Little Nelson Read online

  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 th
ings.

  All Police leave was cancelled. The Army itself was placed on a twenty-four hour alert, and the Territorials were called up. The population was given the additional protection of a civilian force of part-time vigilantes, Safety and Prevention Squads, with the specific task of rounding up any standing gnomes who might still be in situ beside their goldfish pools or hidden in secluded grottos.

  Those were the days of suspense: and looking back on them it must stand as an historic tribute to the British people that there was no national panic, no widespread disorder.

  There were, of course, isolated outbreaks of unrest – protest marches, demonstrations, lootings, arson, mob violence and so forth – but never anything that could be said truly to reflect upon the national ethos. Surprisingly enough, during this period, admissions to county asylums and private nursing homes declined, though the sale of Valium and similar beneficent sedatives rose appreciably. Some people made a point of taking a tablet or two before even venturing out of doors. All in all, however, it was a time of which the Mother Country could be proud. The whole race was bound by a common purpose as in war.

  For the social historian interested in the decade, it is the correspondence columns of The Times that many have come to regard as the richest mine of fact and information. For, though the news pages were full of reports of the latest incidences (and these were often sensational enough) the letter page was devoted almost exclusively to the expression of views as to the cause of the whole puzzling affair. The theories put forward were various and conflicting. Attributions ranged from the decline of parental authority and dwindling church attendances, through Communist and neo-Facist teachings to the adoption of the metric system, legalized abortion and the arbitrary introduction of Double British Summer Time.

  Chapter 3

  The Emergency Committee at once got into its stride. It was the man from Marks and Spencer who saw to that. With their red and white armbands, the Safety and Prevention Squads were soon swarming. No one disputed them. They invaded gardens, play parks, schools, nurseries, civic centres, council allotments and private residences.

  It was, of course, all too late. The Squads found nothing except for footprints – some embedded in concrete, others mere impressions on the soil – to show where their quarry had so recently been standing.

  One extraordinary feature did, however, emerge: and fortunately by then the Police had begun to recognize the importance of correlating all extraneous facts. For the point that struck the searchers was that, in several instances, the plastic feet had actually been broken off in the cement sockets, suggesting that the marauders who had stolen them were not only desperately eager for possession but working against time. That, at least, was the misconstruction currently placed upon it. The number of missing and severely damaged gnomes was calculated to exceed the two hundred mark.

  It seemed for a time as though the peril was lessening. The night time whistlings continued, practically unabated, but people were beginning to grow used to them. Ear-muffs in mink and assorted oriental colours were advertised on TV and sold in large quantities in the bigger stores and super markets. Double-glazing flourished in areas such as Carshalton and Chorley Wood; and, because it had turned out to be a particularly hot and sultry summer, air-conditioning units were to be found in most of the now sound-proofed but, in the result, entirely airless houses.

  Reports of stolen gnomes had, however, dwindled significantly. For days on end nothing at all reached the Emergency Information Department at the Yard – possibly, it was admitted, because the raiders had done their job so thoroughly that there were no more gnomes left to steal.

  Reports of sightings had also declined. And, most important of all, when they were received they were simply not believed. Thus, when a keeper in Hyde Park logged having seen three diminutive figures, far too small for the job, painfully attempting to row a punt on the Serpentine long after official closing time, he was treated with incredulity. It was, the keeper kept asserting, the sound of whistling coming from the lake that at first directed his attention. Nor was he believed when he said that, after he had shouted at them they had, one after another, jumped overboard and swum breast-stroke to the shore. Even the incontrovertible fact that the abandoned punt was found next morning beached alongside the swimming pool, with smudges of green and scarlet paint along the woodwork, was held to prove nothing.

  It was in this mood of diminishing tension that the months of June, July and the first half of August passed off peacefully enough, even though the climate remained humid and tropical throughout, and unprecedented outbreaks of prickly heat had added to the general burden on the National Health Service.

  Then, on the 21st of the month, everything changed. For a start the whole weather system went into reverse. There were 100 mph gusts in Torquay and Truro, torrential rain in Ipswich, and early snow falls in Inverness-shire. Nature herself seemed in disarray. The Met Office could make nothing of it. Even their satellite warnings were blotted out by sun spots: and the anemometer on the Kingsway roof was put out of action by hailstones as large as grapes.

  Simultaneously, reports of gnome incidents began to start up again, in considerable numbers, and from all quarters, too. The reports, all well-attested and by reliable observers, included a description of how a company of no fewer than a dozen gnomes had waylaid a Counties & District bus at a bus stop in Wiltshire and, piling in alongside the driver, had forced him to drive them as far as Devizes. The driver was detained in hospital suffering from shock.

  A railway ticket office in Essex was broken into during the night, the tickets removed from their little pigeon-holes, torn up and scattered on the floor like confetti. Gnomes were immediately suspected.

  Similar suspicion was aroused when two market gardens, as far from each other as Weybridge and King’s Lynn, had their entire chrysanthemum crop trampled to nothing in a single night.

  Next, the proprietor of a lock-up garage in Kentish Town was called out of bed at 3 am because one of his petrol pumps had been switched on, the nozzle jammed into the open position, and left running. Again, local opinion favoured gnomes.

  Then an irregular groove, three to four inches deep and more than a hundred yards long, was sliced overnight into the turf in front of the Pavilion at Lords. A child’s metal spade, the sort that can be bought in seaside toy shops, was found to be the cause of the damage. It had been converted into a sort of miniature plough, the make-shift traces still hanging from the handle. When discovered, it was leaning up against the railings outside Taverner’s Bar.

  Most sensational of all, however, was when three undersized and unauthorized figures succeeded in passing through the security checkpoint at St. Stephen’s, penetrated as far as the lobby and then had scampered through the Chamber itself, finally making their way out through Palace Yard. Admittedly, the incident had occurred at 1.55 am. The benches were largely empty at the time. Nevertheless, the sense of national pride was affronted.

  In consequence, all National Safety measures were intensified. Searchlights were brought in to scan culs-de-sac and side-streets, helicopters roared over outlying housing estates, and the auxiliary patrols of Boy Scouts and Territorials penetrated both coppice and parkland.

  Hilda Woods-Denton’s anxiety about her brother was increasing almost hourly. He had become a man apart, moody, self-absorbed, pre-occupied. Always a practical woman with a strong leaning towards the physical, she suspected constipation. Never particularly robust or well-padded, he now presented a pathetically emaciated appearance. Nor did his dog-collar help. His neck, thin and sinewy, set against the laundry-white circlet of the collar, was strangely off-putting.

  To add to Hilda’s overall feelings of apprehension and unhappiness, the weather continued to deteriorate. It rained monsoon-fashion, and continued unabated while the clouds, mile upon mile of them, gathered in congregation practically at tree-top height. For days on end no one got so much as a glimpse of the sun and life was lived in a penumbra of perpetual twiligh
t. Moreover, the birds had all stopped singing.

  The evening of Wednesday, the 23rd of the month, had proved one of the most trying. At the Vicarage the incessant downpour had at last broken through the roof and, in consequence, the spare room was now flooded, and the pretty Chinese chintz as good as ruined. The temperature, too, had dropped. If Hilda had not remembered to close the greenhouse, she would have found everything sere and withered on the shelves.

  By 10.15 she had at last succeeded in getting her brother safely off to bed with his peasant-ware mug of cocoa and his two wholemeal biscuits, and she was left sitting there, alone to the world, staring mindlessly into the mock glowing embers of the electric fire. So far as her brain was working at all, she was trying to remember how long ago it was – ten, fifteen, possibly twenty years – since she had been forced to turn on the heating so early in the year.

  Outside the weather was worsening. A blocked gutter somewhere made a cataract-sized uproar on the loggia roof. And intermittent volleys of rain squalls hit the windows as though dishfuls of shelled peas were being flung against the panes. With every fresh gust that whistled in through the open letter box, the strip of carpet in the front hall flapped up and down on the brown oil-cloth.

  It was then that Hilda thought that she heard something that was neither wind nor rainstorm. It was a helpless, beseeching kind of sound, half-sob, half-moan. Hilda got up immediately, her thoughts full of lost dogs, hunt-weary foxes, wounded animals in general. And, as she got to the front door, she heard it again, stifled, but inescapable.

  Forgetting all the warnings about night-time security, she hurriedly undid the two bolts, slid back the safety chain, and turned the key. Still a little breathless from having jumped up too hurriedly, she pulled open the front door.