We’ll come to the reasons for the change in our own good time, but to give you some idea of just how difficult Mr. Merryweather’s dwarfs were currently being, a family of four was at that moment passing the van on the motorway, and the two children, a boy and a girl, had pressed their noses against the car window in the hope of catching a glimpse of an elf. Instead, they caught a glimpse of a small chap’s bottom, which at that same moment was sticking out of one of the van’s windows.
“Dad, is that an elf’s bum?” asked the little boy.
“Elves don’t exist,” said his father, who hadn’t noticed the van or, indeed, the bum. “And don’t say ‘bum.’ It’s rude.”
“But it says on the van that they’re elves.”
“Well, I’m telling you that elves don’t exist.”
“But, Dad, there’s a bum sticking out of the window of the elf van, so it has to be an elf bum.”
“Look, I told you: don’t use the word b-”
At which point the boy’s dad looked to his right and was treated to the sight of a pale bottom hanging in the wind, alongside which were a number of small people making faces at him.
“Call the police, Ethel,” he said. He shook his fist in the general direction of faces and bottom. “You little horrors!” he shouted.
“Nyaahhhh!” shouted a dwarf in return, and stuck his tongue out as the van sped away.
“See, I was right,” said the driver’s son. “It was an elf. And a bum.”
Inside the van, Mr. Merryweather was trying to keep his eyes on the road while ignoring all that was going on in the back.
“Cold out there,” said Jolly, the leader of the group, as he pulled his bottom from the window and made himself look decent again. The rest of his companions, Dozy, Angry, and Mumbles, took their seats and began opening bottles of Spiggit’s Old Peculiar. The air in the van, which hadn’t smelled particularly pleasant to begin with, now took on the odor of a factory devoted to producing unwashed socks and fish heads. 13 Curiously, this very strong, and very unpleasant, beer appeared to have little effect on the dwarfs apart from exaggerating their natural character traits. Thus Jolly became jollier, in a drunken, unsettling way; Angry became angrier; Dozy became sleepier; and Mumbles-well, he just became more unintelligible.
“Oi, Merryweather,” called Angry. “When do we get paid?”
Mr. Merryweather’s hands tightened on the wheel. He was a fat, bald man in a light brown check suit, and he always wore a red bow tie. He looked like someone who should be managing a bunch of untrustworthy dwarfs, but whether he looked that way because of what he was, or he was what he was because he looked that way, we will never know.
“Paid for what?” said Mr. Merryweather.
“For today’s work, that’s what for.”
The van swerved on the motorway as Mr. Merryweather briefly lost control of the wheel, and of himself.
“Work?” he said. “Work? You lot don’t know the meaning of work.”
“Careful!” called Dozy. “You nearly spilled my beer.”
“I. Don’t. Care!” screamed Mr. Merryweather.
“What did he say?” asked Jolly. “Someone was shouting, so I didn’t hear.”
“Says he doesn’t care,” said Dozy.
“Oh, well, that’s just lovely, that is. After all we’ve done for him-”
The van came to a violent skidding halt by the side of the road. Mr. Merryweather stood and glared furiously at the assembled dwarfs.
“All you’ve done for me? All. You’ve. Done. For. Me. I’ll tell you what you’ve done for me. You’ve made my life a misery, that’s what. You’ve left me a broken man. My nerves are shot. Look at my hand.”
He held up his left hand. It trembled uncontrollably.
“That’s bad,” agreed Jolly.
“And that’s the good one,” said Mr. Merryweather, holding up his right hand, which shook so much he could no longer hold a pint of milk in it, as it would instantly turn to cream.
“Abbledaybit,” said Mumbles.
“What?” said Mr. Merryweather.
“He says you’re having a bad day, but once you’ve had time to calm down and rest, you’ll get over it,” said Jolly.
Despite his all-consuming rage, Mr. Merryweather found time to look puzzled.
“He said that?”
“Yep.”
“But it just sounded like ‘abbledaybit.’”
“Ed,” said Mumbles.
“He says that’s what he said,” said Jolly. “You’re having a bad-”
Mr. Merryweather pointed his finger at Jolly in a manner that could only be described as life-threatening. Had Mr. Merryweather’s finger been a gun, Jolly would have had a small column of smoke where his head used to be.
“I’m warning you,” said Mr. Merryweather. “I’m warning you all. Today was the last straw. Today was-”
Today was to have been a good day. After weeks, even months, of begging, Mr. Merryweather had got the dwarfs a job that paid good money. It had even been worth repainting the van, and altering the name of the business. At last, everything was coming together.
Mr. Merryweather’s Elves had previously been known as Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs, as the changes to the van’s lettering suggested, but a series of unfortunate incidents, including some civil and criminal court actions, had required that Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs maintain a low profile for a time, and then quietly cease to exist. These incidents had included a brief engagement as four of Snow White’s seven dwarfs at a pantomime in Aldershot, an engagement that had come to a sudden end following an assault on Prince Charming, in the course of which he was fed his own wig; two nights as mice and coachmen in Cinderella, during which the actor playing Buttons lost a finger; and a single performance of The Wizard of Oz that ended with a riot among the Munchkins, a flying monkey being shot down with a tranquilizer dart, and a fire in the Emerald City that required three units of the local fire brigade to put out.
And so Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs had been reinvented as Mr. Merryweather’s Elves, a cunning ploy that, incredibly, had somehow managed to fool otherwise sensible people into believing this was an entirely different troupe of little men, and not the horrible bunch of drunks, arsonists, and monkey shooters who had almost single-handedly brought an end to pantomime season in England. Elves just didn’t seem as threatening as dwarfs, and as long as Mr. Merryweather kept the dwarfs hidden until the last possible moment, and ensured that they were, for the most part, clean and sober, he began to believe that he just might get away with the deception.
That day, Mr. Merryweather’s Elves had begun what was potentially their most lucrative engagement yet: they were to be featured in a music video for the beloved boy band BoyStarz to be filmed at Lollymore Castle. If all went well, the dwarfs would appear in future videos as well, and perhaps join BoyStarz on tour. There would be T-shirt sales; there was even talk of their own TV show. It seemed, thought Mr. Merryweather, too good to be true.
And like most things that seem too good to be true, it was.
First of all, they didn’t want to do it, even before they knew what “it” was.
“I have a job for you lot,” he told them. “A good one and all.”
“Eh, it wouldn’t involve being a dwarf, would it?” asked Angry.
“Well, yes.”
“What a shocker. You know, it’s not as if we wake up every morning and think, ‘Oh look, we’re dwarfs. Didn’t expect that. I thought I was taller.’ No, we’re just regular people who happen to be small. It doesn’t define us.”