Little Nelson

by Norman Collins

  And there a two-foot high figure stood looking up at her. A length of sodden sacking lay upon its shoulders and the body was spattered and half-encased in mud. Even though there was now the shelter of the Vicarage porch, the rain was still cascading off the brim of the red, conical-shaped hat.

  For a moment, neither of them moved. Then with a low drawn-in whistle of excitement, the little figure scrambled up over the top step, rushed into the hall, and flinging its one good arm around her, buried its face in Hilda’s skirt.

  ‘What’s going on? Who is it? Anyone there?’ she heard Cyril’s voice, high and querulous, calling anxiously down to her from his bedroom.

  When she did manage to reply, her voice was so choked with happiness he could scarcely hear her.

  ‘It’s Little Nelson,’ she was trying to tell him. ‘It’s Little Nelson. He’s come back to us.’

  Chapter 4

  Hilda was holding Little Nelson so closely to her that his sobs were now silenced. But she could tell how upset he must be because she could feel sudden bursts of tremblings, impulsive uncontrollable tremblings, passing upwards through her from somewhere around knee-level. Freeing her left hand, she began patting him, nanny-fashion. It surprised her to find, wet as he was, how soft he had become.

  Upstairs her brother was struggling into his thick Jaeger dressing-gown. It was one of those brother and sister, inside-family-jokes, that he always wore the same dressing-gown summer and winter alike. It gave him, she made a point of saying, something of the air of a big teddy bear, a sedate, rather elderly, wrapped-up teddy bear. Cyril Woods-Denton, however, was in no mood to be bothered about appearances. He was in a hurry to protect his sister. Not bothering to pick up his spectacles, not even stooping to reach beneath the chest of drawers for his bedroom slippers, he thrust his feet into the heavy black walking shoes that he had only just discarded, and came thumping down stairs.

  ‘Don’t undo the door, dear,’ he began telling her. ‘Don’t let anyone in. Not until I’m there with you.’

  But, quick as he had been, he had not been quick enough. His sister was already on her way up the same staircase. What is more, she was carrying Little Nelson, cushioned tight against her bosom. And Little Nelson seemed to be liking it. His good arm was now firmly round her neck. On the landing, the three of them came face to face. Without his glasses he could see merely that Hilda was carrying something. It seemed to be a bundle of some kind. Old clothing, probably. And then, to his horror, the bundle moved. It twisted itself round and settled down again more securely than before.

  ‘Hilda, Hilda,’ he said, ‘put that thing down at once. What do you think you are doing?’

  But Hilda took no notice. She simply pushed past him.

  ‘I’m taking Little Nelson to the bathroom,’ she told him. ‘He needs it.’

  ‘Little Nelson!’ He thought those were the words that he had heard called out to him. But he had not believed them. It was as though his dream had come back again. Only this time Hilda was inside the dream with him. He could not appeal to her.

  But he remembered that his duty was to protect his sister. Bracing himself, he followed her along the landing. At the bathroom door Hilda turned, and Cyril found himself staring down into Little Nelson’s bright blue eye. It was a hard and defiant-looking eye. It frightened him. But Cyril Woods-Denton, for his part, had frightened Little Nelson. Framed within the archway of the staircase, he appeared enormous. And not only enormous, but bear-like, too. Little Nelson became really scared and when Cyril put out his finger to examine the small wet body that lay in Hilda’s arms, Little Nelson bit him.

  It was a full two hours later when Hilda and her brother sat down together to review matters. In the meantime, Little Nelson had been given his bath.

  That in itself had not proved easy. Little Nelson had never seen a bathroom before; and Hilda, for her part, had never given anybody a bath. There was trouble from the outset. Little Nelson seemed to think that Hilda was going to do him some kind of injury. He struggled. It may have been the clinically white surface of the walls or the clouds of escaping steam that distressed him. Whatever it was, he did not like it. And, when he saw a reflection of himself in Cyril Woods-Denton’s shaving mirror, he lost all control. Snatching up the long-handled back brush he brought it down with all his force on the offending image.

  Hilda reasoned with him gently as she picked up the pieces.

  ‘Don’t be so silly,’ she told him. ‘There’s no one there. That isn’t anyone. It was just you looking at yourself.’

  It was obvious from his expression that Little Nelson did not believe a word of it. He remained cagey and suspicious. It was the bath itself, however, that aroused his deepest fears. Hilda made no attempt to rush him. She let him stand on the ledge, where the loofah and the bath salts were kept, surveying things. Not that it made much difference. Little Nelson was not easily deceived. He could tell at a glance that there was something radically wrong with the pool – no water-weed, no goldfish. And when, just to tempt him, Hilda threw in a handful of effervescent lavender-scented bath salts, he watched horrified as one by one the bubbles came up to burst before him.

  To Hilda’s surprise, however, splashing him with water was something he actually seemed to find pleasing. He even allowed her to pour small quantities of it over his head and shoulders out of a tooth glass, giving little wriggles of satisfaction as the warm streams divided and trickled down him.

  And a large tablet of pink toilet soap came as a source of absolute delight. Touching it, he found that it could move. That being so, he chased it backwards and forwards along the enamel bath edge and tried to pick it up. But picking up things single-handed is never easy and, when it evaded him, he made the mistake of losing his temper. He grabbed. The soap reared up the edge, slid past him and plunged into the depths below. Little Nelson, left with only the bath salts and loofah for company, stamped his feet from sheer vexation.

  Little by little, however, Hilda lured him into the bath itself. First his toes, then quick dippings in and out again so that he could feel what it was like to get his knees wet. And then she let him stay there for a moment so that the water could ripple round his small fat stomach. A few minutes later, left to himself, he was ducking his head beneath the surface and coming up smiling, just to make sure she was still watching him.

  Surprised and rather shocked at herself, Hilda realized that in all her life she had never been quite so happy. She felt that she knew for the first time what the feelings of young mothers must be. It was as though part of her was sitting there, smiling blue-eyed out of the foamy bath salts lather; and she resolved that Little Nelson must be hers for ever.

  There was only one thing that was wrong and that was that before giving him his bath she had not been able to undress him. For some reason that she did not begin to understand, she felt a fierce desire to peel off the scarlet jacket, remove the white under-shirt and take down the bright green knicker bockers. It seemed the right thing to do. And Little Nelson had stood there motionless in front of her almost as though expecting it.

  It was, of course, entirely out of the question. Every stitch of Little Nelson’s clothing was merely painted on. The one thing that could possibly be called a garment was the torn strip of sacking that he, or some other well-intentioned gnome, had thoughtfully put round his shoulders for protection.

  In the end it was the loofah that worked best. Little Nelson was so dirty all over, so caked and plastered with mud that she recognized at once that an ordinary face flannel would make no impression. It would simply smear things. And using the nail brush was unthinkable. It was a comparatively new nail brush with stiff plastic bristles, and she was afraid that it would hurt him. The loofah was quite different; scratchy but still harmless. Even so, it scraped away grime and, with the grime, some of the paint workunderneath. That was when she felt her heart leap up. One layer below the rather vulgar colouring, Little Nelson’s skin was as pink as any other baby’s.

  G
etting Little Nelson to bed proved every bit as difficult as bathing him. When the trouble started, Hilda had dried his body thoroughly with a soft towel and had begun to dust him all over with the remnants of her last year’s present of talcum power. The talcum powder made him sneeze. And Little Nelson seemed to think that the effect was deliberate. He broke away from her and hid inside the airing cupboard. From somewhere amid the pile of towels and bed sheets, the sound of little sneezes continued. Before she could get him to come out, Hilda was forced to go over to the airing cupboard and say that she was sorry.

  In the bedroom Hilda once more found herself defeated. She had simply not thought of what to do with Little Nelson. A cot, an old-fashioned, high-sided child’s cot, might have provided the answer. But that was not to be. The Vicarage was cotless.

  Then Hilda remembered a story that had been read to her in her old nursery. It was about a pioneer family way out somewhere in the prairies. Red Indians had killed most of them, leaving a whole quiverful of infant Palefaces in need of bedroom comforts. Beds for that number would have been unthinkable, and the solution had been to empty the crude hickory-wood cabinet and, one by one, make small sleeping cubicles out of the rough-hewn drawers.

  A moment later, Hilda had tipped out the contents of her own top drawer and was stuffing in a pillow by way of a mattress. Little Nelson watched her, puzzled and incredulous. He could not help admiring the way she brought out a pillow slip, folded it in half, and proceeded to tuck it in round the sides to make his compact single bedroom more presentable.

  It was only when she tried to put him into it that she had further trouble. He struggled. And he resolutely refused to lie down. Every time she tried to make him put his head flat upon the mattress, he sprang up again. Bitterly as it disappointed her, she was not altogether surprised. After all, until this moment Little Nelson had spent his entire time, awake or asleep, upright beside the little pool, and in all weathers, too. It would, she had to admit, have been rather a lot to ask that he should change the habits of a whole life time simply to please her. In the result, he remained there, boxed-in and vertical.

  Naturally she was worried that, after the hot bath, he might so easily catch cold. But when she attempted to put a shawl around him, he shook it off. It was obvious then that he was perfectly content to stay as he was, his good arm on the side of the drawer for support, not looking at anything in particular, just standing.

  When she left Little Nelson’s bedside, Hilda was dismayed to find her brother so distressed. He was sitting on the edge of his own bed, his head buried in his hands. And he was muttering.

  ‘This is madness. It’s madness,’ were the words that he kept using. ‘Send for the doctor. Now. Before it’s too late. Get me put away somewhere. Out of sight of all of you. Forget I ever existed. Just pray for me.’

  It may have been because she was so tired and secretly more than a bit worked up within herself that Hilda was so abrupt.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Cyril,’ she told him. ‘Pull yourself together. You are perfectly all right. And don’t make a fuss. I shall need all the help you can give me.’

  He raised his face as she was speaking, and she could see that he had been crying. Behind his thick pebble spectacles his eyes were misty and red-veined. And the corners of his mouth were still quivering.

  ‘Then it isn’t just me?’ he began asking her. ‘You mean he’s actually here? We’ve got him with us? He’s.. ?’

  But it was all too much for him. The Reverend Cyril Woods-Denton broke down and began crying again.

  Not for the first time that evening, Hilda knew what it cost women to have the mothering instinct so keenly developed. At the very moment when she needed comforting herself, she could feel her brother Cyril reaching out to her. She went over and put her hand on his shoulder, gently massaging it to show that she was really there beside him.

  ‘Yes, he’s here all right. And it’s our job to protect him,’ she replied, in the high, slightly clipped voice which she used when speaking to the Guides or the Brownies. ‘We’ve got to do everything we can to see that nothing goes wrong. It’s not going to be easy, and it may not be pleasant. But we’ve got to do it. It’s our duty.’

  It was the word ‘duty’ that roused him. Cyril Woods-Denton had always set great store on duty. It was his pole star.

  ‘Very well. Very well. Just as you say,’ he assured her. ‘But look what he did to me.’

  He held up his index finger as he was speaking. Just below the nail there was a circle of little red tooth marks.

  ‘He didn’t mean it,’ the words came bursting to Hilda’s lips. ‘Little Nelson couldn’t mean to do a thing like that.’

  The following week was, for Hilda, one of the hardest that she had yet had to bear. That was because Cyril was still taking it so badly. For the most part, he simply kept to his room, and moped. On two successive mornings when she had been taking him up a cup of sweet, weak cocoa that he liked to drink mid-morning as well as when going to bed, she had been horrified to find that his door was not merely shut but actually locked against her. And when, in response to her knocking, he had at last appeared, he looked haggard and distraught. His pocket radio was in his hand, and it was obvious that she had disturbed him in his everlasting vigil waiting for the next news bulletin.

  But she had more, much more, than Cyril and his cocoa to think about. For a start there was the question of what to give Little Nelson to eat. The answer was not an easy one. Even though there was no way of actually feeding him – that side of nature played no part in his entire make-up – it still seemed wrong that he should not be given anything. Even a make-believe meal seemed better than no meal at all. Feeling that it was expected of her, Hilda went down to the kitchen and cut a plateful of bread-and-butter fingers and poured out a medicine glass of that day’s fresh milk that had only just been delivered.

  Then with a start she saw the time. It was nearly nine o’clock. That was the hour when the daily woman arrived. Hurriedly putting away the milk bottle, Hilda snatched up the plate of bread-and-butter fingers. And only just in time, too. The daily woman was already entering the house just as Hilda started upstairs, carrying Little Nelson’s breakfast tray.

  ‘Don’t bother about my room,’ Hilda called down to her. ‘It’s all been done.’

  As she uttered the words, she could see ahead of her the long avenue of deception and concealment along which she was just venturing. For some reason she found herself remembering a smartly packaged doll that she had seen displayed in the local toy shop. The pink baby-size form had moved her strangely. Or, perhaps, it was the legend accompanying it that had immediately penetrated to her heart. ‘This doll can cry’ the words informed her. ‘This doll needs YOU’ (the letters were all in capitals). ‘YOU have to change its nappies.’ It was while she was setting out the bread-and-butter fingers before him that she could not help thinking what a pity it was that Little Nelson wasn’t still a baby. It would have been nice to peer down into his cot and watch his small plump cheeks going in and out as he sucked away at his bottle. And as regards the end result, the bit about nappy-changing, she realized that she would not have minded in the least. She would rather have enjoyed it, in fact. Tears began to come into her eyes as she thought of what had always been missing in her life. Then she pulled herself together abruptly. She hated self-pity and despised the sort of women who gave way to it. Compared to so many other women, it was obvious how fortunate she was; and, in any case, Little Nelson was, if not actually a baby, still distinctly baby-ish.

  Her temporary comfort, her consolation, was suddenly shattered by that day’s news. A concert at the Royal Albert Hall had, she heard, been ruthlessly vandalized. There had been nothing that could possibly have provoked the outrage. The concert was one of a kind pleasingly familiar to ardent concert-goers – delightful, commendable, unexacting. The Hall was rather less than two-thirds full, and all started well enough. The first two pieces had both been played and suitably applauded. The i
nterval was now behind them and everyone was settling down, placid as basking seals, to listen to the Vaughan Williams.

  The orchestra had just reached the second movement and the great auditorium had become very quiet and pastoral; even, in two instances, somnolent. Suddenly, two glaringly scarlet caps appeared over the top of the xylophone. A moment later, a third cap, complete this time with head, shoulders, green waistcoat and all, came into view beside the drums. Immediately all was panic and confusion. The first two intruders promptly abandoned the xylophone and rushed over excitedly to join their companion by the drums. And, once together, they fought. Not until each one had secured his own drum stick did the squabble cease. Then they all banged away like little blacksmiths. All three hit out at anything that they could reach – side-drums, bass drum, glockenspiel, tambourines, cymbals, triangle. Lovers of Vaughan Williams rose to their feet in astonishment, and the conductor, his mouth open and his baton raised like a truncheon, started to advance towards the disturbance.

  But it was too late. The uproar ended as abruptly as it had begun. When he got there, all that the conductor could see were three strange objects, dressed up in Kendal green and hunting pink, crawling through the forest of chair legs, thrusting aside the long skirts of the lady musicians, upsetting music stands and ‘cellos as they made their way down the bull-run towards the back door.

  There was little else in that day’s bulletins. The BBC was full of it, and Cyril had his radio on throughout. Small as the set was, it was powerful. In the next room every word was clearly audible. And it was obvious that Little Nelson was listening intently. He was leaning forward, his good hand held close to his face like an ear-trumpet.

  Hilda found herself wondering how much he could really understand. It may only have been a trick of the light, but he appeared to her to be grinning broadly.