A Very Large Visitor
The giant arrived at the market hall with one ear wrapped in a tea towel. Nell had put the towel there herself. The ear was made of paper, glue and three weeks of work, and it had already survived a difficult journey in her van. She was not going to lose it to a door. Beside the van, her assistant Ivo pulled the protective sheet away. The giant wore a blue coat with enormous silver buttons. Its long nose pointed towards the hall, as if it could smell the cakes inside. Nell straightened the towel. In forty minutes, this creature was supposed to lead the opening parade through the building.
Ruth, who organised the summer fair, came out carrying a clipboard and half a sandwich. "He's wonderful," she said. "Does he have a name?" "Not yet." Nell had been so busy making him that she had never settled on one. "We'll ask the children," Ruth said. "Can you bring him through the side entrance? The front steps are full of flower stalls." Nell looked at the side doorway. It was the doorway in the plan Ruth had sent her, but a glass door had been fitted inside it since that plan was drawn. The outer opening was wide. The space between the new door and its frame was not.
They rolled the giant towards it on a low wooden platform. Its head was mounted on a pole above a narrow shoulder frame. Two longer bars reached out from that frame to support the arms. Nell had planned to wear the shoulder frame and walk beneath him. Ivo would guide her from outside. At the doorway, however, one sleeve rubbed against the frame. Nell turned the platform slightly. The other sleeve caught. They stopped before the paper tore. "He's wider than the opening," Ivo said. "I can see that." Her answer came out more sharply than she intended. Ruth looked at her clipboard as though it might contain a wider door.
Nell had measured the old opening twice. She had even built a wooden rectangle in her workshop and practised taking the giant through it. Now people were passing them with boxes of cups and trays of biscuits. Nell's visitor waited outside like a guest whose invitation had been lost. Her fee for this job would cover a month's workshop rent. More than that, she wanted a recording of the giant moving through the hall. She had been making shop displays for years, and this was her first large moving puppet. A creature standing still beside a van would not show anyone what she could do.
"Could we use the front?" she asked. Ruth took them round the corner. Three shallow steps led to the main doors. The platform had small wheels, and the giant could not travel up steps on it. They would have to take him off. Beyond the flower stalls, the doors opened into an old stone arch. Its lowest point was well below his paper head. "We could lean him backwards," Nell said. Ivo put one hand against the pole. "With all this weight above us?" He did not sound frightened. He sounded like someone waiting for her to finish calculating. Nell looked up at the giant's pleasant, empty face. "No," she said. "Not like that."
The Wrong Kind of Small
They returned to the side entrance. Ruth checked her watch. "I can move the opening by ten minutes," she said. "After that, the children's band has another booking." Nell nodded. The band had rehearsed a march for the giant. She had heard a recording: small drums, excited whistles, a brave final note. Ruth went inside to explain the delay. Ivo fetched the tool bag from the van. "If we take the arms off, the frame should fit." Nell shook her head before he had finished. "The sleeves are sewn around the shoulder bars. We'd have to open the coat." "Then let's open it." She watched a silver button tremble in the breeze.
She had spent the previous evening hiding those seams. From the front, the coat looked like a single graceful shape, with no sign of the wooden frame beneath. That was the trick she had wanted: nobody should notice the work. Cutting it open in a car park felt like taking the roof off a finished house. "Perhaps we can pull the shoulders closer together," she said. Ivo checked the metal joints. The bars could fold forwards for transport, but they could not become shorter. Even folded, the shoulders were too wide. The problem was not the pose. It was the frame. Nell knew that, but she tried the joints once more.
An older man carrying empty boxes paused beside them. "Delivery?" he asked. "Eventually," Ivo said. The man smiled and pointed to a pair of wooden doors further along the wall. "What about those?" Ruth returned as Nell walked towards them. "The old loading doors," Ruth explained. "They haven't been used for years." Nell pulled gently at one handle. It moved, but the door did not. "Is something behind it?" "Storage shelves," Ruth said. "Full ones. We'd need several people and a good deal of time." Nell let the handle go. Another answer that had looked simple from a distance was not simple at all.
Ivo put the tool bag down. "We don't have to make him smaller forever. Just long enough to get him inside." Nell looked through the side doorway. She could see children laying coloured paper on tables. At the far end, a drum sounded twice and stopped. Nell stepped aside to let another tray pass through the glass door. Then she crouched beside the giant and lifted the back of his coat. The head pole was held in a socket by two bolts. "First the head," she said. "Then we'll see what the rest of him weighs."
They laid a clean blanket on the pavement. Ivo steadied the head while Nell loosened the bolts. Together they lifted it away and rested it on the blanket, with the towel still around its ear. Nell taped the two head bolts to the pole to keep them safe. Without the face above it, the blue coat suddenly looked tired. Its broad shoulders were now within easy reach. Nell unpicked the stitching beneath one arm, working slowly enough to keep the fabric whole. Behind them, Ruth held the tool bag open. "Which one?" she asked. "The small spanner. No, the one beside it." For the first time that morning, Ruth put the clipboard on the ground. She needed both hands.
A Head Without a Body
One shoulder bar came free. Nell dropped its short bolt into a paper cup beside the van. Then the other bar came off, and its bolt went into the same cup. The giant became a narrow wooden spine with a coat hanging from it. The remaining frame passed through the side entrance with room to spare. Nell and Ivo carried the padded bars separately. Ruth wrapped the blanket around the head and brought it in, holding it against her chest so that its nose looked over her shoulder. A little boy near the door stared. "You've dropped his body," he said. "We're bringing that too," Ruth replied. He followed her a few steps, keeping an anxious eye on the towel. Nell wanted to tell him that the giant would soon be magnificent. Instead, she asked him to keep the path clear while they carried the platform inside.
They reached a quiet corner behind the cake stall. Nell checked her watch. Twenty-one minutes remained before Ruth's revised opening time. Putting the parts back together should take fifteen. She fitted the shoulder bars, pulled the coat into place and reached for the short bolts. The inner pockets of the tool bag were empty. Ivo shook out the blanket. No bolts. Ruth checked the clipboard, the floor and the space beside the head. "You put them in a cup," Ivo said. Nell remembered. There had been a paper cup beside the van. She had dropped the two shoulder bolts into it so they would not roll away.
Ivo ran outside. When he returned, his hands were empty. A volunteer had tidied the pavement. The cup was somewhere in a large sack of rubbish, and several sacks had already been taken to the collection point. "I can go and look," Ivo said. Nell glanced at the clock above the cake stall. She could spend the remaining minutes searching, or she could decide what the giant could do without his arms. She had spare long bolts, but they were too long for these joints. Loose metal would rub against the coat and might scratch the performer. "No," she said. "Leave it. We can't use those bars today."
She took the unsecured bars out again, sat on the platform and studied the coat. Without the bars, the sleeves fell flat. At the end of each was a light paper hand. The hands needed something inside the sleeves to move them. Nell slid her own arm into one. The sleeve was longer than her arm. She gathered the loose fabric over her forearm until she could hold the paper wrist. She lifted it. A giant hand rose beside the empty head socket. Ivo watched her try the second sleeve. She could not move both hands and carry the head frame at the same time. He put the two unused shoulder bars on the floor. "What if I carry the head?" he asked. "And you do the hands."
Nell had designed the giant for one performer. Every practice walk had been hers. Two people under the same coat would have to match their steps, and neither would have a complete view. "We'd bump into each other," she said. "Then we should practise before we meet an audience." Ivo knelt beneath the shoulder frame. They put the head back in its socket and secured its original two bolts, which Nell had taped to the pole. She stood behind him and took hold of the paper wrists. The coat covered them both. On their first step, she caught his heel. On their second, he moved before she was ready. The giant gave a very doubtful bow.
Two Pairs of Feet
Ruth cleared a short path behind the stalls. They tried again. Ivo could see ahead through a gap beneath the giant's chin. Nell could see his shoes through the open bottom of the coat. She had to follow them rather than watch the head. "Left," Ivo whispered. "Right. Stop." They practised starting, stopping and turning. When he took a longer step, she told him. When her elbow pressed against his back, he told her. There was no room for a grand gesture. Small movements worked better. Nell raised one paper hand, lowered it and tried a wave. Above them, the giant looked unexpectedly polite.
Five minutes before the opening, they reached the start of the parade route. Ruth had moved a chair and a bin to make the first corner wider. The giant could walk on the floor now; the platform and the unused bars stayed behind the cake stall. Children gathered beside the route. Nell heard one whisper, "He's got four feet." She looked down. Both her trainers and Ivo's brown shoes were showing beneath the blue coat. She had wanted to sew the coat lower, but there had not been enough fabric. Now she was glad. She could still see exactly where Ivo put his feet. "Yes," she said from inside. "Today he needs four."
The drums began. Ivo waited for the first steady beat, then whispered, "Left." Nell followed. The giant stepped out from behind the stall. He was slower than the march, so the band leader slowed the music. His long nose turned towards the cake stall. Nell lifted one hand as if he were asking for a slice. People laughed. She had planned a formal bow at this point, followed by three great sweeping waves. There was no space for those waves. Instead, she let one finger hover over a cake and then drew the hand back. Ivo gave a tiny shake of the head. The giant seemed to be arguing with himself about lunch.
At the corner, Ivo whispered, "Stop." Nell planted her feet. A little girl had stepped forward with a paper flower. Ruth moved beside her, leaving the centre of the route clear. Nell reached out the nearest hand. The girl laid the flower in it. The paper fingers could not close. Nell slipped two of her own fingers past the paper thumb and took the stem. "Thank you," she said in a low voice. "You're welcome," the girl replied, equally seriously. Ivo waited until Nell whispered, "Ready." Then they turned together. The flower travelled safely above the girl's head.
They reached the end of the route while the band was playing its final note. Ruth stood nearby with a bowl of folded name suggestions. "And our guest is called..." She opened one piece of paper. "Mr Wednesday." Nell almost laughed aloud. It was Saturday. Inside the coat, Ivo whispered, "Perhaps he came early." The giant bowed, carefully this time, with Nell moving backwards as Ivo leaned forwards. The flower tilted but stayed in the paper hand. After the applause, they walked back to their corner and lowered the head onto its blanket. Nell's arms were shaking. Ivo had a red mark on his shoulder where the frame had rested. They drank water without speaking.
Later, Ruth brought the agreed fee in an envelope, with two slices of cake balanced on top. "Your guest never got his lunch," she said. She had a recording of the parade for Nell, too. Nell accepted both plates. Ivo was still rubbing his shoulder. "How about another rehearsal on Monday?" she asked him. "For the two of us. I'll pay you as a performer this time." "I thought he only worked on Wednesdays." Nell laughed and passed him a plate. They would need shorter spare bolts, separate pockets and a drawing of the new doorway. Mr Wednesday would need his seams repaired. For now, she placed the paper flower beside his head and sat down to eat. The towel had come loose from his ear. She left it off.
