The Square Finds Its Voice

An Arrival Above the Pine

At noon, the Square looked up.

Reginald had arrived above the Pine.

He came through the bright break in the clouds with the measured grandeur of a special guest who had agreed to attend only because the invitation sounded beneath him. His great wings held the wind, his broad shape crossed the garden, and for one extraordinary moment every leaf, fence post and half-finished argument appeared to know its place.

Batman Smith stood on the Fence Post with two members of his family and stared upward.

“Nobody make this awkward,” he said.

“I wasn’t going to,” said a Robin.

“You were going to say something about the Pine.”

“It is a very good Pine.”

Reginald circled once, magnificent and unreadable. Then he drifted beyond the Hedges without acknowledging the Bird Table, the greenhouse, or Batman’s quiet attempt to look as though this sort of thing happened every day.

“Well,” Batman said.

The two Smiths waited.

“That was entirely normal,” Batman concluded.

The afternoon remained oddly spacious after that. Clouds moved over the Square in slow ranks. The wind was still lively in the high branches, but the garden no longer felt as though it were being shouted over. Somewhere beyond the Oak, ordinary business seemed to be gathering itself again.

The Preventative Operation

By evening, Lieutenant Colonel Stirling came out of the Vegetable Garden with his squad.

They appeared from under the hedge, beside the greenhouse, through the flower borders and, in one case, from somewhere so close to the Bird Table that Batman later insisted he had known about it all along. There were squirrels on the path, squirrels on the fence, squirrels inspecting the lower branches of the Fruit Tree with the brisk seriousness of troops who had been given a map but not a scale.

Stirling stopped beneath the Oak and looked over his assembled squad.

“Excellent work,” he said.

No one knew what work had been done.

Mr Jack Daw, who had arrived on a low branch with one Jack beside him, looked down at the operation.

“Are they establishing something?” he asked.

“They are establishing everywhere,” Batman replied.

Stirling looked up sharply at the sound of Gary’s name drifting from a Jack’s unfinished sentence. The Colonel’s tail stiffened.

“Did somebody say Magpie?”

“No,” said Mr Jack Daw.

“Good.”

This was not reassuring.

The squad continued its silent progress. One squirrel examined a fallen apple. Another checked the roots beside the greenhouse. A third climbed the Fence Post, paused beside Batman, and gave him a brief professional nod before racing straight up the Oak.

Batman watched it go. “What is the operation?”

Stirling considered the question.

“Preventative,” he said.

“Preventing what?”

The Colonel’s eyes narrowed toward the Fruit Tree.

“Exactly.”

The Meeting Nobody Called

As dusk lowered over the Square, the Smith family began to arrive in force. Robins occupied the Hedge, the Bird Table, the garden path and a disputed patch of moss near the summerhouse. Batman moved among them with the purposeful anxiety of a man who was not holding a meeting but had somehow become responsible for the seating plan.

“There is no need to crowd,” he said.

They crowded closer.

“There is no need to discuss it.”

They discussed it immediately.

Stirling’s squad retreated one by one, leaving the Vegetable Garden looking innocent and faintly over-inspected. The Jacks departed for the Oak. Above them, the clouds thinned, and the first clear spaces of night opened between the leaves.

The Voice Beyond the Hedges

Later, a female owl called from somewhere beyond the garden.

The sound came again, clear enough to turn heads but not clear enough to reveal its owner. Batman fell silent. Mr Jack Daw, who had been preparing a night-time observation, forgot it. Even Stirling, half-hidden near the greenhouse, stopped moving.

“Who is that?” asked one of the Smiths.

Gary was not there to answer, which was probably for the best.

The caller spoke again from the darkness, and then once more, patient and unmistakably unwilling to introduce herself. The Square waited for Marjorie’s pearls in the Oak, for Harold’s half-formed excuse, for Jolene’s red Beakstick to catch the moon.

None of them appeared.

At last, Mr Jack Daw said, very quietly, “Perhaps she prefers not to join the committee.”

No one could argue with that.

The owl’s voice faded back beyond the Hedges. The clear dark settled over the garden, and every creature took the hint to mind its own business for a little while.

Before sunrise, the female owl called again beyond the Hedges.

Twice she spoke into the cool, thinning dark. Twice the Square listened. Still nobody saw her. By the time the first robins had begun to stir in the Hedge, she had gone, leaving the garden with the uneasy sense that it had missed the beginning of a conversation.

The Morning Investigation

Then morning became extremely busy.

The Smiths woke first, their orange fronts appearing between leaves with immediate urgency. Steve and Mrs Steve arrived beneath the Hedge: Steve glossy and severe, Mrs Steve practical and already investigating breakfast. Wrens burst from the border in a series of tiny, furious announcements. Jacks came to the Oak. Coal Tits flashed through the branches. A Nuthatch worked down the trunk headfirst, which made Batman stare for several seconds before deciding not to mention it.

“That is not how trees work,” he said finally.

The Nuthatch continued downward without apology.

At the same time, Lieutenant Colonel Stirling returned to the Vegetable Garden with the full weight of his squad.

They appeared beneath the Bird Table, along the path, beside the greenhouse and under the Fruit Tree, moving with the quiet concentration of a group who had already agreed on the objective and would not be explaining it to civilians. Long-tailed tits hurried through the upper branches while the squirrels held the ground beneath them, giving the whole garden the air of a remarkably efficient occupation.

Batman watched the squad cross the path.

“Colonel,” he called. “Are you still on preventative business?”

Stirling did not break stride. “The need remains.”

“The need for what?”

The Colonel paused at the greenhouse door, looked toward the Fruit Tree, and said, “Discretion.”

Then he and his squad vanished one by one beneath the hedge, the greenhouse and the lowest branches of the Oak.

By the time the Jacks had begun arguing over whether this counted as an answer, Stirling was gone.

Only then did Gary arrive.

He landed in the Fruit Tree with two members of his family, looked down at the suspiciously quiet Vegetable Garden, and immediately became interested.

“I hear there was an operation this morning,” Gary said.

“You hear too much,” said Mr Jack Daw.

“That is why I am valuable.”

From the garden path, Batman called, “Do not start.”

Gary smiled at him. “I have not started. I have merely noticed that Lieutenant Colonel Stirling mobilised an entire squad and then vanished before I could offer assistance.”

“Perhaps he did not require assistance,” said Batman.

“That is exactly what makes it suspicious.”

As the morning wore on, Gary’s family gathered in the Fruit Tree until it looked as though the branches had developed a blue-black temper. The Jacks began talking all at once. Coal Tits skipped through the Hedge. The Nuthatch, now halfway down the Oak, appeared to have solved whatever problem it was working on without consulting anyone. At the Bird Table, the Smith family resumed the complicated business of being everywhere.

From the Vegetable Garden came the faintest rustle.

Gary froze.

Batman froze too, though he would later deny this.

Stirling did not emerge.

Gary leaned toward Batman. “You see?”

“I see nothing.”

“Precisely.”

The Square filled with calls, wings and arguments. Above it all, the Oak held its council, the Fruit Tree held its gossip, and the Vegetable Garden held its silence.

Whatever Stirling was preventing, it had clearly begun.

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