The Watcher in the Garden (14 page)

“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?”

But she was expected home for lunch and she had already been in the garden for something like five hours. All the same, after they had said goodbye and Mr. Lovett had told her once again that she was not to let herself be concerned about him, she lingered, watching him walk towards the door preceded by Conrad, feel at just the right point for the step with his stick and go inside. Jackson was still straightening the chairs.

“Mr. Jackson?”

He stopped and looked at her. “You could call me Bob,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

She knew she could trust him. “I get frightened for Mr. Lovett—when he's by himself in the garden. That Terry—” It was not necessary for her to go on. She saw the expression on his face.

“He's a bad lad, that.”

“Can't you keep him out of the garden?”

He shook his head. “Mr. Lovett won't have it. Besides, it wouldn't be possible.” Then his thin face became gentle. “You needn't worry. I watch him pretty close. He doesn't know how close. He wouldn't like it. He likes to think he still has his independence. It's natural. I've worded Tom up. He watches. Besides, that Terry, he's just a stupid chap. He wouldn't dare to do anything.”

She knew he would, because the urge would come over him and he would do it before he knew. Besides, Bob was mistaken. He was not a stupid chap. But she was comforted to know she was not the only one with a care for that old man's safety.

On one more occasion she was shown an example of what she liked to think was the garden's antagonism to Terry's presence. It was only a few days later, and this time she was simply walking through, taking advantage of the short cut. It was about ten o'clock in the morning and she was in a hurry, aware that she was very late for school and expecting trouble. The sun had just broken through after a cold and misty night and was warm and comforting. She was not even thinking of Terry when she suddenly saw him come round the corner of the lower path. He must have seen her, for he was looking up. So he did not see the brown snake lying in the sun just beside the path. She had not seen it, either, but now she saw him put his foot on its tail, saw a sudden squirming of brown rubber and its head shoot out from the grass.

Terry saw it just in time to jump backwards. A sound full of terror came from his open mouth and she saw him shake his foot, as if the snake might have made contact after all. But it dropped down and, as if pursued by all the Furies, he ran along the path towards his own place. The garden was quiet after he left and the snake, about one-and-a-half metres long and already fat for the winter hibernation, crawled slowly back into the grass.

A voice behind her said, “That ought to keep him away for a bit.” And Tom peered over the terrace. “I'd better get after it, though. It could have been Mr. Lovett's foot that trod on it. Ten o'clock's when you see 'em, and this time of year they're moving about. Funny the way some people go mad at the sight of a snake.” He took his mattock and went off after it. She went on, still shaken, but somehow not fearing for Mr. Lovett. It was no accident that it had been Terry's foot. She wondered if he had really been bitten. She was not surprised, either, when Tom failed to find the snake, and she knew that from now on between Terry and Mr. Lovett's garden the battle was joined.

For a week or so she did not see Terry, either in the garden, or about the streets. She still avoided almost automatically the routes about the town where she might have met the motorbikes, but she suddenly found herself in demand at home and it was such an unusual state of affairs that for a time the problems of Mr. Lovett, the garden and Terry moved to the back of her mind. She hardly noticed his absence and little by little she forgot to watch and listen.

At first Diana left it to their father to approach Catherine. He did it in his usual rather ponderous way. “Kit, we've been asked by that fellow, Rupert Iliff—you remember him, fair chap interested in making films about birds, or something of that sort?” The tact of his casual approach seemed to her like icing on a cake she was not expected to like. She knew they thought she would fly into a rage, or flounce out of the house, or even start throwing the crockery. When her father mentioned Rupert's name she had felt the first rumblings of that old volcano but suddenly she wanted to laugh. She saw the elaborate precautions he was taking to prevent its eruption, to defuse a situation she might create at any moment. She did laugh, and she did not know whether she was laughing at herself or at her father. She saw an expression of relief and pleasure come over his face, and somehow it astonished her. Had he found it so hard to tell her? For what might have been the first time in her life she put her arms round him and hugged. The pleased expression remained, even deepened. But now he no longer knew what to say. Her unexpected reaction had baffled him. This seemed funny, too, and she laughed again. In the end she said, “You can say. I shan't blow up,” and the melting of something that had been rigid inside her was a good feeling.

So it was quite easy for Diana to tell her that Rupert wanted to come for several days, not necessarily a week-end if the Hartleys didn't mind, because he hoped to work on the film while he was with them. And could he ask Catherine if she would be able to spare him a few days with the idea of investigating possible locations for filming? He had chosen the school holidays for this reason. For a moment at this point she felt again the exploding indignation that he should expect anything from her. But now at last she was able to see that what had been going on inside her was something he knew nothing about. If he had, how could he have made the suggestion? She said mildly, “So long as it's holidays I expect I can. You could write and ask him for details and I'll work out ways we might go.”

She looked forward to his visit. She began to plan with Diana how they could best employ his time. They heard from him again, writing that he would be seeing them in the school holidays, and there seemed nothing to do now but wait.

Catherine never knew if Terry had been bitten by the snake or not. All she knew was that she was free to walk about the streets as she had not been since his vendetta against her had started and that when she visited Mr. Lovett's garden now a great tranquillity lay over it and she did not see Terry there. The gardener's boy still turned up on his regular days but there was nothing to tell from his appearance or behaviour whether Terry was well or ill, alive or dead.

If there had been anything to tell, he had not told Tom either, for Tom said to her one day, “Told you that chap wouldn't come back in a hurry. I never seen anyone more panicked. He didn't know which way he was going hardly. Good riddance, I say.” But Catherine knew it was not only the snake that had panicked him.

After a while she quite forgot to notice the passing motorbikes and walked about thinking of things remote from personal safety. Her life was taking a more pleasant turn than she had ever known. She was needed at home, she was welcomed by Mr. Lovett whenever she saw him, and in a more obscure way she had been accepted by his garden. She was the more shocked, therefore, when quite suddenly the old familiar harassment began again.

At first it happened only occasionally, almost as if it had been simply an error of judgement by the bike rider that it should have passed so close to her as she walked along. But as time went on these near-misses grew more frequent and little by little nearer still. She knew now that it was intentional. She began to wonder why the full force of the motorbike gang had not been mustered against her. Then, as she paid more careful attention to the rider, she realized it was always Terry. Whatever the snake had done, it had not killed him. He was about again and this time, it seemed, he wanted to carry out his own personal tactics.

 

It was not until he reached home that Terry had looked at his shoe. He had felt the blow as the snake struck, but the one thought in his head was to get out of the garden—to get home. Now, still shaking, he sat on the back step and wrenched off the shoe. He saw the marks on the canvas upper that the fangs had made. Two holes, but torn to one side as he had pulled his foot away. He threw down the shoe, pulled off the sock at a second attempt, for his hands were scarcely under control, and looked at his foot. In his imagination the two puncture marks were so clear that for a moment he thought he saw them on the bare skin. But he passed a finger over his foot and knew there was nothing. It was unmarked, unbruised and apparently the fangs had not penetrated the canvas. He dared not slide his hand inside the shoe to find out, but pulled off the other shoe and threw them both over the fence as far into the scrub as he could. He never wanted to see them again.

The horror he felt when he thought of it afterwards was caused by more than the snake's attack. His horror was for the whole garden, for the malevolence he now knew was directed towards him and would someday do for him if he was not on his guard. He was afraid, and for a long time fear kept him away. But he was not used to feeling afraid, and because it was his nature he looked for something, or someone, to blame. With a kind of joy he pounced on Catherine. It was not necessary to try to work out cause and effect. She had been there. He resented her existence. It was enough. For the first time he permitted himself to be directed by feelings more powerful than reason. For the present he did not want to think about the garden. He thought only of Catherine.

At the same time, as usual with the coming of winter, his father caught a cold that sent him, coughing and moaning, to bed.

“It's not only the cold weather and his smoking,” said Mrs. Nicholson. “It's all this worry about the petrol pumps. Now he wants to sell up and buy a garage.”

“What he'd get for this place wouldn't buy a dog kennel,” Terry told her. “He's mad.”

His mother looked into his face. Her eyes, like his, were a pale, clear blue. “He knows. He thinks if he threatens to sell you'll do something about it.”

“What am I supposed to do, for heaven's sake?”

Her eyes were still on him, holding his own. “He says you've got a plan. Have you?”

They had been talking sitting at the kitchen table. Now he jumped to his feet and the chair reeled backwards. His mother caught it before it hit the floor. “I haven't got a plan. What sort of a plan? I haven't any plan.” He was staring at her.

She shrugged. “Just his idea. You and your mates, he thought. You and your mates together. Sure you haven't?”

“Why should I have? It's his business, not mine.” He came and sat down again, watching his mother warily as if she might pounce again at any moment. But she said nothing more until she had taken the mugs off the table.

Then, no longer trying to hold his eyes, she said casually, “Your dad's no good at making decisions and getting things done. You are. Trouble is when you start you go too far. You don't want to go too far. Only gets you into trouble.”

After she had left the kitchen he sat for a long time perhaps finding inspiration in the pattern of the old linoleum that covered the table, because his head, propped on his hands, was bent over it and quite motionless.

At last he got up. He had told his friends nothing, only that he was going to have a bit of fun with this dim girl with the long, straight hair. He had told them nothing because there was nothing to tell. But somewhere inside him, covered up and strenuously forgotten, was a plan. The fact that one of his mates was gardener's boy was proof enough.

Terry's immediate plans had no use for his gang. It gave him some pleasure to deal with Catherine by himself, working up slowly so that her nerves would always be waiting for him, stretched tighter and tighter until at last they would break, and perhaps he would not even have touched her. As before, he overlooked her character—so like his own.

She did not stop going out, and she did not say anything about it to her family. But she took to carrying a weapon. It was not obviously a weapon. It looked like a heavy walking stick with a knob on the end. It was a kind of family heirloom, come down from a great uncle who had lived in turbulent places. It was heavier than any wooden walking stick should be because there was a steel rod down the middle of it. No one in the house had thought about it for a long time, and no one would think of looking for it where she now kept it under her own mattress. When there were people about and she felt too conspicuous carrying a stick that came up to her middle rib she began to limp a little, as if some small injury had made the stick necessary.