Little Nelson (12 page)

It was at this point that Hilda joined him. Quick and resourceful as ever, she went over and subdued the set. And only just in time. Already the supreme moment had come. The Highgate army was on the move. It was attacking.

By now Hilda had pulled up a chair and was sitting four-square in front of the screen like a guard dog. She could see everything. As a result, the Vicar had been driven over to the corner of the couch.
Even there, however, his seat was well-nigh useless. Every time Hilda leant forward, her head blocked out the picture completely.

The scene was certainly a memorable one. The fairy cycle patrols were out again, wheeling and turning. Two squads of boomerang throwers had moved up, supported on the left flank by a company of light archers; and, in the centre, the array of heavy armour was now visible. A Centurion tank and a couple of Crusaders – both certified scale models – an open troop-carrier and a radio scout car were all advancing in strict battle formation. Most remarkable of all, however, was that the column was led by a single jeep, with a crouched down driver and a solitary figure standing up in it.

Hilda recognized the solitary figure immediately. It was Little Nelson. He was secured to the windscreen by a webbing strap to keep him steady, and in his good hand he was brandishing something. Hilda recognized that, too. It was the Vicar's paper-knife. In the slanting evening sunlight, the ivory gleamed brighter than silver.

The jeep was now occupying the very centre of the screen and the television cameras had their zoom lenses fixed upon it. Every detail was visible. Hilda could count each scroll and piece of braiding on Little Nelson's hat. What is more, under the open collar of his battle dress, she could see the edge of the woolly pullover that she had knitted for him.
He seemed so close that it was almost like having him there, cuddled up in the corner of the chair beside her.

What she was not prepared for, however, was the technical performance of the directional microphones. The result was most startling. Separate murmurs were clearly detectable – the swish of the small rubber wheels upon the grass, the creaking of Little Nelson's webbing strap, and the
peep-peep
of the miniature klaxon horn which the crouched-down driver kept on sounding.

Then came the moment which left Hilda temporarily unhinged. Turning towards the cameras as for a Royal Salute, Little Nelson stuck the paper-knife into his waist-band and doffed his admiral's hat. His lips parted and he uttered two syllables, ‘Hil' and ‘Da'.

The controversy which succeeded this comparatively simple utterance has been both long and embittered. What, however, is no longer challenged is that it is the only oral communication other than a whistle that can with reliance be attributed to any of the gnome population. The meaning of these two monophones is still the subject of debate. There is one school that holds that they come from a bastard form of Pushtu, correctly spelt ‘H I J D Y L' and ‘T A H A R', meaning ‘Danger ahead' or ‘Keep off'. Another school has traced the symbols back to a purely oral Amharic dialect, and contend that their
meaning lies somewhere between ‘Look at me' and ‘Here I come'. For Hilda, however, the message was plain enough and in her emotion she caught hold of her brother's hand and would not let it go.

Meanwhile, Little Nelson's battle jeep was plunging on its way. Being pedalled flat out, it bounced and became temporarily airborne with every tuft of grass that was in its way.

But still it carried on, bearing Little Nelson ever nearer to the enemy. And the defences looked impregnable. The front row of extremely small young gnomes, armed with large-calibre captive missiles on elastic, were sprawled out on the turf, all at the ready and simply waiting for the signal.

In the event, these youngsters were never called upon. As the hostile armour bore down upon them, matches were already being struck somewhere in the closely assembled ranks behind them, and immediately the significance of that hi-jacking of the fireworks delivery van became apparent. Sparklers began to fizz, Roman Candles spouted upwards, Rockets suddenly began to roar overhead. Lit by clouds of Golden Rain, the south lawn of Kenwood was now basking in its own false dawn. The air was full of the fumes of gunpowder and saltpetre. Nor was this all. A special branch of gnome engineers had been working for weeks on the Catherine Wheels and had succeeded in mounting them on small wooden trolleys. Once ignited, they careered
terrifyingly forward, scattering circles of fire and fury all around them.

Hilda could bear it no longer. She shut her eyes. That is how it is that she came to miss the climax. And those who were still watching are by no means unanimous as to what happened. Some claim that there was a blinding violet flash, others an orange one. One group of observers noted that everything suddenly went jet black and that the sky was streaked by lightning flashes. Others again referred to displays of sheet lightning against a noticeably pale sunset. Thunder, or something remarkably like, there indubitably was: and a low rumbling, usually associated with earthquakes, was independently recorded. Where there is universal agreement is that a wind of hurricane strength tore with no warning through the adjoining tree-tops, and that a water-spout some five or six feet in height suddenly erupted in the nearby lake, carrying fish, weed and water fowl up into the air with it. Some camera tripods unaccountably went off balance, and the two mobile generators over the old kitchen wall, fused simultaneously.

By the time Hilda had opened her eyes, it was all over.

There are many who contend that the sudden noiselessness was even more alarming than the clamour that had preceded it. It was as though time itself had stopped. Nothing stirred. The battlefield of Kenwood lawn became simply a tapestry, a majestically spread-out still-life. Tiny plaster-of-Paris corpses in a variety of uniforms lay motionless, piled everywhere amid the litter of up-turned go-carts and abandoned fairy cycles. The only sign of what had been so violent a conflict were the stray wisps of acrid smoke still ascending from the partially burnt-out Catherine Wheels.

The sheer awfulness, the unbelievable magnitude of the transition broke upon a nation wholly unprepared for it. Only the Deputy Commissioner was unperturbed. So far as he was concerned, all that remained was for the powdery mess, the shambles, to be cleared up. And, even here, he had shown his resourcefulness by careful forward planning.
Stand-by teams of clearance and removal men were already on call in Finchley, Muswell Hill and Upper Holloway.

Even so, disturbing things were still happening. In Ross-shire, a bicycle leaning up against a wall of Presbyterian church unaccountably burst into flames; and, to the surprise of the simple villagers, the weather-cock on a Suffolk steeple began crowing lustily before flapping its way to some distant and uncharted farmyard. Again, at the village of Uffington, the White Horse, carved in the turf of the hillside, went missing for a full forty-eight hours, returning on the third day even more painfully emaciated-looking, but with nothing else to show for its prolonged excursion except for a nasty snick in the left foreleg.

The prevailing aura thus remained one of cosmic turmoil and anarchy. It seemed that Nature itself had gone awry. And it could not have been more upsetting for anyone in Hilda's delicate state of health. Not that she really cared. With Little Nelson gone, she was not really interested in living much longer. Shut away in her bedroom, emerging only for the odd cup of tea or the occasional visit to the bathroom, she pined.

Then, one day, she remembered those rolls of film which she had never dared to have developed in case they could be traced – the three good rolls and the
other one, the roll which Little Nelson had spoilt. There was no longer any danger of letting a chemist see them now, and she was able to walk quite boldly into the local shop with the yellow Kodak sign outside.

Such fears as she had were of a quite different kind. Within those four small cardboard packets were all that remained of the most precious moments of her existence. Suppose, she kept asking herself, that the films were somehow accidently destroyed? Or simply over-developed so that nothing any longer showed? There was no cause, however, for anxiety. The snaps all came out beautifully, including all the silly ones of chair legs and skirting boards that Little Nelson had taken.

There was a single photograph that stood out as a prize-winner among all the others. It was more than a snapshot. It was a half-length portrait study of Little Nelson, full-face and smiling. As soon as she saw it, she immediately went back to the chemist to get the print enlarged and buy a suitable frame. And, for once, she found herself in one of those rare beams of sheer happiness that every so often penetrate life's gloom. For the enlargement was even better. There was just a suggestion of a shadow falling across the corner of Little Nelson's good eye. But it was enough. Every time she walked past the hand-worked ornamental frame, it was as though the face behind the glass were winking at her.

And, as the days passed and weeks turned themselves into months, eventually maturing into years, Hilda found another source of consolation. Kenwood and the adjoining heathlands had been thoroughly cleared up and the earth-works, archery emplacements and rows of trenches all filled in and levelled over. Everything was as it had been before the two armies had met in battle there.

With one exception. The Orangery was no longer devoted exclusively to the Arts. It was now a museum, a museum of a highly specialized and distinctive kind. It commemorated the day of the encounter. At one end stood the Mobile Section, with the mini-cars, fairy cycles and pedal motors, all mostly dented or otherwise damaged. Then, separated by an arrangement of canvas screens, came Armour, showing bows, arrows, boomerangs and lengths of elastic as well as the remains of rockets and bangers, and one carefully-restored trolley for the Catherine Wheel attack. Aerial Warfare, with the barrage balloons and the burnt-out Hurricane, occupied the far corner.

But it was to the central showcase that Hilda always went first and left last of all. This showcase contained the small exhibits picked up mostly from the battle field itself. Conspicuous among them was Little Nelson's admiral's hat. It was mounted on its own slender chromium stand, as in the display window of an exclusive establishment for ladies.
What made Hilda so cross, however, was that the caption read; ‘Gnome replica of ceremonial naval head-gear, c. 1860.' Only she knew how long it had taken her to sew back all that original braiding, or how hard she had been forced to press to get it all into place. The silver-gilt thimble from her workbox, a twenty-first birthday present from an overseas cousin, had proved quite useless and, in the end, it was a common steel one, a relic of boarding school days, to which she had been driven.

And it was the same with the other chief exhibit, the ivory paper-knife. This was described as; ‘Gnome staff symbol, Birmingham ware, 20th century.' As soon as she saw it she was glad that her brother did not accompany her on these visits. It would have upset him. At the time of the presentation he had been assured that it was a piece of prized Ashanti work from the pagan Gold Coast, and he had always treasured it as such.

Hilda did not mind. Wrongly attributed or not, both objects had once belonged to Little Nelson and she felt therefore that they belonged to her, too.

She went up to Kenwood nearly every weekday, endlessly waiting in all weathers for the rural-looking, single-decker buses that plied so irregularly beneath the overhanging trees. And, once arrived at the House, she went instinctively towards the Orangery. She became known there as a regular. Attendants
regard all regulars with suspicion, and more than once she had been warned.

The reason for these warnings was Hilda's uncontrollable habit of suddenly kissing the showcase containing all those treasures. In the end she was asked to go before the Curator to explain her behaviour. The Curator could not have been nicer about it. He confessed that he, too, was just the same when it came to personal objects like hats and paper-knives. He even hinted that one day – after closing time, probably – he would be ready to go so far as to unlock the cabinet and take out one or two of the prize pieces so that she could examine them more closely.

Hilda was horrified. She could not bear to think of other hands, other fingers, touching anything of Little Nelson's. It seemed too much like desecration.

As time passed, Hilda visited Kenwood less frequently. She still made straight for the Orangery, and it was easier now because the attendant who had tried to arrest her had been put on other duties. But it was not the same. The sense of being there again near Little Nelson had vanished completely. Only a new emptiness remained. As she stood there facing the showcase, it was no longer the present that embraced her. It was the past.

Outside the confines of Kenwood, life had returned to normal. The whole gnome-episode, like the Blitz,
had passed quietly into history and been forgotten. Volume upon volume of gnome literature, both popular and scholarly, had either been pulped or remained undusted and unread upon the library shelves. The imitation jewellery and trinket trade had reverted to the proven emblems of earlier years – bunnies, fox-masks, horseshoes and sprigs of heather. Dress fabrics were once more striped or flowery, and curtain material was for the most part entirely abstract. Anything in the way of a gnome motif would have been rejected out of hand by all the leading suppliers.

It was, indeed, a symptom of this restored normality that gnomes in number should slowly have been returning to places where they had formerly belonged. Horticulturists and garden centres began re-stocking them, and they were once more to be seen popping up in flowerbeds or peeping through the evergreens beside splashing waterfalls and plastic rock-pools. They were everywhere.

One firm, more enterprising than its competitors, even introduced the Little Nelson model, slightly smaller than the rest of the set and complete with eye-shade and admiral's hat. The Reverend Cyril Woods-Denton spotted one in the local garden centre while he was out visiting. It was wonderful; altogether too good to be true, he told himself. Indeed, in his excitement, he felt sure that it could have been
no idle glimpse that had revealed it to him; his gaze must surely have been directed. The annually recurrent problem of Hilda's birthday present had, for once, miraculously been solved.