The Watcher in the Garden

by Joan Phipson

  It was not long before Catherine was quite well again. Her mood was now so amiable that she did not even snap back when Mrs. Hartley told her to be very careful when she crossed the street on the first occasion she went out by herself. Naturally she went to the garden. She found Mr. Lovett sitting at the look-out with Conrad beside him. It was a cold morning with a sharp breeze and he was well muffled-up. Jackson never let him out in the winter wind without his coat and scarf. But he refused to wear a hat and the white hair was blowing about like some wild winter bloom, sprouting from the folds of the woollen scarf. He did not hear her come. It was Conrad who came towards her, ears flat, tail waving. Mr. Lovett must have been deep in thought, for she had to say his name before he knew she was there.

  When he did, the surprise and joy in his face silenced her, and for a moment she could not speak. But it was not necessary. He got up at once, saying, “Catherine! We never expected to see you so soon.” He put his hand out and she put hers into it and was led towards the seat. “Sit down. I’m sure you shouldn’t be standing.”

  “I’m quite all right again now,” she said. “I was never very ill.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said quite sharply. “No one gets knocked off the road by a motorbike without feeling ill.”

  “Not very ill, I said. I was lucky, and now I’m quite well again.” She wanted to dispose of the subject before he asked if she knew who had been riding the motorbike. Terry’s name had not been in the paper when the accident was first reported, and it was better that he should not know. “Thank you for the herbs. They were lovely. Just what I needed.”

  He smiled. “I knew you’d like them. Sometimes a pleasant smell is more healing than a pleasant sight.”

  “Yes.” There were times she forgot he was blind and when it hit her, as it did again now, the shock was always painful.

  Unexpectedly he got up. “We must go into the house. Come along. I can’t have you sitting here in this cold wind. I should have thought sooner.”

  She could not persuade him that she was again in robust health, but just as they were leaving the look-out he stopped and said, “Just before we go—take a glance at the new look-out. Tell me what you see.”

  She turned round again, facing the wind. Surprise made her hesitate, but he waited quietly until she was prepared to speak. At last she said, “They’ve done a lot of work on it. That piece of ground is quite level now and there’s a sort of stone parapet round the outside, over the drop into the gorge. It’s a long drop, Mr. Lovett, longer than the one from here. You can hardly see the bottom of the gorge over there. It gets very narrow and the trees go down right to the bottom on both sides. You can’t even see the water.”

  “You can hear it though, when there’s no wind. Jackson took me over there the other day. You could hear it quite clearly.”

  “I expect so. And the cliff that goes down from the look-out is higher than this one. At the bottom the trees start. They’ve begun to make the seat for you to sit on. It looks rather like this one. But the back part of it isn’t finished yet. Will it take much longer?”

  “Next week, Jackson thinks. Tom can get on with work like that in the winter when there’s not much else to do. You see, they’ve been pretty quick about it.”

  “Is—does—” She started again. “Does that boy still work for him?”

  “I believe so. Apparently he turns out to be quite an intelligent boy and he works reasonably well.”

  “They haven’t started the bridge yet?”

  “I think not. Can you see any sign of it?”

  She looked at the steep, narrow little gully that divided the two look-outs. So far there was nothing to connect them at all. Just air that flowed out into the wider, deeper gorge below, flowed up, caressing the falling water, stroking the clinging trees and the cliffs, rising, invisible, into the empty sky and streaming silently south, racing lightly over the hills and valleys, cool and fresh, and carrying the smells of winter fires and the nip of frost. Soft, silent, invisible air, capable, too, of using its great power for destruction, of picking up one of those mighty trees and flinging it, roots and all, into the gorge below, of swirling tons of soil from the ground and putting it somewhere else.

  “The bridge hasn’t been started yet.” She stopped, and then said, “It’s a pretty morning.”

  “Tell me—just before we go.”

  She began slowly, carefully. “The sky is quite clear. I can’t see any clouds. This morning it’s a lovely, lovely sort of blue—not dark like sometimes, or washy, like in summer, but bright—clear and bright as if it was holding the sunlight everywhere. You seem to be able to see a long, long way into it. The hills are all patchy with shadows because the sun isn’t very high up yet. In places the trees are very dark, but in others they’re a kind of olive green, and where the shadows are, they’re blue as blue. Towards the south where the gorge goes the last of the mist is rising out of it and being blown among the trees in little wisps. The sunshine has turned some of it to a sort of whitey silver. And I can see a hawk floating about. I expect he’s brown, but he looks quite black against the blue sky. Behind us, at the head of the gorge, where the sound of traffic comes from there are little flashes of sunlight where it’s catching windows and bits of metal.”

  It had taken her a long time to say it because she had spoken slowly and carefully, with quite long pauses. When she had finished there was a silence that lasted several minutes. Then Mr. Lovett said in a voice she had never heard before, “Thank you, my dear.”

  They walked up the path, Conrad leading with his tail streaming like a banner in the breeze, then Mr. Lovett, who liked to go at his own pace, and then Catherine. Before she followed him round the corner where the path took a twist towards the lower terrace she stopped and turned to look once more at the two look-outs and the sheer gap that divided them. There was no sign yet that even the first preparations for the communicating bridge had been started. One could throw a stone from one look-out to the other, but they were as remote from one another as two stars in the night. She found herself hoping the bridge would never be started.

  Her eyes blurred and she thought it was the nip in the breeze that had brought tears to them, but when she tried to blink them away it made no difference. She seemed to be looking through a slowly moving mist, not white and gleaming like the one that was rising from the valleys far away to the south, but a grey mist, and the grey was streaked through with black. She saw now that it was rolling up from the gully that divided the look-outs, rising between them, and the black streaks licked up through it like tongues of flame from some monstrous satanic fire. A sudden terror paralysed her and for a moment she felt colder than she had ever felt before. Then she blinked again and her eyes cleared and there was nothing between the look-outs but space and sunshine and the sound of birds. Her heart was thumping as she started up the path, telling herself she was not as fully recovered as she had thought, and glad that Mr. Lovett, who was very quick at picking up her changes of mood and behaviour, would put her quickened breathing down to the steepness of the path. And perhaps, she told herself, that was all it was—some sudden need of oxygen in her brain.

  At the same time Terry, still lying in his bed in the hospital, experienced in his hazy mind a sudden clear picture of the two look-outs, and he knew them and he remembered that his mate was helping to make the second one. And a sudden idea came to him, tailor-made, complete and beautifully simple. Then the images he was constantly seeing became confused again and no clear thoughts attached themselves to any of them as they had to the one brief vision of the look-outs. It was the only one that, much later on, came back to him and the idea with it.

  Chapter 15

  The period that Terry was in hospital was one of the most tranquil that Catherine could remember. Nothing at all happened at home to disturb it. Her mother and Diana were still looking after her as if she might disintegrate at any moment and for once she found nothing to irritate her in their solicitude. In fact
—and this was something new—she was grateful. With nothing to ruffle the domestic harmony her father became less critical. Diana was rash enough to say one day, “It’s lovely being able to stay at home without wondering when the next crash of crockery is coming.” Catherine only smiled at her.

  With no need to watch over Mr. Lovett, and the garden constantly undisturbed, the times Catherine spent with him were as happy as any she could remember. They talked of all sorts of things. She learned to know him better and got the feeling that he had begun to know her very well indeed. And it gave her a peculiar kind of pleasure that, understanding her as he did, he still welcomed her visits and apparently enjoyed her friendship. Her confidence grew like a watered plant and she began to wish there were no such things as school to limit the times she could go to the garden. But even school became more bearable and she did not resent his asking her questions about it as she always did when her parents tried to find out what, if anything, she was learning. His questions always led to helpful comments and often he sorted out her mind for her when it had got bogged down in confusion.

  As she had discovered earlier, she was able to help him, too. She knew now that she had in some strange way widened his life by letting him see farther into hers than anyone had ever done. It became a habit that wherever they were, walking in the garden, sitting in the courtyard, or even, when the evening chill drove them indoors, sitting by the fire in his study, that she should describe what she saw. To be seeing for him was an important thing to be doing. She visited him now not only for her own pleasure but because she was needed. She had a job to do. What she did for him bound her more closely to him than what he was doing for her.

  Catherine knew at once when Terry came out of hospital. It came as no surprise to her to see him bending over an old car with his father a few days afterwards in the Nicholsons’ back yard. She had known he was at home. She knew, too, that for the moment there was nothing to worry about. She was walking with Mr. Lovett on that side of the garden. They happened not to be talking when they came into his line of vision. His head had been under the hood, but he lifted it at once. For a moment he and Catherine looked at one another across the patch of scrub that divided the properties. In that moment it was as if her mind had widened, as if somewhere within it a window had been opened. What lay beyond it was unclear. A stormy ocean lying calm? An animal asleep? The moment passed. She did not think she had hesitated as she walked. But a few minutes later, when they had lost sight of the Nicholsons’ back yard, Mr. Lovett said, “What was it? What happened just then?”

  She could not tell him because she did not know. And she could not tell him she had seen Terry. She only knew that at this moment he was not in danger.

  Terry came out of hospital very placid, very calm, almost happy in a negative way. They said he was no longer ill. And it was true that his head had stopped aching. But sometimes it still hurt to swallow and he did not mind when they told him, and he heard them telling his mother, that he was to go easy for a week or so. It was all he wanted to do. But none of it accounted for the remark his mother made a couple of days after he had come home.

  “You don’t seem like yourself any more, somehow. What’s happened to you in that hospital? What have they done to you?”

  His father had said, “Damn good thing if you ask me. Maybe now we’ll have a bit of peace about the house.”

  Terry knew it was true in a way. It was harder than he’d thought to pick up the old threads. He hardly even knew where to look for them. But who could tell what could happen in a head that had received the crack that his had? Anything could happen. In time he’d find out what it was. Just now it was no effort to be patient. For the first time in his life there was nothing else he wanted to do. The impulses within him that had sent him careering round because of hate, indignation or righteous anger had all left him. They had filleted him in hospital, he decided, and until the bones grew again he was prepared to be patient until kingdom come.

  When he saw Catherine the confusion in his mind clarified for an instant. Looking at her, and seeing her look at him shed a light into places that had been dark, illuminated thoughts that he had found inexplicable. But it was only for an instant. When she walked away he was no better off than he had been before. But there had been one big difference, and he did not realize it until he told his mother he had seen them walking past. She had looked at him strangely, and suddenly he knew why. He had spoken of Mr. Lovett and Catherine with no emotion whatever. It was as if he had been describing the passing of the mail van.

  Time passed and he grew stronger. And as he grew stronger vitality filtered slowly back into his body. His brain began to work again. Feelings and emotions that had stayed dormant for so long began to grow more insistent. For the first time since he had felt the stick across his throat he began to feel the need for action. And he asked his mother to tell the gardener’s boy to come and see him after work.

  He came a couple of days later and they sat together on the boards of the back veranda, dangling their legs over the edge so that their feet brushed the leaves of Mrs. Nicholson’s mint patch. “So what’s new, Joe?” said Terry.

  “Nothin’ much.” Invalid visiting was not in Joe’s line, and this and other things were pricking his conscience. “Kevin got hisself a ticket for no lights. Cost him a week’s pay. Les’s girl friend dumped him at last. There was a big fire in the cafe while you was in hospital. Hot fat, they said.” He stopped, knowing he was losing his audience. “Nothin’ much, really.”

  “How’s work?” It came into Terry’s head suddenly why he had wanted to see Joe.

  “Same as usual.” He stopped, and then remembered a fact that might find favour. “Say, did you know the old man was blind?”

  At the same instant as Terry realized that fate had at last given him a hand he could play, he understood that in his subconscious mind, or wherever unrecognized memories lie, he had known this all the time. Perhaps not all the time, though he may have heard it and forgotten long ago, but at any rate ever since he went to hospital. And he had known this not as a shock, but as a long-established fact. Now he had it in his grasp and with it came the half-formed schemes that had been in his mind before the accident. He looked hard at Joe. “What about that look-out?”

  Joe knew that he had been made to take the job only so he could impart information, and he said easily, “Finished—good as. Only got the approach to do and finish the seat. Half a week’s work, I’d say. Looks good, too.” He waited for Terry to speak, but Terry seemed to be thinking. He added, “Only got the bridge to do then. And that won’t be too easy.”

  It was at this point that the moment of vision he had experienced in the hospital came back to Terry. It was complete—and foolproof. In his present state of half-speed ahead he hesitated at the thought of carrying out so drastic a plan. But it was too beautiful to waste and he kept the thought in the front of his mind. There were one or two things he still had to know. “Just let us know when you start, Joe,” he said casually. “I might go and watch you swinging about over that drop.” He laughed, and Joe laughed too, but not as if he thought it was the best joke of the season.

  Mrs. Nicholson came out with a glass that she handed to Terry. “Drink it up,” she said. “Even if you don’t like it, you need it.” She looked at Joe. “Tea for you, Joe?”

  After that they talked of small things and slowly Terry began to get back into the ebb and flow of his old life.

  About this time Catherine knew that things in the garden were changing. It was the dead of an unusually cold winter and every morning the ground was hard with frost, white and crackling to walk on. The trees and plants had retreated deep into themselves, away from cold, down into the warmer earth, there to concentrate on the secret life of their roots. Every morning the pool and the formal pond in the courtyard were sealed with ice, and sometimes it was midday before the shaded pool was free of it. The birds were about still, but now the smaller birds were wary, for the garden was full
of currawongs, hungry for winter berries but not averse to dining off any small bird that came within reach of those long and savagely snapping beaks. Tom had long ago raked up the last of the fallen leaves and they lay now, piled and rotting and giving off the tingling smell of life in transit, busy turning itself into the summer’s mulch. Every so often icy winds from the south roared up the gorge, swept over the garden and left it battered and stiff with cold. It was all this winter stress, Catherine had decided, that accounted for the renewed uneasiness she felt when she was in it.

  Her visits to Mr. Lovett were not as tranquil as they once had been. She could no longer remain in that quiet state where her body was still and her mind clear. Tensions had begun to build up in her which at first she did not recognize. Fortunately Mr. Lovett appeared not to notice any change in her. She might have known more if her mind had not been taken up with other happenings at home.

  Chapter 16

  Rupert Iliff had written to say that he thought the spring would be the best time to make his film and, as he understood Catherine would be free during school holidays, would it be convenient if he arranged to come up then? Would Catherine then be able to show him the places he wanted to see? He thought she already had a fair idea of what he wanted.

  He did not suggest that he should stay with them, but Mrs. Hartley, the letter in her hand, said, “There’s no reason why he shouldn’t make his headquarters with us, is there, Hal?”

  Mr. Hartley could see no reason. Visitors were never permitted to interfere with his routine. But a different thought struck him and he said, “What about Kitty? Will she be up to clambering about the hills? Perhaps she’d better explain to Diana and let her take him.”

  For a moment Catherine was filled with the old familiar sinking feeling, but Diana quickly said, “Not on your life. Nothing will persuade me to go on one of those jolly country rambles of Kit’s. If she can’t go with him he’ll have to wait till she can.” Diana had never seemed a more benign or kindly sister than she did at that moment.