The Watcher in the Garden (6 page)

“Only me,” he said. “Just a tap. Don't want trouble. You, Bill. You grab the bag. And see here—no running. We stay quiet—in among the trees. And then we go out one by one so we won't be seen together. We'll meet after, where I said.”

They could all see the man. He was just about to enter the trees. They were squatting along the inside of the fence and in the fading daylight were almost invisible from any distance. Once the man had disappeared Terry stood up. “Come on,” he said. “Quick now.”

They ran down the path and stopped when they reached the trees. Terry's hand motioned them back. A few paces ahead they saw him. He was whistling to himself now, swinging the bag as he walked. Terry lengthened his stride, raised the piece of metal.

And then—something blocked his arm. Something blocked his will. He felt again, and this time with a kind of terror, an echo of the earlier vibration in his mind—or his heart; he still could not tell which. It was acutely uncomfortable and it made him helpless. His arm dropped and for a moment he stood quite still. Then he turned round and they saw that his face was full of rage. Its pale colour had changed to a dull red. He looked at them as they waited, open-mouthed, behind him and then he said, “I can't do it.”

Bill stepped forward, reached for the piece of metal pipe. “Let me—” His hand was shaking, but his eyes blazed.

Terry snatched the weapon out of his reach. Through his clenched teeth he said, “We'll let him go.”

“No. Not now.” Joe came up beside Bill with the same light in his eyes.

“You try to touch him—” The rage was still there. Terry raised the weapon again, but this time it was over Joe's head. Then, with a kind of a shudder, he lowered it. He drew a long, wavering breath and the flush faded from his face. “Let him go,” he said again. And then, dangerously loud, “I said let him go.” He moved now, pushed past them, still clutching the pipe, and walked with long strides back the way they had come.

They waited until they saw him climb through the paling fence and gain the road. Then they moved. They left the clump of trees, quietly as they had entered it, and, without speaking again, went their separate ways.

After she had seen the figure on the rock it was a long time before the girl in the garden stepped out on to the open lawn. When she did, it was with a strangely naked feeling, like standing unclothed in a winter wind. But it passed and she knew what she had to do. All her earlier indecision left her and she crossed the lawn, climbed a flight of stone steps and arrived on the terrace where the house stood. It seemed to tower above her, the walls glimmering pale in the twilight and the windows blank and dark as usual. This time the dog did not bark, and she knew it would never bark at her again. The front door was closed. She walked up the steps, reached for the shining brass knocker and banged four times. The sound was like thunder in the dark hall beyond and it seemed to take an eternity for the vibrations to die away. She knew she could not bring herself to knock again. She stood there for a long time. Then a door closed far away inside the house. She continued to wait, hearing nothing more. Then, quite suddenly, the big cedar wood door swung open. She gasped and stepped back. It was the old man himself. The dog stood beside him waving its tail.

“I know who it is,” he said. “Conrad hasn't barked. Come in, Catherine. I'm glad you have come at last.” He stepped back, waiting for her. She might have said nothing and gone away. She might have said she was someone else. But he was so sure and would remember her voice better than she remembered his face. She stepped in through the door and without anything said, or any obvious communication between them, he shut the door behind her.

“If you had rung the bell,” he said, walking past her down the hall, “Jackson would have come at once. He can't hear the knocker with the doors shut.”

“I just saw the knocker. I thought I was meant to use it.”

“Yes. Well. It seemed a pity to take it down when we installed the bell. Perhaps we should have.”

“Please don't,” she said quickly. “I like it.”

Although he did not look round she could tell he was smiling. “So do I. And that's why it's there.” She wondered how he could like or dislike it if he could not see it. “I like its shape and the feel of the polished brass. Come in here.” He went through an open door into a small, book-lined room. It had been in darkness but he switched the light on as he went in. In the grate of the old fireplace a slow-combustion stove glowed silently. There were some comfortable chairs and a desk, and she wondered who used the desk until she realized that, somehow, the work of paying bills and answering letters had to be done, too, and afterwards she found out it was a book in braille. There was quite a pile of them in one corner of the room. On a table under the window a large bowl of late chrysanthemums shone yellow and gold against the blackness of the windowpane. Their peculiar, pungent smell filled the room.

“Would you mind pulling the curtains? I don't bother as a rule, but since we have the light on—Be careful of the flowers on the table.”

She crossed the room to where she could see the curtain cord hanging down and pulled them carefully across. She was glad to do it, for the figure on the rock was occupying her whole mind. The curtains were of heavy, brown velvet.

He seemed to know when she had finished, for he said, “Now come and sit down and tell me why you have come.” He walked over to one of the chairs, sat down and touched the one beside it lightly with his stick. “Sit here beside me.” When he felt that she was sitting he said, “Would you like something to eat or drink before we start talking? A cup of tea or coffee? A piece of cake? Jackson would be very pleased to have a visitor to look after. We don't have many, you know.”

She did not want anything—only to tell him, to warn him. She sat and looked round her at the warm, comfortable room, the flowers, and the bowls and bookends of shining brass. He must touch the brass from time to time, and she wondered if he had read all the books while he could still see, or whether they were relics of someone before him. Although there were many things here of no use to him now, the room was full of his presence. His personality was everywhere, and here, as in the garden, there was no sign of helplessness.

“Well?” he said. He seemed to be looking at her and she gave a start. His question had got lost somewhere in the vibrations of the room.

“I'm sorry. I was thinking.”

“Then tell me what you were thinking.”

“It's this room. I don't see how you can
not
see it.” Immediately she wished herself ten feet underground. It was a terrible thing to have said.

“The mind's eye,” he said quite calmly. “I could see once.” She was enormously relieved to see him smile. “Now—tell me why you came. It took some determination to walk up those steps and knock on the door, didn't it?”

“I wasn't brave enough until tonight,” she said, and was surprised that she had confessed as much.

“I had hoped you would be. And what was it that brought you tonight?”

“I had to tell you—” She stopped, searching for words. All she had seen was a man standing on a rock in the garden. It was not what she had seen, but what she had felt—what the whole garden seemed to know: that the man standing there had filled the garden with menace and fear. How could she say that? As she sat in the warm, safe room it scarcely seemed worth saying.

“Yes?” he said, and she was obliged to go on.

“It was for you. I thought you should know. Now I'm here there's so little to tell. I saw a man on that little patch of rocks up near the road. He was just standing there.”

The old man had gone very still. The dog had moved over to his knee and sat down beside him looking up at her.

“It was nothing, really. He didn't do anything, and then when the sun went he just—disappeared. I wouldn't have bothered, but there was a funny feeling. The garden—” She stopped again and then burst out, “I was frightened. Everything was frightened. It was horrible. We thought—that is, I thought something dreadful was going to happen. I thought I ought to tell you. But now it seems so silly.”

For a time the old man did not say anything. His dog continued to gaze at her, still sitting upright. At last he said, “It wasn't silly at all. It was perceptive of you, and you did right to come and tell me. I'm grateful to you, Catherine.”

“But then you see, could I have imagined it?”

“No. You didn't imagine anything. He was there all right. I know quite well who he is and it is true that he does mean me harm.” He stopped talking and in the silence that followed she felt a chill creep through her. He was a long time thinking of his next words, but she had no wish to hurry him on. What he had to say next might be something she had no wish to hear. He seemed not to know where to start and the silence had thickened and become heavy in the small, sheltering room before he spoke again.

“His name is Terry.” It astonished her that what she had seen on the rock should have a name at all, let alone such a commonplace one. “He is a youth probably a couple of years older than you are, and his nature is unusually violent. He has also been blessed, or cursed, with more intelligence than people give him credit for, and with a peculiarly strong personality so that perceptive people, and people like myself, whose senses have been developed through lack of sight, can feel his presence very strongly whenever he is near. You are a perceptive person, you see. And I suspect you can sense not only his presence, but his mood. I've known for a long time that he comes into my garden. And I've known that he has a grudge against me. Sooner or later he will turn to violence. It is fire in summer I fear most. It's so easy to set a match to a few dry pine needles. Even the house would burn given the right conditions.”

“Why don't you keep him out?” The words burst from her.

He smiled. “I couldn't keep you out, could I?”

“But I wasn't—” She stopped, suddenly awkward.

“You were near violence that first night, weren't you? Perhaps not with me, but violence of some kind.”

He could not see her head droop suddenly, the long hair hiding her face as she studied the pattern on the carpet. But when she spoke it was all in the sound of her voice. “I didn't know then that you—”

“Neither does he know. Oh, he knows an idle, selfish old man lives in this house and owns a larger piece of ground than he has any right to, but he doesn't know—” Something stopped him and the next words failed to come.

“He doesn't know you're blind,” she said bluntly.

He was not offended. “Let us say he doesn't know everything. So he comes from time to time, mainly, I suspect, to think up ways of damaging me or my property.”

“Surely he'd never—” The thought seemed too fantastic to put into words.

“Deliberately harm me? Not today, perhaps, or tomorrow, but some day, unless something happens to remove the grudge. Yes, some day I think he will try. It's the way he's made, you see.”

She wanted very much to ask what the grudge was that he nursed against this harmless old man, but there was a knock at the door and the dog jumped up.

“Come in, Jackson.”

A small, middle-aged man came into the room. The dog stretched, yawned and moved his tail once or twice. The man looked surprised to see Catherine, but, in a way, pleased. “I'm sorry, Mr. Lovett. I didn't hear the bell.”

“She didn't ring the bell, Bob. She used the knocker. You see, we were right to leave it there.”

She was surprised to see the depth of affection there was in the smile that passed over the man's face. “I came to ask about your dinner.”

“Oh yes. Is it time already?” He leaned towards Catherine. “Would you like to stay and have some dinner with me? I'm sure Jackson has got enough out there. He's always very optimistic about my appetite.”

She had not thought of the time passing and she got up quickly from the chair. “Oh, I'd better go. I'd forgotten.” She saw that he was still waiting for her answer and she felt suddenly uncouth. “I mean—thank you very much, but they'll wonder where I am. I only came to tell you—to warn you. I would like to stay, but really, I can't.” Everything she said seemed to her ill-chosen, even rude. Into her mind came her mother's exasperated voice. “It's your manner, Kit. You put everyone off. Why can't you occasionally say the right thing? It's no wonder—” and her shortcomings would be spelled out once more. Rather desperately she took a step towards him and looked into his face. “You are very kind to me, and I would like to have dinner with you, but I will go now so that you won't be late.”

“In that case—” He turned to Jackson. “I won't be a minute, Bob. I'll just see Catherine safely on her way home.”

“Oh, but you don't—” A sudden vision of the darkened garden outside made her stop.

He went on as if she had not spoken. “Which way will you go? Up by the road, or the way you usually come? I think, on the whole, your usual way would be best.”

She could guess why he said it and was suddenly glad of his offer to go with her. Jackson opened the front door for them and held it open so that the light shone out on to the terrace. Mr. Lovett walked with a surer step than hers, and she realized it was for her the front door had been left open. She followed him down, treading in his footsteps, and the shrubbery enveloped them and the trees closed over them. Without hesitation he took the path to the left and came at last to the boundary fence. Below them on a platform of rock overhanging the gorge and facing down the long valley to the south was the look-out, just visible in the gathering darkness.

He felt with his stick, found the fence and stopped. “Here we are. Can you find your way from here in the dark?”