Return to the Hundred Acre Wood

by David Benedictus

  “He wouldn’t like it if I pulled his tail,” said Tigger. “What’s got into him? He’s even grumpier than usual.”

  “Don’t know,” said Roo. “Race you to the Six Pine Trees!”

  Owl was busy. If you were to knock on his door and wait for a while you might be lucky or, more likely, not. If Owl did come to the door and you were to ask him, “What are you up to these days?” he would look mysterious and say, “Mind your own business,” or “You wouldn’t understand,” or “Don’t want any today, thank you very much.”

  The animals and Christopher Robin discussed what Owl might be up to. Rabbit thought it must be something big.

  “Perhaps he’s spring cleaning,” suggested Kanga.

  “You don’t think the Thesaurus has got him, do you?”Piglet said anxiously.

  “Well, let’s find out,” said Christopher Robin.

  So they went to Owl’s house and Christopher Robin tugged the bell-pull eight times until it came away in his hand and then banged on the door with the sole of his shoe.

  “Owl,” he shouted through the door, “we are going to have a picnic. Do you want to come along?”

  “No!” said a cross voice from within.

  “How about a row up the river to say hallo to the swans?”

  “Don’t like swans. Noisy, vulgar things.”

  Then, when Christopher Robin shouted, “Open the door, Owl, I’ve got a present for you” (which wasn’t really true but is a good way of getting people to open doors when they don’t want to), Owl replied: “Not interested. Busy.”

  It was Piglet who uncovered the mystery. He scrambled around to the back of Owl’s house and peered through a gap in the curtains, and there was Owl sucking the end of his quill pen.

  “He looked as if he was writing a book,” said Piglet, “but I didn’t actually see him write anything.”

  “We must get him out of the house,” said Rabbit. “It can’t be healthy, cooped up like that. We could try smoking him out.”

  “We could starve him out,” said Piglet, and then he added, “just a little.”

  “Perhaps we could deliver a large wooden horse to him,” said Christopher Robin, “and have somebody hiding inside ... no, that wouldn’t work.”

  “I’ve got it. We will burrow under his house,” said Rabbit, “and get in that way.”

  So Rabbit, aided by Friends and Relations, burrowed under Owl’s house and made an opening just big enough for Lottie to wriggle through.

  She waited until she heard Owl going into the pantry, and then came up underneath the rug in his study.

  There was nothing particularly odd in the room, except a big pile of papers on Owl’s desk. Lottie took the top sheet between her teeth and pulled it out through the burrow to show to the others.

  “It’s got writing on it,” said Rabbit, in case they hadn’t noticed.

  UNCUL ROBERT

  A LEJEND IN HIS LIFETIME

  BY WOL

  Christopher Robin looked at the sheet of paper. This is what it said:

  “Ooh, show it to me, show it to me!” cried Piglet, who never liked to be left out of things, except, sometimes, buckets that were going down wells.

  “What Owl is writing,” said Christopher Robin, “is the story of his Uncle Robert.”

  “That’s still no reason to pull my tail,” said Tigger.

  “Or box my ears,” Roo added, “which isn’t funny.”

  The very next day Christopher Robin met Owl, who was cutting back the branches that were growing over his window.

  “Hallo, Owl,” said Christopher Robin. “You’rewriting a book?”

  “Oh, so you know,” said Owl. “It’s a monograph.”

  “I’m not sure what that is, Owl.”

  “It’s the story of my late Uncle Robert, who lived in Pretoria.”

  “Was he always late?” asked Christopher Robin. “Even for dinner?”

  “You will have to read the book when it’s published,” said Owl loftily, “and now if you’ll excuse me—” And he disappeared into his house.

  The following morning, Christopher Robin and Pooh were at Christopher Robin’s house having their elevenses: squashed-fly biscuits for Christopher Robin and condensed milk for Pooh. They had just started to listen to some music on the gramophone, and Pooh was wondering where the musicians were, and how they knew to start playing when you put the needle on the record, when Rabbit came in noisily.

  “We’re going to have to do something about Owl,” he said.

  “Are we?” asked Christopher Robin. “Have a biscuit, Rabbit.”

  “There’s no time for biscuits. Owl is not the Owl he was.”

  “Biscuits don’t take long,” Pooh commented. “Unless you get crumbs in your bed.”

  “I expect he’ll get over it,” said Christopher Robin, putting on a new record.

  “No, no, no,” said Rabbit, impatiently.

  Then suddenly he had an idea, and knew that it was one of the finest ideas the Forest had ever known.

  “May I borrow your gramophone, Christopher Robin?” he asked.

  “Of course,” said Christopher Robin.

  “Thank you,” said Rabbit, then he looked severely at Pooh. “Everyone will assemble outside my house after luncheon, and I will explain my plan.”

  That evening, Owl settled down to write Chapter 1: Wer and Wen Uncul Robert was Bron. It was a chapter he had started to write a good many times, and he had just written Uncul Robert was bron one more time when he though the deserved a break, so he got up to fetch himself a glass of fizzy lemonade and stretch his wings a bit.

  However, as he passed the living room window he saw outside it a placard. There was writing on the placard, and the writing said:

  I DONT WANT YOU TO RITE MY STORY

  (SIGNED) UNCUL ROBERT

  “Ah, phooey!” said Owl. And then he shouted: “You out there! I know who you are and I shall come out and box your ears.”

  But he did not leave his house nor box any more ears, but went rather thoughtfully to fetch the lemonade. While he was out of the room, something slinky and slithery crept from underneath the rug and a little later slinked and slithered back again, just before Owl returned.

  Having flapped his wings a few times, Owl resumed his writing position, but there on top of page one was a large sign. It read:

  I MENE IT!!!

  “Oh, really,” said Owl, “this is too much.” He lifted up his quill and sucked on the end of it, but before he could write another word a ghostly voice, unlike any voice that Owl had ever heard before, echoed from the chimney.

  “Owl,” it said. “Nephew Owl, I do not want you to write this book.”

  “Who is that and where are you?” Owl asked nervously.

  “It is your late Uncle Robert from Beyond the Grave.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Owl, but his voice trembled a little as he said it.

  “You’d better,” said the Voice, “or you will regret it.”

  At that moment there was a loud rumble of thunder, or possibly it was a sheet of corrugated iron being shaken.

  “If you really are my Uncle Robert,” said Owl, and he had to clear his throat several times before he spoke, “prove it. Tell me what you did every night before you went to bed.”

  At this there was quite a lengthy pause before the Voice said (in a rather hesitant and unconvincing way), “I said my prayers.”

  “No, you didn’t,” said Owl. “You drank a whiskey.”

  “I drank a whiskey and then I said my prayers,” said the Voice.

  Owl considered this, but before he could think of a suitable answer the Voice added, now sounding quite like Rabbit: “If you continue writing this book, you will wish you had not.”

  “Stuff and nonsense!” said Owl, very rudely, and sat back down at his desk.

  But just then a loud blast of music resounded from the chimney. It was the National Anthem, so Owl had to stand at attention until it was over. And the music playe
d and the thunder rumbled and outside the window a paw held up a placard reading DONT!!! and the Voice from the chimney said “BE WARNED! BE WARNED!” and several small animals covered in sheets came out from under the rug crying“WHOO WHOO!” and pretending to be ghosts.

  Then Owl thought that he had had quite enough and flew out of the upstairs window into the branches of another tree. He sat there in the dark for quite along time, until finally the noises stopped.

  A twig snapped loudly.

  “Bother,” said someone.

  “Go away, if you are there!” shouted Owl. “And if you aren’t, you can still go away!”

  Once more there was silence, until Owl concluded that it was silly to be sitting in a tree and shouting at the darkness, so he flew back indoors. But the funny thing was that when at last Owl went to bed (after saying his prayers, which he never usually did), he lay awake thinking.

  His head was buzzing with a jumble of placards and patriotic music and things in sheets and thunder and a suspicion that he might have behaved rather foolishly. And the more he thought he should stop writing his book just to be on the safe side, the more he though the shouldn’t stop writing it, because that would be Giving In.

  “Shan’t!” he said very loudly to the darkness, and then he fell asleep.

  Meanwhile, in another part of the wood, the others were saying good night to one another. Tigger returned the corrugated iron to the roof of Kanga’s shed, and the Friends and Relations folded up their sheets and gave them back to Rabbit. Everyone was starting to wonder if they had done the right thing, and whether Christopher Robin would quite like it when he heard. After all, did it matter whether Owl wrote a book or not?

  Piglet said, “I think it was quite clever of him to write as much as he did.”

  “But he shouldn’t have boxed my ears,” Roo insisted.

  “Or pulled my tail,” agreed Tigger.

  “I expect he knows that now,” said Piglet.

  “I don’t suppose he will do it again,” said Pooh.

  “Quite so,” said Rabbit. “Quite, quite so.”

  And indeed, Owl seemed to have got over his fright very well.

  For a few days afterwards, if people came up to him and asked him how he was getting on with his book he would say defiantly: “Very well. I’ve got to the bit when he takes up fire-walking.” Or “I’m just working on his days in the animal hospital.” Or “He’s at the Siege of Mafeking this week.”

  But in time, people stopped asking. Roo and Tigger resumed their games of Falling Leaves outside Owl’s house and nobody boxed their ears or pulled their tails,which they were pleased about even though it made the game less exciting.

  Then one day, Rabbit decided to visit Owl, and to take some old letters that Uncle Robert had sent to Grandad Buck, because goodness knows Rabbit didn’t need them cluttering up the place.

  “I thought these might be useful for your writing,” said Rabbit, when a glaring Owl met him at the door. “Going well, is it?”

  “Write? Me?” snapped Owl. “You must be muddling me up with someone else. Now, I am extremely busy, so if—” he paused and blinked. “How fascinating!” he cried, snatching an envelope from Rabbit.

  “Is that a Twopenny Blue? An extremely rare stamp,” continued Owl, bustling over to his desk, where a large album was surrounded by piles of old envelopes. “Do take a seat, and if you promise to pay attention I will show you my collection.”

  Rabbit sighed and sat down, glancing longingly at the door. Owl began to tell Rabbit all about his stamp collection and all the different countries the stamps came from. He went on telling him about it for hours and hours, until Rabbit had had enough and remembered an urgent appointment.

  And that was the first of many such days that summer when Rabbit tried to stay awake and look interested while Owl went on about his stamps, until eventually Rabbit would suddenly remember something very important he had to do.

  But even Owl’s enthusiasm for his stamps declined in time and in later years, when the woodworm had gnawed halfway through the leg of Owl’s bed, the stamp album served splendidly as a prop.

  And one cold night, when Owl needed something to block a draft, the unfinished book came in very useful too.

  Chapter Seven

  in which Lottie starts an Academy, and everybody learns something

  DID YOU MISS US when you were away at school?” Pooh asked Christopher Robin one August morning when the Hundred Acre Wood was at its best.

  “I did,” said Christopher Robin, “but then something would happen and I would forget. It’s noisy at school. Everyone shouts.”

  “It’s very noisy in the Forest too,” said Pooh.

  “Yes, but here the noises come one at a time, and at school they all come together.”

  Pooh seemed to be a little disappointed with Christopher Robin’s answer.

  “If you don’t miss us, nobody will.”

  “Silly old Bear,” said Christopher Robin. “I might not have missed you all the time, but I never forgot you.”

  Pooh nodded slowly. Then he brightened, and suggested: “Maybe we should have a school here, and you could be the headmaster.”

  “What a good idea,” said Christopher Robin. “Only I’m not old enough to be a headmaster, and I haven’t got a gown.” Then he thought for a moment, and added, “But I wonder...”

  Meanwhile, over in the place that had been boggy before it turned dry and crusty, Lottie was swimming around in her old tin trunk, Fortitude Hall, and explaining to Eeyore what was wrong with the Forest.

  “Perhaps, since you have been here such a very long time, Eeyore, you don’t notice things as clearly as I do. But it seems to me that the behaviour of some of the animals is Quite Uncouth.”

  “Especially the stripy ones,” agreed Eeyore.

  “Exactly. Stripes or spots, fur or feathers, what they need is a little discipline. So I have a Proposition to put to you.”

  “Well, let me get comfortable first,” said Eeyore, scratching that place behind his right ear where a scratch was always welcome.

  At exactly this moment, Christopher Robin and Pooh came into view.

  Christopher Robin was riding his bicycle, and Pooh was perched on the crossbar. At least, some of the time he was. Christopher Robin could not see the grass in front of him, because Pooh was in the way. So every time they went over a tussock, the bear was bumped into the air and tumbled onto the ground.

  “I’m not sure that bicycles were meant for bears, or bears for bicycles,” said Pooh, getting down carefully as Christopher Robin stopped beside Lottie’s trunk. Pooh rubbed that part of him which was meant for landing on, but which had been landed on rather too much.

  Christopher Robin gave him a consoling pat.

  “Why don’t you tell them about our proposal,” he suggested.

  “We have a proposal too!”said Lottie. “Shall we go first?”

  “I think we should go at the same time,” said Christopher Robin. “One, two, three—” “What the Forest needs is a school,” said Lottie, and at the same time Pooh said: “We were thinking of a school in the Forest.”

  “How strange,” said Eeyore. “There seems to be a sort of echo around here.”

  The four of them went and sat in a magic ring of mushrooms, which is the best place in a Forest to have ideas, and sure enough their plans came thick and fast. Owl was the obvious choice to teach Latin and Greek, Rabbit would be asked to take Household Management, and Kanga, Geography.

  “What will you teach, Lottie?” asked Christopher Robin.

  “I shall teach Good Manners, Dancing and Deportment, Elocution and Water Sports. Diverse subjects, but I am skilled in them all.”

  “I shall take sports,” said Christopher Robin, “and throwing the cricket ball. But we’ll need a headmaster. I thought that maybe—”

  At just the same time Lottie lowered her voice and said a little huskily: “I thought maybe you, Eeyore...”

  There was a long pause. E
eyore shuffled his feet.

  “Could you mean me, Lottie? Eeyore, the old grey donkey, headmaster of a school?”

  “Yes!” said Lottie, Pooh, and Christopher Robin together.

  It was so quiet in the Forest you could almost hear the spiders knitting their cobwebs.

  At length Eeyore said, “I shall need a gown, a mortarboard, and a blackboard. And plenty of chalk. It often breaks, you know.”

  “Excellent,” said the otter. “You shall be headmaster of —yes, let us call it the Hundred Acre Wood Academy!”

  So that was settled, and Lottie went to carry the news to the others.

  When she asked Owl to teach Latin, he stretched his wingsacoupleoftimes,thenintoned:“Theverb amare, which means ‘to love,’ is declined: amo, amare, amavi, amatum.”

  “Just what I had in mind,” said Lottie, and she hurried outside, where Tigger and Roo could be heard beginning an energetic game. Tigger tried to bounce out of her way, but Lottie was too fast for him, and before he knew it he had agreed to be a pupil.

  “As long as Roo comes too!” he added belatedly.

  Roo looked uncertain and said he would be a pupil as long as Piglet came too, and wouldn’t Lottie like to ask Piglet first? Unfortunately for Roo, Piglet happened to stroll by at that very moment and, when he was asked, said,

  “I’ll come! I do want to know things, Roo, because there are so many things I don’t know—more than a hundred!”