UNDERGRADUATE ARTICLE
Giants in the Earth
By HILARY MILES (Newnham College, Cambridge) cc 0 you find yourself much troubled by Midgets ? "
asked the woman in the Turkish Bath.
Swathed in a cocoon of steam, through which I could but dimly discern her as an insubstantial shape; I con- sidered the question. Mr. White had his Lilliputians, and Mr. Thurber his little men with beards, but I was delighted or troubled by neither of these. Giants had always been my burden. Someone had told me that the first men had been giants; and these monstrous and mythical ancestors had come every evening to persecute me. It was a Giant, hidden in the wardrobe or the chest of drawers, that made it creak; a Giant that blew at the curtains, making the night-light flicker. Giants climbing in at the window rattled the sash, or lay under the bed, breathing softly. They thought they moved silently, but I could always hear them—they rustled and sighed, their bones cracked and their shoes squeaked. Every night we went through a desperate race: once inside the borders of sleep I was safe, but in my waking moments I was vulnerable. Sodietimes I would reach sanctuary almost before they had time to sneak into the room, but on other nights they would drive sleep away, and would gather round my bed in crowds, staring down at me (I never saw them at these times because I hid under the bed-clothes in fear, but I could hear them breathing. I could always hear them breathing, wherever they were. Sometimes the breaths were slow and irregular, sometimes short and quick. Occasion- ally a Giant would hold his breath, but I would hear him letting it out—" Pwhoo-oo-oo-oosh "). As time went by they got bolder, and would even wait for me under the bed, in the cupboard, and behind the bathroom door. Midgets ? " I said, `! no, I'm not troubled by Midgets . . " In the grass, you know," said the woman. Yes, Mr. White had known about that—tiny horsemen tilting through the grass, stabbing your ankles, tripping you up. I was filled with a sudden understanding. I knew now why the Giants, of recent years, had gone from my house- . . they but now who seemd In bigness to surpass Earths Giant sons Now less then smallest Dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless, like that Pigmean race Beyond the Indian Mount, or Faerie Elves, Whose midnight Revels, by a Forrest side Or Fountain some belated Peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while over head the Moon Sits Arbitress, and neerer to the Earth Wheels her pale course . . . " In the Parks." she added. In the Parl:s ? so near to civilisation ? " Look," she said, showing ankles studded with round pink lumps. " Bite something terrible." " Yes," I said, " I am troubled by them. But they don't bite me. They put stones in my shoes, they beat my legs with nettles and thistles. They-give me blisters on my heels, fill my sandals with grit, and stick dry grass between my toes."
Really ? " she said uneasily.
" Yes,' I pursued, " and they scratch my legs in the hope that I am wearing stockings that will ladder; and they put that deceptive dry look on cowpats." The Woman wiped her brow, a ghostly -movement just perceptible through the vapour.
" Hot, isn't it ? " she said.
" And furthermore," I continued, " they put nice black- berries just within reach, and when I stretch for them, the Midgets push me off my balance, and crucify me between barbed branches. They bring their ant-divisions by land and air to where I am sitting; they advise the local wasp-batteries that I am picnicking on apples and honey sandwiches. It is, of course, superfluous to point out that they are the same pisgies, elves, or hob-goblins that plait horses' manes in the night and over-look the sows; the demi-puppets that by moon- shine do the green sour ringlets make, whereof the ewe not bites.
" And it has just occurred to me that pdssibly their activities are the true cause of Resistentialism. This," I said, gazing sternly at my companion through the hissing steam, " is the name given, by Mr. Paul Jennings in the Spectator some years ago, to the system whereby inanimate objects resist human control.
" The spoon which inserts its bowl under a running tap; the spectacles which are always upstairs (unless you want to read in bed, in which case they will return to the drawing room and slip themselves down by the arm of your chair); the boxes of matches which employ similar tactics—as indeed do fountain pens; the milk which boils over while you are on the tele- phone; the pile of dirty plates which conceal themselves until you have quite finished washing up. . . ." The room was now impossibly full of steam, through which the Woman only rarely appeared, wraithlike. " The picture that continually sets itself askew;" I went on " the pile of books that overbalances—such minor examples are endless. Many are, indeed, almost too classic to mention— the shoelace that breaks when you are in a hurry, the untrace- able door banging upstairs. All these are to a greater or less extent resistential. Have you ever been struck by the apparently idiotic behaviour of a wet sheet on a windy day, when you are trying to hang it on the line ? And yet nothing could be more deliberate ,than its lunatic embraces.
" It has been held, after prolonged and scholarly investiga- tions, that some things, such as curtains, keys, handkerchiefs, combs, are in the highest degree resistential, while the resis- tance of others, such as windowsills, is practically (though never, alas, entirely) negligible. It now seems to me that the behaviour of those things we so inaccurately term ' inanimate ' is not due to an observable and consistent rule of nature, but is the direct result of the labours of Midgets. If this is so, the Midgets must be closely related to the Gremlins. The civilian branch of the family, I suppose.
" I might even," I reflected, hazard the theory that Midgets have some measure of control over the weather." The Woman stirred, gathering up her towel.
" Fantastic, I know," I said, " but surely not beyond the bounds of possibility. After all, when you see. what Gremlins can achieve. . . . "
The Woman paused at the door of the steam room, smiling kindly. " If you feel at all faint," she said, "you can always come out for a breath of air, you know. They won't mind." " Mind ? " I said, " mind ? I wouldn't care if they did mind. I'm not one to kow-tow to a lot of Midgets."
Mr. James Pope-Ifennessy's series of articles on contemporary London will be resumed in next week's " Spectator."
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