Tom's Midnight Garden

by Philippa Pearce

  Then Hatty had to get quickly back into bed again, for they heard footsteps along the landing outside. Summer dusk had begun shadowing the room, and now Susan arrived with an oil-lamp which she put on the mantelshelf and lit. Then she went away and came back again with a bowl of bread-and-milk for Hatty’s supper.

  While Hatty ate, Tom and she talked on, and Tom warmed his fingers over the opening of the lamp-glass and watched the shadow patterns his fingers made on the ceiling. From downstairs sounded the reverberation of the gong, calling the Melbournes to their evening meal; they heard footsteps and voices going downstairs.

  Susan came again and took away the empty bowl and the lamp, and bade Hatty lie down and go to sleep. When Susan had gone, Tom said that he had better be going too.

  ‘Very well,’ said Hatty. She never asked where he would go.

  ‘I shall see you tomorrow,’ said Tom.

  Hatty smiled. ‘You always say that, and then it’s often months and months before you come again.’

  ‘I come every night,’ said Tom.

  He said good night to her, and went downstairs. In the hall there was a smell of food, and Susan and another maid were running to and fro with plates and dishes: the family was dining.

  Tom paused to check that the key of the grandfather clock was in its keyhole. He longed to be able to turn it, but Hatty must do that for him. He stared at the angel on the clock-face.

  He left the clock and went out into the garden, and then very deliberately came in again and—shutting his eyes—closed the door and bolted it. But when he opened his eyes again, the hall was still the Melbournes’ hall. He went along it and upstairs, hoping desperately that, even as he went, the stair-carpet and rods would dissolve away beneath him, and he would find himself on the way to the Kitsons’ flat and his own bedroom there and his own bed.

  No such thing happened. He reached Hatty’s bedroom, that should have been his; the door was ajar.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Hatty mumbled sleepily.

  ‘It’s only me,’ said Tom. ‘I—I came back for something.’

  ‘Have you got it?’

  ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘But it’s all right. Good night, Hatty.’

  ‘Good night.’

  He went downstairs and out into the garden, and walked right round it, under the flickering bats; and then he tried again: the house was still the same—the Melbournes’ house.

  ‘I shall never get back,’ Tom thought suddenly; and then, ‘I’ll tell Hatty. I’ll ask her what to do. I’ll tell her everything, even if it does mean talking about ghosts.’

  He went upstairs and slid into the bedroom, and called Hatty’s name into the darkness. She did not reply, and, when he listened, he heard the regular breathing of a sleeper. He did not like to waken her and frighten her, so he crouched down on the floor by the bed, with his arm across one of hers, so that when she woke or even stirred he would at once feel her movement. He let his head rest on his arm and gradually felt himself falling asleep.

  He did not know how much later it was when he woke, except that there was daylight in the room, and he was cramped from his position on the floor. At first, he did not know where he was. Then he remembered sharply and clutched with his arm across the bed, but the bed was empty—no Hatty. Then he saw that the bed was his, not Hatty’s, and that this, too, was his bedroom—only a slice of a room with one barred window.

  Tom did not understand how he came to be there, but he was grateful with all his heart. He was about to climb into his cold bed, when he remembered the bedroom slipper that wedged the flat door open. It would never do for his aunt or uncle to find it there. Fortunately the hour was still too early for them to be awake. He got the slipper, shut the front door and went back to bed. There he lay, looking up at the ceiling, until he heard his uncle go into the bathroom on the other side of the flimsy partition and start the water running for an early bath.

  A moment afterwards, his aunt came in to Tom, bringing the early cup of tea with which she spoiled him.

  ‘It’s time to get up, Tom. The post has just brought a letter from home—one for you from Peter, and one for me from your mother.’

  XIX

  Next Saturday

  They all sat round the breakfast-table: Alan Kitson with his newspaper; his wife with a long letter from her sister, Tom’s mother; Tom himself with a letter from Peter. Tom read his letter with one hand curved round the top, to prevent any—even accidental—overlooking.

  ‘Dear Tom,

  BEWARE! Mother is writing to Aunt Gwen to say can you come home at the end of the week and this time you really are to. I think Mother will say you must come because I miss you so much but I don’t want you to come away. I like all you write in your letters. Tell me some more. I wish I were there but Mother and Father say no.

  I wish we had more trees and a river near and a high wall. I wish I were there.

  ‘Yours,

  Pete.’

  Tom sighed; he would have liked to bring Peter, if only for a little, to the reach of his wishes.

  Tom looked back to the beginning of the letter: ‘BEWARE!’ But what can children do against their elders’ decisions for them, and especially their parents’? ‘You are to come home at the end of the week’; and this—Tom looked at the top of Uncle Alan’s newspaper—this was Tuesday. He supposed that they would be suggesting Saturday or Sunday for his return.

  Aunt Gwen put down her letter and smiled at Tom, but sadly. ‘Well, Tom, so we must really say good-bye to you soon.’

  ‘When?’ said Tom, abruptly.

  ‘On Saturday. There’s a cheap train on Saturday morning, and your mother says you can go by train, now that you’re out of quarantine.’

  ‘Next Saturday?’ said Tom. ‘So soon?’

  His uncle said suddenly: ‘We shall miss you, Tom.’ Then he looked surprised—almost annoyed—at what he had said.

  Aunt Gwen said: ‘Your father and mother send their special love, Tom, and look forward to seeing you again soon. Your mother says that Peter has been missing you very much; he pines and daydreams without you; he needs you. We could hardly expect to keep you longer with us here—unless we adopted you.’

  If they adopted him, Tom thought, he could stay here; but, on the other hand, he wouldn’t have his own family any more: his mother, his father, Peter …

  Tom felt a tightness round his ribs, as though he were being squeezed apart there. He wanted two different sets of things so badly: he wanted his mother and father and Peter and home—he really did want them, badly; and, on the other hand, he wanted the garden.

  ‘If you adopted me,’ Tom began, slowly and painfully.

  ‘I was only joking, Tom,’ said his aunt, thinking to reassure him.

  So she did, in part, for Tom had not at all wanted to become the Kitsons’ child and to stop belonging to his own family; but, all the same, some desperate remedy must be found for his now desperate situation. He knew, from Peter’s letter and from the way his aunt had spoken, that he had no further hope of prolonging his stay here—not by postponements, not by chills, not even by adoption. They had said Saturday morning, and that was that.

  Next Saturday …

  ‘Perhaps next year,’ his aunt was saying, ‘you’ll come again and spend part of your summer holiday with us.’

  Tom could not answer her and thank her, because next year was so far away, and the feeling round his heart, here and now, was so bad when he thought of going—so bad that one might have said his heart was nearly breaking.

  All that morning, Tom seemed to hear the ticking of the grandfather clock, bringing Saturday, minute by minute, nearer and nearer. He hated the clock for that. Then he would remember that, this very night, the grandfather clock was to give up its secret, when Hatty unfastened the doors. What the secret might be, Tom could not even dimly guess; yet he had a strange feeling of its importance, and he found himself setting a faint hope upon it—his only hope. For that reason, he longed for the minutes and hours to pass
quickly until tonight. Time was so long from now until then; so short from now until Saturday.

  That afternoon, Tom wrote to Peter about the garden, with a hopefulness he did not really feel; he promised to write more tomorrow. Then, to get away from the ticking of the clock, he went out for a walk with his aunt. He had asked whether there was not a river flowing near by, and she had thought so and that she could find it for him. They walked among back streets, turning this way and that until Tom lost all sense of direction. They came to a bridge.

  ‘Here’s your river, Tom!’ said Aunt Gwen, triumphantly.

  It must be the same river, although it looked neither like the stretch Tom had glimpsed from Hatty’s window nor like the one he and Hatty had reached through the meadow by the garden hedge. This river no longer flowed beside meadows: it had back-garden strips on one side and an asphalt path on the other.

  There was a man fishing by the bridge, and Aunt Gwen called to him: ‘Have you caught any fish?’

  ‘There aren’t any fish,’ the man replied sourly. He stood by a notice that said: ‘WARNING. The Council takes no responsibility for persons bathing, wading or paddling. These waters have been certified as unsuitable for such purposes, owing to pollution.’

  ‘What is pollution?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I know it means that the river isn’t pure and healthy any more,’ said Aunt Gwen. ‘It’s something to do with all the houses that have been built, and the factories. Dreadful stuff gets into rivers from factories, I believe.’

  Tom looked at the river-water: it did not look foul, but he saw that the weeds below the surface of the water, instead of being slim and green and shining, were clothed in a kind of dingy, brown fur. There were no geese about, nor any waterfowl. There certainly seemed to be no fish. On the other hand, there was a large quantity of broken glass, broken crockery and empty tins dimly to be seen on the river-bed.

  ‘Can’t you bathe or paddle anywhere?’ asked Tom.

  ‘There’s bathing at Castleford. This river flows down to Castleford, you know.’

  ‘To Castleford, Ely, King’s Lynn and the sea,’ said Tom.

  ‘Why, yes, Tom,’ said his aunt, rather surprised. ‘How did you come to know that piece of geography?’

  ‘Someone told me,’ Tom said reservedly. ‘What is the time, please?’

  ‘Nearly four o’clock.’

  Was that all?

  They walked home again, there being nothing more of interest to see. As they came in through the front-door of the big house, the first thing Tom heard was the ticking of the grandfather clock. It would tick on to bedtime, and in that way Time was Tom’s friend; but, after that, it would tick on to Saturday, and in that way Time was Tom’s enemy.

  XX

  The Angel Speaks

  That Tuesday night Tom did not know how he might find Hatty—whether she would still be in bed after her fall, or whether she would be up and about in the garden again, or whether she would already be trying out the social pleasures with which James had tempted her.

  Tom had been ready for changes in Hatty; what took him utterly by surprise, when he opened the garden door, was a change in the season. It was mid-winter—not a dreary, grey mid-winter, but one shining with new-fallen snow. Every tree and bush and plant was muffled in white; only the deeper alcoves of the yews had been sheltered from snow, and these seemed to watch Tom like dark, deep-set eyes.

  In its way, this weather was as perfect as the summer weather had been.

  There was a great stillness; and Tom held his breath, enchanted by the scene before him. Then a moorhen—probably driven by the severity of the weather to leave the river and seek food in the garden—appeared from under one of the bushes by the lawn; stooping, nervously jerky, and yet unhurried, it trod its way lightly across the snow of the lawn and disappeared again under the shrubs.

  The movement broke the spell for Tom. He looked around him and saw that there were other prints in the snow besides the moorhen’s light, three-toed impressions. Human feet had walked out of the garden door, along the path, across a corner of the lawn and gone round by the greenhouse in the direction of the pond. Tom was at once sure that these were Hatty’s, and he followed the trail.

  Round the end of the greenhouse he tracked her, and then came within sight of the pond. There was Hatty. The pond was frozen over, and one end had been swept clear of snow: in this space Hatty was skating—if one could call it skating yet. She had one of the chairs from the summer-house and was pushing it before her, and striking out with her skates as she went, gasping aloud with the effort and concentration. Yet when Tom called her, she turned to him a face bright with joy.

  ‘Why, Tom!’ she cried, and hobbled towards the side of the pond, and stood there with her toes turned inwards as if otherwise her skates might take it into their heads to try dashing away in opposite directions.

  ‘Hatty,’ said Tom, ‘I wanted you—you promised—’

  ‘But you’re thinner!’ said Hatty, frowning to herself.

  ‘Thinner?’ said Tom. ‘No, I’m fatter.’ He knew that for certain, because Aunt Gwen had recently paid a penny to have him weighed, and she had been very pleased with the result.

  ‘I didn’t mean that; I meant thinner through,’ said Hatty, and then said, with a look of consternation, ‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean that either—at least, I don’t know what I could have meant, or rather—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Tom, impatiently; ‘but I want you to find out for me about the picture on the grandfather clock.’ He saw Hatty looking uncertain, so he added: ‘You did say you would.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘When you fell from our tree-house. We talked of it after that.’

  ‘Why, that was long ago! If you’ve waited so long, Tom, couldn’t you wait a little longer? Must you know now? Wouldn’t you rather watch me skate?’ In a rush she told Tom how her skating was improving, and that soon she could go skating with the others—with Hubert and James and Edgar and Bertie Codling and the Chapman girls and young Barty and all the others. ‘Don’t you like skating, Tom?’ she ended. ‘Haven’t you ever learnt?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom, ‘but now, Hatty, please do as you promised, and come and open the grandfather clock for me and show me what the picture means!’

  Sighing, Hatty sat down on the summer-house chair, took off her skating-boots and skates, put on her ordinary shoes, and went back with Tom to the house. As she went, she said something about the explanation of the picture being a revelation—or so Tom thought he heard her say.

  In the hall, standing by the grandfather clock, Hatty listened carefully for a moment. ‘Aunt will be upstairs.’ She turned the key in the keyhole and unlocked the clockcase. While she was feeling for the catch to the dial-front, Tom took a look at the inside of the pendulum-case. He saw shadows and cobwebs; and then he saw the pendulum that swung to and fro with the ticking of the clock. The bob that ended the pendulum was a flat, round disc of metal, gilded: it shone like a sun as it moved to and fro. Tom saw that there was a flourish of lettering across the gilt; even as the bob swung, he could make out what was written there: ‘Time No Longer.’

  ‘Time no longer?’ said Tom in surprise.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hatty, struggling with the unfamiliar latch. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘But no longer than what?’

  ‘No, no! You don’t understand. Wait—’

  She found the catch at last, and released it, and swung back the dial-door, and pointed out to Tom the writing very low down, well below the wide-apart feet of the angel with his book. ‘Look! I thought it was the Book of Revelation; but I couldn’t remember the chapter and verse.’

  Tom read: ‘Rev. x. 1–6.’ He was repeating this aloud, to memorize it, when Hatty said, ‘Hush! Wasn’t that a movement upstairs?’ In a fright, she re-fastened the clock-doors, and hurried Tom away into the garden.

  ‘Revelation chapter ten verses one to six,’ Tom repeated as they went.

  ‘I ought to g
et my Bible and then I could look it up for you,’ said Hatty; but she seemed very much disinclined to go indoors again and upstairs.

  Then Tom thought of Abel’s Bible, that he kept in the heating-house; and they went there. Tom noticed how easily Hatty opened the door, now: she reached the square of iron at the top, without even needing to stand on her toes. She had certainly grown a great deal since those early days in the garden.

  The inside of the heating-house looked quite different in winter-time. The furnace was working to heat the water for the greenhouse pipes, and the little place was stuffily warm and glowing with light. Hatty found the Bible easily and brought it out to Tom.

  She began to turn the pages towards the end of the volume, muttering to herself: ‘—Titus—Philemon—’Pistle-to—the-Hebrews—’Pistle-to-James—First-of-Peter—Second-of—Peter—First-of-John—Second-of-John—Third-of-John—Jude—REVELATION. Revelation is the last book in the Bible.’

  Hatty was now among the chapters of the Revelation of St John the Divine, and Tom was reading over her arm. There was the slightest sound—the sound of snow being compressed under a footfall—and they both looked up: Abel had come round the corner of the nut stubs. Perhaps he had been on his way to stoke the furnace; perhaps—for he carried a besom broom—he had come to sweep the rest of the pond-ice for Hatty.

  He stood dumbfounded.

  Hatty saw the amazement on Abel’s face, and misunderstood it: she thought he was looking at the Bible, whereas he was looking at Tom—or rather, at Tom in the company of the Bible. ‘Abel,’ said Hatty nervously, ‘do you mind? We—I mean, I, of course—I wanted to look something up in the Bible, quickly.’