A Blink of the Screen (5 page)

RINCEMANGLE, THE GNOME OF EVEN MOOR

‘C
HILDREN’S
C
IRCLE’ BY
U
NCLE
J
IM
,
B
UCKS
F
REE
P
RESS
,
16
M
ARCH–18
M
AY 1973

This is one of the pieces I used to do on Thursday evenings: an earlier and shorter version of what became
Truckers.
The name of the protagonist finds an echo in the later creation of Rincewind the Wizzard, who first appears in
The Colour of Magic.

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.

He didn’t look very gnome-like. He wore a pointed hat, of course, because gnomes do; but apart from that he wore a shabby mouse-skin suit and a rather smelly overcoat made from old moleskins. 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 hazel nut. 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.’

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.’ And he told him stories about the streets of Blackbury and places even further away, where the sun always shone and the seas were blue. Actually they weren’t very accurate, because the owl had heard them from a blackbird who heard 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, if I could write.’

He scrambled down the tree and set off.

When Rincemangle the gnome set off down the road to Blackbury he really didn’t know how far it was. It was raining, and he soon got fed up.

After a while he came to a layby. There was a lorry parked there while the driver ate his lunch and Rincemangle, who had often watched lorries go past his tree, climbed up a tyre and looked for somewhere warm to sleep under the tarpaulin.

The lorry was full of cardboard boxes. He nibbled one and found it was 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.

The first thing he saw was another gnome.

‘Hullo,’ said the gnome. ‘Is there much interesting in there? It looks like another load of baked beans to me. Here, help me get a tin out.’

Together they gnawed at the box until one tin rolled out. The box was on a high shelf, but the other gnome had got up by climbing it rather like a mountaineer. 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. They even had a telephone 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 the old hollow tree,’ said Rincemangle, looking round.

‘Everyone’s in the restaurant, I expect,’ said Featherhead. ‘There’s about three hundred gnomes live 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. It was the lift, he explained. Of course, the gnomes had managed to use the big lift, but they’d rigged up a smaller one at the side of the shaft. 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 a giant sewing machine.

‘Good evening!’ said one bustling up, rubbing his hands. ‘Hullo Featherhead – what can I do for you?’

‘My friend here in the moleskin 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. They made Rincemangle a suit
out
of a square of cloth in a pattern book and there was enough 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. Two teams of gnomes had unrolled one of those big football games and had started playing, while the 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 and didn’t believe in gnomes. 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 the 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.

He wasn’t very good at steering, but managed to drive right out of the toy department before crashing the car into a display. He jumped out and climbed the stem of a potted plant just as the cat dashed up.

Rincemangle the gnome climbed right up the potted plant just as the cat came scampering towards him. From the topmost leaf he was able to jump on to a shelf, and he ran and hid behind a stack of china 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, and he was able to climb down.

When he got back to the gnome home under the floorboards the place was in uproar. Some families were gathering their possessions together, and several noisy meetings were going on.

He found Featherhead packing his belongings into an old tea caddy.

‘Oh hullo,’ 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 nightwatchman 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 marvellous. There’s wild animals in the country, so I’ve heard tell, that are worse than cats even!’

‘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 smelt odd, they said. They’d found it in the restaurant.

Rincemangle sniffed at it. ‘It’s poison,’ he said. ‘They think we’re mice! I tell you, if we don’t leave soon we’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 nightwatchmen patrolling the store after everyone had gone home, and the gnomes hardly dared to show themselves.

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 younger 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, the gnome Rincemangle was staying with, had led
a
raid on the book section to see if there were any books about living in the country.

Towards dawn a party of tired gnomes came back, dragging a big paper bag.

‘We were almost spotted by the nightwatchman,’ muttered Featherhead. ‘We got a few books, though.’

There was one in the sack that had nothing to do with the country. Rincemangle looked at it for a long time.

‘
Teach Yourself to Drive
,’ he said. ‘Hmmm.’ He opened it with some difficulty and saw a large picture of 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 reached the large underground car park where the store’s lorries were parked.

The journey had taken them quite a long time because they took 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 driving 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 they visited the lorries at night to take measurements and try to 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.