Tom's Midnight Garden

by Philippa Pearce

  They went ashore. Hatty unstrapped and unscrewed her skates and walked in her skating-boots—she had no others; Tom slung his boots and skates round his neck and walked in his socks.

  They walked through the town, making for the cathedral, and went in through the great west door. Inside, the failing of winter daylight was beginning to fill the vastness with gloom. Through this they walked down the nave towards the octagon; and it seemed to Tom as if the roof of the cathedral were like a lesser sky, for, although they walked steadily, when they looked upwards, they had moved very little in relation to its spaces. Hatty walked with dazzled eyes: ‘Oh, I never thought there was anywhere so big—so beautiful!’ she said.

  They passed a verger, and Tom whispered to Hatty: ‘Ask about going up the tower.’ She turned back and did so. The verger said the young lady could go up if she would be waiting by the font at the west end, in ten minutes from now. It was the last ascent of the day. The charge was sixpence.

  They spent the interval in walking round the cathedral. As they came out of the Lady Chapel, Tom lingered to read a memorial tablet to a certain Mr Robinson, Gentleman of the City, who had exchanged Time for Eternity on the 15th day of October one thousand eight hundred and twelve at the age of seventy-two. Tom reflected that, in a way, he was intending to copy Mr Robinson; he meant to exchange ordinary Time, that would otherwise move on towards Saturday, for an endless Time—an Eternity—in the garden. ‘Exchanged Time for Eternity,’ Tom repeated aloud, and noticed that the walls of the cathedral returned not the slightest echo of his voice. The silence was chilling.

  Hatty had turned back to see what kept Tom. Now, over his shoulder, she too read the inscription, and her attention was caught by the same quaint phrase: ‘Exchanged Time for Eternity,’ she read aloud. ‘Time … Eternity …’ the words spoken by Hatty made a little echo, and her voice and its echo filled the silence after Tom’s speaking, so that he was somehow comforted by the sound. Impulsively he turned to Hatty: he would confide in her—he would tell her all that he intended. He would do it now.

  But Hatty was looking towards the font: already people were waiting there, and she moved to join them. Nor did Tom wish to delay her, for he, too, wanted to go up the tower. He followed Hatty. After all, he could talk to her later, when they had started the long run home to Castleford. He would have plenty of time then.

  XXIV

  Brothers Meet

  Peter Long slept only a little that Thursday night before he woke himself in dissatisfaction: his dreaming was all wrong. Night after night he had managed to dream that he was with Tom; he had been able to dream of the garden, as Tom described it in his letters. Tonight, when his ignorance of Tom’s plans made him yearn all the more to imagine what he might be doing—tonight, he could not dream of the garden at all. Instead, he had begun dreaming of a tall grey shape that rode like an anchored ship in the surrounding level. He did not know what he was seeing, until his eyes opened from sleep and fell at once upon the Ely postcard, still dimly visible on the mantelpiece by the light from the street.

  Peter closed his eyes again, to shut out the sight of the cathedral tower. He concentrated his thoughts upon what Tom might be doing at this very moment; and, at the same time, he began to count, in order to send himself off to sleep. He did not count the usual sheep going through a stile, because there are neither sheep nor stiles in a garden: he simply counted.

  Numbers, in their regularity, began to send Peter to sleep. He had a drowsy feeling that he was earnestly seeking for Tom, and that pleased him; surely he would see the garden soon. He had only to follow Tom … He was really asleep now; but even in his sleep he went on counting, and the numbers now began to be numbers of something particular. The garden was still not reached; and these were numbers of steps that he was counting—steps upward, winding inside a grey tower that, even in his dream, he perceived with annoyance to be the cathedral tower of Ely once again.

  There are nearly three hundred steps up to the top of the tower of Ely cathedral, or—to be exact—two hundred and eighty-six. At least, that is what Tom made them, counting as he climbed. He was at the end of the file of sightseers; Hatty just before him.

  They came stooping out at last through a little door on to the leads of the tower roof. Now, nothing was higher. They looked over the parapet and saw the roof of the great nave below them. They looked far down over the house-tops of Ely, and saw the black holes of the chimney-pots, through which mounted the smoke of winter fires. The lines of smoke were beginning to bend slightly out of the upright as a little wind got up. The breath of this wind and the puffing of a train in Ely station was all the sound that reached them.

  They saw the town and, at once, beyond it, for Ely is very small. They saw the river bounding the town on one side; and they looked along it, downstream. They saw the whiteness of that iceway, gleaming where the sunset touched it, and winding and disappearing into distant mist and evening, in the direction of Littleport, Denver, King’s Lynn and the sea. Then they looked back along the way they had come, from Castleford: they were awed at the distance of it.

  The tower-keeper pointed to something far away that he declared were the spires of Castleford; then he drew his sightseeing party aside to peer in another direction, towards Peterborough. Hatty went with the others.

  Tom remained where he was, still staring towards Castleford. He was alone on that side of the leads for a moment; and then he had a strong feeling that he was not alone after all. Someone had come belatedly out through the door from the spiral staircase, and now stood beside him. He knew, even before he turned, that it was Peter.

  From the other side of the leads, Hatty looked round to see where Tom had got to. She saw, instead of one boy, two: they were very much alike, and dressed identically in pyjamas. The second boy had the same insubstantial look that she had noticed recently in Tom himself: she was almost sure that she could see the tower parapet through them both. She stared in wonderment.

  ‘But, Tom, where’s the garden?’ Peter was saying, rather querulously. ‘I thought you were with Hatty, in the garden.’

  Tom answered directly, because he felt in his bones that time was short, and shortening. ‘The garden’s back there,’ he said briefly, flinging his arm outwards, in the direction of Castleford. ‘And Hatty’s here.’

  ‘Where? I can’t see her,’ said Peter.

  Tom was pointing with his finger, and Peter was facing Hatty across the leads—she was the only one among the sightseers who had turned in his direction.

  ‘There!’ said Tom. ‘Right opposite to you—the one carrying skates.’

  ‘But that’—said Peter indignantly—‘that’s not Hatty: that’s a grown-up woman!’

  Tom, staring at Hatty as though he were seeing her for the first time, opened his mouth to speak; but he could not.

  ‘Time’—called the tower-keeper—‘time to go down again, if you please, ladies and gentlemen!’

  The little crowd of sightseers began to cluster round the doorway to the spiral staircase; one by one they began to go through it. Only Hatty remained where she was, and the two boys.

  ‘But she’s grown-up,’ Peter said again.

  Hatty began to come across to them; and Tom felt Peter shrinking away from her.

  ‘Who was he? What was he?’ Hatty breathed to Tom; and Tom, again without looking, knew that Peter had vanished from his side—thinned out and vanished. ‘He was like you,’ Hatty whispered; ‘and he was unreal-looking, just like you.’

  ‘Come along, lady!’ called the tower-keeper, and looked at Hatty curiously, thinking she was young to be queer in the head and muttering to herself.

  ‘He was my brother, Peter,’ Tom stammered; ‘but he’s real, Hatty. He’s real, like me. You agreed I was real, Hatty.’

  ‘Don’t you want to get home at all tonight, young miss?’ the keeper was asking impatiently.

  Hatty heard him, and looked up and round her suddenly: the sun had set; in the town, yellow lights were
springing up in the windows; beyond the town, the Fen level was one shadowy expanse, so that one could no longer see the windings of the river.

  ‘It’s late,’ she cried, in fright. ‘Yes, we must hurry!’

  ‘We?’ said the keeper. ‘It’s you should hurry! Here I’ve been waiting for you—’ Hatty, however, now started down the stairway, in great haste, with Tom at her heels; and the keeper was left to grumble to himself and lock up and come after them.

  Inside the tower, it was as black as if night had already descended: Tom felt that the darkness increased Hatty’s anxiety for the homeward journey. The hurry, and the fear behind it, prevented Tom from thinking coolly about the strange meeting above, and about what had been said then. He wondered confusedly how Peter had come to them, and whether he would come again.

  That did not happen. Peter Long, at home, had woken up from his dream—a bad dream, if not quite a nightmare. He lay in bed remembering it, but only in seemingly unconnected parts: he had been counting to send himself to sleep, and he remembered getting as far as two hundred and eighty-six; then, he had been at some great height, where he did not want to be, and the garden was impossibly far away; Tom had been there, too, somehow; and he remembered Tom’s pointing someone out to him and saying that she was Hatty, and his own crying out that it could not be so, because this was a grown-up young woman and not a child at all. He remembered then the look on Tom’s face: a strange, dawning amazement, and fear.

  Tom and Hatty hurried from the cathedral and went down to the river again, just when most of the Ely skaters were beginning to come off it. They were the only two, it seemed, who were starting to skate.

  Three old men, past skating themselves, were leaning on convenient posts along the waterfront, watching all that was going on. They considered themselves of the age and experience to give Hatty advice. One asked where she was skating to, at that time of evening; and when she said, ‘Castleford,’ they all three shook their heads.

  ‘If the ice holds,’ said one; ‘but this old south-west wind means rain and thaw, likely.’ The breeze that Tom and Hatty had noticed from the top of the tower had by now strengthened into a real wind; it felt softer and milder, even in Tom’s face, than the former frosty stillness.

  ‘There’s already someone went through, I heard,’ said the second old man. ‘Somewhere upstream it was. He didn’t drown, though. There were friends with him, and they got him out just in time, with a ladder over the ice. There’ll be a hole left, and rotten ice round it: you’d best keep a look-out for it. Now, where did they say it was, Matthew?’

  The first old man did not know; but the third one thought the hole must be a biggish one, and that Hatty would be sure to notice it when she got really close to it. She must not forget to be careful, too, of treacherous ice under bridges and trees, and along reed-beds.

  The first old man started the round again by saying that Hatty would do better to go by train from Ely to Castleford.

  Hatty thanked them all, but went on fastening her skate straps: Tom thought she was rather brave. They stood up together on the ice, and Hatty wished the old men a cheerful good night; and they earnestly wished her the best of luck, and one of them shouted after her that at least she would have a full moon. When they had skated out of earshot, Hatty told Tom that she had not had enough money to take the train all the way from Ely to Castleford.

  They were skating out against a stream of homecomers, but soon they passed the last of them and were skating alone. Tom knew that this was the time to talk to Hatty, and yet, clearly, she was disinclined for any conversation: all her powers were being put forth into her skating. Tom stole sideways glances at her as she went, weighing in his mind what Peter had said; he did not speak to her.

  The moon rose, full, as the old men had said: it had a halo to it, which is supposed to mean rain. The moonlight laid open their way before them, and yet made it appear more desolate, and themselves more lonely. Except for the wind and the sound of steel on ice, there was silence. Neither Hatty nor Tom liked the silence; but neither broke it. In silence, moonlight and loneliness they were gliding onwards.

  Some way ahead, on the river-bank to their right, they noticed an upright, dark shape, perhaps six feet high. It was certainly a post or a tree-trunk; and they were paying no particular attention to it. Then, suddenly, they saw it move.

  Hatty gave a little gasp, but never stopped skating—it was almost as if she could not. At this curve of the river she was skating full into the moonlight, but the man—for it was a man—was black against it, and seemed unnaturally tall. He seemed to be watching something intently, and Tom felt that he was watching them.

  They were nearer now; they would be level soon. The figure on the bank stirred again, and called over the ice a name that was between a question and a hail: ‘Miss Hatty …’

  Tom felt himself fall out of stroke with Hatty, as she wavered in her course.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called; but Tom thought she recognized the voice, although he did not. Her strokes were beginning to shorten; her course was curving towards the bank.

  ‘It’s me, young Barty.’

  ‘Oh, Barty, I am glad to see you!’ cried Hatty, forgetting shyness in her relief.

  He came down to the edge of the bank—a well-set young man in a caped overcoat, wearing farmer’s gaiters. ‘But where are you off to, all alone, at this time of evening, on this ice?’

  ‘To Castleford. From there I can take the train, or walk home. I must get home.’

  ‘As to getting home—why, yes,’ agreed young Barty; ‘but you shouldn’t be skating alone like this. I’d best give you a lift.’

  It seemed that he had been on his way home from Castleford market, in his gig. He had turned aside down a drove-way to have a look at the river and the condition of the ice. That was when Tom and Hatty had seen him.

  Delightfully, the horse and gig, although invisible from the river, were only a few yards away, on the other side of the river embankment. When young Barty had helped Hatty up this embankment they saw the horse waiting between the shafts, lit by the little yellow flames of the headlamps—the first warm-coloured light they had seen since the candlelight and lamplight in the house windows of Ely. Beyond the gig, the drove-way stretched back to meet the main road to Castleford and home.

  They all got into the gig, young Barty and Hatty at either end of the front seat, with a large space in the middle which Tom took for himself.

  ‘I’ll drive you to Waterbeach,’ said young Barty. ‘You can take a train from there to Castleford. If you’ll excuse the question—have you enough money for the ticket? If not, I could lend you some.’

  ‘That is very kind,’ said Hatty, primly. Then she added, ‘I fear that I take you out of your way.’

  She certainly was not taking him on the way he had been going, which was home to one of his father’s farms out in the Fens. Yet, without exactly telling an untruth, young Barty gave Hatty to understand that all this was a pleasure.

  After that they drove in silence.

  When they reached Waterbeach they found that the last train to Castleford had gone.

  ‘I’ll drive you to Castleford, then,’ said young Barty, and sounded quite cheerful about it. So they went on again, and Tom noticed that this time the other two made more conversation. They remarked upon the weather and their journey, Hatty speaking at first awkwardly, and then with more ease. Young Barty said he had talked with James that afternoon on Castleford market; and now Tom remembered hearing of this young man as one of the friends of the Melbourne cousins. They had all been at school together in Castleford.

  Soon, very naturally, Hatty and young Barty were talking of skating. Young Barty admired Hatty’s achievement that day. He had done as much himself, certainly, this very winter; but few ladies had skated so far. His own mother had done so—he remembered the tale of it. Years ago, when old Barty and she had been courting, there had been one of these same widespread, hard frosts. The two of them had gone skati
ng together from Castleford to Ely and then to Littleport and beyond. They had skated so far and so long that the young woman had nearly fallen asleep as she skated, and she had half-dreamed that she and her sweetheart had reached the sea and were skating over the smoothed-out, frozen waves of it, to far countries.

  He and Hatty laughed over that. Then young Barty began to speak of the prospects of further skating that winter, and of next winter. He loved skating, as Hatty did.

  Tom found the conversation uninteresting, chiefly because he could not join in it. He was also cross with Hatty: she was behaving as if she either did not remember him or did not see him—or both. Several times a gesture of her hand actually passed through him. Once she leant her arm along the back of the gig-seat, as she turned the better to listen to young Barty, and then her wrist and hand rested in Tom’s gullet and made his swallowing feel strange.

  He was glad when they reached Castleford railway station. The last train had not gone, but there was a long time to wait for it: young Barty said it would be much better to drive home the last five miles, and Hatty did not object. Tom did, but he could not argue. He had been hoping for an empty railway compartment for that long, private, explanatory talk with Hatty: he must have it soon.

  The gig drove on. Tom sat alone in his thoughts, while the other two talked over him or through him, with an increasing delight in each other’s company. A village church clock struck across the darkened countryside, and Tom thought of Time: how he had been sure of mastering it, and of exchanging his own Time for an Eternity of Hatty’s and so of living pleasurably in the garden for ever. The garden was still there, but meanwhile Hatty’s Time had stolen a march on him, and had turned Hatty herself from his playmate into a grown-up woman. What Peter had seen was true.

  Through the clattering of the horse’s hooves, Tom listened to Hatty and young Barty: theirs was grown-up conversation, and had no interest for him; and his own thoughts displeased him. Gradually his mind fell into vacancy. He was not tired by the skating, nor was he sleepy because of the lateness of the hour, yet he slept: perhaps the monotony of the hoofbeats had something to do with it; perhaps a strange feeling that he was not in Hatty’s thoughts any longer made him feel less awake and alive.