The Watcher in the Garden

by Joan Phipson

  Having made up her mind she took her old route to school, her usual way to the shops. The first time or so nothing happened at all. Then in the second week she heard the motorbikes in the distance. Terry and his friends were not the only owners of motorbikes in the district, but there never was a time when she failed to identify the sound of their motors. It was the same as when Terry was in the garden. She knew that they were there. When she heard them she looked about for shelter and then remembered that she had made up her mind to remain plainly in view. But she was pleased to notice there were other pedestrians on the footpath besides herself. The motorbikes were not coming very fast, but it was not until she reached a narrow bend in the road where the footpath petered out for a few yards that she understood why. As soon as she stepped off the pavement on to the road to turn the corner she heard them speed up. It was hard to keep on steadily without looking back or jumping aside. But she had made up her mind and kept on without swerving.

  This first time they made no attempt to touch her. They roared up behind, passed so close she could have caught them as they passed one by one—all four of them. And except for the deafening noise, the swirl of air and the petrol fumes they left behind, they had not interfered with her at all. They disappeared up the road and round the corner, and she did not see them again that day. She decided that if that was all they intended she could put up with it. The only trouble was that unless they came at her from in front she could not see their faces.

  Several times after that she walked to and from town without being interfered with. The next occasion happened to be at midday when there was little traffic and most people were indoors having lunch. This time she felt one touch her and, when they had gone by, looked down and saw a tear in her shirt. It was cleverly done, for she had felt almost nothing, and the shirt fitted quite tightly. He must have had a knife ready as he passed, and she knew that it was Terry.

  After this Catherine felt herself getting jumpy. As an inevitable result the atmosphere at home began to deteriorate. She knew it and did her best, but it had always been hard for her to think before she spoke. She was not made like Diana. She knew the remedy, but she would not talk of this to Mr. Lovett. She found it fortifying to tell herself that while Terry was concentrating on her he would not be thinking so hard of ways to injure her old friend. She knew that the aim was to frighten her and only to frighten her until, perhaps, she asked for mercy. That laughter would have to be paid for.

  Terry’s mistake at this early stage was to misjudge her. It was a long time before either he or she really knew how things were between them. Catherine reacted not at all to harassing. She did not even try to avoid it. When she broke at last and did react it was in an unexpected way.

  Each day that she walked out on the roads and in the streets about the town became more of an effort. Each day it took more determination to go the way she always did to school, back from school, to the shops or on her mother’s errands. They did not always come. Days passed, and nothing happened at all. Other motorbikes caused her to brace herself and clench her fists as they went by. And then they passed, giving her plenty of space, ignoring her. But from time to time it happened, and she heard the roar, felt the rush of air and sometimes the little nick to her clothes. The day came when Terry misjudged by a hair’s breadth. She felt a prick on her arm, stumbled over a stone and without thought, but with fury in her heart, picked it up and hurled it after the helmeted figure speeding off. It was a fairly heavy stone and she did not even take aim. But it hit the rider’s hand on the handlebar and he swerved, skidded and nearly came off. He regained his balance somehow, turned with a shriek of tyres and made straight for her. This time she knew that she was in danger. She ran across the pavement, into the gate of the nearest house, through the garden and down behind the house. She had no idea whose house it was and would have asked for help if there had been anyone there. But there was no one and she ran on, round, out of sight, past the clothes-line and out over the back fence. She found herself in another garden, and this time she knew the people it belonged to. She knocked at the back door, asked if she might come in for a glass of water and remained there, thinking up curious reasons for her presence until she thought it safe to leave. It was lucky for her that the owner of the house was a lady who was friendly with her mother, to some extent in her confidence, and knew that Catherine tended to be “difficult.” So she humoured her, believing what she chose of her story and let her go at last, feeling, as Catherine had hoped she would, that she had been a friend in need.

  Chapter 11

  After that Catherine gave up her ostentatious parading of the streets. When she went out she did so with care, avoiding places where she suspected the motorbikes might be. She had not meant to throw the stone. She had not wished to taunt him any more than she had already done. But it was done, and she was certain that now she had to be careful. Oddly, the tension lessened. She no longer forced herself into their path, and learning to avoid them was less strain. She could go now and talk with Mr. Lovett and he would be expecting her to be avoiding Terry, and he need not know how necessary it had become. For a time she had not been visiting even the garden, and she went again as often as she could.

  She felt she had been absent from it a long time, but it was not much changed. It was still a summer garden. The locusts still drummed in the trees. Flies still settled on her back and tried to do the same on her face. The roses were beginning their autumn blooming and frogs were still croaking in the pools. There was dust in the air, and the aromatic smell of hot eucalyptus leaves. She walked about slowly, stepping lightly on the flagged paths, stepping softly on the dead leaves. As always she felt the garden enfold her, as if she had become part of it and her absence had been noted and mourned. If Mr. Lovett had noticed that she had not been with him as much lately he said nothing. He was pleased to see her and said so.

  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, Cath
erine, 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.

  Chapter 12

  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.