The Watcher in the Garden (7 page)

“Yes. I shall be all right now. Thank you very much—Mr. Lovett.” She would not for a moment suggest that there might be danger still lurking on the isolated path to where she lived.

But as if he had guessed what was in her mind, he said, “Terry won't hang about down here. But in any case you'll be in no danger from him. His violence has never been irrational.” He spoke calmly and then said goodnight to her, feeling for the wire and holding it up for her to get through.

On the other side of the fence she said, “Shall you be all right going back?”

“I shall be all right. I think you can feel, as I can, that the garden is empty now. Besides, Conrad is here to warn me.”

Half-way home she stopped to look back. The garden lay quiet under the night sky. The look-out was still visible. But it had changed. Surely the stones had altered? Then she saw that it was now inhabited. Her old man had not gone straight back. He was standing on the look-out, his hands on the waist-high wall, leaning forward, looking, it seemed, down the valley. He was very still, and the dog, invisible beside him, was still too. The air flowing up the valley must be brushing his face, bringing scents from far away, and the feeling of space, the endless night and the open sky. For someone who could not see it was a kind of freedom.

Then she thought how vulnerable he was, just as he stood now. Anyone—Terry—could creep up behind and, catching him unawares, tip him over the wall. It was a long way down to the gorge, on to the rocks below. No one would believe he had not simply lost his balance.

She looked for Terry after that, half fearful of finding him. The image she had of him in her mind—inhumanly tall and black as night—was scarcely adequate. But she knew that he lived near the garden, and she listened and she watched. And one Saturday in the news-agent's she heard his name. She knew that there was someone behind her buying the morning paper, but she took no notice until a voice said, “Here, Terry, better take this for your dad. He'll find the racing tips inside.”

His reply was too low for her to hear, but she stood where she was, unable to turn her head, though there was no reason at all that she knew of why he should recognize her. It was not until she heard him go out of the shop that she dared look round. She glanced quickly through the glass door, thinking to see him walk up the street. But the street was empty. She found herself queerly edgy, as if bubbles ran along her nerves, and decided it was because the ridiculous thought had come to her that, once outside the shop, he had again dissolved into air, that he had ceased to exist. Then it seemed to her that the shop window, as she viewed it from inside, was unusually dark, and she looked up and saw him standing there looking at her. He was neither inhumanly tall, nor black as night, but she recognized him at once. His eyes, staring at her through the window, were pale blue. He was reasonably, but not unduly tall, and his hair was longish, blond and faintly curly. His face—always after that she had trouble remembering his face. It was pale, with a small, well-cut nose and thin lips, the jawbone sharp, the chin firm. It was not a particularly thin face, yet the bones everywhere were clearly visible. Its expression was totally blank, as a blind is blank, pulled down, not to shield the room from what is outside, but to conceal what is happening inside. He wore jeans and a yellow T-shirt, and the clinging fabric outlined the bone structure beneath. There was little spare flesh in between and the effect was of strength and high tension. She felt herself suspended in time, all her nerves anaesthetised, her brain halted. Then, as if a spring had been released, he swung round and walked quickly away.

 

The picture Terry carried away with him was a curious one. The girl was not pretty. Had he expected her to be pretty? What, then, had made him stop outside the shop and turn to look at her again? What had he expected? Had he seen her before? He had not even looked at her in the shop. But he had known she was there. He had known she was listening. He had not meant to turn and look, but he found himself there, outside the shop window, and she wasn't his type at all. She was just a kid, a skinny kid, even, with lank black hair, a pale face and a scowl. This, at any rate, was what he told himself, holding up the image like a shield against—he did not know what. He walked away quickly, resentful that she had seen him watching her. It was nothing. One of those silly things, and he would forget it in five minutes. But he carried her away with him. Some part of her penetrated his skin. Or was it his mind? And while she remained beneath his skin and in his mind he was filled with unease and a kind of fear. He thought he had not known she existed until a few minutes ago. And yet he had always known. She was as familiar as his own toothbrush. He shut his eyes for a moment, shook his head and broke into a run.

 

A spring must have been released in her, too, for she felt herself go limp, as if the energy had suddenly drained out through her feet. For a moment her knees threatened to give way. She caught herself in time and managed to cross the shop to the till.

“Who was that chap?” she asked the assistant.

“Him?” The assistant peered through the window. “Oh, that's Terry Nicholson. He lives up on the side of the hill there. Supposed to be working for his dad, but you'll find him hanging about the street most of the time—him and his mates.”

She could see him far down the street when she left the shop. There were no mates with him and he was running. She had intended to go the other way, towards her own home. But she turned in his direction and began to follow him towards the hillside where Mr. Lovett lived, where the garden was. When he had turned the corner and was no longer in sight she began to hurry. When she reached the corner she thought she had lost him. She could see the garden now, the big spruce and cedar trees that edged the road and threw their shadows over the footpath. And there he was, sure enough, sliding along under the trees, keeping close to the fence. But his pace had slackened, and once or twice he stopped and seemed to be peering through the palings into the garden. She followed, walking with a purposeful step, as if her goal were clear-cut and quite ordinary, not the subconscious pull, half fascination, half fear, that dragged her after him. She came to a cross-road, looked for traffic and when she had reached the footpath again, discovered she had lost him. The trees of the garden and their shadows reaching out over the fence were nearer and easier to see, but nothing moved beneath them any longer.

He could have slipped inside, bent on a further session of his silent reconnaissance. Or he could simply have passed beneath the trees and walked home. Entering the garden had not been part of her plan, if she could be said to have had a plan, when she left the shops. But when she reached the corner of the fence she found a gap and slipped through. Here, where the deciduous trees had dropped their leaves, it was impossible to walk silently. The leaves had not been swept up and the sunlit weather of the recent weeks had crisped them so that they rattled and snapped in a series of small explosions as she passed. She moved cautiously and looked about her. Sometimes she stopped and listened, for no one else would be able to walk silently, either. But she saw nothing and heard nothing, and there was a feeling of tranquillity in the air that told her there was no danger here this morning.

Usually her way had been at a much lower level of the garden in the semi-wild area of native trees and shrubs, but now she made her way near and parallel to the road boundary. The house was below her and for the first time she looked down on its slate roof and the enclosed back yard. From this angle she could see that the side porch, from which the light sometimes shone, opened on to a paved courtyard containing a small pool presided over by the bronze statue of a dancing boy and some large terracotta pots of healthy azalea plants, their leaves yellow and red at this time of year. One wooden chair stood beside the pool and she guessed that Mr. Lovett sometimes sat here sheltered from the wind. It was empty now. From an open window upstairs came the sound of a vacuum cleaner being energetically used. The sound almost blotted out faint strains of music issuing from the open door on to the porch. The house could hardly produce sounds of such normal activity if he had taken advantage of that open door to slip inside. She stood and watched for a few minutes, but nothing happened except that Conrad came pensively through the door, walked to a post on the far side of the pool and returned, still pensive, into the house. There was no sign of Terry anywhere so she went on, cautious, but more relaxed.

Once past the house she turned downhill, without thinking very clearly why she did so. It was already some way behind her when she found she had reached the garden fence again. On the other side was a small stretch of scrub and then quite clearly someone's back yard. It was a large back yard and seemed to be taken up almost entirely with broken-down motor cars. Beyond it a small house and several sheds faced an unpaved side road. Higher up the hill where the road junction must be was a respectable-looking brick house on the corner, surrounded by an orderly garden. And this, too, backed on to Mr. Lovett's garden, except for the narrow patch of scrub in between. She was about to make her way up the garden fence to the major road when she noticed some movement at the back of the sheds. Two figures had come out from between them and were making their way towards one of the wrecked cars. One of them was Terry.

She sank down behind a bush. The car they were headed for turned out to be quite near the limit of their back yard, not far from the strip of scrub that separated her from them. She dared not move, but shrank as small as she could behind the bush, peering through the leaves and listening. The impression she had received of Terry through the shop window was strengthened now that she saw him more clearly. The pale, expressionless face, the thin body and the lank, half-heartedly curling fair hair should have given an impression of a faint and feeble personality. But what Mr. Lovett had said was true. There was something about him that made itself felt, that commanded attention, even through the lacklustre exterior. The other man was thin, too, but small, stooped and wrinkled. His slow and slightly crablike movements suggested rheumatic joints, if not some more deep-seated disability.

“But I told you to bring cigarettes.” It was an old man's voice, a high, querulous voice.

“I never heard. You said the paper, and she remembered to give me the racing tips. You never said nothing about cigarettes.” Terry's voice was quiet, but oddly metallic.

“You never listened, you mean.”

“If you start that again you can get your own papers and cigarettes. I don't know why you don't anyway. Nothing to stop you hopping in the car and driving up.”

“I got to think of the petrol, haven't I? You'd know if you ever paid the bills, 'stead of just filling up your bike at my expense.”

“Pack it in, Dad. Anyone'd think you paid me a wage for what I do for you.”

“If I paid you a wage for what you do it wouldn't equal your dole money hardly. You're never here half the time.” There was a sing-song note in the old man's voice, as if he had said it all many times before.

Catherine expected some kind of explosion from Terry. She was still crouched beneath the bush. There was an ant on her leg and her knees ached, but she was scarcely aware of either. There was no explosion. When he spoke, his voice was as quiet as before, but the words carried clearly in the windless morning.

“You don't know what I'm doing for you. I'm doing more than you think. One of these days you'll find out.”

All at once the old man became suspicious. “What do you mean? You haven't done nothing—?”

There was a crack and a sudden grinding of metal as Terry got the car hood up. He turned to his father. “I haven't done nothing yet. And I'm not telling you. You'll go and wreck it all. I know.”

“But, Terry, you won't do nothing against the law? You can't afford to be in trouble—”

There came a distant sound and Catherine could not be sure if he had added “again”. But Terry burst into laughter. “Don't worry, Dad. You'll never know.”

The distant sound was repeated and resolved itself into a female shout from the direction of the house. Both men turned, and Catherine saw a tall woman striding down picking her way between the heaps of old metal. She was almost as tall as Terry, and as blond as he was. The same strong personality was evident as soon as she drew near. It had been easy to see in Terry the violence Mr. Lovett had talked about. It was here, too, in his mother. But in her there was control and perhaps even an attempt to conceal it. She spoke reasonably enough, but it was the voice of authority.

“It's dinner time. Didn't you hear me call?”

“Can't say I did,” said the old man rather too quickly. “With Terry making all that racket.”

“I heard,” said Terry calmly. “But I was telling something to Dad. We was coming when I'd finished.”

“Well, you'd better come now,” said his mother and started back to the house without looking to see if they followed.

Before they moved the old man touched Terry on the arm. Catherine saw how quickly he pulled it away from the touch. “You won't tell your mother nothing, Terry, about—whatever it was you was telling me?”

Again Terry laughed. She watched as they made their way to the house, Terry striding after his mother and the old man following with his crablike shuffle.

They had not seen her, and they could not possibly see her now from the house. But she waited until there had been no sign of movement for some minutes before standing up and stepping back in among the trees. She went home through the garden, taking the lower path she usually took. And as she walked she considered what she had heard. Somewhere in it all there was a threat, and for no clear reason except the memory of Mr. Lovett's words, again she was afraid.