Before Gary Gets There

A Warning in the Rain

A brief shower caught Batman Smith on the Fence Post with his feathers arranged for a much better day. Gary arrived beneath the Oak and immediately declared that the weather had changed its plans without consulting anybody.

“You said you were coming earlier,” Mr Jack Daw reminded him.

“Tomorrow. This is still today.”

“And I said they might already know.”

“You said perhaps,” Gary replied. “That is hardly a warning.”

The Jacks occupied the upper branches in numbers sufficient to make that distinction a subject of debate. Batman stayed out of it. The Smiths had their own business in the hedge, and every question Gary asked seemed designed to discover what Stirling had done while nobody was watching.

“You watched him yesterday,” Mr Jack Daw said.

“That was yesterday. An ambitious squirrel can accomplish a great deal overnight.”

“So can a Magpie.”

Gary gave him a look of wounded professional respect and changed the subject.

The Busy Oak

The shower passed. Hopalong worked up the Oak while the Jacks continued arguing overhead, and Derek came down a different side of the trunk later, managing to make both directions look like private property. Batman started to explain to him why trees ought to be used in a more conventional manner, then remembered how their last conversation had ended and let him go.

By afternoon the Square had brightened. Brenda emerged from the hedge, inspected the ground, and pronounced it damp in a tone implying that someone would be hearing from her. The Jacks, still crowded in the Oak, took turns being told to make room. A party of long-tailed tits swept through the branches together, with Flora, Fauna and Merryweather appearing and disappearing among their companions before anyone could impose order on them.

Gary returned near the end of the afternoon and looked down at the Vegetable Garden.

“No squirrels,” said Mr Jack Daw.

“I can see that.”

“You came to check.”

“I came to enjoy the sunset.”

“It is behind you.”

Gary turned around. “Then I have arrived just in time.”

After Gary Leaves

Chiffchaffs slipped through the hedge as the light lengthened. Batman tried once to decide whether Colin was among them, but each candidate vanished before he could finish the question. Mildred listened from below and suggested that a bird might be allowed to pass through a garden without declaring his address.

Gary left. Only then did Stirling’s squad cross the lawn. They worked the Vegetable Garden in a short, quiet rush and were gone before the last of the daylight. Mr Jack Daw watched them from the Oak, then looked towards the empty branch where Gary had been.

“Tomorrow,” he said to nobody in particular, “ought to be interesting.”

Marjorie Alone

After dark the Smiths settled. The Square grew still beneath a nearly full moon. Marjorie did not appear until much later, when clouds had gathered across it.

She took the Oak alone. For a while she looked towards Marlboro’s garden without going to the boundary. Then she seemed to lose patience with her own restraint.

“I am not asking for an answer,” she said.

The neighbouring garden offered none.

“Good. You are entitled to your own evening.”

Marjorie moved along the branch, turned back, and found something else she apparently did not need answered. She delivered it anyway. Nothing came from next door. Harold did not arrive to improve or worsen the situation. At last Marjorie left the Oak, having conducted an entire argument with the possibility of being overheard.

The night went on without a reply. Before dawn she returned once, alone again, to the same side of the Square. The air had grown colder and the clouds had thickened. Marjorie paused as if she might begin where she had left off.

“Keep it, then,” she said softly to the dark beyond the hedge.

She was gone before the garden woke.

Not Early Enough

The Smiths arrived in a red-breasted commotion. Steve inspected the lawn while Brenda objected to the wind; Mildred kept her place beneath the hedge and declined to adjudicate either complaint. Mr Jack Daw’s family reclaimed the Oak as the sky grew light.

Stirling’s squirrels crossed the Vegetable Garden early. Dorothy the Goldfinch appeared briefly above them, bright enough to make the whole operation look less secret than Stirling might have wished. The squad vanished. Then Gary arrived.

“Early,” he announced.

“Not early enough,” said Mr Jack Daw.

Gary looked at the empty beds. “They have been?”

“It seems perhaps was warning enough,” said Mr Jack Daw.

“That is a yes.”

Chiffchaffs came through in a lively succession, drawing Batman after one unfamiliar face and then another. Gary went with him, insisting that he was interested in migration and not at all in which direction Stirling’s squad had gone. Before long both birds had disappeared into the busier part of the garden.

They Came Back

The squirrels returned after Gary had left. Derek worked down the Oak above them. By the time a light shower swept through, the squad had vanished again. The Jacks were left to argue about whether a bird who arrived early could still miss an appointment nobody had made.

The morning turned brighter and windier. Percy flickered through the high branches, then returned later with more urgency and no explanation. Derek kept to the trunk. Brenda reappeared beneath them to remind everyone that the ground was still wet.

Batman looked towards the path Gary had taken. “Should we tell him?”

“Which part?” Mr Jack Daw asked.

“That they came back.”

Mr Jack Daw considered the empty Vegetable Garden. “He came early as promised. Let him have that until lunchtime.”

Above them the Jacks resumed their argument, already preparing several incompatible accounts for Gary’s return.

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