Once upon a time there was a gnome who lived in a hollow tree on Even Moor, the strange mysterious land to the north of Blackbury. His name was Rincemangle, and as far as he knew he was the only gnome left in the world.
Real gnomes are very small—only a few centimeters tall—but like all real gnomes Rincemangle didn’t look the way many people think a gnome should.* He wore a pointed hat, of course, because gnomes always do; but apart from that he wore a shabby mouse skin suit and a rather smelly overcoat made from old moleskins. He didn’t have a big jolly face, and he certainly didn’t have a beard. He lived on nuts and berries and the remains of picnics, and birds’ eggs when he could get them. It wasn’t a very joyful life.
One day he was sitting in his hollow tree gnawing a hazelnut. It was pouring with rain, and the tree leaked. Rincemangle thought he was getting nasty twinges in his joints.
“Blow this for a lark,” he said. “I’m wet through and fed up. And a bit lonely. Maybe there are other gnomes in the world . . . ?”
An owl who lived in the tree next door heard him and flew over. “You should go out and see the world,” he said. “There’s more places than Even Moor. Maybe even more gnomes.” And he told him stories about the streets of Blackbury and places even farther away, where the sun always shone and the seas were blue. Actually, they weren’t very accurate stories, because the owl had heard about these places from a blackbird who had heard about them from a swallow who went there for his holidays, but they were enough to get Rincemangle feeling very restive.
In less time than it takes to tell, he had packed his few possessions in a handkerchief.
“I’m off!” he cried. “To places where the sun always shines! How far did you say they were?”
“Er,” said the owl, who hadn’t the faintest idea. “About a couple of miles, I expect. Perhaps a bit more.”
“Cheerio then,” said Rincemangle. “If you could read I’d send you a postcard.”
He scrambled down the tree and set off.
When Rincemangle set off down the road to Blackbury he really didn’t know how far it was, but it was raining, so he soon got fed up.
After a while he came to a lorry parked on the side of the road while the driver sat in the cab and ate his packed lunch. Rincemangle had often watched lorries go past on the road near his tree, so he climbed up a tire and looked for somewhere warm to sleep under the tarpaulin at the back.
The lorry was full of cardboard boxes. He nibbled one open but found it was just full of horrible tins. They weren’t even comfortable to sleep on, but he did eventually drop off, just as the lorry set off again to Blackbury.
When Rincemangle woke up it was very dark in the box, and there was a lot of banging about going on; then that stopped, and after waiting until all the sounds had died away he peered cautiously through the hole in his box.
The first thing he saw was another gnome, standing below and looking up at him with a friendly smile.
“Hullo,” said the gnome. “Is there much interesting up there? It looks like another load of baked beans to me. Here, help me get a tin out.” He climbed up to the box rather like a mountaineer—the box was on the top of a pile—and he began to chew.
Together they gnawed at the box until one tin rolled out. They lowered the tin down on a piece of thread.
“My name’s Featherhead,” said the gnome. “You’re new here, aren’t you? Just up from the country?”
“I thought I was the only gnome in the world,” said Rincemangle.
“Oh, there’s a lot of us here. Who wants to live in a hollow tree when you can live in a department store like this?”
Talking and rolling the tin along in front of them they crept out of the storeroom and set off. The store was closed for the night, of course, but a few lights had been left on. There was a rather nasty moment when they had to hide from the lady who cleaned the floors, but after a long haul up some stairs Rincemangle arrived at the gnomes’ home.
The gnomes had built themselves a home under the floorboards between the toy shop and the do-it-yourself department, though they had—er—borrowed quite a lot of railway track from the toy shop and built a sort of underground railway all the way to the restaurant area. They even had a phone rigged up between the colony and the gnomes who lived in the gents’ suiting department two floors down.
All this came as a great shock to Rincemangle, of course. When he arrived with his new friend, Featherhead, pushing the baked bean tin in front of them, he felt quite out of place. The gnomes lived in small cardboard houses under the floorboards, with holes drilled through the ceiling to let the light in. Featherhead rolled the tin into his house and shut the door.
“Well, this is a cut above my old hollow tree,” said Rincemangle, looking round.
“Everyone’s in the restaurant, I expect,” said Featherhead. “There’s about three hundred gnomes living here, you know. My word, I think it’s very odd, you living out in all weathers! Most gnomes have lived indoors for years!”
He led Rincemangle along the floor, through a hole in a brick wall, and along a very narrow ledge. This was the lift, he explained. Of course, the gnomes could use the big lift, but they’d rigged up a smaller one at the side of the shaft just for themselves. It was driven by clockwork.
They arrived in the gents’ suiting department after a long ride down the dark shaft. It was brightly lit, and several gnomes were working on a giant sewing machine.
“Good evening!” said one, bustling up, rubbing his hands. “Hello, Featherhead—what can I do for you?”
“My friend here in the mouse skin trousers . . . ,” began Featherhead. “Can’t you make him something natty in tweed? We can’t have a gnome who looks like he’s just stepped out of a mushroom!”
The gnomish tailors worked hard—and speedily. In no time at all, they had made Rincemangle a suit out of a square of cloth in a pattern book, and there was enough left over for a spare waistcoat.
Featherhead led him back down under the floorboards, and they went on to the toy department, where most of the gnomes spent the night (they slept when the store was open during the day).
All the lights were on. Two gnomes were racing model cars around the display stands, while two teams of young gnomes had unrolled one of those big football games and had started playing, while a watching crowd squeaked with excitement.
“Don’t any human beings ever come down here at night?” asked Rincemangle, who was a bit shocked. “I mean, you don’t keep lookouts or anything!”
“Oh, no one comes here after the cleaners have gone home,” said Featherhead. “We have the place to ourselves.”
But they didn’t.
You see, the store people had noticed how food disappeared and how things had been moved around in the night. They were sensible people, so they didn’t believe in gnomes. They thought it was rats, or mice.
So they had bought a cat.
Rincemangle saw it first. He looked up from the football game and saw a big green eye watching them through a partly open door. He didn’t know it was a cat, but it looked like a fox—and he knew what foxes were like.
“Run for your lives!” he bellowed.
Everyone saw the cat as it pushed open the door. With shrill cries of alarm several gnomes rolled back the carpet and opened the trapdoor to their underground homes, but they were too late.
The cat trotted in and stared at them.
“Stand still now,” hissed Rincemangle. “He’ll get you if you move!”
Fortunately, perhaps because of the way he said it, the gnomes stood still. Rincemangle thought quickly and then ran to one of the toy cars the gnomes had been using. As the cat bounded after him, he drove away in it.
He wasn’t very good at steering, but he managed to drive right out of the toy department—leading the cat away from the other gnomes—before crashing the car into a display of garden tubs. He jumped out and climbed the stem of a potted plant just as the cat dashed up and sprang at the car.
From the topmost leaf Rincemangle was able to jump onto a shelf, and he ran and hid behind a stack of picnic plates—knocking quite a few down in the process, I’m sorry to say.
After half an hour or so, the cat got fed up and wandered off, so Rincemangle was able to climb down.
When he got back to the gnomes’ home under the floorboards the place was in uproar. Some families were gathering their possessions together, and several noisy meetings were going on.
Rincemangle found Featherhead packing his belongings into an old tea caddy.
“Oh, hello,” he said, “I say, that was pretty clever of you, leading the cat away like that!”
“What are you doing?”
“Well, we can’t stay here now they’ve got a cat, can we?” said Featherhead.
But it was even worse than that, because very soon the night watchman, who usually stayed downstairs, came up and saw all the broken things on the floor, and he called the police.
All the next day the gnomes tried to sleep, and when the store emptied for the night the head gnomes called them all together. They decided that the only thing to do was to leave the store. But where could they go?
Rincemangle stood up and said, “Why don’t you go back and live in the country? That’s where gnomes used to live.”
They were all shocked. One fat gnome said, “But the food here is so marvelous. And I’ve heard that there are wild animals in the country that are even worse than cats!”
“Besides,” someone else said, “how would we get there? All three hundred of us? It’s miles and miles away!”
Just then two gnomes burst in dragging a saucer full of blue powder. It smelled odd, they said. They’d found it in the restaurant.
Rincemangle sniffed at it. “It’s poison,” he said. “They think we’re rats or mice! I tell you, if you don’t leave soon you’ll all be killed.”
Featherhead said, “I think he’s right. But how can we leave? Think of the roads we’d have to cross, for one thing!”
As the days passed things got worse and worse for the gnomes. Apart from the cat, there were night watchmen patrolling the store after everyone had gone home, and the gnomes hardly dared to show themselves. They certainly couldn’t drive around in the toy cars again, or play football.
But they couldn’t think of a way to leave. None of them fancied walking through the city with all its dangers. There were the lorries that delivered goods every day, but only a few brave gnomes were prepared to be a stowaway on them—and, besides, no one knew where they would stop.
“We will have to take so much with us!” moaned the head gnome, sitting sadly on an empty cotton reel. “String and cloth, and all sorts of things. Food too. A lot of the older gnomes wouldn’t survive for five minutes in the country otherwise. We’ve had such an easy life here, you see.”
Rincemangle scratched his head. “I suppose so, but you’ll have to give it up sooner or later. Where’s Featherhead?”
Featherhead had led a raid on the book section to see if there were any books about living in the country that they could take with them. Toward dawn his party of tired gnomes came back, dragging a big paper bag.
“We were almost spotted by the night watchman,” muttered Featherhead. “We got a few books, though.”
There was one he had put in the sack that had nothing to do with the country, but it did have a lot of pictures in it, so Rincemangle looked at it.* “Teach Yourself to Drive,” he read aloud v e r y s l o w l y, partly working out the words by looking at the picture of the human on the front cover, sitting in the front of a car. “Hmmm.” He opened it with some difficulty and saw a large picture showing the controls of a car. He didn’t say anything for a long time.
Finally the head gnome said, “It’s very interesting, but I hardly think you’re big enough to drive anything!”
“No,” said Rincemangle. “But perhaps . . . Featherhead, can you show me where the lorries are parked at night? I’ve got an idea. . . .”
Early the next evening the two gnomes went to the large underground car park. The journey took them quite a long time because they had to take turns at dragging the book on driving behind them.
And it took them all night to examine the lorry. When they arrived back at the toy department they were very tired and covered in oil.
Rincemangle called the gnomes together. “I think we can leave here and take things with us,” he said, “but it will be rather tricky. We’ll have to drive a lorry, you see.”
He drew diagrams to explain. A hundred gnomes would turn the steering wheel by pulling on ropes, while fifty would be in charge of the gear lever. Other groups would push the pedals when necessary, and one gnome would hang from the rearview mirror and give commands through a megaphone.
“It looks quite straightforward,” said Rincemangle. “To me it looks as though driving just involves pushing and pulling things at the right time.”
An elderly gnome got up and said nervously, “I’m not sure about all this. I’m sure there must be more to driving than that.”
But a lot of the younger gnomes were very enthusiastic,* and so the idea took hold.
For the rest of the week the gnomes were very busy. Some stole bits of string from the hardware department, and several times the most scientific gnomes visited the lorries at night to take measurements and try and find out how it worked. Meanwhile, the older gnomes rolled their possessions down through the store until they were piled up in the ceiling of the lorry garage.
A handpicked party of intrepid mountaineering gnomes found out where the lorry keys were kept (high up on a hook in a little office). Rincemangle, meanwhile, studied road maps and wondered what the Highway Code was for.*
At last the day came for moving.
“We’ve got to work fast,” said Rincemangle when they heard the last store assistant leave the building at the end of the day. “Come on—now!”
While the gnomes lowered their possessions through the garage roof onto the back of the lorry, Rincemangle and an advance party of young gnomes squeezed into the cab through a hole by the brake pedal.
Inside, it was—to them—like being in a big empty hall. The steering wheel seemed very big and far too high up. The gnomes formed themselves into a pyramid, and by standing on the topmost gnome’s back Rincemangle managed to throw a line over the steering wheel. Soon they had several rope ladders rigged up and could set to work.
They planned to steer by two ropes tied to the wheel, with fifty gnomes hanging onto each one. While this was being sorted out, other gnomes built a sort of wooden platform up against the windscreen, just big enough for Rincemangle to stand and give orders through a megaphone.
Other gnomes came in and were sent to their positions by Featherhead. Before long the cab was festooned with rope ladders, pulleys, and fragile wooden platforms, and these in turn were covered with gnomes hanging on to levers and lengths of thread.
The big moment came when the ignition key was hauled up and shoved into its keyhole by two muscular gnomes. They gave a twist and some lights came on.
“Right,” said Rincemangle, looking down at the waiting crowds. “Well, this is going to be a tricky business, so let’s get started right away.”
Featherhead joined him on the platform and hauled up the Teach Yourself to Drive book and a street map of Blackbury.
“On the word go, the Starter Button party will give it a good press, and—er—the Accelerator Pedal squad will press the pedal briefly,” he said uncertainly. “The gnomes working the clutch and gear lever will stand by. Go!”
Of course, it didn’t work as simply as that. It took quite some time before the gnomes found out how to start up properly. But at last the engine was going, making the cab boom like a gong.
“Headlights on! Clutch down! First gear!” Rincemangle shouted above the din. There were several ghastly crashes, and the great lorry rolled forward.
“Here, what about the garage doors?” shouted Featherhead.
The lorry rolled onward. There was a loud bang, and the doors didn’t seem to matter anymore. The lorry was out on the street.
“Turn left!” shouted Rincemangle hoarsely. “Now straighten up!”
For several minutes the cab was full of shouts and bangs as the gnomes pushed and pulled on the controls. The lorry wove from side to side and went up on the pavement several times, but at least it kept going. Rincemangle even felt bold enough to order a gear change.
Through the dark streets of Blackbury the lorry swayed and rumbled, occasionally bouncing off lampposts. Every now and again there was a horrible clonk as it changed gear.
Steering was the big difficulty. By the time the gnomes down below had heard Rincemangle’s order it was usually too late. It was a good job there were no other vehicles on the road at that time of night, or there would have been a very nasty accident. They blundered through the traffic lights and onto Blackbury High Street, knocking a piece off a letter box. Featherhead was staring into the great big mirror, high above them, that showed what traffic was behind.
“There’s a car behind with a big blue flashing light on it,” he said conversationally. “Listen! It’s making a siren noise.”
“Very decorative, I’m sure,” said Rincemangle, who wasn’t really listening. “Look lively down below! It’s a straight road out of town now, so change into top gear.”
There was a thud and a crash, but the gnomes were getting experienced now and the lorry whizzed away, still weaving from side to side.
“The car with the flashing lights keeps trying to overtake us,” said Featherhead. “Gosh! We nearly hit it that time!” He craned up and had another look. “There’s two human beings in peaked caps inside it,” he added. “Golly! They look furious!”
“I expect someone has got a little angry because of all those lampposts we knocked down. I don’t think we were supposed to,” said Rincemangle. Unfortunately, while he said this, he didn’t look where they were going. . . .
The lorry rumbled off the road and straight through a hedge. The field behind it was plowed, and the gnomes had to hang on tightly as they were jolted around in the cab.
The police car screeched to a halt and the two policemen started running across the field after them, shouting.
The lorry went through another hedge and frightened a herd of cows.
Rincemangle peered through the window. There was a wood ahead, and behind that the heather-clad slopes of Even Moor started climbing up toward the sky.
“Prepare to abandon lorry!” he shouted. They plunged into a wood and the lorry stopped dead in the middle of a bramble thicket. It was suddenly very quiet.
Then there was a very busy five minutes as the gnomes unloaded their possessions from the back of the lorry. By the time the policemen arrived there was not a gnome to be seen. Rincemangle and Featherhead were sitting high up on a bramble branch and watched as the men wandered round the abandoned lorry, scratching their heads. After poking around inside the cab and finding the little ropes and ladders they wandered away, arguing.
When they had gone the gnomes crept out of their hiding places and gathered around Rincemangle.
“Even Moor is only a short walk away,” he said. “Let’s spend the day hidden here and we can be up there by tonight!”
The gnomes lit fires and settled down to cook breakfast. They made cups of tea and handed them round and they all toasted their new home. Many of them were wondering what it would be like to live in the country again after so long in the town. A lot of the little ones, of course—I mean, even littler than the average gnome—were rather looking forward to it. But they all knew that there was going to be a lot of hard work before them.
Early next morning a poacher, coming home for breakfast, told his wife he’d seen a lot of little lights climbing up the slopes of the moor.
She didn’t believe him.
Perhaps you will.