The Watcher in the Garden

by Joan Phipson

  “Just a friend,” she would end up lamely. “I go to help.” And she did not say the help consisted of a kind of watch and ward she had imposed on herself. Even her fears could not be revealed. Diana, for whom the sun always shone, would never understand. Not unnaturally Diana was left to think Catherine had found her first boy friend, and she was pleased for Catherine, gave up asking awkward questions and told her parents she was sure all was well with their problem child.

  Sometimes Catherine wondered if Terry knew the route she took from her house to the garden. It led first through back lanes and then out on the winding track through the scrub that brought her to the lower boundary. Going this way she met few people and she had never heard, or seen, the tracks of a motorbike. Nevertheless, she began to vary her approach. There were many wandering paths through the bush on the outskirts of the town. Most of them led from one point of the town to another. Some of them were simply the paths of tourists leading to view points or picnic places. She did not know them all, but she had no fear of losing herself.

  One day the path she took wound its way along the hillside on a higher level. She could catch glimpses of Mr. Lovett’s stupendous view through the trees—more hazy and dreamlike now with the approach of autumn, but still with that clear air and the wide sky above. Then trees would close in again on each side and she could see only the pattern of leaves against the sky and the sandy track ahead, winding along among the tree trunks. She had been walking for some time, following the path, with her mind far away and her senses relaxed and she had forgotten that very soon the path must end. It ended quite suddenly round the next bend and she found herself at the far end of an unpaved road that seemed familiar. On the left of the road was a cheaply built house badly in need of a new coat of paint and beside the house one or two corrugated iron sheds. The front garden consisted of a patch of lettuces going to seed and a bed of young cabbages. The rest was weeds and long grass. Only the lettuce and cabbage beds were damp and tidy. Catherine was about to step out on to the road when somewhere just out of sight she heard a voice. It was speaking quite softly, but she knew it at once. She stepped back among the trees. After a moment as the voice continued she began to move downhill as quietly as she could. She stepped cautiously from bush to bush, from tree trunk to tree trunk until she calculated she would be beyond the back of the house. She moved forward until she could see what lay beyond the edge of the scrub.

  It was the Nicholsons’ back yard as she had suspected, and there was Terry still talking. Now she saw that he was addressing one of his friends. At first she could not see the other boy’s face, but Mrs. Nicholson called out something from the back door and he turned to look. It was the gardener’s boy. She tried very hard to hear what Terry was saying, but he was speaking too softly, and even the metallic quality of his voice did not make it carry to where she stood. Whatever he was saying was making an impression on the gardener’s boy, for he was listening carefully, every so often nodding or shaking his head, and once he made an ejaculation of surprise—alarm? She could not be sure. After a time Terry stopped talking, put his hand on the other’s shoulder and together they walked to the front of the house. Shortly afterwards she heard a motorbike start up, and the sound disappeared down the road.

  She waited a long time while Terry poked about among the wrecked cars. It was only when he finally went inside and she heard the screen door at the back of the house slam shut that she moved away, still keeping out of sight. When she reached Mr. Lovett’s garden fence she climbed through. She did not expect to see Mr. Lovett, for it was midday and she knew he would be inside having his lunch. The garden would be quite empty.

  Not far below her she could see the look-out. It seemed to be exactly as she remembered it. There was no change there yet. But on the next spur, where the new look-out was to be, there was now a small cleared patch in the scrub, as if old age had come upon it suddenly and it had begun to go bald. Gradually she grew calmer. As always she felt herself absorbed, sucked in, by the garden as if it were a living presence all about her. This time she could feel a kind of holding of the breath, a suspension of living in the surrounding vegetation that at first she put down to apprehension of some future event, but, finding this too fanciful an idea, decided it was only the imminence of autumn. There had been no rain yet and everything showed vestiges of summer heat, but there was rain in the air. Soon it would come. The garden was ready and waiting to soak it up, and then withdraw under the onslaught of winter winds and frosts. Time to sleep; time to rest. And then a new day, a new life, a resurrection and a new beginning. By that time the new look-out would be finished, and the bridge over the narrow chasm joining one with the other. What else might have happened between now and then?

  It was after this visit that very gradually she, too, began to notice a change in the garden. It was not the ordinary seasonal change, but something different, something it took her a long time to understand. She noticed it, she came to realize, only on the days when she knew that Terry was in the garden. She could feel on those days a kind of wariness all about her, a closing of ranks, even a kind of settling in position for instant action, as a snake will coil, its head held back, waiting to strike. Nothing changed, yet somehow everything was different. Only the breeze would sometimes change direction, become wayward, fitful, as if it were flowing about the garden paths, over the lawns, through the branches of trees—waiting. The sound it made in the leaves and branches at these times was not the quiet rustling she was accustomed to, but a muted hissing, as if leaf whispered to leaf, branch to branch and tree to tree.

  When she heard it, wherever she was, she would stay very still, and she began to notice that strange little accidents happened to Terry. Quite often she had not known where he was—only that he was there. Then something would occur that told her his position in the garden. One day she had been there for some time when the wind, which had been quite gentle up to that time, began to gust, swinging from the north suddenly round to the west for no reason that she could see. The gusts increased in strength and a sudden crack told her a branch had broken from one of the pine trees on the western boundary not far away. At the same time she heard a sudden human exclamation, and Terry shot out from among the pines. He stopped, looked up at the trees and then after one quick glance over his shoulder slipped away in the direction of his own house. After some time when she knew for sure he had left the garden and, oddly, the wind had subsided and now blew again from the north, she went towards the pines, again standing motionless in the calm autumn afternoon. She reached the tree he had been looking at and saw on the ground beneath it a large branch with the sap still oozing from its broken stem. She could see also the wound in the tree high above where it had been torn off. She began to think Mr. Lovett was not mistaken after all.

  Then the autumn rains began and the garden soaked up the moisture after the long, dry summer. “Branches often fall before rain,” someone told her.

  Another time when the rain had come and temporarily gone she was in the garden again. It was a different place now. Trees and shrubs whose leaves had been lifeless and grey with summer dust now blazed out in shining autumn colours. The earth once again smelled of life and growth. What had earlier been hard gravelled paths were now gleaming, slippery beds for little runnels of water, soaking out of the ground on each side. The garden smells were rich and tingling in the nostrils. The scent of late roses, chrysanthemums, herbs, eucalypts all mingled with the less charming smells of corruption as dead vegetation rotted and snails and slugs fallen victim to the gardener’s perpetual chemical war finally disintegrated and merged with the ground they lay on. The sky, no longer the distant bleached blue of high summer, was busy dispersing the last of the scattered clouds, shedding them in flocks over the crests of the hills, and seemed at this moment only an arm’s length above, as blue as cornflowers.

  Catherine stood beside the bridge above the pool. She meant to cross, but an uneasiness that had as yet no definite object made her prefe
r to remain unseen. She did not know if Terry was in the garden or not. At last she stepped out on to the bridge and looked down to the pool below. Everything was peaceful here. The pool danced in the bright afternoon light as the stream of water fell into it from above. The reeds that grew in clumps between the rocks were motionless in the windless air, and the grass patch beside the pool was empty of life. She let her eye slide down the hill towards the look-out. From here it was clearly visible. But it was empty too. Faintly from the depths of the gorge far below came the sound of trickling water—a sound she had not heard since the days of spring. Seeing the look-out there below her, as yet untouched, made her think of Mr. Lovett’s new plan, and she glanced across to the cleared patch on the next spur. She could not see much change there yet and she thought it was deserted. But then something moved at the edge of the scrub surrounding it and a figure stepped out. She would recognize that figure anywhere, and she slipped back into the shade of the trees as he walked into the bare patch. There was no reason at all why he should not be there. They had not yet built the fence to enclose the new look-out. It was still common land. He moved with a certain bravado, a kind of swing of the shoulders that said to whoever might be watching that he had as much right to be there as anyone else. Then, as he stepped into the very middle of the patch, a strange thing happened. It would certainly have been wet—as wet as the garden—and it would certainly have been slippery. All that raw, yellow clay had not had a chance to set hard. But it should surely have been level. From where Catherine stood watching there seemed no rational explanation of why, when Terry’s foot unaccountably slipped, he should so quickly have lost his balance and slid to the very edge of the spur. As he slid, feet first, towards the edge Catherine gave a sudden cry and clapped her hand over her mouth. But Terry did not go over. Just in time he clutched at the bushes, stopped his slide and cautiously wriggled back from the edge. She watched him crawl on hands and knees to the other side and then carefully get to his feet. For a moment he stood looking at the bare patch. Then he turned, stepped into the bush behind and disappeared. She knew now that that bare patch of earth was as much part of Mr. Lovett’s garden as the rest of it.

  She had felt she should tell Mr. Lovett what she had seen. Perhaps he would realize what the making of the new look-out was going to involve. But he only said, “That yellow clay is fearfully slippery. Perhaps I had better get the men to put a fence round it straight away.”

  Chapter 13

  A few weeks later she was in the same place again. This time it happened to be very early in the morning and because Daylight Saving Time was finished and the days were getting shorter the sun had only just begun to show on the hillsides beyond the gorge. Its light, as it climbed up to the crest of the eastern hill behind the garden, was just streaking through the trunks of the trees that lined the road. There had not quite been a frost, but the air was still cold, hanging damp and chill in all the hollows. Catherine had had a bad night. She had not thought that Diana’s brief and guarded statement, “We’ve heard from Rupert and he says that at last he might be able to arrange to come up for a few days,” would have resurrected the old feelings of fury, frustration and disappointment. She had almost forgotten the whole incident, or thought she had, but had lain awake, nevertheless, and before dawn had climbed out of a wrecked bed and made for the garden.

  At that hour she expected to be alone, and her mind was still full of rage. So she stepped out on to the bridge over the pool and did not see at once that Terry was below on the patch of grass. He was standing at the foot of the rocks gazing down to the look-out. And for this reason he did not notice her straight away. But she was still standing with her mouth open when he turned slowly and saw her there. She never knew what he intended to do. He made a sudden move and at that moment she felt a kind of tremor under her feet. She saw the stream of water that fell into the pool lose its straight line and fall in a series of curves, heard a faint rumble and saw a large piece of the rock face detach itself and roll downward. It fell at Terry’s feet and would have fallen on his shoulders if he had not moved. It now lay on the grass beside him, angular and jagged and roughly the size of a man. She saw a strange expression pass over his face. That pale face, so schooled in keeping its own council, now showed a mixture of total disbelief and of bewildered fear—the seeds of panic. He gave her one look and ran from the pool, down the flagged path and out of the garden. The stone lay where it had fallen, an innocent accident on a fresh autumn morning. The sun rose above the trees and poured its light down on to the garden, down into the gorge below, and only the pool, deep among the sheltering rocks, remained in shadow.

  She stayed in the garden a long time that morning, and before she went home she came across Mr. Lovett and Conrad taking their post-breakfast stroll. They walked together along the terrace and Mr. Lovett said, “What’s happened, Catherine?”

  She chose to say only, “A big stone fell off the rocks by the pool. It’s lying on the grass down there.”

  “Did you see it fall?”

  “I was standing on the bridge. I think it came off from near the top. I felt the bridge shaking. About an hour ago.” It was his garden and he had a right to know that much.

  He did not seem unduly astonished. He only said, “I think, you know, there may have been a very small earth tremor. We have them occasionally. It’s due to a geological fault, I believe. I must get Tom to move the stone. It will mark the grass if it’s left there too long.”

  It was on this occasion, perhaps shaken by what she had seen, that she asked him the question she had been asking herself for so long. “Mr. Lovett—”

  “Come and sit down,” he said at once. “It’s a long while since we have had a real conversation. It’s time.” He took her to the courtyard, called to Jackson to bring coffee and sat her down by the pool. “Now,” he said. “What brought you here so early?”

  “How did you know?” There had been no sign of life in the house when she arrived.

  “Conrad told me. He saw you, or smelled you. He always lets me know.”

  “But I was not the only—” She had not wanted to mention Terry, but perhaps he had known all the time.

  He seemed to be looking at her, concentrating on the tone of her voice, searching for her mood. He said slowly, “You were not the only person in the garden. I know. You know he comes in. Sometimes I hope it is because the garden gives him something he needs as it does to you.”

  “No.” Her voice came sharp and harsh, and Conrad, who had been sleeping, lifted his head and looked at her. She must not let him think that, even though thinking it would give him pleasure.

  He smiled. “How can you be sure?”

  “I am sure.” The question had to be asked, and it had to be asked now. “Mr. Lovett, you said there would be a trigger. There would be something that would—set him off. Do you think—could there have been one?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because—I think you ought to take care.” It was not what she wanted to say. She had wanted to impress him with the sense of danger that she felt. But she only felt it. There was nothing she knew, no fact at all. It could, after all, have been the fear she felt for herself, and that was real enough.

  “You must not worry about me, Catherine. What is wrong with you today?”

  She wished she did not know so clearly what went on in Terry’s mind. She did not want to know. She knew the badness was there and it was too near her—too near, and diseases could be caught.

  “Do you really think I am a violent person?” she said.

  His reply was quiet and considered. “I think, yes, I think you are a person capable of violence. But you aren’t made up solely of violence, you know.” His smile was very kind.

  “Like Terry?” She had spoken it before she thought. Perhaps this was part of the violence. She could tell it had not pleased him.

  “Why do you keep harping on Terry? You don’t know him. I don’t know him. We only know he resents my existence.�
�� And hers, but this time Catherine did not say it. “You are not like Terry Nicholson. I know his family a little. They teach him hate and resentment. He is full of it, that’s why the violence will erupt one day. How can you think you are like him? You’re not like that at all. You love instead of hate.”

  “I resent my sister,” she said. “Sometimes I think I hate her.” She would not let him whitewash her.

  For some reason what she said made him angry. She could see the pink spots appear on his cheeks. “Don’t be silly, Catherine. You are fond of your whole family. You think because I can’t see that I can’t see anything at all, but the sound of a voice is a window into people much clearer than the expression of a face. You envy your sister because nature has made her so that she has an easy life. It’s natural. But you’ll end up achieving more than she will. How can you think you are in any way like that wretched youth?”

  She drew a long breath and knew that something that had not let her rest had settled at last. But there were more important things than her own state of mind, and she said, “Did you know the boy Tom has working for him is a friend of Terry’s?”

  “I did not. How did you know?”

  “I saw them together.” As he said nothing she continued, “What will you do about it?”

  “Nothing. I’m interested to know, and thank you for telling me. But I don’t investigate the friends of people I employ. Tom will look after him.”

  The sun had moved away from the courtyard and when Jackson came out to collect the coffee things he said, “Too cold for you here, now, Mr. Lovett. If Catherine isn’t going to take you walking you’d better come in.”

  “I think we’ll both go inside.” He reached for his stick and got up. “We’ve already had a walk in the garden. What about staying to lunch, Catherine?”