Little People (6 page)

Get real
, I told myself.
What were you planning to do, anyhow? Barge your way into the science labs at Cambridge University, yelling, ‘This tiny blob of disgusting white mush will prove that elves exist?'
I took in a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. I had enough proof to convince one person – myself. The rest of the world was going to need something a bit more substantial.

At this point, it occurred to me that I'd been standing in full view in the middle of a restricted area for several minutes; not smart at all, since the only thing standing between me and probable discovery were the singing and dancing skills of a cast of veteran Hollywood troupers. I closed the forefinger and thumb tightly on the fag end, threw myself on the ground and rolled sideways into the cover of a dense patch of bolted spinach.

I stayed put for as long as I could bear to, but quite apart from the cramp and the small inquisitive insects crawling up my trouser leg there was the issue of how long it'd take for my absence to be noted and remarked on. A curious thing, that: none of my family ever seemed to have much use for my company, but the absence of it seemed to give tremendous offence. Slowly and carefully I crawled out of the spinach jungle, checked for obvious signs of observation, and scuttled back indoors as fast as I could go.

Luck was with me for once, and I made it to my room without being intercepted. First order of priority was finding a safe home for my evidence; luckily I had one of those empty plastic film canisters handy, and I scraped it off my finger into that, sellotaped round the lid and cached the canister on the top of my wardrobe, among the dust and spiders' webs. That made a quick visit to the bathroom something of a necessity – the dust dissolved in the milk to form a fine, creamy-textured taupe mud, which I decided I'd probably be better off without. Once again my luck held and I was able to sneak back into my bedroom, shut the door and get down to a brief but intensive figuring-out session before rejoining the family downstairs.

It didn't take me long to resolve on a plan of campaign; it was basically just a minor tweak on what I'd already done, only with a degree more thought and insight behind it. Of course, I had to wait till early the next morning before I could do anything about it. Luckily, this time I managed to wake up when the alarm went off at 6 a.m. (horrible time of day, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise). I crawled out of bed, pulled a shirt and trousers on over my pyjamas, and snuck down as quietly as I could to the kitchen.

Preconceptions can be a real pain in the bum, can't they? For some reason I'd got it into my head that elves must be vegetarians – probably because of their alleged fondness for bread and milk, though the fact that they'd used my previous offering of same as an ashtray seemed to suggest they weren't all that keen on the stuff after all

– so I couldn't bring myself to plunder the turkey carcass, just in case I mortally offended their principles, or whatever. So I burgled the biscuit jar instead, and dug about in the back of the kitchen cupboard for a bar of cooking chocolate I'd remembered having seen a while back – not parsimony, let me hasten to add; it was simply that after three days' infestation by my blood kin, it was the only unscoffed chocolate left in the house.

Fortunately, the booze wasn't a problem. True, they'd swigged a hell of a lot of it over the past few days, but Daddy George was far too canny to underprovide in that department; not that it mattered, since I was able to fill my saucers from the dregs of last night's unwashed-up glasses.

Tiptoeing down a gravel path in the dark while carrying a tray of saucers three parts full of stale beer calls for precision footwork, excellent night vision and a certain degree of luck. It's not something I'd recommend to anybody who's inclined to be timid or slapdash in their approach to fine work – such as, on both counts, me. Still, I made it. The hardest part was locating the saucer-drop sites by dead reckoning alone, since I couldn't see what I was doing. It's amazing, though, what a clear mental image of a place you can drag into your mind's eye when you absolutely have to. As soon as the last saucer was in place I snatched up the tray and legged it back indoors, pausing only to hop up and down a few times and scream noiselessly when my unshod big toe found the large stone urn on the corner of the patio.

Mercifully, about half of the house guests pushed off that day, which eased the tension around the house to a certain small degree. We were still lumbered with Cousin Valerie, Auntie Chris, Uncle Pat and Psycho Jack, Mum's unlovely half-brother; it was nevertheless a blessing, like seeing off the boils and the locusts and only having the plague of frogs to contend with. By the time we were through with the waving-goodbye ceremonies for the ones we were managing to get shot of it was lunchtime. I was able to hide in my room until 4 p.m. on the pretext of having work to do for next term, and at 9.30 I synthesised a headache that got me out of the front room and back to safe territory. I got undressed, set the alarm again and dropped off to sleep as quickly and painlessly as if I'd been reading a Martin Amis novel.

The results, when I came to examine them the next morning by the feeble light of the little pen-sized torch that had fortuitously tumbled out of a cracker the day before, weren't nearly as encouraging as I'd hoped. One saucer of stale beer had become a sort of Agincourt for snails, and there was no indication that the biscuit and chocolate had been touched. As I approached the next saucer a very fat-looking pigeon tried to do an emergency lift-off, stalled about a foot from the ground and just about pulled off a forced landing in the leek patch. I don't know if pigeons can be prosecuted for drunk flying; if so, I hope it had the sense to hunker down and sleep it off, though I doubt it. If it was bright enough to do that, it wouldn't be a pigeon. My guess is that a badger got at the third saucer; that, or it was the victim of a very small-scale drive-by Greek wedding. In any event, the saucer was too badly smashed and the shards too widely distributed to give me any useful data about whether and by what its contents had been molested. That just left one more saucer, in the same part of the garden where I'd seen Elf One all those years ago, and sure enough all the beer had gone, along with nearly all the chocolate and two-thirds of the biscuit; also, there was a small puddle of yellowy-brown stuff that didn't smell nice at all and could conceivably have been elven vomit – but I couldn't confirm that, of course, since I had no samples of definitely genuine elf-puke to compare it with. What there weren't were any tracks, footprints, discarded artefacts or other clear evidence. A definite maybe, in other words.

Never mind. I gathered up the three surviving saucers, replaced them with the next instalment, and got back inside before sunrise had a chance to grass me up to the household. The day dragged by in the same tiresome pattern of obligation and evasion, and once again I set the alarm before going to sleep. By the end of the week, I didn't need it; I'd mutated, God help me, into an early-to-bed early riser, which only goes to show the sacrifices we scientists are prepared to make for the sake of our research.

But a pattern was starting to emerge. The only saucer to get any sort of result was Number Four in the lettuce zone. No more alleged elf-puke, and still no tracks or other visible signs, but something was scoffing the bickies and glugging the beer in a highly thorough, not to mention dedicated fashion; certainly enough to justify proceeding to Phase Three.

Assuming I was prepared to take the risk, of course. Putting down saucers of flat beer could just about be explained away as a science project or a sudden burst of compassion for asylum-seeking hedgehogs or something of the sort, though I suspect that if I'd been called upon to explain myself to Daddy George an explanation along those lines would've come across as unconvincing bordering on the Clintonesque. A camera, on the other hand, cunningly rigged with tripwires to set itself off as soon as anything jostled the saucer, was in another league altogether. Besides, quite apart from the security aspect, I couldn't make up my mind whether I was prepared to change the nature of my relationship with the putative elf –

I know, that does sound nauseatingly flaky. But look at it this way. Up to that point, all I'd done was give away free beer and calories, out of (for all the elf knew) the kindness of my heart. If the little buggers were capable of goodwill, I was due for some; likewise trust and all that stuff. If I was then to start loosing off flashguns under their noses like some ruthless paparazzo, we'd be straight back to square one, possibly even worse.

Furthermore, it wasn't just a matter of cold policy: I was starting to feel attached to the little tyke.

God only knew how or why; looked at logically, on the evidence I had gathered, my elf was the kind of person who drinks the equivalent of ten pints of beer and guzzles three packets of chocolate digestives and a half-dozen Mars bars every day. A mental image inevitably begins to condense around statistics like that, and in my mind's ear I was already imagining him burping a lot and talking with an Australian accent. Even so: the idea of trapping him with a hidden camera felt like betrayal. It might be the next logical step in my research, but I didn't want to do it. Simple as that.

When in doubt, prevaricate; as mottoes go it's neither use nor ornament, but it's what I tend to do, and it's my life. I put the decision off for another two days and carried on with the biscuit-and-beer drops, hoping that something would happen that would make the stealth photo call unnecessary. Maybe the elf was getting as curious about me as I was about him, and one morning I'd show up with the day's saucer and he'd be there waiting for me, poised to carry out first-contact protocols in a properly dignified and serious manner. Or maybe he'd get careless and leave something behind. There was a fair chance that with all the booze and chocolate he'd been getting through, I'd come down one morning and find him stone dead of heart or liver failure. Now that really would be evidence: a dead elf –
another
dead elf. But you can take nearly everything too far, and that includes scientific research. In fact, thinking it over, that was all the more reason to wrap up Phase Two and stop putting down the saucers, if I didn't want another death on my conscience.

Valid point, dammit.

So: next morning I didn't take a fresh saucer with me. No big deal, I told myself. After all, I'd proved the existence of elves to my own satisfaction, which meant I wasn't crazy, or at least not as regards elf-seeing. Surely that was all that mattered; besides, even if I completed my ‘research' and came up with dead certain conclusive proof, who the hell was I going to show it to? Any scientist worth his lab coat with the row of pens in the top pocket would tell me to get lost as soon as he saw the word ‘elf' in the title of my field notes. Nope; time to call it a day, pack it in, get a life . . .

I froze. Out of the corner of my eye I'd noticed something. Something strange – well, that wouldn't have been so bad. This was worse than strange, it was familiar.

It was an elf, sure enough. I could just make out the shape of his head through a screen of verdant weeds. Because of the angles and the height differential, I was fairly sure he hadn't seen me yet. Very slowly and carefully I turned my head until I could see him properly.

An elf: same size as the other two, same general appearance. This one was squatting on an upturned acorn cup with his tiny moleskin trousers round his ankles, smoking a miniature ciggy and reading a very small tabloid newspaper.
Bloody hell
, I thought.

I guess that if you're a trained naturalist, you don't get embarrassed. Must be so, since those guys spend all their time spying on God's creatures, with a somewhat dubious level of concentration on their reproductive activities. But this was the first time I'd done anything like this; and besides, the little fellow looked so much like a human that the natural social instincts cut in before I could stop them. And the first instinct was, of course, to apologise.

‘I'm sorry . . .' I stammered.

The elf looked up and scowled at me. ‘What the fuck do you think you're staring at, tall-arse?'

If it wasn't for the extreme mortification that was flooding all my systems at that moment, I'd have taken conscious note of the fact that, although the first couple of words seemed very faint and far away, as you'd expect of the product of a one-sixteenth scale larynx, something inside my head managed to turn the volume up, so that by the time he'd finished the sentence it was like listening to someone my own size. There you go, you see. A born scientist would've noticed that straight away, rather than having it dawn on him several hours later.

‘I'm sorry,' I repeated, ‘I didn't mean – I mean, I didn't expect—'

The elf snorted. ‘What d'you mean, you didn't expect? Stands to reason, I'd have thought. Whole saucer of beer every night, on top of all that chocolate and biscuits, any bloody fool ought to see what that's going to lead to. The runs,' he added accusingly. ‘Something chronic.'

‘Actually—'
No
, I told myself,
don't try and explain further.
‘I'm sorry,' I said for the third time. ‘Besides, if it didn't agree with you, why did you—'

‘What, turn down a free drink?' The elf laughed harshly and flicked away his dog-end. ‘Now, would you mind terribly much pissing off while I wipe my bum? If it's all the same to you, that is.'

I turned away so quickly that I nearly lost my balance and fell over. While I was still wobbling precariously on one foot, I realised that I was practically face to face with Daddy George, in a green-and-red-checked dressing gown and non-matching slippers.

‘Who were you talking to?' he asked quietly.

‘What? Oh, nobody,' I replied as best I could, though it wasn't easy; it felt as though my tongue was suddenly several sizes too big for my mouth. ‘I was just—'