The Snowman Who Lost His Nose

Ivy was nine, and she kept a list.

It was in pencil on a long strip of paper, and at the top it said REASONS I SHOULD BE ALLOWED OVER THE PASS.

The pass was the white gap in the hills behind the farm, and on the other side was the far valley, which Ivy had never seen. Children were not allowed over. Grandma said so, and Mom said so, and Dad said so most of all.

There were eleven reasons so far. Reason one was It is there. Reason seven was Dad has been over, and Dad is nervous of nearly everything. Reason eleven, which was new, was It has snowed for three days and I have read all my books twice.

On the third night of snow, Ivy was in bed thinking up a twelfth reason when somebody knocked at the kitchen door.

It was a polite knock. Knock, knock, and then a third, smaller one. It was as if whoever it was thought the first two had been a bit much.

Ivy went down in her socks and opened the door.

A snowman was standing on the step.

He was taller than Ivy and as round as a rain barrel, with a teapot lid for a hat and two sticks for arms. His three buttons were three different jam-jar lids. One was red, one was gold, and one still said GOOSEBERRY. His eyes were two black pebbles. Where his nose should have been there was nothing at all, only a small, hopeful dent.

“Good evening,” he said. “I’m so sorry to call this late. My name is Gooseberry. The children chose it. You haven’t by any chance seen my nose?”

Ivy was so delighted she could not say anything, which almost never happened to her.

“What does it look like?” she said at last.

“It’s a carrot,” said Gooseberry. “Orange. Pointy at the front.”

Three children in the far valley had built him yesterday. In the night he had sneezed. Snowmen do not sneeze often, but when they do, they mean it. His carrot had shot off over the pass, and he had walked all night looking for it.

“I must be back in my spot before the children wake up,” he said. “If they come out and find a bare patch in the garden, they’ll think I didn’t like them. And I liked them very much.”

Ivy looked past him at the pass, white under the moon. Somebody was going to have to take him home.

She took out her list and wrote, Reason twelve: a snowman has come to the door.

* * *

Gooseberry came into the kitchen, but only for a minute. The fire was low, and still the edges of him went shiny.

“Lovely room,” he said. “Bit much for me.”

Mom came down in her robe and looked at the puddle under him. Then she did what people do in a farmhouse where things turn up in the night, which is find somewhere to put them.

“Larder,” said Mom.

The larder was the coldest room in the house, with a slate shelf. Gooseberry sat down beside the butter with a happy crunch.

He looked at the butter for a long time.

“Excuse me,” he said to it. “How do you stay so firm?”

The butter did not say.

“It’s the slate,” said Ivy.

“Ah,” said Gooseberry. A little later he asked the butter again anyway, in case it had anything to add.

By then Grandma had come down, and Dad, because once one person is up in a farmhouse, everyone is. Grandma put her hand flat on the window and said a warm south wind would be here by noon. Grandma was never wrong about wind.

“The far valley faces north,” said Gooseberry. “The south wind never gets over the top. Once I’m home, I keep till spring.”

“Then you need a nose,” said Ivy, “and you need to go now.”

There was one carrot in the house, and Grandma had been saving it since Tuesday for the Sunday stew.

Grandma looked at the dent in Gooseberry’s face. She said that a person waited all week for a stew. She said that in her day, snowmen kept hold of their noses. She said she supposed it would be parsnips, then. And she fetched the carrot and put it in Ivy’s hand.

“Straight, mind,” said Grandma. “Not wonky.”

Ivy wrote, Reason thirteen: Grandma gave up her carrot, so it would be a waste not to.

The first time Ivy put the nose on, it was too high, and Gooseberry looked surprised. The second time it was too low, and he looked sorry about something. The third time she pushed it in just under his eyes, with a little quarter turn, and he looked exactly like himself.

Gooseberry crossed his pebbles to see it. “Oh, that’s me,” he said. “That’s me all over.”

* * *

Then Ivy read Dad her list. At reason seven he said, “Nearly everything. That’s fair.”

“I’m not saying you can go over,” said Dad. “I’m saying we can.”

Mom wound two scarves round Ivy and three round Dad and lit the big lantern. Dad got out the big sledge, which he had not sat on in thirty years and did not plan to sit on now.

At the door Gooseberry said, “You wouldn’t have a tea tray? I like to go down a hill properly.”

Mom took the tin tray off the dresser. “It was a wedding present,” she said, “and I never liked it. Go on.”

They went up the pass by lantern light, Dad and Ivy pulling, Gooseberry riding with the tray on his knees. Behind them the farmhouse windows got small and gold.

Snow piles up on a teapot lid, Gooseberry explained, and then the lid slides off, and then where are you? So he sang to keep it off, mostly “Up we go, and mind the snow.” While he sang, the flakes went round his hat the way water goes round a stone.

Dad said “Steady” on every steep bit. Dad said “Oh” whenever the sledge slid back an inch. But he kept pulling.

Halfway up, the snow stopped, and Ivy wrote by moonlight, Reason fourteen: I am good at pulling.

At the top the wind was cold and clean, and Ivy saw the far valley for the first time.

It went down and down, long and white, with a frozen pond in it like a dropped spoon. At the bottom was a row of little houses with their windows lit. In the garden of the end house was a round bare patch in the snow, exactly the size of a snowman.

Ivy had wondered what was over the pass for her whole life, which is nine years, and it was every bit as good as she had wondered. That hardly ever happens, so she stood and looked at it properly.

“There’s my spot,” said Gooseberry. He sounded so glad that Dad had to blow his nose.

Gooseberry sat down on the tray. “Thank you, Ivy,” he said. “Thank you, Ivy’s dad. Tell your grandma it’s the best nose I ever had.”

Then he pushed off.

He went slowly, then not slowly, then very fast indeed, singing all the way down. At the bottom he slowed, and stopped in the garden of the end house, exactly in the bare patch. One stick arm waved, very small. Then he was a snowman in a garden, which was all he had wanted. A minute later three small figures ran out to say good morning to him.

Dad looked at the big sledge, and at the long road home.

“We could walk,” said Dad. Then he said, “No, we couldn’t, there isn’t time,” and sat down on the front of the sledge, with Ivy behind him holding on.

Dad shouted all the way down. Ivy could not tell until the bottom that the shouting was laughing.

Back in the yard, the first drip was falling off the roof. Ivy ate two eggs and fell asleep on her toast, and Dad carried her up to bed.

* * *

The next morning there was frost on the kitchen window, and someone had written in it, in big careful capitals: NOSE FINE. THANK YOU.

“Well,” said Grandma. “I hope he enjoys it. I’m having parsnips.”

Dad read it too, over his tea, and said Ivy could go over the pass again.

“As long as I come too,” said Dad.

Ivy took out her list and wrote at the very bottom, Reason fifteen: Dad says yes. Then she drew a line under it, because that was the one she had been after all along.