Little Nelson (2 page)

Fixing the eye-shade had not proved easy. It had kept slipping. And bandaging the injured arm with selotape had been just as difficult. In the end she had been forced to hold him between her knees, clamping him there. Nor had it been easy to concentrate. Every time she turned him over on his back his bright blue eye kept staring up at her. It was a fixed and penetrating eye. Even so, she could not help smiling back. When the whole operation was over, she had picked him up and kissed him before returning him to his place alongside the others.

Even in the Vicar's dream, Little Nelson had been the one apart. He had proved strangely difficult to get moving. The other three had been forced to go over and reason with him. The Vicar had been aware of faint but persistent whistling. In the end, Little Nelson had given way. Shrugging his shoulders and
giving a deep sigh, he had eventually fallen in line and trudged off with the rest of them across the corner of a neighbouring flowerbed.

Mr Woods-Denton was a thoroughly sensible man. Now that he was fully conscious again he was not unduly disturbed. Dreams were a speciality of his. He had even arrived at a theory which he called the Law of Conditional Opposites. For example, in dream symbolism, returning from a long journey usually meant that you were about to set off on one; being marooned on a desert island denoted that you were going somewhere crowded; or, becoming involved with a terrible railway accident was an indication that the next train you took was bound to arrive safely and on time. The theory, though arcane and difficult at first, was really perfectly simple to apply once you got the knack of it.

And now that Mr Woods-Denton was sitting upright again he could see that the gnomes were all missing. There was nothing to show that an entire family of them had ever rested there. Even the fishing rod must have been picked up again.

The dream lesson was immediately obvious. If they had all seemed to go off on their own free will, that meant they must, in fact, have been abducted, stolen, snatched away by an unknown intruder.

Mr Woods-Denton did not hesitate. He went straight in to tell his sister. She was the one he always turned to when anything went wrong. He
did not mention his dream, merely that the gnomes were missing. And Hilda Woods-Denton, although busy as she always was, stopped what she was doing and came at once.

She was a firm and decisive woman.

As soon as she saw the empty places she told him what to do, ‘Phone the Police Station,' she said. ‘Straight away. Now. At once.'

But Mr Woods-Denton was reluctant to the point of obstinacy. Gentler, far gentler, than his sister, he was moved by compassion in all things.

‘No, no, dear,' he said. ‘Not the Police Station. We don't want to bring them into it. Nobody's in any danger. Nobody's been hurt. It's only …'

Hilda, however, was not listening to him. She was looking down at the flower-bed.

‘Then try the Infants' School,' she interrupted him. ‘Just look at the size of those footprints.'

Mr Woods-Denton looked, too, his heart sinking. A track of tiny footprints led diagonally across the border, just as he had seen it in his dream. The ground was soft from the recent rain and each footprint showed up precise and clear.

Mr Woods-Denton only hoped that his sister had not noticed that the shoes that had trampled down the zinnias and godetias had been narrow, very narrow, with long pointed toes.

Not that the Vicar's failure to ring up the Police
Station really made the slightest difference. Everyone else seemed to have rung up instead. Reports of missing gnomes were coming in from all quarters. Surrey and the Isle of Wight were the two worst hit areas, with North West London figuring high on the list, with complaints, practically minute by minute, from East Finchley, High Barnet, Totteridge, Mill Hill, Ruislip, Pinner and Uxbridge. By midday no fewer than forty-five calls had been received at a total of thirty-four local Police Stations.

Because of the apparently trivial nature of the incidents, no attempt was at first made to co-ordinate them. Thus Ruislip, which by 8.15 am had been informed of two particularly flagrant cases – one from a front garden right under a lamp post and in full view of the street – was left in complete ignorance of the fact that in nearby Pinner two more cases had already been on record by 7.50 am.

By the time of their noon conference, however, the staff at Scotland Yard were beginning to see the whole picture. But, still only beginning. The calls were pouring in. And from all directions. In Lancashire, Lytham St. Anne's appeared to be particularly larly badly affected with five cases, all within a two-mile radius. From Douglas, Isle of Man, moreover, came the report that from a children's playpark a whole residential gnome colony, previously complete with windmill, ornamental bridge and
illuminated pagoda, had been removed, leaving only an earthquake-like pile of broken fragments behind.

Meanwhile, Hilda Woods-Denton was becoming increasingly worried about her brother. At times she even began to have doubts as to his sanity. It seemed to her that the poor man must have received a shock, a violent traumatic assault upon his psyche that could not be accounted for by the mere theft of a set of garden gnomes already badly in need of re-painting.

Could it, she asked herself, be some hidden scandal that had suddenly come to light? No, she decided, it could not. Cyril was not that kind of person. There had indeed been only one ugly incident – a five-shilling fine for riding a bicycle without a rear lamp – in his distant college days. The Church, however, has a long memory, and Hilda could not forget that there were some among his friends who regarded that youthful, careless lapse as the probable reason for the conspicuous lack of ecclesiastical preferment in his later years.

Whatever the reason, he was certainly all jittery and on edge. Previously inclined to avoid all contact with either radio or television, he now made a point of hanging around at news-times, waiting impatiently for the reports of world events to be over and done with, and for the domestic items to begin.

Here it was sound radio that came out on top. That was because of reports, mostly from the Home
Counties, of strange, night-time whistlings. The outer suburbs were particularly badly affected and those with extensive areas of woodland worst of all. The sound broadcasting organizations taped the lot. And what was most remarkable was that the sound seemed to follow a fixed pattern. First a few isolated chirps, more squeal-like than musical. Then a long continuous note developing into trills, tremulos and warbles until the darkness was full of it. And then simply the odd squeaks and chirpings again.

Naturally, political prejudice came into play and, in some quarters, it was the nationalized industries that were held to blame. The Central Electricity Generating Board, the Gas Board, the Metropolitan Water Board, the Railways, the Atomic Energy Commission, and British Airways were all under suspicion. It was only later that the true origin of the sounds was established. At that time, however, the whistles that Mr Meehan, the milkman, had heard when his float overturned, had not yet been properly appreciated or woven into the overall pattern of disturbance.

The mounting pile of reports of missing gnomes and of the unaccountable nocturnal whistlings could no longer be ignored. Nor did Scotland Yard shirk its responsibilities. The whole matter was straightway placed on a National Alert basis. Even the remotest Police Stations in country districts were instructed,
as a matter of top urgency, to report all gnome cases immediately.

By 1.30 the evening papers were on the streets and the front pages were devoted to the mystery.

GNOME OUTRAGES; POLICE BAFFLED

LOCK UP YOUR GNOMES; MORE RAIDS PREDICTED; and

STOLEN GNOMES, WHO IS MR BIG? –

The headlines grew ever bolder and more strident. There were moreover hastily-taken pictures of the desolate marble surrounds of swimming pools beside which entire gnome families belonging to TV and Pop celebrities had once paraded themselves.

By then even those who had been in no way affected— flat-dwellers, hotel residents and the like – were talking of little else. Conversation during the rush hour was entirely devoted to uninformed speculation and, as always happens when a major emergency is threatened, a mood of forced jocularity set in. People began making little jokes, carefully pronouncing the letter ‘g' in the word gnome, as though calling them g-nomes made it all seem harmless and trivial. At six o'clock, when the BBC reported the latest toll of disappearances – another seventeen since lunch time – listeners referred to it as the BBC G-nome News, and simply stopped worrying.

That evening, however, the full extent of things had still not been appreciated. The National Alert
had not yet become a National Alarm. That was still to come. And it came in the form of a News Flash on both radio and television that there would be an important announcement on all channels at nine o'clock. The News Flash was repeated at seven and again at eight, and only then did householders seem to become aware of the fact that something of unusual importance was actually occurring.

The announcement itself was both terse and dignified. It was the Deputy Commissioner who spoke. He confirmed that there had by now been a considerable number of instances of domestic interference – he did not, poor fellow, at the time know how else to describe them – largely from the Home Counties, and that the Police were conducting a full investigation. He made it clear that the Force regarded the thefts as a deliberately planned and concerted operation, and were already being assisted by information received. In no circumstances, he emphasized, should the public regard themselves as being in any way at risk. Then he reminded all householders of the necessity of taking adequate precautions before retiring to bed. Meanwhile, any garden gnomes that were still left standing, he advised, should be removed and put away under lock and key in some safe place, either indoors or in the garage.

That, however, was before the first of the reported
sightings began to come in. And, when they came, they were legion.

It began with a telephone message from Potters Bar, almost incomprehensible because of the note of near hysteria in the caller's voice. What the Station Sergeant
was
able to make out was, however, sufficient. A night-duty Post Office worker, it seemed, had been cycling home past Hadley Woods when he had been assaulted by three small figures, one carrying a long rod with a piece of cord dangling from the end, and all brilliantly dressed up in green and crimson. Without warning they had sprung out from behind a clump of blackberry bushes and attacked him. In his agitation he had fallen off his cycle, and the three small figures had promptly begun jumping up and down on it, damaging three of the spokes and badly denting the front mudguard. As soon as he had recovered from the shock, he had managed to chase them off and, whistling shrilly, they had simply scuttled back into the bushes. The bicycle, however, was in no condition to ride, and he himself in no state to attempt it.

Then came a rather breathless report from a public call box. It was an early morning paperboy who was phoning. On his way back to the newsagent he was amazed to find the quiet suburban road littered with ragged strips of newspaper. The whole place, he said, looked like a Council Refuse Dump. Then, when he came to the end house, he saw the cause. Seated
on the doorstep opposite were two dumpy and diminutive creatures furiously ripping up the newspapers that he had just delivered. It was probably the endless zip-zip sound of the tearing paper that had left them unaware of his presence. At the sight of him, however, they instantly broke off and ran round the back of the house, one squeezing under the side gate and the other heaving himself up over the roof of a lean-to dustbin shelter. That was from East Norwood.

At Ongar a whole column, twenty or thirty strong, of what looked like gnomes, had been seen crossing the road and making for the denser parts of Epping Forest. What was remarkable was that they were all marching in step, military-fashion, like little guardsmen.

The climax came when Heathrow reported an unknown number of mysterious brightly coloured objects crossing and re-crossing the runways, darting backwards and forwards like rabbits, all apparently desperately looking for the way out. For over two hours all arrivals and departures had, of course, been cancelled.

Other reports were now coming in at the rate of half-a-dozen-a-minute, from Walton Heath, Dagenham, Gunnersbury, Kemptown, Haywards Heath, Reigate, and as far away as Bootle, Axminster and Truro. In some areas the calls were so frequent and
over-lapping that requests for extra switchboard staff were beginning to come through.

It was then, and only then, that the full and developing seriousness of the situation came to be recognized. Up till that moment unrest in the Near East, the Middle East, the Far East, India, Central Africa, Bolivia and Korea had tended to put domestic affairs out of the Government's mind, and the Home Office was reluctant to move.

The Press, however, soon saw to it that something was done. And in this they were aided by a nasty rail disaster on the Southern Region. Just outside Redhill, a crowded commuter train had been derailed when it hit a concrete sleeper placed crossways over the line. Gnomes were immediately blamed for the outrage, and public opinion flared. The fact that the concrete sleeper was far too heavy and unwieldy for any number of gnomes to carry was completely ignored. It did not seem to occur to anyone that the occurrence was simply a piece of normal everyday vandalism performed by perfectly normal everyday vandals going about their chosen vocation in perfectly normal vandalistic fashion. In the heated emotional atmosphere of the moment, it had to be gnomes who were responsible, and the fact that two small figures had been seen pillaging a litter bin at nearby Hands Cross was enough to clinch the matter.

As a result an Emergency Safeguards Committee was set up. Chaired by the Home Secretary it comprised
the Chief of the General Staff, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the Director of the National Research Council, the Chief Scout, two Civil Servants from the Department of the Environment, a Trade Union representative, and a Board member of Marks and Spencer who had an outstanding reputation in the City for his skill in getting on with the job and co-ordinating things.