The Watcher in the Garden (12 page)

They walked together in the garden. He led her down past the rocky pool towards the look-out. When he reached the approach to it he stopped. On this warm summer morning the scrub-covered hills were very blue, and the gorges between almost purple in the shadows. There was no wind and the land lay dazzled under the cloudless summer sky. Except for a distant bird call it was quiet round about them. No sound at all came up from the gorge below. But, rolling over the hills came the muted thunder of motor traffic on the highway, rising and falling with the speed and weight of the vehicles that spun over the glistening macadam surface, winding their way through the hills to the open plains beyond.

“I am going to have the look-out altered,” he said.

“Why?” She could not imagine how this quiet corner of the garden with its long and lovely view could be improved at all.

He did not answer directly; but as if he were thinking aloud. “I like the look-out very much. I spend a lot of time here.” She remembered all the occasions she had seen him standing or sitting on the stone seat—a lonely figure poised over the blue depths below, with his old head held high as if he were in some kind of silent communication with things she could not see. “I knew there was another outcrop of rock rather like this one on the next spur.” Without turning his head he waved his hand in its direction. It was smaller than the one the look-out stood on and there was a deep gash in the hillside between. But it was on the same level and not very far away. It was beyond the garden, emerging from the wild scrub that rolled on down the untouched hillside. Its aspect would be different. The view would be slightly different but—“I have a fancy to stand on that outcrop and it would not be difficult to make another small look-out there, or to build a bridge over the gully. Tom tells me he and the boy could do it quite easily.” She knew Tom was the gardener. “As a matter of fact I have just rented that half acre from the Council. Providing I leave the new look-out to the town, they're agreeable.”

“Why?” she said again. She could not see what he could gain by it. “Why build another when you've got one?”

His smile was without mirth. “You see, Catherine, it would extend my boundaries a little, and I have a feeling that if I stood there I would find the air different.”

“Just the same air as here, Mr. Lovett.” For some reason she did not want him to carry out this plan.

“Not really. You would be surprised how the air changes in different places, how different breezes blow, how draughts come from quite different directions. And there are the smells. They change, too. Besides—”

He had stopped, and there could be nothing else, but she said, “Besides what?”

“It will seem absurd to you, but I know there will be a more open feeling that will come to me when I stand on that rock, a sensation of greater space than I get here.” He stopped again and then said, as if the dream had left him, “Silly, isn't it?”

She put her hand on his arm. “Mr. Lovett, please don't do it. I can take you walking. We can go anywhere—anywhere you like.” She did not know why she had said it. It was not what he wanted to hear, but it had to be said.

He did not answer at once. But at last he said, “You must have a reason.”

When she had said it she had no reason, but now it came to her and she knew it had been there all the time, and it was a reason she could not give. She could not tell him it was because of the gardener's boy. She looked across at the outcrop. Although it was on the same level as the look-out, the drop to the bottom of the gorge was longer and steeper, and the floor of the gorge at this point threw up a tumbled heap of rocks through which the creek rushed and foamed. Compared with the present look-out it would be a savage and desolate place. Suddenly, on this warm, sunbathed morning she felt cold. But she only mumbled, “I suppose I just thought it would be nice to go for walks.”

His face softened. He was never angry when she expected him to be. “You're the oddest girl, Catherine. We shall go for our walks, and it will be very pleasant, but I shall build my new look-out as well.” She knew she must say nothing more. Mr. Lovett's will was even stronger than her own. But as if he sensed her unhappiness, he added in quite a different voice, “You have never told me if you have discovered the—secret, if I can call it that—of my garden. Haven't you realized, as we've walked in it together, that it takes care of me? In my garden I am safe because I am protected. You really don't have to worry about me the way you do, Catherine.”

 

She had never managed to see clearly the faces of Terry's friends, but when she got the opportunity she tried to memorize the face of the gardener's boy. It was quite an ordinary face, and told her nothing. Sometimes she wondered if the thought of Terry and his future actions had become a kind of disease in her mind, blown up and exaggerated by too much thinking. But she remembered the sudden swerving of the bike, the way it headed straight for her, and the crouching figure over the handlebars. And she knew there was no disease in her mind. She came to the garden more and more, and her own family saw her less and less. But she was easy to live with again, and they asked no questions.

She took Mr. Lovett walking, too. Jackson had taken her on one side the next time she came to the house and told her how pleased he was that Mr. Lovett had decided to go. “I used to offer to take him, but he never would go. It will do him good to get out a bit.”

It did not take her long to realise he came only to please her—not to seem ungrateful. He never said so, but she knew there was no pleasure for him in their walks. She also found that while they were out she never stopped looking and listening for motorbikes. Whatever danger he may have been in at home, he was more vulnerable in the public streets. She found herself taking him along the busier ways where people went during most of the daylight hours. The walks became fewer and gradually stopped.

Jackson explained to her, “It's the feeling he has of people watching him and him not being able to watch them back. I keep telling him he'll get used to it the way other blind people do, but he says he doesn't see why he should have to in the time left to him, when he has all he wants inside his own garden fence. I'm sorry, though. I know he should mix with people.”

The walks stopped without either of them commenting. She replaced them with more frequent visits to the garden. She did not always see Mr. Lovett when she came, but she found there was seldom a time when he had not known she had been there. She wondered if he knew how often Terry came.

Terry must have known, as she did, which were the gardeners' days, for she never saw him then. She began to wonder if one of the reasons he came now was to watch for her, and her approach to the garden became more cautious each time. But it did not stop her coming. Often when the Saturday shopping for her mother made it possible she came boldly by the road, went in at the main gate and moved only within sight of the house. If Terry were out there among the trees she knew it, and if he were looking in through the fence anywhere along the garden's boundary she knew it, too. But while the house stood open and Jackson and the dog were about she felt safe. Sometimes she watched Tom and his boy at work. There was nothing to tell her whether the boy was one of Terry's gang or not. He worked away and appeared to obey orders in a way that was, if not cheerful, at least without resentment. Nothing about the boy suggested evil intent, yet the feeling of uneasiness remained with her. Then one day when she was sitting on the terrace in the shade of one of the cherry trees, having climbed up from the very bottom of the garden, she heard the sound of a motorbike. It was a perfectly ordinary noise and it was only because she never heard this sound now without an immediate tightening of the nerves that she noticed it at all. The sound came from the road above and she looked up. At the same time the gardener's boy, who had been hoeing through the rose bed, stopped hoeing, lifted his head and looked up also. The sound faded, the unknown cyclist went on his way, and the boy went on hoeing. A small enough gesture, yet it was sufficient. She did not doubt any longer that he was one of Terry's gang, one of those who had tried to frighten her. He must have known it, too, ever since he first saw her in the garden. But he had given no sign then and he gave no sign now. From that moment she watched the gardener's boy when she could. It had seemed strange from the beginning that a fellow of his years should have been content with the job he was doing.

One day she met Mr. Lovett by the pool. They sat together in the shade of the rocks and he said, “They're starting on the little bridge and the new look-out next week.” When she made no comment he said, “Why does it make you angry—after what I have told you?”

How to say she could not wholly share his confidence? A garden is a garden, however strange its manifestations may be. Even if he did as good as own the jutting crag across the gully, there was—would be—still the bridge. How much part of the garden was that? How to tell him it was not anger she felt, but a sudden surge of apprehension, without cause and without justification. How to tell him that? “Are you getting a proper builder?” she said at last.

“Would it make you less angry if I did?”

“Yes. I mean—I'm not angry, but it would be better.”

“I dare say, but it would be a good deal more expensive. You'll see. Tom will make a good job of it. He always does.”

 

The trigger Mr. Lovett spoke of had not yet been pressed. But the opportunity, thanks to Terry's forethought, was shaping up satisfactorily. Nothing so rigid as a fixed plan was in his mind yet. So far there was little more than some forceful emotion seeking an outlet. Deep within him the idea lay dormant. It was not an idea, anyway, that could stand the light of day. He felt strongly for the disadvantaged, the unlucky, among whom he classed himself, and for those many who should have had more, but who, through the scheming of nebulous characters he was prepared to hate, had less. For his father he had contempt, knowing that in his father's position he would have made a better job of life. But in spite of that he pitied him. Never far away was the wish, encouraged by his mother, to strike some kind of blow, perhaps not so much with the idea of helping his father, as in revenge for what his father had to put up with. Revenge was something he was much in favour of.

Without question he wanted to get that piece of land for his father. He had turned over in his mind the possibilities of being able to persuade the old man to sell where his father had failed. He knew he would have made a better job of that, too, but persuasion of that kind did not appeal to him. He preferred to go directly for what he wanted. What he wanted was what he ought to have. So he waited. How long, he wondered, would it be before the old man died?

Having got his pal where he wanted him, Terry continued to go to the garden. He knew that Catherine went as often as he did. His turn to deal with her would come, too. When he heard about the new look-out and the bridge he knew that somewhere a thread was being untangled. He would find the end of the thread soon enough. Only Catherine was the unknown factor, and it infuriated him that she should be a factor that loomed so large in his mind.

It was at this point that the garden seemed to him to change. It took him a few visits to notice it. At first he blamed his own imagination. Later he knew he had not been wrong. He was not welcome here.

Each day the sun set a little earlier. Each night brought a hint of crisper air, and autumn came nearer. The first term of the new school year, which began at the end of January, kept Catherine busy, but more than ever now she spent her spare time in the garden. Only Diana ever asked where she went, and Catherine did try to tell her. But each time something stopped her. She found she could not even tell about Mr. Lovett. Diana would know his name. Everybody in the district knew his name, and the name of his house and garden. Some were sympathetic, some, like Terry and his father, indignant that one old man should own so much in a growing district where land for the developers was scarce. Diana's sympathy would immediately make her want to know more. She might even want to help. Catherine had been swamped by her kind elder sister too often.

“Just a friend,” she would end up lamely. “I go to help.” And she did not say the help consisted of a kind of watch and ward she had imposed on herself. Even her fears could not be revealed. Diana, for whom the sun always shone, would never understand. Not unnaturally Diana was left to think Catherine had found her first boy friend, and she was pleased for Catherine, gave up asking awkward questions and told her parents she was sure all was well with their problem child.

Sometimes Catherine wondered if Terry knew the route she took from her house to the garden. It led first through back lanes and then out on the winding track through the scrub that brought her to the lower boundary. Going this way she met few people and she had never heard, or seen, the tracks of a motorbike. Nevertheless, she began to vary her approach. There were many wandering paths through the bush on the outskirts of the town. Most of them led from one point of the town to another. Some of them were simply the paths of tourists leading to view points or picnic places. She did not know them all, but she had no fear of losing herself.

One day the path she took wound its way along the hillside on a higher level. She could catch glimpses of Mr. Lovett's stupendous view through the trees—more hazy and dreamlike now with the approach of autumn, but still with that clear air and the wide sky above. Then trees would close in again on each side and she could see only the pattern of leaves against the sky and the sandy track ahead, winding along among the tree trunks. She had been walking for some time, following the path, with her mind far away and her senses relaxed and she had forgotten that very soon the path must end. It ended quite suddenly round the next bend and she found herself at the far end of an unpaved road that seemed familiar. On the left of the road was a cheaply built house badly in need of a new coat of paint and beside the house one or two corrugated iron sheds. The front garden consisted of a patch of lettuces going to seed and a bed of young cabbages. The rest was weeds and long grass. Only the lettuce and cabbage beds were damp and tidy. Catherine was about to step out on to the road when somewhere just out of sight she heard a voice. It was speaking quite softly, but she knew it at once. She stepped back among the trees. After a moment as the voice continued she began to move downhill as quietly as she could. She stepped cautiously from bush to bush, from tree trunk to tree trunk until she calculated she would be beyond the back of the house. She moved forward until she could see what lay beyond the edge of the scrub.