Winnie's Great War

by Lindsay Mattick

  Sam sauntered to the edge of the moat to get a better look at your Bear.

  Winnie sniffed the ground shyly, avoiding his eyes.

  “Well, aren’t you a delightfully plain and quiet bear,” Sam drawled.

  “He means that as a compliment,” said Barbara with a stretch of her neck. “The last bear who lived next door was a Himalayan. What an unworldly racket he made! Welcome to the neighborhood, dear.”

  Now Miss Saunders was taking Winnie to the end of the walkway and around the side, where she stopped at a dark green metal door and put a key into a lock.

  Deep inside the Terraces, Miss Saunders led Winnie down a dark and gloomy passageway lit by an electric bulb fixed high on the wall. Your Bear tried to be brave, but she trailed behind, walking as slowly as she could.

  At the top of a short, steep set of wooden stairs was a closed gate. Sunlight filtered through from the other side.

  Winnie understood that they were at a den’s back door.

  Miss Saunders reached into her bag and pulled out an apple. She showed Winnie into her den, placed the apple on the ground, and, with a kick of her dainty shoe, rolled it farther inside. Winnie followed the apple slowly. Then she heard a lonely clank as Miss Saunders closed the gate.

  “Wait,” Cole interrupted, as if realizing something for the first time. “Winnie had to live in a cage at the Zoo?”

  “The Mappin Terraces weren’t really a cage,” I said.

  “Was she allowed to go outside?” he asked. “Outside, outside.”

  “No.”

  “Could she walk around the Zoo? Could she visit other animals?”

  “No.”

  Cole crossed his Bear in his arms. “That’s wrong.”

  “It’s what happened.”

  “Locking Winnie up in a zoo is NOT RIGHT! She deserved to be free!”

  “I agree with you,” I said softly as I wrapped my arms around him and his Bear. “But it’s the only place Harry thought he could leave her.”

  “She must have hated it,” Cole said bitterly.

  Your Bear hated the Zoo.

  She would trudge around the edges of her den, ignoring the spectators who called to her, and lick half-heartedly at the puddle of water.

  She slept nearly all the time.

  Days stretched into months. One new moon after another bloomed into fullness, then died away.

  Sometimes she would crawl right up to the front of her den and drape her nose over the edge of the empty moat, watching the passersby watching her. Every day, hundreds of people stood there, waiting for Winnie to do something. The only time her ears perked up was when a green uniform appeared in the crowd.

  Harry, is that you? she would think.

  It never was. It was never Brodie, or Dixon, or Edgett, or Colonel Currie, or any of her boys. It was just one more soldier visiting the Zoo to take his mind off the War. Sometimes he wore a bandage around his head or on his arm or leg. Sometimes he had no legs at all.

  She was comforted, at least a little, by Miss Saunders, who took to coming into her den and giving her a baby’s bottle of condensed milk like Harry used to do. While your Bear drank in silence, Miss Saunders petted her fur gently and sang in a sweet whisper.

  Keep the home fires burning,

  While your hearts are yearning,

  Though your lads are far away

  They dream of home.

  There’s a silver lining

  Through the dark clouds shining,

  Turn the dark cloud inside out

  ’Til the boys come home!

  April 19, 1915

  Germans shell town and kill 4 soldiers in Grand Place. Saw aeroplane fall. Stay in cellar under large grocery store for several hours. Tremendous shelling.

  April 21, 1915

  Shelled out of my billet & lost everything. Stayed at no. 16 vet mobile station. Have supper with English cavalry.

  Many killed.

  Warm.

  April 22, 1915

  Shell bursts almost at my feet.

  Germans gas French soldiers who retreat en masse. Hundreds of civilians and soldiers streaming down road out of Ypres. Old men carrying their wives on their backs.

  Terrible scenes.

  Canadian soldiers hold on grimly against great odds.

  April 23, 1915

  Lost everything. Returned to Ypres under heavy shell fire to try to save some of my things. Attempt failed.

  April 24, 1915

  Germans attack. Terrible fighting. Canadian troops hanging on.

  Recovered coat from ruins.

  7000 Canadian casualties.

  April 26, 1915

  Severe fighting all day. Visit lines in morning. Bombs drop on Poperinge. Close call in afternoon with Dixon.

  “Winnie,” said Miss Saunders after plying her with a custard tart one day. “I’m worried about you. You’ve been down.”

  Winnie blinked at her from where she lay.

  “I was thinking. How would you like some visitors?”

  Winnie sighed and turned away.

  “I know it’s not customary, but you’re not a customary bear. Even with Sam and Barbara, we’d be worried about someone getting hurt. But I don’t believe you could hurt a fruit fly, could you?”

  Winnie thought. She got to her feet and went and sniffed at Miss Saunders’s handbag. “Do you have anything more to eat?”

  Miss Saunders smiled. “That’s the spirit,” she said, opening her bag. “What sort of guest doesn’t bring a little something extra?”

  The next day, there was someone standing beside Miss Saunders at the gate: an elderly woman wearing a long coat who was not much taller than Winnie. Wisps of white hair peeked out from beneath the brim of her ornate hat. Around her neck and in the lobes of her ears were stones that sparkled brightly even in the gloom of the tunnel.

  “Winnie,” said Miss Saunders. “I’d like you to meet Mrs. Mappin. She’s one of our patron saints.”

  “Nonsense,” the woman said. “It was my husband, John, and the silversmiths of Mappin & Webb who made all this possible. I’m just a lover of animals.”

  Miss Saunders opened the gate and pressed a bottle of milk into Mrs. Mappin’s frail hand. Mrs. Mappin moved toward your Bear slowly, with a doubtful look back to Miss Saunders. Winnie stood and went to meet her.

  “Is that for me?” wondered Winnie, her lips searching for the bottle.

  Mrs. Mappin drew in her breath when Winnie began to feed. “My, you are a beauty,” she said, tipping the bottle. She stroked Winnie’s neck with her other trembling hand.

  Mrs. Mappin came to see your Bear throughout that spring, sometimes twice a day. She fed Winnie, and held her, and petted her. Most of all, she talked to her.

  “Why, I was just a girl,” Mrs. Mappin said. “But when John said, ‘You know, Ellen, a silver goblet is worthless without something to fill it,’ there wasn’t a thing I could do but fall for him.” Winnie remembered Harry’s hand reaching out to her under the bench at the station in White River.

  “You can’t imagine the uproar when John and my brother George set up shop down the road from John’s brothers,” Mrs. Mappin said on another visit. “They were furious! But John felt he had to prove himself.” Winnie thought of Harry, face-to-face with the Colonel the morning he became Orderly Officer of the Day.

  “The maharaja wanted a bedroom done completely in silver. When it was finished, John put the whole room up in the store window, and they had to shut down the street for the crowds! The police made him take it down because they were sure someone would steal it.” Winnie remembered the glittering smells of the mess tent at Valcartier, Harry whisking her away in his arms.

  “This was his dream, and he held on to see it through. You probably don’t know this, because you’re a bear, but John left us nearly on the day construction of the Terraces was finished.” Winnie recalled Harry’s pale, clear eyes as he held her face in his hands before leaving her at the Zoo.

  The bottle was empty o
nce more.

  Mrs. Mappin blinked as if she were just waking up. “I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since he passed.” Her eyes became shiny, and she blew out a trembling breath. “I miss him very, very much,” she said, and it was as if she were speaking for your Bear. But then Mrs. Mappin laughed through her tears: “But you make me feel better, you silly bear.”

  Winnie sat back. Mrs. Mappin had jogged something loose way up inside her.

  As if a nut had fallen from a tree and plunked her on the head, your Bear suddenly remembered her duty.

  “That’s why I’m here!” Winnie leaned in and stuck her nose right in Mrs. Mappin’s face. “I make people feel better!”

  When Winnie was jolted awake in her den that night, her first thought was of the horses.

  The Terraces were cast in a strange light. It was a cloudless night, the moon nearly full in a way bears can sense, but something wasn’t right.

  When Winnie looked at the sky, a shiver rippled through her. Something was partly blocking the moon. Droplets were falling from whatever it was, black rain against the dark gray night.

  Balls of fire bounced off the horizon suddenly. And then the explosions reached Winnie’s ears, and all at once, the sounds of the Zoo rushed in: the alarmed trumpeting of elephants, monkeys screaming, birds calling out to one another.

  On the other side of her den’s wall, Winnie heard Barbara weeping as Sam tried to comfort her.

  Winnie shrank back against her slope. A man on a bicycle rode past the bottom of the Terraces blowing a whistle in short forceful bursts. “Take cover!” he cried between shrieks of his whistle. “Take cover!”

  More explosions rattled the City.

  Someone ran by on the walkway above your Bear. “It’s a zeppelin attack! Get the animals inside!”

  “What’s a zeppelin?” asked Cole, hiding his Bear under the covers.

  “It’s a really big blimp.”

  “It dropped bombs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did anyone get hurt?”

  “Seven people died in that first raid on London, but the Zoo was okay.”

  Cole pressed his lower lip against the satin edge of his blanket. “I didn’t know there were war blimps.”

  The air still smelled burnt when the first visitors arrived at the Zoo the next morning. Faces were pale. Legs moved stiffly. The whole city was shaken by the attack in the night.

  But Winnie was up and ready.

  Attention! Salute! Forward! Double march! She marched along on two legs, waving with her nose at the passersby.

  On the walkway, a little girl giggled and tugged her distracted mother’s hand. The woman looked, and a smile spread across her face.

  More and more visitors stopped to point and wave at your Bear. A round-faced boy sitting on his daddy’s shoulders clapped for her, kicking his father’s chest with his heels. A woman wrapped in colorful scarves waved her hands over her head, and Winnie did the same. A member of the fire brigade threw her a warm bun, and she caught it in midair.

  “Winnie,” Sam called over the wall, “are you trying to steal my thunder?”

  “Thunder?” Winnie dropped onto all fours. “Is that why you need all those umbrellas?”

  As spring turned to summer, more special guests were allowed into Winnie’s den. Miss Saunders would lead them right up to her gate, introduce them, and let them inside. Winnie would rub her flank against each visitor’s leg to greet them.

  There was the lanky, cheerful old man with a pale blue work coat and a face that reminded Winnie of Sir Reginald the horse, especially when he laughed. Pfeiffer was his name. Miss Saunders said he visited the Zoo every day except Christmas.

  “Winnie!” he’d say. “The hippopotamuses were asking about you.” Their favorite game was Flying Chestnuts. This involved Pfeiffer standing on the other side of the den from your Bear while holding a small greasy paper bag. He’d pitch chestnuts from the bag to her one by one. Those watching from the walkway would count each successful catch in Winnie’s mouth. “One! Two! Three! Four!” Winnie once caught seventeen chestnuts in a row, which she thought was probably More Chestnuts Than Any Bear Had Ever Caught.

  A large woman with a small chin fed her sardines on strips of toast. Afterward, she sang to Winnie in a high, warbling voice. She was an opera singer, but the Royal Opera House had been shuttered for the War and turned into a furniture warehouse. Winnie danced on two feet as she sang, and the visitors to the Terraces clapped for them both.

  Miss Saunders concocted a special drink, especially for when Winnie had guests: Winnie’s cocktail, which was one part condensed milk, one part golden syrup, stirred. Whenever she drank one, your Bear rocked on her back and hummed a grand symphony.

  One cool, cloudy summer day, Miss Saunders called to Winnie from the gate. Your Bear trotted up, but she didn’t recognize who was waiting there at first because his scent was caked with smoke and his hat was missing.

  But then she knew all at once and as the gate opened, she jumped up on Harry and very nearly knocked him to the ground.

  July 8, 1915

  In London all day. Visit Zoo in morning & see Winnie. Afternoon looking round city. Visit bookstore and was measured for jack boots. Also bought watch. Lunch at Lyon’s popular restaurant in Piccadilly.

  “Oh, Winnie!” Harry cried as she licked his face all over. He tucked in his dimpled chin. “You’ve gotten so big,” he gasped.

  Her hind feet stumbled over his boots as she pawed at his chest. “It’s you!” She snorted, unable to believe her senses. “It’s you!”

  “Settle down now,” Harry said, and his fingers found that spot behind her neck, and she settled. Harry sank to the ground beside her. She put one paw on top of the hand that wasn’t scratching her. He slipped his hand out and put it on top of her paw. She moved her paw on top of his hand. He put his hand on top of her paw. She thumped him hard with both paws.

  “Hey,” said Harry, pushing aside her nose roughly. “Want to wrestle?”

  And so they wrestled. They wrestled the way Mama and your Bear wrestled so long ago and far away, pushing themselves under each other, feeling each other’s weight against their shoulders, climbing over each other. Winnie got to standing on Harry’s back, but then Harry roared and flung her off into the puddle and jumped on her back, and she dragged him around and over the slopes toward the gate as he kicked his feet comically while the crowd cheered them on.

  He let go and they both collapsed, panting and smiling dumbly.

  The voice of a child on the walkway above asked, “Did Winnie win?”

  As Harry lay there, blinking and breathing and doing nothing at all, Winnie examined him bottom to top. The sole of one of his boots had come loose; it flapped when she nudged it, though it was tied to the shoe leather above by a tattered strip of bandage. A spiderweb crack marred the watch on Harry’s wrist, and there was mist trapped behind its glass. When Winnie listened, its familiar tocking was gone; all she heard was Harry’s stomach grumbling. One of his thumbnails was black. She rooted around the top of his head and found a long, thin pink path through his fur.

  “We had a close call, Dixon and I,” said Harry in an absentminded way. “A sniper’s bullet struck my helmet. It sounded like a church bell, but it was just a scratch. A miracle, really.” Winnie licked the scar. Very quietly, Harry said, “I don’t know why I was the lucky one.”

  He rubbed his eyes and let out his breath. “It’s a horrible business, this War,” he said. “But the future of the world depends on us, so we must soldier on. Not for ourselves. For one another. For our children’s children’s children’s children.” He stroked your Bear’s ear. “Isn’t that so?”

  Winnie could tell Harry was preparing to leave. Bravely, she nodded.

  Harry got to his feet, dusted himself off, and saluted.

  Winnie saluted back.

  “Miss Saunders!” Harry called. He gave a brisk nod to your Bear. “Take care of London while I’m gone, Winnie.”<
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  And then Harry went back to the Front.

  The seasons repeated themselves over and over as the War wore on.

  At least once a year, Harry would travel from the front lines in France or Belgium to visit your Bear. Winnie grew into a husky grown-up, while Harry got more wiry and compact. When he visited, Winnie noticed a grim determination beneath his smile, though his hands remained as warm as ever. He and the horses saw some of the worst battles of the War. They were part of the charge when the Canadians took Vimy Ridge in 1917. It was a great and terrible victory: more than ten thousand Canadian soldiers killed or wounded in just three days and thousands of horses lost.

  There were more zeppelin attacks on London. When the City succeeded in fighting them off, the Germans replaced their blimps with biplane bombers that flew above the clouds like dragonflies. Big guns were set up around London to shoot them down. Winnie grew used to taking cover.

  While many places were closed during the War, the Zoo drew larger crowds than ever. Faced with so much hardship and pain, people flocked to see the animals. Millions walked past Winnie’s den, smiling and gasping, laughing and calling to one another. “Look!” they cried. “Come look at Winnie!”

  They were brave enough to smile. The giggly twin boys who made monkey faces at your Bear; the American soldier whose head was half-covered in bandages blowing her a kiss; the three young women who shouted all of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” as loud as they could across the moat so they could watch Winnie bounce as she walked.

  She had guests to see her in her den nearly every day, although the variety of treats dwindled. No more scones or custard tarts or golden syrup. It became against the law in England for bakers to even sell fresh bread. Everything, it seemed, was being used up by the War.

  She developed a new routine. Each morning, Miss Saunders would come through the gate and say, “Do your daily dozen,” and Winnie would perform the new exercises Pfeiffer had taught her, which included lying on her back and pumping her legs, standing, and clapping her paws.