The Child Garden

by Catriona McPherson

  It was crows, a cloud of ravens and crows, swirling and cawing and endlessly pecking at the sack-covered hump that lay on the grass waiting for the hole that Stig never finished digging.

  “Get away!” I yelled, bursting in through the gate and rushing at them, waving my arms. “Leave him alone.” Almost lazily, the birds on the ground hopped back and then lifted off, and the whole cloud of them flapped away into the trees. “Oh, Walter,” I said, feeling my legs go from under me, so that I was sitting down beside him. “Walter.”

  Stig came over and stood beside me, stroking my shoulder.

  Even through my sobs, Duggie’s footsteps sounded so peculiar that I turned away from the poor old dog, pulling the sack back over his pecked face and turned, watching Duggie strolling so casually towards us across the gravel and up the steps.

  “Why would she be scared of me?” he said.

  “Because she saw what you did,” said Stig. “She said all along that she had come out to check on us at eleven. Then, when she got really hysterical, she said she’d come out twice. She’d come out again. In the early hours. I get it now. She was telling the truth, wasn’t she?

  “When my dad drove away she came out to check us again, but she didn’t get any further than the bridge because she saw what you did there and she was terrified by you. That’s why she was so blank and stilted when she heard the news. She already knew, didn’t she, because she saw it.”

  “All very interesting,” said Duggie. “But complete bollocks.”

  “In the morning, when we all came back with the news—except it wasn’t news to her—she realised what a mistake she’d made not raising the alarm right away. When you all turned on her and started telling lies about her, she couldn’t believe it. That’s why she was so completely crazy. She covered for you, Duggie, and you dropped her in it.”

  “But she’ll tell them now, won’t she?” I said. “Zöe.”

  Duggie’s face drained of all color.

  “Of course she will,” Stig said. He was almost laughing, or the shudders were making it sound that way. “The penny’s just dropped this minute. He’s not very bright.”

  “Did you throw Moped over the bank?” I said.

  “No,” said Stig. “That’s not what happened. We all saw the clue to what happened when we were crossing the bridge in the morning to go back to the school. We all saw it and none of us realised what it meant.”

  “Zöe is Naismith?” said Duggie. He walked over to the Rocking Stone and leaned against it.

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “The Tarzan swing,” said Stig. “It was hanging down over the water instead of being hooked over the tree at the edge so we could use it. It was hanging straight down. He was on the Tarzan swing, wasn’t he, Duggie?”

  “I don’t see what difference that makes,” I said.

  “And Duggie was there,” said Stig. “How long did it take?”

  “He came to try to scare me at eleven o’clock,” Duggie said. “And I chased him. He went to the swing. I managed to snatch his coat, just grab a handful, enough to slow him down.”

  “So he couldn’t make it to the other side,” said Stig. “And you broke the rule.”

  “What rule?” I asked.

  “We had another rope,” said Stig. “And if anyone did a bad swing and got stuck, the rule was you had to fling them the rope and pull them back in.”

  “He begged me,” said Duggie. He rolled around until both his shoulders were against the stone, letting his head fall back. It almost looked like a relief to him to be telling it at last. “On and on for hours. Snivelling and begging and pleading. Everything but apologising, and that’s all I asked him to do.”

  “Hours?” I said. “He was just a little boy, Duggie. How many hours?”

  “It was his choice,” Duggie said. “All he had to do was apologise, but he just hung there, swinging around and threatening me. God, who was he not going to tell? Then he went quiet, must have dozed off. And he just let go, slipped down, didn’t make a sound. Didn’t even make a sound when he hit the water. God knows how long it took, but it was just before the car engine, that I can tell you.”

  “Five hours,” I said. “You stood there and watched for five hours while a little boy clung onto a rope.”

  “All he had to do was say sorry.”

  Stig and I were silenced then.

  “And I went in after him,” Duggie said.

  “You tried to save him?” I asked in a small voice.

  “Of course.”

  “Bullshit,” said Stig. “You were bone dry when you woke me.”

  “All right,” said Duggie. “I took my clothes off first. So maybe it’s fairer to say I went in to drag him under the bridge. Not really to save him exactly. What’s the difference in the end? He was probably dead already.”

  He shrugged, then he took a deep breath and swung round to face us again and something about the series of movements … Well, I had been wondering since he first leaned against it. But that was only a few minutes at most, nothing like five hours, and he was a grown man, not a little boy. I heard the grating as the rock started to move and then a cry of panic, but I didn’t see it. I had turned back to Walter, stroking his soft ears for the last time and holding one of his big velvety paws.

  Postscript

  We left Scotland. Stig had lost his job already, and I lost mine too. They were sympathetic up to a point, but between the misuse of the computer records and the two times I skipped off that week, there was no way for them to carry on letting me be a registrar. It’s a very responsible job. People have to trust you.

  And it’s not as though either the Tarrants or my family were enough of a tie to keep us there. We don’t miss them, and Wee J comes to see us with his wife and the kids when he can. We’ve settled in North Yorkshire, by the sea. Plenty of tourists to eat Stig’s food and plenty of long walks on the moors for us to work off some of what we eat ourselves. That’s the idea anyway.

  I like having the border between me and Duggie and Zöe—Janice Naismith, actually. She’s back in Cornton Vale for a lot longer than an overnight stop this time, but he’s still in Castle Douglas in the carpet shop.

  The Rocking Stone didn’t kill him, but at least for a minute he thought it was going to. And he didn’t do time. He was twelve as well, after all, and failing to save someone isn’t the same as killing them.

  Mrs. Best has moved, maybe to get away from Duggie, but I like to think she’s gone to Perth to wait with the other Scarlet in case her grandchild ever gets in touch.

  Old Mrs. Jameson was too far gone to be told about Jo-jo, but the two remaining Irving girls took the news about Cloud quite well. They sold their story and used the money to straighten things out a bit. I only hope the money lasts and they stay that way.

  The reason I know all this is that we didn’t leave straight away. We stayed right there in Rough House for Nicky’s last months. And I read him the whole of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games series, and Stig read him some things that he wouldn’t tell me about and I didn’t ask. Because he’s probably right about lads of fifteen, and what harm could it do?

  And of course I didn’t have to find another home when Miss Drumm died and her heirs swooped in and sold up, because there was only one heir and it was me. So they all had plenty of time to find another place, Deirdre and Mr. Lawson and the rest of them. And after all that had happened, no one was sorry to go.

  It never occurred to me to keep Milharay, or even Rough House, even though I’d been so happy there. Not that I believe the tales. Someone died in those woods once, hundreds of years ago, and the Drumms demolished the bridge and used the stone to build a sanctuary. Then Miss Drumm’s father put in a footbridge and eventually, when it fell into disrepair, the children of Eden mended it. With old wood from breaking up the benches in the hallowed place. Not that I bel
ieve it, as I say. And I haven’t heard from Lynne or Donna that the sky’s come down from no one rocking the stone either.

  So the whole Milharay estate is on the market and when it sells, if it sells, maybe it’ll be a hotel or a conference centre or a retreat. Or maybe it’ll never sell. It’ll just sit there, the trees growing taller and undergrowth choking the paths. And the roof will cave, and the walls will fold, and brambles will cover the huttie, and the bridge will fall into the river, and on the river will flow.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank: Terri Bischoff, Nicole Nugent, Beth Hanson, Kevin Brown, Bill Krause, Mallory Hayes, and all at Midnight Ink; my agent, Lisa Moylett, once again; my family and friends, more than ever; Richard and Cathy Agnew for the ten years I spent living in Gloria’s house; my late beloved step-grandmother-in-law, Laura McRoberts, who inspired Miss Drumm; Stuart Campbell, English teacher and RLS scholar; the real Mandeep Bhullar, vet extraordinaire; and Margaret Kenny, for help with the details about Scottish registrars.

  Facts and Fictions

  The towns, villages, and hamlets mentioned in this book are all real places. Close study of a map of the area between Dumfries and Castle Douglas will reveal Milharay Hill and Rough Hill, but the estate itself is fictional, as are the stone, the hallowed place, the devil’s bridge, and all the characters depicted here.