Tom's Midnight Garden (17 page)

‘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.

T
hat 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 get 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—R
EVELATION
. 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.’

Abel still stared.

‘I’m very sorry if you object,’ said Hatty, and waited.

‘No … No …’ He seemed to be working something out in his mind. ‘For there’s Truth in that Book, and Salvation. Them that reads in that Book—no, they cannot be altogether damned.’ He touched his forelock, in what seemed a kind of misplaced apology, but Tom knew that the apology was intended and was for him. With that, as though he did not like to intrude, Abel left them.

They went back to their search in the Bible; and now Hatty had found the right chapter and the right verses:

‘And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: and he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me,

‘“Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.”’

‘And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer.’

Tom’s head, when he had finished reading, whirled with cloud and rainbow and fire and thunder and the majesty of it all—perhaps like the head of the unknown dial-painter of long ago.

Tom did not understand, however, and he said so.

‘It’s difficult,’ Hatty agreed. ‘I don’t think anyone knows for certain what it all means. The Book of Revelation is full of angels and beasts and strange sayings. It’s like that.’

‘But the end of it—“time no longer”—what does that mean?’ Tom insisted. ‘I must know: it’s important—it’s written on the pendulum of the clock, and the angel swore it—swore that there should be time no longer. What did he mean?’

‘Perhaps when the Last Trump sounds—when the end of the world comes,’ said Hatty, vaguely; and Tom could see that she was going to be of no more help to him. Already she had shut the Bible and had taken a step backwards, to return it to the heating-house. Her eyes had gone to the pond and they brightened—yes, Abel was sweeping the rest of the ice for her.

‘Time no longer …’ murmured Tom, and thought of all the clocks in the world stopping ticking, and their striking stopped too, drowned and stopped for ever by the sound of a great Trumpet. ‘Time no longer …’ repeated Tom; and the three words began to seem full of enormous possibilities.

Hatty had replaced the Bible. ‘Are you coming to the pond with me, Tom, to watch me skate?’

‘No,’ said Tom. ‘I must think.’

Already wrapped in thought, he turned from her and from all the frosty-sparkling distractions of the garden he loved so well, and went indoors and upstairs to bed.