by MJ Walker
Her action drew a laugh from all who saw it. From atop Doris, Edward waved at Bear, who knew it was his turn. Being an anteater, a giant one at that, Bear had never been schooled in the finer arts of entertainment. Years of prodding, shouting and whipping had only managed to convince him to run in a circle. He was good at it though, so he set off in a clockwise direction. He selected a wide circumference and looped far beyond the seats and bandstand, passing the flamingoes and even the hippo pool as he circumvented the lawn. It was the first time he’d ever performed without his spectacles.
The crowd and King clapped as he ran, so Bear spun upon his feet and repeated his trick, this time anti-clockwise, dizzying himself. But the applause didn’t grow, the humans expecting more from an animal which had evolved to do anything but run in circles.
Tony the terrier realised Bear’s predicament. He ran after the anteater.
“Now do what I do,” Tony said.
The dog broke away and found a spot in front of the chairs. He lay on his belly. Bear matched him and Tony rolled on to his back. Bear did the same. Tony jumped up and ran to his master. He flipped on to his back again and Lloyd Morgan rubbed it. Bear went to the professor. Misjudging things he rolled his large frame on to the professor’s shoes, his spine connecting with the human’s shins. Lloyd Morgan roared with pain and joy. He patted the anteater’s warm chest, his very being becoming lighter each time he felt the beat of Bear’s heart.
Tony spun on to his feet and offered his owner a paw, which Lloyd Morgan shook. Bear did too and the professor noticed the size of Bear’s talons.
“There’s no way I’m shaking those,” Lloyd Morgan announced loudly to those watching, growing into his new role as a performer. “You’ll take my hand off.”
“I’ll shake his hand,” suddenly shouted the King, above the furore.
Bear had heard him. Without further instruction, he jogged across the grass to the foot of the bandstand. Doris winked at the anteater who sat back and offered up a paw, the long black hair dangling from his arm as he waited for the King to reciprocate.
“My word, have you taught these exotic creatures to obey a King?” he shouted back to Lloyd Morgan, who looked as surprised as his monarch.
The King knew he couldn’t reach the anteater from up on the bandstand. So he did the most unroyal thing. He passed his written speech and walking stick to his private secretary, removed his cap, hitched his trousers and clambered down until he sat alongside the Indian elephant. He leaned forward and Bear gently placed his paw into the King’s hand, making sure his pad met the King’s palm, his long talons passing safely by the King’s wrist.
“Amazing,” whispered the King, as the two shook.
The crowd had fallen into a deferential silence.
“And what will you do boy?” the King then asked of the leopard, sitting quietly now on the lawn next to the jaguar. “You reign here,” the King reminded the cat.
The leopard considered his life once last time. He thought about taking one of the elderly men in the front row, or a young plump woman, just to see how she might taste. He glimpsed Lloyd Morgan beside him. The leopard thought about wiping the smile off the human’s giddy, manicured face. He eyed Tony the terrier, but knew now the dog had good intentions. He respected any animal willing to fight for what it considered was right. Then the jaguar brushed up against the leopard’s body, necking him, licking his fur.
“I will come with you. Wherever we are going, I will come with you,” she said.
The leopard made his last big decision. He rose on to all fours. He stared the King square in the eye. He raised his tail and pushed his toes into the warm grass. A drop of saliva fell from his mouth. He pushed forward and slowly walked towards the King, who eyed the cat all the way. The leopard sat next to the giant anteater, the jaguar joining them. The old leopard offered his blotched, arthritic paw. The King saw the scars, where the leopard’s claws had been ripped out. He took the paw and shook it, bowing his head. The jaguar too lifted her paw and the King took it, planting a kiss upon a rosette.
“How wonderful. This is a fine institution, but if any man says that animals are better caged, then he’ll have me to answer to. And if not me, then God,” announced the King, chortling.
He looked about for the zoo administrator, who was nowhere to be seen.
“You have put on a great show for us. An astounding show of the animals’ wit and intelligence,” said the King. “But these animals can’t understand my words, and I will prove it. I command that little bird there to take my handkerchief from my pocket. I know it won’t do that.”
The King had noticed Bessie all along. Her life as a show bird now reached its zenith. To the amazement of every human watching, she flew on to the King’s shoulder. She hopped along till she reached his tie. As the King stared down in shock, she climbed down his beard and popped on to his top pocket. She pulled out a white silk handkerchief embroidered with royal blue letters. Grasping it in her small beak, she flew from the King. Conducting the first ever royal air show, she looped up over his head. She flew through the bandstand and back over. Towing her white and blue banner, she whizzed past the hats of the cheering crowd, through Lloyd Morgan’s legs and across the nose of the leopard who raised a mocking paw to her, drawing yet more laughs. Each and every person attending noticed Bessie and became convinced she was the most special bird they had ever sighted.
“You see, my King,” said Lloyd Morgan, approaching the bandstand. “Animals are more intelligent than we think. I have no doubt that in the decades to come, they will continue to surprise us with their insight and emotions.”
“I don’t doubt you Sir,” answered the King. “And you have learned all this at your place of study?”
Lloyd Morgan nodded. He couldn’t bring himself to speak his lie.
“Then we shall accelerate the granting of a Royal Warrant. A university you shall have!”
Lloyd Morgan clasped his hands to his chest in gratitude while his fellow professors cheered. Edward watched it all and felt certain the animals had fulfilled their part of their contract with the scientist. But he knew humans to be fickle, so he decided to end the greatest show on earth with one final flourish, a reminder to them all.
He jumped off Doris’s head, who still sat, chest heaving, so pleased and proud. The monkey leaped into the crowd on the bandstand and began dipping into the pockets of the humans. He threw aside pennies and pencils, watches and tissues. He moved from man to man, searching for the finest cigars. Edward found them in the pocket of the King’s private secretary who didn’t dare interrupt the monkey stealing from his clothes. Edward selected three cigars and ripped away their paper seals. He jumped one more time on to the King’s tweed jacket and waved the cigars under the nose of the private secretary.
“Light one man!” demanded the King. “He’s asking you to light one.”
The private secretary pulled out a distressed silver lighter presented to him the year before by the Ambassador of France. He cocked its arm and sparked it into life. Edward watched, so the man took back a cigar, bit the end off and spat it on to the grass. He drew heavily, making the cigar’s end burst into life, and handed the cigar to Edward.
The monkey held the unlit cigars under his chin, as if fetching firewood in winter. He grabbed at the last one and ran back up on to the elephant’s head. Doris stood and walked back out on to the lawn, dwarfing the humans standing next to their seats. Edward threw the lit cigar into the air and watched it rotate and fall. He caught it perfectly. The crowd began to clap. So he threw it again and then another, catching them both. The applause grew louder until Edward tossed all three cigars, juggling them while shrieking and cackling as the clapping reached a crescendo never heard in Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top.
“Three cheers!” demanded the King, and the humans cheered three times, gentlemen and ladies breaking protocol by removing their hats and tossing them high.
Then as confidently as he had appeared, the King to
ok back his walking stick and cap and walked down the steps to the bandstand. As his entourage gathered around him, full of questions and gossip, he strode across the lawn as they followed, a few darting looks back at the troupe of wild animals. The King and his men disappeared out of sight and the crowd began to leave their seats, some dashing after the King, others to use the lavatory. Many commented that they had never been to a zoo before, and if this was what they were like, they would surely come again.
“What now?” Doris asked, looking at Bear.
“What now?” asked Professor Lloyd Morgan of the animals.
“We go home,” said Edward.
“We go home,” agreed Bear. “To live in the woods. Will you join us?” he asked the spotted cats.
“We will,” they said together.
Bear ambled across the lawn. As finely dressed humans milled around him, some eating ices, others cooing at the birds and apes imprisoned behind bars, Bear started to walk as he did across the pampas of South America.
“This way,” said Doris.
She joined the anteater and showed him the path down which they had followed the lady dressed in lace. Bessie alighted upon Doris’s head and Edward jumped up on to the jaguar. She flinched, but promised herself to adjust to the monkey’s antics. Together the animals wandered the zoo, weaving their way back to the entrance.
Behind them, Professor Lloyd Morgan picked up his hat and dusted it.
“Friends of yours?” he asked his terrier, smiling.
Tony barked once back at him. The human and dog walked after the animals, which plodded through the gardens as if they did it every day, Edward visiting the bird tables, Doris taking the odd bunch of daffodils, the cats urinating up trees and Bear slurping up any passing convoys of insects.
As the afternoon gave way to evening, they reached the black gate hung between two white cottages. Mystified, a guard emerged. News had already reached him about an unexpected show put on that day for the King. He was not used to animals walking into the zoo and he was even less used to them walking out. He paused, confused, keys dangling from his belt.
Lloyd Morgan serenely passed between the two predatory cats. He ran his hand along Doris’s belly and along Bear’s back until he confronted the guard.
“Will you please open the gate,” he said. “My animals are tired. They have just performed for the King and I must now return them to their lodgings at University College.”
The professor spoke with such authority that the guard slotted and turned a big key into the gate, pushing it aside. Mouth agape he watched as the human and his small dog led a troupe of exotic animals out of the zoo.
Three cars braked heavily, stopping in the road to allow the troupe to cross. Despite its locks, keys, cages and high walls, word had already reached beyond the zoo of what had happened within. Children playing on the downs ran to its edge, their parents chasing after them, all curious to see the animals that had caused such a commotion. They formed a corridor of little faces with flushed cheeks and the adults placed protective hands on their shoulders. A couple of women pulled back their little ones, having heard stories in their youth about the ways of wild spotted cats, while one man, having caught too much sun on his balding head, fell over, stunned by the heat and the creatures before him.
Tony the terrier led the way, then Lloyd Morgan ahead of the once captive animals. They walked across the downs towards the great cleave in the ground, the gorge that separated the dirty city from the clean meadows and hills of west England. Every human out picnicking on the grass that day had by now gravitated close to the procession, leaving the rest of the downs to the blackbirds and worms. As the humans flocked around them, Lloyd Morgan and the animals passed through the trees surrounding the clipped, green expanse, and down a street that had hours earlier been closed for a King. They saw the first brick tower suspending one side of the metal bridge. The menagerie prepared to cross the gorge for the last time, to freedom.
Tony started barking, his noise drawing the attention of Lloyd Morgan and the animals, who had been looking into the crowd, flattered by its acclaim. The corridor of humans ended at the road that joined the bridge, their bodies giving way to the huge twisted cables and metal supports that carried the wooden boards above the river. But three humans stood apart from the crowd. In the middle of the road, they blocked the entrance to the bridge. One was a woman, her hair covered in a gypsy shawl, her moist eyes surrounded by dark shades. Another was a man of more than six feet in height, bearing an oiled moustache, his sweat soaked into a shirt that clung to a broad chest and biceps. The third, smaller man wore thick trousers tucked into leather boots, a red jacket that hadn’t been washed for days, and tall black hat. His collar was fixed and his jacket buttoned high and tight around his chest and belly. He held a whip in his hand, its burnt length coiled five times through his palm.
Tony barked at the humans. Doris recognised the man that had kept her for so many years.
But she didn’t see her leader, the human that led her across the countryside, securing water and graze. She didn’t anymore see her family. She no longer wanted to follow him and be part of his herd. Instead, she flapped her ears and felt the wind pass through the holes in them, made by the Ring Master ripping at them with his harpoon. She rolled her tongue over her teeth that he’d filed, just to be sure. She tasted not the memories of her time at the circus, but the years that she knew would be lost to her, as the molars at the back of her mouth wore through long before she reached old age.
Upon the jaguar’s back, Edward cackled. His discomfort transmitted itself through the cat’s veins, forcing her whiskers to harden. The little pin monkey, the tufted capuchin that had been bought and sold until he ended up on the Ring Master’s shoulder, covered his eyes with his hands. He thought of Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top and how, just a few days earlier, he’d wanted to run a circus of his own. But to do so, he knew he’d have to command and cajole other animals to do his bidding. He would have to resort to the whip. And he knew that wasn’t a very clever thing to do. He remembered the snuff he’d sneezed and the port he’d poured, and how he’d wanted to taste a drop. But then he heard the Ring Master’s words play in his mind, the challenge the human had set the monkey that he allowed into his wagon. Edward recalled the Ring Master challenging him to understand that his mother was dead.
Bessie watched the humans all around. She knew she had been bred for no other reason than to perform and that most people had lost interest in her doing even this. But then she looked to the sky and saw the other birds flying free, a robin that had waited for her, and the buzzard still circling high. She gave thanks that she could fly and promised she would do more of it, seagulls or not. She too remembered something once said; how the wrens that had given her sanctuary told her they had no need of a name. How it mattered not to them whether they were registered by humans.
Bear stared at the whip in the Ring Master’s hand. He had found a new energy these past days and simply decided never to run from the whip again.
The old leopard saw the people who’d kept him caged for most of his life. He resolved to give himself. He now understood the other circus animals had risked it all to save him from the zoo. He would repay the favour and give everything to save them. He would kill the woman first, then Jim the Strongman. Then he would wound the fat Ring Master. But rather than sever his jugular, he would take the human’s body in his mouth. He would jump upon the bridge’s side, letting the human fall still in his jaws like a dying antelope. Then he’d leap one last time, plunging himself and his tormentor into the abyss.
Lloyd Morgan struck first. He shouted to Tony, who swapped his bark for a deep, incessant growl. The professor stood tall and stroked his beard.
“These are not your animals,” he shouted down the road.
The Ring Master pulled a flask of spirit from his trousers and gulped at it, trying to fortify his own.
“They are mine. They are so. I have trained and taught them everything
they know. They are escapees from Whyte and Wingate’s circus. They are performing animals that I have paid for. And they will again perform for me.”
The Ring Master pointed to the pavement, covered in rusting chains and collars.
“You don’t even have enough men to take them back,” said Lloyd Morgan.
“You will relinquish them Sir,” said the Ring Master, trying to speak with authority, in the style of another social class. “It is their destiny! Tell them,” he demanded, pushing forward Charity, the circus clairvoyant.
She stumbled as her long gypsy skirt caught under her heeled shoes. Jim the Strongman took one long stride and caught her.
Lloyd Morgan realised the Ring Master was drunk.
“These animals are not going with you Sir!” the professor declared.
“They are from the circus,” shouted a man from within the crowd. “I paid good money to see them. They are circus animals I tell you.”
The crowd of humans began to argue. A factory man threw his cigarette on the floor and blew the last of his smoke into the eyes of another. A woman put down her basket of fish bought from the docks and shouted at the heckler.
“If they are your circus animals, why aren’t they dressed so?” demanded the professor. “Now move aside. These animals are free, by the order of the King of England. Any man who cages them risks being caged himself.”
The Ring Master was used to haggling and gambling his way through life. But he could see the aging professor wasn’t bluffing. He saw a dog ready to bite, an anteater that had discovered life and was willing to fight him for it. He noticed Bessie and then Edward. But the monkey wouldn’t look at the Ring Master, who moved on to examine the jaguar, her sleek coat and perfect, shiny teeth. How he wished he could collar her and put her to work in the Big Top.
