The child and the bear

The child was being a nuisance. It was making excuses not to go down to sleep. First had come a story, then a drink and now what was it?

“I can’t find her.” Came the pathetic little voice out of the half-darkened room. I was losing my patience. She drew breath. “I can’t find her” came the voice again.

“Can’t find who?” She was shorter than she could have been – but she’d had enough, a full day at work; dinner, bath, the bedtime ritual – a long day, and a timid, sickly child. The child had knocked the stuffed toy to the floor. Stooping down, she grabbed it and stuffed it under the covers. “Silly child” she said, “Now, go to sleep”.

She was hard pressed not to slam the bedroom door behind her, but she almost ran down the stairs to the waiting bottle of wine and the glass. “How dare he work away all week?” she muttered under her breath, as she poured herself a glass. “That brat wouldn’t be like that if he was here.”

“God, I waited all those years for a baby – and look what I was given!” She could hear the child crying softly in the dark bedroom upstairs, snivelling into the teddy bear.

The first glass of wine had somehow disappeared, so she poured a second and stood up to turn on the television to drown out the sound.

Some banal quiz show filled the room. The second glass of wine was beginning to take effect.

“How I wish the child had been a boy,” the woman thought, “I could have been proud of a boy – but this child is thin and dark and ugly. She’s ill and wheezy and she’s got eczema, and people point at her and stare – and she doesn’t have friends. She’s not even a pretty girl – I can’t dress her up and have people say what a pretty little girl you have: she’s just a nuisance. But he adores her, of course. And she’ll do anything for him.”

Her thoughts were drowning out the sound of the television. She got up and switched it off – and heard faintly from upstairs the sound of the child singing herself to sleep –

 “When constabulary duty’s to be done, to be done – a policeman’s lot is not a happy one – happy one….”

The anger mounted as she remembered that it was the song he was learning for the next opera production. The child had picked it up from the CD player in the car, or from him. It had made her laugh. She couldn’t make her laugh.

She shut the living room door and picked up her knitting, put it down again and poured a third glass of wine. With any luck it would send her to sleep…

The child was happy now. She was making the bear dance to the song and join in with the chorus. "Happy one" the bear sang in her head.

The bear heard all her secrets, all her wishes, all her dreams and all her sorrows. It dried her tears and shared her successes - like when her teacher, Miss Wyatt, who she really loved, and thought was the prettiest person she had ever, ever seen, had told her she was really good at reading - and would she like to read a story about fairies by a man call William Shakespeare - even though she was only seven years old?

She had asked about William Shakespeare - and found out that he had lived a long time ago in the Tudor times. She was excited about that. She knew about King Henry VIII and his six wives and how he had beheaded Anne, who had been beautiful and who Henry had been in love with (not when he beheaded her - thought the child, sadly) - and little Catherine Howard, who had run screaming for Henry through Hampton Court when they arrested her. It made her feel sad and sometimes, when she told the bear these stories, the bear had nodded wisely and felt sad too. Her Mother had been collecting a big book which came out in magazines - one each week, called "the History of the English Speaking People" by a Very Important Man called Winston Churchill - and each week the child had read them - but she liked the ones about King Henry VIII best - and the Black Death - and she sat with the bear reading them over and looking at all the pictures of the people. She especially liked the pictures by a man named Holbein because they looked most like real people and she could picture how they spoke and moved - which was, she thought, why she liked Henry and his wives so much. She had told her mother she was going to read William Shakespeare's story about fairies - but her mother had told her to stop telling lies. She told the bear - and the bear asked if she would tell the story to her - and the child did - the bear's name was Honey. The child could not remember a time before Honey.

Time passed as it has a habit of doing, and the child grew up and left home, but the bear remained with her - sitting now on the bedside table instead of lying in bed, until the time came for the child to become a mother herself.

She gave birth to a daughter, a baby with eyes as blue as cornflowers and hair as fair as corn. And everyone said to this child how pretty she was. This child laughed and giggled through her days, and smiled at everyone. She was not shy or timid, and never cried herself to sleep. She did wheeze and she had skin as clear and beautiful as a summer's day - and oh, how her mother loved her. But this child never spoke and did not learn how to walk. And her mother took the bear from her bedside table and tucked her in beside her baby, who never spoke but only laughed, and never walked but was as fair as the day - and she spoke to the bear for the last time: "You always knew my pleasures and my joys, my sorrows and my fears, Honey. My child can't tell me hers, but I trust you to know hers as you knew mine. Help me to keep her safe, as you kept me safe, and happy and secure, as you kept me happy and secure."

And the bear nodded wisely and listened hard to the child in the way that she always had done. And her child was happy and contented and smiled and laughed and slept well with the bear beside her, just as her mother had done before her.

But the day came when the child did not wake. She simply did not wake up. Her heart had broken, and her mother's heart was broken and the bear's heart was broken too.

And today the bear and the child lie together still....

And I can tell you this because the story is true.