Tom's Midnight Garden (13 page)

‘What kind of knife?’

She brought her hand out of her pinafore pocket, and opened it: across the palm lay a gaudy, cheap little penknife, ornamented with true-love-knots in blue. ‘He bought it at the Fair, to give to Susan; but she wouldn’t have it from him, because it’s unlucky to have a knife from your sweetheart. So Abel gave it to me. It’s a dear little knife.’ She turned it over lovingly.

‘Open it,’ ordered Tom. Hatty did so, and held it towards him so that he could see the blade—there was only one.

‘Well!’ Tom laughed shortly. ‘You certainly couldn’t cut yourself with that! You could just about cut butter with it, that’s all!’

Hatty was still admiring the coloured decoration of the haft; but she said, ‘I’ve cut more than butter with it, already. Come, and I’ll show you.’

There was a touch of mystery and pride with which she took Tom to one of the yew-trees—it was the one called Matterhorn—and showed him the tree-trunk on which were carved—or, rather, half scratched, half pressed—the initials: ‘H. M.’

Tom was wondering what surname the ‘M’ stood for, but not liking to ask, when Hatty said: ‘That means:
“Hatty Melbourne
has climbed this tree.” With my knife, I’ve carved my initials on all the yew-trees—except for Tricksy, of course.’

‘It’s very wrong to carve things on trees,’ said Tom, remembering suddenly to be severe. ‘It’s like leaving litter about.’

Hatty opened her eyes wide, as though she had never heard of litter; and Tom could tell by her expression that she didn’t think her carving could be wrong, on
her
trees, and anyway, she intended to go on doing it if she liked, without telling him.

‘And,’ Tom pointed out, ‘you’ll only get yourself into trouble if anyone sees those tree-trunks. They’ll see “H. M.”, and they’ll know they’re your initials, and they’ll know you’re to blame. Now, if I wanted to carve my mark on a tree—which, of course, I wouldn’t, ever—but if I wanted to, I’d make a secret mark.’ He told her of his device of the long tom-cat, for Tom Long.

Hatty was envious. ‘Melbourne’s such a stupid name.’

‘There’s Hatty,’ said Tom. ‘You could draw a hat.’ Hatty’s eyes sparkled. ‘Only, of course, you mustn’t—I’ve told you why not. And now,’ he said, suddenly tiring of talk, ‘let’s do something.’

‘Let’s,’ agreed Hatty. So, at once, their play began again in the garden, and went on as though the garden and their games need never end.

They went tree climbing again—it was a passion with them. As Hatty had mentioned not being able to climb Tricksy, Tom taught her how to swarm. She did not learn easily—chiefly from a horror of dirtying her clothes so much that her aunt might notice and punish her; but after a while she learnt how to wind her arms and legs about the trunk, and worm her way upwards. In the end, she climbed Tricksy: she was triumphant.

They played new games. Hatty found grasses of wild barley growing in the wilderness, and picked them. She showed Tom how to nip the top out of the grass-head and then replace it; and, then, holding the grass in one fist, she would knock against it with the other, repeating: ‘Grandmother—Grandmother—jump out of bed’. On the word ‘jump’, she would give a particularly hard knock, and the top of the grass would spring out of its green bed into the air and Hatty would laugh, and Tom too.

Together they hunted for young frogs under the leaves of the strawberry-bed (‘Abel says they suck the strawberries’) and set them hopping elsewhere; and once they had the sight of a toad in a crevice under the threshold stone of the greenhouse—like a stone himself, brown and dull and unmoving except for the breath in his sides.

They teased the birds of the garden—Tom was particularly good at surprising them, and at hoaxing the watchful jay; yet they protected them against all comers, too. Hatty let out birds from the gooseberry wire and from under the strawberry nets; and—when she was sure Abel was far away—she unlatched the door of his sparrow-trap. When any of the cousins came into the garden with a gun, Tom ran ahead, waving his arms and shouting, to warn the birds. Wild pigeons rose heavily from the rows of peas where they had been browsing, and made their way back to the safety of the wood. Nothing was ever shot—unless you could count Tom himself, who once received a spatter of pellets through his middle. Hatty went pale; but Tom laughed—they tickled him.

One day, when Tom and Hatty had been gazing at the sundial on the south wall, trying to make out how it told the time, they saw a wren light on one of the stone sunbeams above the dial, and then—the beams projected a little way away from the wall—disappear behind them.

‘Do you think there’s a wren’s nest there?’ whispered Hatty; and Tom thought there well might be; but, of course, one couldn’t be sure from the path below.

‘James once walked along the top of the sundial wall,’ said Hatty.

‘Well, I’m not going to,’ said Tom. ‘It would be just silly, not brave. That wall’s far too high, and it’ll be very narrow along the top: it would be far too dangerous.’

‘Oh, Tom, I didn’t mean that you should walk it!’ said Hatty, in dismay. ‘James only did it for a dare. Cousin Edgar dared him, and James did it. He walked the whole length, and then he climbed down, and then he fought Cousin Edgar, and then he was sick. And Cousin Hubert heard about it all afterwards and was very angry, because he said James might have fallen and broken his neck.’

Tom was silent, turning over in his mind what Hatty had just said. He was beginning to change his mind about climbing the wall, because he saw that there could not be—for him—the danger that there had been for James. He might possibly fall off the wall, but a fall, even from such a height, could neither bruise nor break
him.

He said to Hatty, ‘I’m going to see if there really is a nest behind the sundial; I’m going to walk along that wall.’

‘Oh, Tom!’

The way in which Hatty said, ‘Oh, Tom!’ made Tom feel warm and kind. He patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry. It’s all right for me.’

He climbed, by means of the laddering branches of an espalier pear, to the top of the wall. In spite of all he had told himself, he felt a pang of horror when he stood upright upon it. The wall top was so narrow—nine inches, in some places weathered away to even less by the crumbling of brickwork; quite bushy plants grew along it, over which Tom would have to step; and on either side of that narrow, hazardous path the wall face went sheer and far: down to the orchard on one side; on the other, down to the garden, where Hatty stood, her pale face upturned to him. Tom knew, however, that he must not look down, if he were to keep his head and walk that wall top. He lifted his eyes and stepped resolutely forward.

Very soon he was over the porchway into the orchard, and then over the vine against the wall, and then over the sundial. He could see that dead leaves and other airy garden rubbish had drifted into the space between the stone sunbeams and the wall. At one end they seemed much denser than elsewhere: Tom got upon his hands and knees on the wall top and, peering closely, saw that this was indeed a wren’s nest, with moss still greeny brown worked into it. He could see the little hole of entry.

‘There is a wren’s nest,’ he called softly to Hatty. ‘But I daren’t touch it—I mean, I daren’t for her sake.’

‘Come back and come down now, Tom!’

He stood upright again, intending to turn back, as Hatty had said; but now, standing there, gazing freely about him, he was taken by a sudden joy. He began to pace along the wall like a king. Hatty was keeping step with him below, and whispering up to him; but he paid no attention, he was so far above her and the garden altogether. He had thought himself high when he had climbed to the top of the yew-trees, but he was higher now. In one sweep of the eye, he could see the whole lay-out of the garden, and the boundaries of walls and hedges that enclosed it. He could see the house: there was Susan leaning from an upper window to blow a kiss to somebody in the garden—Abel, he supposed. He could see into a courtyard of the house—a courtyard whose existence he had never suspected before: he saw Edgar there, engaged in washing Pincher in a tin bath of soapy water. Pincher looked very clean and wretched, with his neck poked forward and his ears back and his tail down. Tom, in exhilaration, called to him, ‘Cheer up, Pincher!’ Pincher heard him, or saw him, or even smelt him—it was difficult to tell which: even under the lather, his hackles rose, and he suddenly bolted from the bath, and had to be chased round the yard and caught by Edgar, who was very much annoyed and covered with splashes of soapsuds and water.

Tom saw beyond the garden and the house, to a lane, down which a horse and cart were plodding. Beyond the lane was a meadow, and then a meandering line that he knew must be the river. The river flowed past the meadow, and reached the village, and passed that. It reached a white handrailed bridge and slipped under it; and then away, towards what pools and watermills and locks and ferries that Hatty and Tom knew nothing of? So the river slipped away into the distance, in the direction of Castleford and Ely and King’s Lynn, to the grandeur of the sea.

‘What do you see beyond the garden, Tom?’ Hatty whispered up to him, her curiosity having overcome her fears.

‘If you were up here yourself to see …’ Tom said; and his words floated high over the whole garden.

He could not tell her—could not hope to convey to her, without her seeing it, the distance. In a flat countryside—as this was—even a slight eminence gives a commanding view, as from a mountain peak. Tom, before, had known only the garden, and a very little beyond its limits; now, from his wall-top, he saw what seemed to be the whole world.

‘Tell me what you see,’ Hatty pleaded.

‘Well, from the top of the wall you can see the river,’ Tom began, ‘and if you follow the river with your eye—’

‘Yes? Yes?’ whispered Hatty.

Tom did not finish what he was saying, for at that moment Abel came round the corner of the trees. He was running; he rushed straight at Hatty; he set his hands upon her shoulders and pressed down, so that Tom saw her suddenly crumple to the ground in a kneeling position. Then he thrust something into her hand, and, standing over her, began speaking in a lowered, quick voice. Tom heard Hatty’s voice replying: she sounded frightened. He could not hear what either of them said.

In haste Tom retraced his steps along the wall and climbed down again into the garden. By that time, Hatty was alone.

‘What on earth was the matter?’ Tom asked.

‘Abel thought I was going to walk along the top of the wall, as James did,’ said Hatty. ‘He wanted to stop me because of the danger.’

‘I thought he was going to beat you.’

‘He made me kneel down on the path and swear on his Bible—swear never to climb the sundial wall and walk along it.’

‘Was he very angry?’ asked Tom.

Hatty said slowly: ‘No. I think—somehow—he was frightened.’

‘Frightened?’ Tom frowned. ‘You mean that
you
were frightened;
he
was angry.’

‘No. I was frightened a little, just because he was so quick and strong; but I’m sure he was frightened too, and much more frightened. When he made me take the Bible, his hand was all clammy and it shook.’

‘Why did he suddenly think you might try to climb the wall?’ asked Tom.

‘Because he saw me looking up at it in that way, I suppose.’

‘No, that couldn’t be the reason,’ said Tom. ‘He was running when he came round the corner of the trees; he must have been running with his Bible in his hand before ever he came within sight of you.’

‘Perhaps he heard me talking to you on the top of the wall.’

‘No: you only whispered; and he couldn’t have heard
me.’
By that Tom did not mean that he had spoken very quietly, for he had not; he meant that, even if he had shouted with all his strength, his voice could never have been heard by Abel.

‘Well, then,’ said Hatty, ‘perhaps Susan saw me from a bedroom window, and came down and told him of it.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Tom. ‘I saw Susan at a window.’ But he was not satisfied with the explanation.

At about this time, Hatty and Tom started on the building of the tree-house, and they soon forgot Abel’s strange behaviour in their absorption in the work.

I
n a letter to his brother, Tom wrote: ‘… I am glad your measles are over. I wish you were here. We are building a tree-house in the Steps of St Paul’s.’ Peter read the letter, and then burnt it, as he must burn all Tom’s correspondence now. He went sombrely out into the Longs’ little back-garden and began to put in some half-hearted work at a construction in the apple-tree.

Mrs Long, watching from the kitchen-window, called: ‘I wish Tom were home to help you.’ She spoke uneasily. She had told herself again and again that she completely trusted Gwen and Alan with the boy; and indeed she did. Nevertheless, she sensed something unusual and mysterious in the air, and it troubled her.

The Kitsons were better off than the Longs—there is all the difference, in expense, between having two children and having none at all. Tom might have been made discontented with his home by the luxury he was experiencing away from it; but he was not—Mrs Long had to admit that. Tom’s letters to his parents contained nothing but brief, dry reports of a dull life spent almost entirely in the company of his aunt and uncle. He did not seem to find any pleasure in it—not even in the meals, now. Yet he had asked more than once to be allowed to stay on.