The Watcher in the Garden (16 page)

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.

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.

“I'm quite well again,” Catherine said. “And I'll be even better by then.”

Mrs. Hartley peered at her with the close scrutiny she kept for sickbeds, and which usually infuriated Catherine. But now she welcomed it and did her best to look enormously robust. She was, indeed, feeling quite well again, and Mrs. Hartley must have been satisfied with what she saw, for she nodded briskly and said, “There's no need to worry, Hal. I shall write and tell him to come.”

“Very well.” Mr. Hartley had a further thought. “Kitty, you'll have to start a bit of preparation. He's asked you to find out the best places to go and how to get there. How near he'll be able to drive his car and that sort of thing.”

She nodded. She had forgotten all about Rupert since the accident. It was good to know he had not forgotten her and she began to look forward to the holidays. When she next saw Mr. Lovett she explained to him that for a little while she would not be able to visit him quite so often.

He had said nothing to this and she could not tell if he was disappointed or not. But when she told him the reason she saw the interest come into his face again and he said, “In that case I'll excuse you from your visits to me—on one condition, that you promise to come when you can and tell me where you have been and what you have seen.”

“I will,” she said at once. “I always do.”

“Not always,” said Mr. Lovett. “You tell me only what you think I ought to know. You thought I didn't realize that, but you see I do. Oh, I'm content with your decisions. Don't worry. We'll leave it at that.”

He had left her nothing to say, and she felt closer to him now than she had ever felt. But she still did not tell him everything.

Sometimes she experienced again that sense of an expansion of her mind, and through the new window the view was clearing. Thoughts she seemed to have had before, brief, clear pictures that were new yet not new, now swam and swelled like thunder clouds behind it. But her still recent concussion was an easy explanation and “Routes for Rupert” soon filled her mind. She asked the teachers at school about routes and they made suggestions which she followed up. So she began going for long, solitary walks, notebook in hand and sometimes a packet of sandwiches. Slowly she began to collect information, and sitting motionless for long periods by remote pools or in patches of scrub, she learned patience as Terry had recently learned patience.

Terry and all that he implied little by little faded into the background of her mind. She thought constantly now of Rupert, and it pleased her to believe he would be in her debt. Surely this would mean something to him? For the time being her problems were overlaid by pleasant things. It did not once occur to her that she was in any danger, alone for so long in places where nobody came. She knew enough not to fall over any of the many cliffs that plunged sheer into the gorges below and that were often hidden by undergrowth and scrub. At this time of year all the snakes were hibernating. There was no other danger that she was aware of.

Yet there was one, and because she did not know of it she was the more vulnerable. It would have happened anyway, sometime, somewhere. Sooner or later she would see clear through that new window. But she made one slip, and so she was caught, defenceless, when the time came for her to understand it all.

One day she sat too long by a deep and lonely waterhole and darkness came down before she reached the first track, and she found herself lost. She was alarmed, but not too alarmed, because she knew that as soon as daylight returned she would find her way out. She knew her way about as well as most people in the district, and she knew as well that it was quite possible to walk over one of the cliffs. In the darkness it was better to stay still and wait. She found as sheltered a place as she could and resignedly settled down for a long, cold night. She knew her family would worry about her, but there was nothing she could do about it. She put them out of her mind and tried to think more useful thoughts.