The Watcher in the Garden (11 page)

When he spoke it was quite slowly and the words were just loud enough for her to hear. “Are you trying to put me down?”

They came as a threat and a warning, but she was fortified by her anger, and she said, “I'm not trying to do anything. I said you were childish, and if you say stupid things like that, you must be. Please get out of my way.” She had not wanted to go any farther into the shop. The newspapers were beside her on a shelf. But the need for some physical gesture became imperative. She stepped forward, expecting him to move back. To her surprise she came up against his rigid forearm.

“Oh no,” he said. “That won't do. I think maybe I've got to get an apology out of you.”

The way to the till and the newspapers was not barred. She swung away from his outstretched arm, picked up a newspaper and handed the money across the counter. The woman looked at her curiously as she took it, glanced once over her shoulder, started to speak and then stopped. The bell on the till rang, the drawer rattled open and the woman handed her the change. When she turned to the door Terry was no longer there.

As she stepped out into the street she knew it was not the last of it. But there was no sign of him and she started to walk home.

He was waiting for her just round the corner. She had not seen him, but she felt him step out of a doorway after she had passed it. In two strides he was beside her. She did not look round or hesitate, but her spine tingled. By now her anger had subsided. She began to see that antagonising him would do nothing for Mr. Lovett. Also, as soon as she ceased to be angry she began to be afraid. She could feel him now at her side, hostile, angry as she had been, and perhaps—perhaps just a little baffled. In a strange way she could feel it in him and knew she must exploit this one hint of weakness. Perhaps no one had ever stood up to him before. But she must not antagonise him any more. She waited for him to speak.

“So I'm childish.” She knew he was looking at her.

“It was a childish thing to say. I don't know if you're childish or not. I don't know you.”

“People'll tell you about me.”

His arrogance made her angry again. “I shan't ask them. I'm not interested in you.”

“Yes, you are. Yes, you are.” To her surprise he snatched at her elbow and swung her to face him. She was already half-way home and they stood under the spreading branches of a Chinese elm behind a garden fence. He looked into her face and she could feel the hard eyes on her skin. “I know you are interested in me. Why do you come into that garden and watch me? I know when you are there.”

“I go into the garden to please myself. It's my business why I watch you.”

“I think it is my business. When people start watching me I like to know why.” He was still holding her elbow, but now she shook herself free.

“It worries you that you should be watched by a—a schoolgirl?” She used the most ignominious term she could think of.

He was not used to being goaded, but this time he reacted differently. When he spoke his voice was soft, but she could feel the anger beneath. “I think you've got something going for me. I think that's why you're always watching me.” The softness had gone from his voice when he said, “I'm not interested in schoolgirls. You're wasting your time.”

This time the arrogance of it made her speechless. Before she could stop herself she had burst into laughter. The look on his face struck her as funny, too, and, still laughing, she left him standing there and ran up the road. He did not follow her, but when she reached her own front gate she knew it was no laughing matter. They would meet again, whether she liked it or not, and the next meeting would see him putting her down—if he could. It would not be a pleasant experience.

She continued to visit the garden, partly because it had become her own refuge, partly because she now felt bound to find out how often Terry visited it too, and partly because talking to Mr. Lovett was fast becoming a necessity for her. She could talk to him as she had never been able to talk to her parents, or to Diana, and she now knew that talking to her gave him pleasure, too. She understood at last that she had become important to him. Barriers she had erected unknowingly began to crumble and with increasing confidence and happiness she began to change. Home, as a result, became a much happier place, and it was a pleasant novelty to be welcomed with smiles when she came home.

But of the secret life—of the garden and Mr. Lovett—her family still knew nothing, nor of the constant threat of Terry's malice. Sometimes, because she felt the need of support and advice for Mr. Lovett's sake, she was tempted to tell Diana. But she never did, feeling that to bring it out into the open at home, where so many dreams had been damaged, would be to see it all evaporate before her eyes. She remained silent, enjoyed the new easy relationships at home, and watched for Terry.

She watched for him in the garden, too, and saw him more often than she had expected. She tried not to let him see her, but she had a feeling he always knew when she was there, just as the garden itself told her when he was about.

She saw Mr. Lovett, and when he was alone, always went to talk to him. But sometimes he was talking to his gardeners. She had found that on two mornings in the week two men came to look after the garden and mow the lawns. She learned to keep away on these mornings during the holidays and assumed Terry would be keeping away too.

One day Mr. Lovett said to her, “We've got a new gardener's boy.”

“What happened to the old one?” She was suspicious at once.

“Nothing.” He seemed surprised at her question. “Gardener's boys come and go. They grow up and go to better jobs.”

Nothing disturbing about it at all. But she found that he came on a motorbike and she managed to turn up once or twice on the gardeners' morning to see if she could, unobserved, get a look at his face. She knew it would not be Terry's. Whatever he had in mind, Terry would not be blatant. When she did see it, it was a face she had never seen. But she had become wary of all motorbike riders. There had been times when she was walking along the street when it had seemed to her that someone roaring past on a motorbike had come altogether too close. She had taken to walking on the inside of the footpath—nowhere near the curb.

She could not forget, either, what Mr. Lovett had said about violence building up, waiting for a fuse to set it off. What kind of a fuse? She did not know what to look for, but waited and watched—and haunted the garden. After the first time she had been frightened by a passing motorbike and had jumped aside, she had wondered if she might, herself, be the trigger. But although she had managed to antagonise Terry she did not think he knew of her friendship with Mr. Lovett. After all, she had gone into the garden the first time with much the same feelings that had taken him there. She wanted very much to see the faces of his friends, but it was more difficult than ever now. She took to going to town and to school by circuitous routes and little-used footpaths. She would try to be inside shops in the town at the times she knew Terry and his friends would be riding by, and she would try to see through the shop windows what their faces were like. Sometimes they had their visors down, and then it was impossible, but often in the early evenings when they were about most, their faces would be unprotected. This was her best chance, but even so it was not at all easy. When she found that after many days of seeing them ride past she was getting nowhere, when all the faces except Terry's, which she could always pick out, were just as unknown to her as before, she knew that she must give up lurking about small lanes and the interiors of shops. She must give up thinking twice before she left her own house. She must be prepared to face them. They might harass her a little, but they could not be so foolish as to knock her down deliberately on the public highway. It was curious that there was no doubt in her mind that Terry himself would try this if he could.

Having made up her mind she took her old route to school, her usual way to the shops. The first time or so nothing happened at all. Then in the second week she heard the motorbikes in the distance. Terry and his friends were not the only owners of motorbikes in the district, but there never was a time when she failed to identify the sound of their motors. It was the same as when Terry was in the garden. She knew that they were there. When she heard them she looked about for shelter and then remembered that she had made up her mind to remain plainly in view. But she was pleased to notice there were other pedestrians on the footpath besides herself. The motorbikes were not coming very fast, but it was not until she reached a narrow bend in the road where the footpath petered out for a few yards that she understood why. As soon as she stepped off the pavement on to the road to turn the corner she heard them speed up. It was hard to keep on steadily without looking back or jumping aside. But she had made up her mind and kept on without swerving.

This first time they made no attempt to touch her. They roared up behind, passed so close she could have caught them as they passed one by one—all four of them. And except for the deafening noise, the swirl of air and the petrol fumes they left behind, they had not interfered with her at all. They disappeared up the road and round the corner, and she did not see them again that day. She decided that if that was all they intended she could put up with it. The only trouble was that unless they came at her from in front she could not see their faces.

Several times after that she walked to and from town without being interfered with. The next occasion happened to be at midday when there was little traffic and most people were indoors having lunch. This time she felt one touch her and, when they had gone by, looked down and saw a tear in her shirt. It was cleverly done, for she had felt almost nothing, and the shirt fitted quite tightly. He must have had a knife ready as he passed, and she knew that it was Terry.

After this Catherine felt herself getting jumpy. As an inevitable result the atmosphere at home began to deteriorate. She knew it and did her best, but it had always been hard for her to think before she spoke. She was not made like Diana. She knew the remedy, but she would not talk of this to Mr. Lovett. She found it fortifying to tell herself that while Terry was concentrating on her he would not be thinking so hard of ways to injure her old friend. She knew that the aim was to frighten her and only to frighten her until, perhaps, she asked for mercy. That laughter would have to be paid for.

Terry's mistake at this early stage was to misjudge her. It was a long time before either he or she really knew how things were between them. Catherine reacted not at all to harassing. She did not even try to avoid it. When she broke at last and did react it was in an unexpected way.

Each day that she walked out on the roads and in the streets about the town became more of an effort. Each day it took more determination to go the way she always did to school, back from school, to the shops or on her mother's errands. They did not always come. Days passed, and nothing happened at all. Other motorbikes caused her to brace herself and clench her fists as they went by. And then they passed, giving her plenty of space, ignoring her. But from time to time it happened, and she heard the roar, felt the rush of air and sometimes the little nick to her clothes. The day came when Terry misjudged by a hair's breadth. She felt a prick on her arm, stumbled over a stone and without thought, but with fury in her heart, picked it up and hurled it after the helmeted figure speeding off. It was a fairly heavy stone and she did not even take aim. But it hit the rider's hand on the handlebar and he swerved, skidded and nearly came off. He regained his balance somehow, turned with a shriek of tyres and made straight for her. This time she knew that she was in danger. She ran across the pavement, into the gate of the nearest house, through the garden and down behind the house. She had no idea whose house it was and would have asked for help if there had been anyone there. But there was no one and she ran on, round, out of sight, past the clothes-line and out over the back fence. She found herself in another garden, and this time she knew the people it belonged to. She knocked at the back door, asked if she might come in for a glass of water and remained there, thinking up curious reasons for her presence until she thought it safe to leave. It was lucky for her that the owner of the house was a lady who was friendly with her mother, to some extent in her confidence, and knew that Catherine tended to be “difficult.” So she humoured her, believing what she chose of her story and let her go at last, feeling, as Catherine had hoped she would, that she had been a friend in need.

After that Catherine gave up her ostentatious parading of the streets. When she went out she did so with care, avoiding places where she suspected the motorbikes might be. She had not meant to throw the stone. She had not wished to taunt him any more than she had already done. But it was done, and she was certain that now she had to be careful. Oddly, the tension lessened. She no longer forced herself into their path, and learning to avoid them was less strain. She could go now and talk with Mr. Lovett and he would be expecting her to be avoiding Terry, and he need not know how necessary it had become. For a time she had not been visiting even the garden, and she went again as often as she could.

She felt she had been absent from it a long time, but it was not much changed. It was still a summer garden. The locusts still drummed in the trees. Flies still settled on her back and tried to do the same on her face. The roses were beginning their autumn blooming and frogs were still croaking in the pools. There was dust in the air, and the aromatic smell of hot eucalyptus leaves. She walked about slowly, stepping lightly on the flagged paths, stepping softly on the dead leaves. As always she felt the garden enfold her, as if she had become part of it and her absence had been noted and mourned. If Mr. Lovett had noticed that she had not been with him as much lately he said nothing. He was pleased to see her and said so.