thank you, Charlie.’

Big Charlie looked desperately down the glen for Davey. But there was no rescue in sight; he pulled himself together and crumbled the twig.

‘But we will worry about you, Dr. Johnson. And … we’ve got enough to worry about right now.’

‘Charlie—don’t let’s talk about it. Let’s wait for David. Let’s just talk …’

A glint came into his hooded eyes.

‘It’s not just for Davey to decide, Dr. Johnson.’

She could have bitten off her tongue for the tactless way she had put that.

‘I know … I’m sorry … but please—can we just talk?’ She shook her head. ‘Tell me about yourself. Or I’ll talk about myself. Are you married, Charlie? Have you got a girl friend? Where is she? Or let’s … tell me about the animals.’

Big Charlie looked at her with disappointment. That she thought she was fooling him. But he was too polite to say so.

‘I’m not married,’ he mumbled reluctantly.

‘Is Davey?’ she said brightly.

‘No.’

‘Have you got a girl?’

Big Charlie looked at the ground, and then a rueful smile twinkled across his face. ‘Sometimes …’ Then a smothered laugh rose from his chest: ‘When I get lucky.’

She was smiling again. Oh, poor Charlie! ‘And Davey?’

Charlie shifted and looked at her apologetically. ‘Can we talk about the animals?’

She clutched at this change of subject. She cast about for something not provocative.

‘The elephants …’

Big Charlie waited. ‘What about them?’

She marshalled her thoughts urgently. ‘I watched that lion play today. And then the chimps. And … it was truly wonderful.’ She shook her head sincerely. ‘It’s been a wonderful day, really. I’ve learned a great deal. But about the elephants … I mean the zoo ones. Your circus elephants. They’re accustomed to traveling, to new places and all that. And to teamwork. So maybe all this isn’t such a shock for them. But you saw how nervous the zoo tiger is, for example—she doesn’t want to mix. So what I’m saying is, I’m sure that the zoo elephants are feeling the same way. I know those elephants—as individuals. I know they must be very frightened. Of —she waved at the forest—‘the vastness … the lack of security.’

Big Charlie stared at the ground, self-conscious at being asked advice by a fully fledged veterinary surgeon. He found it difficult to say, you’re mostly all wrong.

So he said, ‘You’re partly right, Doctor.’

In his cage in the zoo, Little had learned almost nothing about being an elephant. He had learned what time of day he was going to be fed, when he was going to be chained up again by his foot, that in daylight people came to stare at him. He was not allowed to play with Clever: sometimes their chains were just long enough to be able to reach each other with their trunks, but mostly they were chained too far apart, facing opposite directions. For the rest of the time they just rocked on their great feet. When the people came to look at them, they reached out their trunks through the bars, groping for some friendly contact. There was nothing else to do.

He could not see Jamba behind the next gray wall. But he could smell her, and hear her. Sometimes, he could stretch his trunk out through the bars, reach around the dividing walls, and maybe touch trunks with her. Then they sniffed and groped at each other. He yearned to be with her, for her company, her comfort, and her natural authority. Jamba yearned with all her elephantine instinct to mother him and yearned for his fellow elephantness. But they could not see each other. The only way to express themselves was to trumpet, a frustrated, old sound of the jungles that fell back on the Victorian hall.