Tales From Moominvalley (10 page)

That was long ago, and the hemulen was even a little uncertain about the way to the park.

The wood had grown, and ways and paths were under

water. While he was splashing along the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started eight weeks ago. But the hemulen didn't notice it. He was wholly occupied with grieving over his lost dream and with feeling sorry because he didn't want to build a doll's house any more.

Now he could see the park wall. A little of it had tumbled down, but it was still quite a high wall. The single gate was rusty and very hard to unlock.

The hemulen went in and locked the gate behind him. Suddenly he forgot about the doll's house. It was the first time in his life that he had opened a door of his own and shut it behind him. He was home. He didn't live in someone else's house.

The rain clouds were slowly drifting away and the sun came out. The wet park was steaming and glittering all around him. It was green and unworried. No one had cut or trimmed or swept it for a very, very long time. Trees were reaching branches down to the ground, bushes were climbing the trees, and criss-crossing, in the luscious grass tinkled the brooks that grandma had led through the park in her time. They didn't take care of the watering any longer, they took care only of themselves, but many of the little bridges were still standing even if the garden paths had disappeared.

The hemulen threw himself headlong into the green, friendly silence, he made capers in it, he wallowed in it, and he felt younger than he ever had before.

Oh, how wonderful to be old and pensioned at last, he thought. How much I like my relatives! And now I needn't even think of them.

He went wading through the long, sparkling grass, he threw his arms around the trees, and finally he went to sleep in the sunshine in a clearing in the middle of the park. It was the place where grandma's house had been. Her great fireworks parties were finished long ago. Young trees were coming up all around him, and in grandma's bedroom grew an enormous rose-bush with a thousand red hips.

Night fell, lots of large stars came out and the hemulen loved his park all the better. It was wide and mysterious, one could lose one's way in it and still be at home.

He wandered about for hours.

He found grandma's old fruit orchard where apples and pears lay strewn in the grass, and for a moment he thought: What a pity. I can't eat half of them. One ought to... And then he forgot the thought, enchanted by the loneliness of the silence.

He was the owner of the moonlight on the ground, he fell in love with the most beautiful of the trees, he made wreaths of leaves and hung them around his neck. During this first night he hardly had the heart to sleep at all.

In the morning the hemulen heard a tinkle from the old bell that still hung by the gate. He felt worried. Someone was outside and wanted to come in, someone wanted something from him. Silently he crept in under the bushes along the wall and waited without a word. The bell jangled again. The hemulen craned his neck and saw a very small whomper waiting outside the gate.

'Go away,' the hemulen called anxiously. 'This is private ground. I live here.'

'I know,' the small whomper replied. The hemulens sent me here with some dinner for you.'

'Oh, I see, that was kind of them,' the hemulen replied willingly. He unlocked the gate and took the basket from the whomper. Then he shut the gate again. The whomper remained where he was for a while but didn't say anything.

'And how are you getting on?' the hemulen asked impatiently. He stood fidgeting and longed to be back in his park again.

'Badly,' the whomper replied honestly. 'We're in a bad way all of us. We who are small. We've got no pleasure-ground any more. We're just grieving.'

'Oh,' the hemulen said, staring at his feet. He didn't want to be asked to think of dreary things, but he was so accustomed to listening that he couldn't go away either.

'You must be grieving, too,' the whomper said with compassion. 'You used to punch the tickets. But if one was very small and ragged and dirty you punched beside it. And we could use it two or three times.'

'My eyesight wasn't so good,' the hemulen explained. 'They're waiting for you at home, aren't they?'

The whomper nodded but stayed on. He came close to the gate and thrust his snout through it. 'I must tell you,' he whispered. 'We've got a secret.'

The hemulen made a gesture of fright, because he disliked other people's secrets and confidences. But the whomper continued excitedly:

'We've rescued nearly all of it. We keep it in the filly-jonk's barn. You can't believe how much we've worked. Rescued and rescued. We stole out at nights in the rain and pulled things out of the water and down from the trees and dried them and repaired them, and now it's nearly right!'

'What is?' asked the hemulen.

'The pleasure-ground of course!' the whomper cried. 'Or as much of it as we could find, all the pieces there were left! Splendid, isn't it! Perhaps the hemulens will put it together again for us, and then you can come back and punch the tickets.'

'Oh,' the hemulen mumbled and put the basket on the ground.

'Fine, what! That made you blink,' the whomper said, laughed, waved his hand and was off.

Next morning the hemulen was anxiously waiting by the gate, and when the whomper came with the dinner basket he called at once:

Well? What did they say?'

'They didn't want to,' the whomper said dejectedly. They want to run a skating rink instead. And most of us go to sleep in winter, and anyway, where'd we get skates from...'

That's too bad,' the hemulen said, feeling quite relieved.

The whomper didn't reply, he was so disappointed. He just put down the basket and turned back.

Poor children, the hemulen thought for a moment. Well, well. And then he started to plan the leaf hut he was going to build on grandma's ruins.

The hemulen worked at his building all day and enjoyed himself tremendously. He stopped only when it was too dark to see anything, and then he went to sleep, tired and contented, and slept late the next morning.

When he went to the gate to fetch his food the whomper had been there already. On the basket lid he found a letter signed by several kiddies. 'Dear pleasure-puncher,' the hemulen read. 'You can have all of it because you are all right, and perhaps you will let us play with you some time because we like you.'

The hemulen didn't understand a word, but a horrible suspicion began burrowing in his stomach.

Then he saw. Outside the gate the kiddies had heaped all the things they had rescued from the pleasure-ground. It was a lot. Most of it was broken and tattered and wrongly re-assembled, and all of it looked strange. It was a lost and miscellaneous collection of boards, canvas, wire, paper and rusty iron. It was looking sadly and un-expectantly at the hemulen, and he looked back in a panic.

Then he fled into his park and started on his leaf hut again.

He worked and worked, but nothing went quite right. His thoughts were elsewhere, and suddenly the roof came down and the hut laid itself flat on the ground.

No, said the hemulen. I don't want to. I've only just learned to say no. I'm pensioned. I do what I like. Nothing else.

He said these things several times over, more and more menacingly. Then he rose to his feet, walked through the park, unlocked the gate and began to pull all the blessed junk and scrap inside.

*

The kiddies were sitting perched on the high wall around

the hemulen's park. They resembled grey sparrows but were quite silent.

At times some one whispered: 'What's he doing now?'

'Hush,' said another. 'He doesn't like to talk.'

The hemulen had hung some lanterns and paper roses in the trees and turned all broken and ragged parts out of sight. Now he was assembling something that had once been a merry-go-round. The parts did not fit together very well, and half of them seemed to be missing.

'It's no use,' he shouted crossly. 'Can't you see? It's just a lot of scrap and nothing else! No!! I won't have any help from you.'

A murmur of encouragement and sympathy was carried down from the wall, but not a word was heard.

The hemulen started to make the merry-go-round into a kind of house instead. He put the horses in the grass and the swans in the brook, turned the rest up-side-down and worked with his hair on end. Doll's house! he thought bitterly. What it all comes to in the end is a lot of tinsel and gew-gaws on a dustheap, and a noise and racket like it's been all my life...

Then he looked up and shouted:

'What are you staring at? Run along to the hemulens and tell them I don't want any dinner tomorrow! Instead they might send me nails and a hammer and candles and ropes and some two-inch battens, and they'd better be quick about it.'

The kiddies laughed and ran off.

'Didn't we tell him,' the hemulens cried and slapped