Tom's Midnight Garden (16 page)

Hatty thought this an unnecessary and stupid idea, and said so. ‘Besides, this would only be a slice of a room, then.’

‘Yes,’ Tom agreed; ‘and the partition will be—would be thin, and you’d always be able to hear the bath-water next door, as you lay here in bed.’

‘I’d never want to hear that,’ Hatty said positively.

‘I don’t suppose you ever will,’ said Tom. ‘Other people may.’

He moved over to the window and looked out. His gaze travelled far: first of all, over a lawn, at one end of which a giant beech-tree leaned in thought; over a hedge; a lane, another hedge; a meadow, with a great elm in the middle …

Tom took a deep breath: ‘I like your room better,’ he said, ‘and I like your view much better.’

‘And can you see the river beyond the meadow?’ asked Hatty. ‘But better than what, Tom?’

‘Better—better than if there were nothing but houses opposite.’

Hatty laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, Tom! If that were so, we shouldn’t be living on the edge of a village, as we do, but in a town.’

‘Or in a village grown so big that it’s really a town.’ He seemed to change the subject. ‘How many baths do you have, Hatty?’

‘One a week. How many do you?’

‘One every other night. But I think I’d rather have fewer, and have this room and this view.’

Hatty looked at him, puzzled: she could not understand the connexion of his thoughts, nor understand a sadness that seemed to have come over him. ‘Tom, there’s nothing to be sad about.’

Tom was thinking about the Past, that Time made so far away. Time had taken this Present of Hatty’s and turned it into his Past. Yet even so, here and now, for a little while, this was somehow made
his
Present too—his and Hatty’s. Then he remembered the grandfather clock, that measured out both his time and Hatty’s, and he remembered the picture on the face.

‘Hatty, what does the picture on the grandfather clock mean?’

‘It’s something from the Bible.’

He was surprised. ‘What?’

Hatty drew her brows together. ‘It’s difficult: I can’t remember it—I mean, it’s difficult to understand, so I can’t remember it exactly. I’ll find out, if you want to know.’

‘Yes, please. Whom will you ask?’

Hatty smiled, but made no mystery of it, as an earlier Hatty might have done. ‘I shall ask the clock; it’s written there.’

‘Where? I’ve never seen it.’

‘No, you can’t, because it’s written so low down on the clock-face that the writing is hidden by the frame of the dial glass. You have to open the dial door to read it.’

‘From inside the pendulum case, by a catch?’

‘Yes, but how did you know?’

‘Never mind. Who keeps the key to the pendulum-case?’

She smiled again. ‘The grandfather clock. The key is always in the keyhole.’

Tom was shocked. ‘But anyone might unlock it!’

‘Only Aunt needs to, to wind the clock; she has forbidden anyone else to touch it.’

‘But if strangers came to the house. Inquisitive people? Boys?’

Hatty simply did not understand him. She promised, however, that when she was next downstairs, and if there were nobody about, she would unlock the pendulum-case and unlatch the dial-door: then Tom could read the secret for himself.

There was nothing more that could be done now, so the subject was changed. Hatty took over the conversation, as Tom seemed thoughtful and quiet; she entertained him with tales of the nursery bedroom. Of how, behind the slatted shutters of these front windows of the house, bats slept in the daytime—you could fold back the shutters and see them hanging there, black among the grey cobwebs and dried wistaria leaves and dust; and how, one night, one had come into her room by mistake and swooped around it like a tiny black spectre, and she had screamed and screamed from under the sheet, because Susan had told her that bats made for long hair and entangled themselves in it, and then all your hair had to be cut off. (Tom smiled, and even Hatty smiled a little.) Then there had been the summer when a wistaria tendril had come in at the top of the window and twined itself the whole length of the bell-wire before Hatty’s aunt had seen it and ordered it to be cut; and when you lay still you could hear mice running races behind the skirting-boards, and there were always more mice after the harvest, in the autumn, because they came in from the fields then. And then, of course, there was the cupboard—

At this point, Hatty jumped out of bed to show Tom the cupboard—not her clothes hanging there, but a secret hiding-place she had had, since she was a child, under the floorboards. She scrabbled with her finger-nails and levered up a section of floorboard, and there below, in a roomy space between the joists, was her little hoard: her one-bladed Fair knife, and a box of paints, and a small, pale-brown picture of a solemn-looking young gentleman leaning against an armchair in which sat a young woman. ‘That was my mother and father, long ago. You remember, Tom, I once used to pretend to you that they were a King and Queen.’

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.’

T
hey 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.