The Time Garden (5 page)

Old Henry looked up from a tray of Canterbury bell seedlings and eyed the three children coldly.

"Please," said Ann, "may we borrow your garden catalog?"

"And what put that idea into your head?" said Old Henry, suspiciously. "No messing about with my borders, mind!"

"Oh no," Ann assured him. "I just want to look up about the different kinds of thyme."

All three children thought they saw a change come over Old Henry's grim countenance, almost as though he were pleased at something, though that could hardly be.

"Oho," he said. "So that's the way it is, is it? Look your fill, then. But no mucking about the garden with it and leaving it out in the rain, now!"

"We won't," said Ann. "We'll look at it right here." And sitting down on the doorstep, she opened the book and found the place among the T's.

"For heaven's sake! There's a whole page of them!" said Eliza, bending to read over Ann's shoulder and breathing down her neck.

"Thymus serpyllum," Ann read slowly from the list, stumbling over the big word. "Creeping thyme."

"What's that supposed to do, turn us back into mere creeping babes?" said Eliza. "No, thanks."

"There's lots more kinds," said Ann, her eyes traveling down the page. "Silver thyme and golden thyme and lemon thyme and woolly thyme and..."

There was an interruption. Old Mrs. Whiton appeared on the path. She was wearing her old-fashioned bathing dress again. Following her was Jack, wearing
his
bathing suit.

"Come along, children," said old Mrs. Whiton. "It's swimming time."

3. Time Will Tell

"I keep worrying," said Ann.

"What about?" said Eliza.

The four children were lying on the beach, after their swim. Old Mrs. Whiton had gone back to the house, leaving strict instructions that the others weren't to lounge about in their wet bathing suits for a minute more than half an hour.

"I keep worrying about those poor people at that inn," said Ann, "after those Indians got them."

"Serves them right, if you ask me," said Eliza.

"But it was our fault," said Ann. "And they may have been mean, but they didn't deserve to be massacred."

"Maybe they weren't," said Roger. "Maybe after we disappeared the time jumped back, and everything was just as though it had never happened. Sometimes magic works like that."

"Sometimes it doesn't," said Ann. "Remember last summer? Every single thing we did counted. Think back."

Everybody thought back except Jack, who didn't seem to want to.

"Honestly!" he said. "Can't you talk about anything else? Anyway, it didn't happen. You just dreamed it. All that stuffing-y smell put you to sleep."

"We wouldn't all dream the same dream, silly," said Eliza.

"Sure you would. It happens all the time. Look at flying saucers! Mass hypnosis, it's called."

Roger shook his head. "This was real, all right."

"Rave on!" said Jack. He got up. "I just thought. There was this girl that came to visit, back home. Gretsie Kroll, her name was. She came from up around here somewhere. Maybe if I look in the phone book I can find her number." And he started climbing the rock stair to the house.

"What did I tell you?" said Eliza. "It's the end of a noble mind. He's lost to us."

There was a pause.

"I still keep worrying," said Ann. She got to her feet. "I'm going to ask the Natterjack.
He'd
know."

She started up the steps and the others followed. They went past the house and into the garden. The Natterjack lay dormant upon the sundial. But when the three children came near, it woke up and jumped down and started hopping away as fast as it could.

It was Eliza who caught it, with a flying tackle.

"Oh no you don't," it said. "No more tricks today. The garden wouldn't stand it. It'd wilt."

"Oh, I
know,
" said Ann. "So would
we!
"

"We don't want any more magic for ages," said Roger.

"Not till tomorrow, at
least!
" said Eliza.

"We have to think," said Roger, "and plan, first."

"We've been thinking
now,
" said Ann. "And I've been wondering. About those people."

And she told the Natterjack her worries about the Indian massacre.

The Natterjack was silent in thought. Then it spoke. "I 'ave 'eard," it said, "that the h'evil that men do lives after them..."

"'The good is oft interred with their bones,'" Ann finished the quotation. Then a look of horror came over her face. "Do you mean the bad things we do last, and the good ones
don't?
"

"That wouldn't be fair," said Roger.

"It would be just like that magic, though," said Eliza, "always thwarting us!"

"I was thinking," said the Natterjack, "more the other way round."

"You mean...?" Roger puzzled it out. "You mean the mistakes we make come out of the adventure with us, and don't do any harm, but the good things we do stay buried in the past, and turn real?"

"That," said the Natterjack, "is the general h'idea."

"But that makes it dandy," said Eliza. "We can go biffing and banging around to our heart's content, and no harm done to anybody!"

The Natterjack eyed her coldly. "I 'ave also 'eard," it said, "that one good turn deserves another."

The three children thought about this.

"You mean," said Roger again, "that unless we do a good deed in each adventure, we don't get another one?"

"That's fair enough, isn't it?" said the Natterjack.

"What good deed did we do this time?" said Ann.

"If any," said Eliza.

"We got six extra minutemen," Roger reminded them. "Would that count?"

"Under the circumstances," said the Natterjack, "I would say that it was h'almost h'adequate." And it seemed to smile as it digested a passing midge.

"Good," said Eliza. "Then we can go on and on, the whole summer. How long does the magic last?"

"Till the thyme is ripe," said the Natterjack. It hopped away. Then it changed its mind and hopped back again.

"One other thing," it said. "I'm 'ere to mind this 'ere garding, and you're 'ere to mind
me.
Try any tricks when I'm not looking, and beware!"

"We won't," said Roger.

"We'll be good," said Ann.

Eliza nodded in agreement, but Ann saw her cross two fingers of one hand, behind her back. "When do we get our next chance?" she asked.

"Time will tell," said the Natterjack. And it gave an extra-long leap and landed on a cushion of purple blossoms, and promptly went to sleep.

"Look at it," said Eliza, enviously. "It's probably ages away, back in purple time by now, whenever that would be."

"Probably the Roman Empire," said Roger. "The Emperors were born to the purple, weren't they?"

"If we were there with it," said Eliza, "we could rescue a martyr from a lion. That'd be a really good deed."

"I'm glad we're not," said Ann. "I don't feel like lions today."

"Anyway, we'd probably do something wrong," said Roger. "Probably make Rome decline and fall sooner than it would have, even. We've got to plan better for next time."

"Yes," said Eliza, "only not now. We've the whole South Shore to explore."

And for the next few days the three children did just that, learning to dig for clams and learning to like the taste of them after they had been dug (and fried), swimming and looking for seashells and cast-up treasure and then swimming again. One night was the Fourth of July and they saw a fireworks display in a nearby town, and on another night they went to a wonderful place called Nantasket where there were roller coasters arid Ferris wheels. Old Mrs. Whiton on the roller coaster was terrible and wonderful to behold.

Sometimes Jack was with the other three, but mostly he wasn't. Because, even though he hadn't found Gretsie Kroll in the phone book, he had met two teenage girls on the roller coaster called Barbara Granbery and Joan Chapin, and after that when he wasn't on the phone he was mostly hitchhiking to the house of one or the other. Eliza and Roger and Ann despaired of him, but old Mrs. Whiton said he was going through a phase.

And so the days went by, full of happy events and marine life. But no day is too full for the thought of magic to creep in now and again, and once Roger stole off to the garden by himself and found Ann already there looking for the Natterjack (only it wasn't to be seen), and on another day Eliza and Ann and Roger all met by chance and at once on the fragrant blossomy bank. The scent of thyme hung in the air, but the Natterjack was conspicuous by its absence.

"Time will tell!" snorted Eliza disgustedly, as they trailed back past the sundial into the main garden. "Only it never says a thing!"

Ann sat down on a stone bench. She had absently picked a sprig of thyme blossom from the bank. Now she held it to her ear.

"What good do you think
that
'll do?" said Eliza, jigging restlessly up and down the borders. "Do you think a dear little fairy's going to peek out of a flower bell and talk to you? More likely a dear little bee!" She gazed across the garden. "What's Roger supposed to be doing?"

Ann looked. So far as she could see, Roger wasn't doing anything, just standing and staring at the sundial. Now he spoke. "Come here," he said, and there was something in his voice that made Eliza and Ann go there right away.

He pointed at the sundial. "Look," he said. "It isn't working!"

"Sure it is. You just can't see it," said Eliza. "It's like trying to watch a tree grow."

"Or a watched pot," said Ann.

"No, honest, it hasn't moved," said Roger, who was a noticing kind of boy. "The shadow's exactly where it was when I went by here this morning. It ought to be way over there by now." He pointed. "It must be stuck or something."

Eliza clutched Ann's arm excitedly. "No! Don't you see what this means? It means time's standing still! And you know what
that
means! It means it's trying to tell us something! Time will tell!"

"Well!" said the Natterjack, appearing suddenly in the grass at their side. "I wondered when light, would dawn."

Eliza wasted no time in greetings. "Do you mean to say it's been standing like that for days, waiting for us to notice?" she said. "Of all the mean tricks!"

"Not that we're not grateful," put in Roger quickly, but Eliza had small regard for the niceties.

"What happens next? What time will it be when it starts again? Where'll we go?" she was saying. "Oh, and we meant to plan it all out beforehand and we never did! Never mind, we'll plan now. Now / think..."

"Wait a bit, wait a bit," said the Natterjack. "Take your time. Oh, I see you already 'ave." It had noticed the sprig of thyme in Ann's hand. Now Ann held it closer so the Natterjack could take a good look.

"But we don't know if it's the right kind!" said Eliza. "We haven't decided a thing!"

The Natterjack eyed the tuft of thyme with its crimson blossoms. "That's a very 'elpful sort," it said. "Some may call it
thymus coccineus splendens,
but
I
calls it splendid thyme. An' that ought to be good enough for anybody."

Roger looked at the blossoms. "They're sort of red," he said. "Maybe we'll get the Great Fire of London."

"Or the Russian Revolution!" said Eliza, her eyes kindling.

"Or a volcano," said Ann, timorously.

"Don't worry. It ought to turn out splendidly, from the ñame," Roger reassured her.

So without further ado, Ann crushed the blossoms in her hand, and each of the children took a spicy whiff. There was a pause.

"It's just like last time," said Ann, wonderingly.

They were still in the garden by the sundial. Not a thing seemed to have happened, except that the sun had crossed the sky and was rapidly sinking in the west, just as it had before.

"Well, of all the cheating things!" said Eliza. "It's just going to be that old Paul Revere thing all over again! The red stands for the Redcoats, I suppose."

"I don't think so," said Roger. "It doesn't feel quite the same, somehow."

"The house isn't the same," said Ann. "It's got trimmings."