Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 67, No. 3. Whole No. 388, March 1976

The Pond by Patricia Highsmith[11]

Elinor Sievert stood looking down at the pond. She was half thinking, half dreaming, or imagining. Was it safe? For Chris? The real-estate agent had said it was four feet deep. It was certainly full of weeds, its surface nearly covered with algae or whatever they called the little oval green things that floated. Well, four feet was enough to drown a four-year-old. She must warn Chris.

She lifted her head and walked back toward the white two-story house. She had just rented the house, and had been here only since yesterday. She hadn’t entirely unpacked. Hadn’t the agent said something about draining the pond, that it wouldn’t be too difficult or expensive? Was there a spring under it? Elinor hoped not, because she’d taken the house for six months.

It was two in the afternoon, and Chris was having his nap. There were more kitchen cartons to unpack, also the record player in its neat taped carton. Elinor fished the record player out, connected it, and chose an LP of New Orleans jazz to pick her up. She hoisted another load of dishes up to the long drainboard.

The doorbell rang.

Elinor was confronted by the smiling face of a woman about her own age.

“Hello. I’m Jane Caldwell — one of your neighbors. I just wanted to say hello and welcome. We’re friends of Jimmy Adams, the agent, and he told us you’d moved in here.”

“Yes. My name’s Elinor Sievert. Won’t you come in?” Elinor held the door wider. “I’m not quite unpacked as yet — but at least we could have a cup of coffee in the kitchen.”

Within a few minutes they were sitting on opposite sides of the wooden table, cups of instant coffee before them. Jane said she had two children, a boy and a girl, the girl just starting school, and that her husband was an architect and worked in Hartford.

“What brought you to Luddington?” Jane asked.

“I needed a change — from New York. I’m a freelance journalist, so I thought I’d try a few months in the country. At least I call this the country, compared to New York.”

“I can understand that. I heard about your husband,” Jane said on a more serious note. “I’m sorry. Especially since you have a small son. I want you to know we’re a friendly batch around here, and at the same time we’ll let you alone, if that’s what you want. But consider Ed and me neighbors, and if you need something, just call on us.”

“Thank you,” Elinor said. She remembered that she’d told Adams that her husband had recently died, because Adams had asked if her husband would be living with her. Now Jane was ready to go, not having finished her coffee.

“I know you’ve got things to do, so I don’t want to take any more of your time,” said Jane. She had rosy cheeks, chestnut hair. “I’ll give you Ed’s business card, but it’s got our home number on it too. If you want to ask any kind of question, just call us. We’ve been here six years. — Where’s your little boy?”

“He’s—”

As if on cue Chris called, “Mommy!” from the top of the stairs.

Elinor jumped up. “Come down, Chris. Meet a nice new neighbor.”

Chris came down the stairs a bit timidly, holding onto the banister.

Jane stood beside Elinor at the foot of the staircase. “Hello, Chris. My name’s Jane. How are you?”

Chris’s blue eyes examined her seriously. “Hello.”

Elinor smiled. “I think he just woke up and doesn’t know where he is. Say ‘How do you do,’ Chris.”

“How do you do,” said Chris.

“Hope you’ll like it here, Chris,” Jane said. “I want you to meet my boy Bill. He’s just your age. Bye-bye, Elinor. Bye, Chris.” Jane went out the front door.

Elinor gave Chris his glass of milk and his treat — today a bowl of applesauce. Elinor was against chocolate cupcakes every afternoon, though Chris at the moment thought they were the greatest food ever invented. “Wasn’t she nice? Jane?” Elinor said, finishing her coffee.

“Who is she?”

“One of our new neighbors.” Elinor continued her unpacking. Her article-in-progress was about self-help with legal problems. She would need to go to the Hartford library, which had a newspaper department, for more research. Hartford was only a half hour away. Elinor had bought a good second-hand car. Maybe Jane would know a girl who could baby-sit now and then. “Isn’t it nicer here than in New York?”

Chris lifted his blond head. “I want to go outside.”

“But of course. It’s so sunny you won’t need a sweater. We’ve got a garden, Chris. We can plant — radishes, for instance.” She remembered planting radishes in her grandmother’s garden when she was small, remembered the joy of pulling up the fat red and white roots — edible. “Come on, Chris.” She took his hand.

Chris’s slight frown went away as he gripped his mother’s hand. Elinor looked at the garden with different eyes, Chris’s eyes. Plainly no one had tended the garden for months. There were big prickly weeds between the jonquils that were beginning to open, and the peonies hadn’t been cut last year. But there was an apple tree big enough for Chris to climb in.

“Our garden,” Elinor said. “Nice and sloppy. All yours to play in, Chris, and the summer’s just beginning.”

“How big is this?” Chris asked He had broken away and was stooped by the pond.

Elinor knew he meant how deep was it. “I don’t know. Not very deep. But don’t go wading. It’s not like the seashore with sand. It’s all muddy there.” Elinor spoke quickly. Anxiety had struck her like a physical pain. Was she still reliving the impact of Cliff’s plane against the mountainside — that mountain in Yugoslavia that she’d never see? She’d seen two or three newspaper photographs of it, blotchy black and white chaos, indicating, so the print underneath said, the wreckage of the airliner on which there had been no survivors of 107 passengers plus eight crewmen and stewardesses.

No survivors. And Cliff among them. Elinor had always thought air crashes happened to strangers, never to anyone you knew, never even to a friend of a friend. Suddenly it had been Cliff, on an ordinary flight from Ankara. He’d been to Ankara at least seven times before.

“Is that a snake? Look, Mommy!” Chris yelled, leaning forward as he spoke. One foot sank, his arms shot forward for balance, and suddenly he was in water up to his hips. “Ugh! Ha-ha!” He rolled sideways on the muddy edge and squirmed backward up to the level of the lawn before his mother could reach him.

Elinor set him on his feet. “Chris, I told you not to try wading! Now you’ll need a bath. You see?”

“No, I won’t!” Chris yelled, laughing, and ran off across the grass, his bare legs and sandals flying, as if the muddy damp on his shorts had given him a special charge.

Elinor had to smile. Such energy! She looked down at the pond. The brown and black mud swirled, stirring long tentacles of vines, making the algae undulate. It was at least seven feet in diameter, the pond. A vine had clung to Chris’s ankle as she’d pulled him up. Nasty! The vines were even growing out onto the grass to a length of three feet or more.

Before five p.m. Elinor phoned the rental agent. She asked if it would be all right with the owner if she had the pond drained. Price wasn’t of much concern to her, but she didn’t tell Adams that.

“It might seep up again,” said Adams. “The land’s pretty low. Especially when it rains and—”

“I really don’t mind trying it. It might help,” Elinor said. “You know how it is with a small child. I have the feeling it isn’t quite safe.”

Adams said he would telephone a company tomorrow morning. “Even this afternoon, if I can reach them.”

He telephoned back in ten minutes and told Elinor that the workmen would arrive the next morning, probably quite early.

The workmen came at eight a.m. After speaking with the two men, Elinor took Chris with her in the car to the library in Hartford. She deposited Chris in the children’s book section, and told the woman in charge there that she would be back in an hour for Chris, and in case he got restless she would be in the newspaper archives.

When she and Chris got back home, the pond was empty but muddy. If anything, it looked worse, uglier. It was a crater of wet mud laced with green vines, some as thick as a cigarette. The depression in the garden was hardly four feet deep. But how deep was the mud?

“I’m sad,” said Chris, gazing down.

Elinor laughed. “Sad? — The pond’s not the only thing to play with. Look at the trees we’ve got! What about the seeds we bought? What do you say we clear a patch and plant some carrots and radishes — now?”

Elinor changed into blue jeans. The clearing of weeds and the planting took longer than she had thought it would, nearly two hours. She worked with a fork and a trowel, both a bit rusty, which she’d found in the toolshed behind the house. Chris drew a bucket of water from the outside faucet and lugged it over, but while she and Chris were putting the seeds carefully in, one inch deep, a roll of thunder crossed the heavens. The sun had vanished. Within seconds rain was pelting down, big drops that made them run for the house.

“Isn’t that wonderful? Look!” Elinor held Chris up so he could see out a kitchen window. “We don’t need to water our seeds. Nature’s doing it for us.”

“Who’s nature?”

Elinor smiled, tired now. “Nature rules everything. Nature knows best. The garden’s going to look fresh and new tomorrow.”

The following morning the garden did look rejuvenated, the grass greener, the scraggly rosebushes more erect. The sun was shining again. And Elinor had her first letter. It was from Cliff’s mother in Evanston. It said:

The letter lifted Elinor’s spirits. She went out to see if the carrot and radish seeds had been beaten to the surface by the rain — in which case she meant to push them down again if she could see them — but the first thing that caught her eye was Chris, stooped again by the pond and poking at something with a stick. And the second thing she noticed was that the pond was full again. Almost as high as ever!

Well, naturally, because of the hard rain. Or was it naturally? It had to be. Maybe there was a spring below. Anyway, she thought, why should she pay for the draining if it didn’t stay drained? She’d have to ring the company today. Miller Brothers, it was called.

“Chris? What’re you up to?”

“Frog!” he yelled back. “I think I saw a frog.”

“Well, don’t try to catch it!” Damn the weeds! They were back in full force, as if the brief draining had done them good. Elinor went to the toolshed. She thought she remembered seeing a pair of hedge clippers on the cement floor there.

Elinor found the clippers, rusted, and though she was eager to attack the vines she forced herself to go to the kitchen first and put a couple of drops of salad oil on the center screw of the clippers. Then she went out and started on the long grapevine-like stems. The clippers were dull, but better than nothing, and still faster than scissors.

“What’re you doing that for?” Chris asked.

“They’re nasty things,” Elinor said. “Clogging the pond. We don’t want a messy pond, do we?” Whack whack! Elinor’s espadrilles sank into the wet bank. What on earth did the owners, or the former tenants, use the pond for? Goldfish? Ducks?

A carp, Elinor thought suddenly. If the pond was going to stay a pond, then a carp was the thing to keep it clean, to nibble at some of the vegetation. She’d buy one.

“If you ever fall in, Chris—”

“What?” Chris, stooped on the other side of the pond now, flung his stick away.

“For goodness’ sake, don’t fall in, but if you do” — Elinor forced herself to go on — “grab hold of these vines. You see? They’re strong and growing from the edges. Pull yourself out by them.” Actually, the vines seemed to be growing from underwater as well, and pulling at those might send Chris deeper into the pond.

Chris grinned, sideways. “It’s not deep. Not even deep as I am.”

Elinor said nothing.

The rest of that morning she worked on her law article, then telephoned Miller Brothers.

“Well, the ground’s a little low there, ma’am. Not to mention the old cesspool’s nearby and it still gets the drain from the kitchen sink, even though the toilets’ve been put on the mains. We know that house. Pond’ll get it too if you’ve got a washing machine in the kitchen.”

Elinor hadn’t. “You mean, draining it is hopeless?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

Elinor tried to force her anger down. “Then I don’t know why you agreed to do it.”

“Because you seemed set on it, ma’am.”

They hung up a few seconds later. What was she going to do about the bill when they presented it? She’d perhaps make them knock it down a bit. But she felt the situation was inconclusive. And Elinor hated that.

While Chris was taking his nap, Elinor made a quick trip to Hartford, found a fish shop, and brought back a carp in a red plastic bucket which she had taken with her in the car. The fish flopped about in a vigorous way, and Elinor drove slowly, so the bucket wouldn’t tip over. She went at once to the pond and poured the fish in.

It was a fat silvery carp. Its tail flicked the surface as it dove, then it rose and dove again, apparently happy in wider seas. Elinor smiled. The carp would surely eat some of the vines, the algae. She’d give it bread too. Carps could eat anything. Cliff had used to say there was nothing like carp to keep a pond or a lake clean. Above all, Elinor liked the idea that there was something alive in the pond besides vines.

She started to walk back to the house and found that a vine had encircled her left ankle. When she tried to kick her foot free, the vine tightened. She stooped and unwound it. That was one she hadn’t whacked this morning. Or had it grown ten inches since this morning? Impossible.

But now as she looked down at the pond and at its border, she couldn’t see that she had accomplished much, even though she’d fished out quite a heap. The heap was a few feet away on the grass, in case she doubted it. Elinor blinked. She had the feeling that if she watched the pond closely, she’d be able to see the tentacles growing. She didn’t like that idea.

Should she tell Chris about the carp? Elinor didn’t want him poking into the water, trying to find it. On the other hand, if she didn’t mention it, maybe he’d see it and have some crazy idea of catching it. Better to tell him, she decided.

So when Chris woke up Elinor told him about the fish.

“You can toss some bread to him,” Elinor said. “But don’t try to catch him, because he likes the pond. He’s going to help us keep it clean.”

“You don’t want ever to catch him?” Chris asked, with milk all over his upper lip.

He was thinking of Cliff, Elinor knew. Cliff had loved fishing “We don’t catch this one, Chris. He’s our friend.”

Elinor worked. She had set up her typewriter in a front corner room upstairs which had light from two windows. The article was coming along nicely. She had a lot of original material from newspaper clippings. The theme was to alert the public to free legal advice from small-claims offices which most people didn’t know existed. Lots of people let sums like $250 go by the board, because they thought it wasn’t worth the trouble of a court fight.

Elinor worked until 6:30. Dinner was simple tonight, macaroni and cheese with bacon, one of Chris’s favorite dishes. With the dinner in the oven, Elinor took a quick bath and put on blue slacks and a fresh blouse. She paused to look at the photograph of Cliff on the dressing table — a photograph in a silver frame which had been a present from Cliff’s parents one Christmas.

It was an ordinary black-and-white enlargement showing Cliff sitting on the bank of a stream, propped against a tree, an old straw hat tipped back on his head. The picture had been taken somewhere outside of Evanston, on one of their summer trips to visit his parents. Cliff held a straw or a blade of grass lazily between his lips. His denim shirt was open at the neck. No one, looking at the hillbilly image, would imagine that Cliff had had to dress up in white tie a couple of times a month in Paris, Rome, London, and Ankara. Cliff had been in the diplomatic service, assistant or deputy to American statesmen, and had been gifted in languages, gifted in tact.

What had Cliff done exactly? Elinor knew only sketchy anecdotes that he had told her. He had done enough, however, to be paid a good salary, to be paid to keep silent, even to her. It had crossed her mind that his plane had been wrecked to kill him, but she assured herself that was absurd. Cliff hadn’t been that important. His death had been an accident, not due to the weather but to a mechanical failure in the plane.

What would Cliff have thought of the pond? Elinor smiled wryly. Would he have had it filled in with stones, turned it into a rock garden? Would he have filled it in with earth? Would he have paid no attention at all to the pond? Just called it “nature”?

Two days later, when Elinor was typing a final draft of her article, she stopped at noon and went out into the garden for some fresh air. She’d brought the kitchen scissors, and she cut two red roses and one white rose to put on the table at lunch. Then the pond caught her eye, a blaze of chartreuse in the sunlight.

“Good Lord!” she whispered.

The vines! The weeds! They were all over the surface. And they were again climbing onto the land. Well, this was one thing she could and would see to: she’d find an exterminator. She didn’t care what poison they put down in the pond, if they could clear it. Of course she’d rescue the carp first and keep him in a bucket till the pond was safe again.

An exterminator was someone Jane Caldwell might know about.

Elinor telephoned her before she started lunch. “This pond,” Elinor began and stopped, because she had so much to say about it. “I had it drained a few days ago, and now it’s filled up again... No, that’s not really the problem. I’ve given up the draining, it’s the unbelievable vines. The way they grow! I wonder if you know a weed-killing company? I think it’ll take a professional — I mean, I don’t think I can just toss in some liquid poison and get anywhere. You’ll have to see this pond to believe it. It’s like a jungle!”

“I know just the right people,” Jane said. “They’re called ‘Weed-Killer,’ so it’s easy to remember. You’ve got a phone book there?”

Elinor had. Jane said Weed-Killer was very obliging and wouldn’t make her wait a week before they turned up.

“How about you and Chris coming over for tea this afternoon?” Jane asked. “I just made a coconut cake.”

“Love to. Thank you.” Elinor felt cheered.

She made lunch for herself and Chris, and told him they were invited to tea at the house of their neighbor Jane, and that he’d meet a boy called Bill. After lunch Elinor looked up Weed-Killer in the telephone book and rang them.

“It’s a lot of weeds in a pond,” Elinor said. “Can you deal with that?”

The man assured her they were experts at weeds in ponds and promised to come over the following morning. Elinor wanted to work for an hour or so until it was time to go to Jane’s, but she felt compelled to catch the carp now, or try to. If she failed, she’d tell the men about it tomorrow, and probably they’d have a net on a long handle and could catch it. Elinor took her vegetable sieve which had a handle some ten inches long, and also some pieces of bread.

Not seeing the carp, Elinor tossed the bread onto the surface. Some pieces floated, others sank and were trapped among the vines. Elinor circled the pond, her sieve ready. She had half filled the plastic bucket and it sat on the bank.

Suddenly she saw the fish. It was horizontal and motionless, a couple of inches under the surface. It was dead, she realized, and kept from the surface only by the vines that held it under. Dead from what? The water didn’t look dirty, in fact was rather clear. What could kill a carp? Cliff had always said—

Elinor’s eyes were full of tears. Tears for the carp? Nonsense. Tears of frustration, maybe. She stooped and tried to reach the carp with the sieve. The sieve was a foot short, and she wasn’t going to muddy her tennis shoes by wading in. Not now. Best to work a bit this afternoon and let the workmen lift it out tomorrow.

“What’re you doing, Mommy?” Chris came trotting toward her.

“Nothing. I’m going to work a little now. I thought you were watching TV.”

“It’s no good. Where’s the fish?”

Elinor took his wrist and swung him around. “The fish is fine. Now come back and we’ll put on the TV again.” Elinor tried to think of something else that might amuse him. It wasn’t one of his napping days, obviously. “Tell you what, Chris, you choose one of your toys to take to Bill. Make him a present. All right?”

“One of my toys?”

Elinor smiled. Chris was generous enough by nature and she meant to nurture this trait. “Yes, one of yours. Even one you like — like your paratrooper. Or one of your books. You choose it. Bill’s going to be your friend, and you want to start out right, don’t you?”

“Yes.” And Chris seemed to be pondering already, going over his store of goodies in his room upstairs.

Elinor locked the back door with its bolt, which was on a level with her eyes. She didn’t want Chris going into the garden, maybe seeing the carp. “I’ll be in my room, and I’ll see you at four. You might put on a clean pair of jeans at four — if you remember to.”

Elinor worked, and quite well. It was pleasant to have a tea date to look forward to. Soon, she thought, she’d ask Jane and her husband for drinks. She didn’t want people to think she was a melancholy widow. It had been three months since Cliff’s death. Elinor thought she’d got over the worst of her grief in those first two weeks, the weeks of shock. Had she really? For the past six weeks she’d been able to work. That was something. Cliff’s insurance plus his pension made her financially comfortable, but she needed to work to be happy.

When she glanced at her watch it was ten to four. “Chris!” Elinor called to her half-open door. “Changed your jeans?”

She pushed open Chris’s door across the hall. He was not in his room, and there were more toys and books on the floor than usual, indicating that Chris had been trying to select something to give to Bill. Elinor went downstairs where the TV was still murmuring, but Chris wasn’t in the living room. Nor was he in the kitchen. She saw that the back door was still bolted. Chris wasn’t on the front lawn either. Of course he could have gone to the garden by the front door. Elinor unbolted the kitchen door and went out.

“Chris?” She glanced everywhere, then focused on the pond. She had seen a light-colored patch in its center. “Chris!” She ran.

He was face down, feet out of sight, his blond head nearly submerged. Elinor plunged in, up to her knees, her thighs, seized Chris’s legs and pulled him out, slipped, sat down in the water, and got soaked as high as her breasts. She struggled to her feet, holding Chris by the waist. Shouldn’t she try to let the water run out of his mouth? Elinor was panting.

She turned Chris onto his stomach, gently lifted his small body by the waist, hoping water would run from his nose and mouth, but she was too frantic to look. He was limp, soft in a way that frightened her. She pressed his rib cage, released it, raised him a little again. One had to do artificial respiration methodically, counting, she remembered. She did this... fifteen... sixteen... Someone should be telephoning for a doctor. She couldn’t do two things at once.

“Help!” she yelled. “Help me, please!” Could the people next door hear? The house was twenty yards away, and was anybody home?

She turned Chris over and pressed her mouth to his cool lips. She blew in, then released his ribs, trying to catch a gasp from him, a cough that would mean life. He remained limp. She turned him on his stomach and resumed the artificial respiration. It was now or never, she knew. Senseless to waste time carrying him into the house for warmth. He could’ve been lying in the pond for an hour — in which case, she knew it was hopeless.

Elinor picked her son up and carried him toward the house. She went into the kitchen. There was a sagging sofa against the wall, and she put him there.

Then she telephoned Jane Caldwell, whose number was on the card by the telephone where Elinor had left it days ago. Since Elinor didn’t know a doctor in the vicinity, it made as much sense to call Jane as to search for a doctor’s name.

“Hello, Jane!” Elinor said, her voice rising wildly. “I think Chris has drowned! — Yes! Yes! Can you get a doctor? Right away?” Suddenly the line was dead.

Elinor hung up and went at once to Chris, started the rib pressing again, Chris now prone on the floor with his face turned to one side. The activity soothed her a little.

The doorbell rang and at the same time Elinor heard the latch of the door being opened. Then Jane called, “Elinor?”

“In the kitchen!”

The doctor had dark hair and spectacles. He lifted Chris a little, felt for a pulse. “How long — how long was he—”

“I don’t know. I was working upstairs. It was the pond in the garden.”

The rest was confused to Elinor. She barely realized when the needle went into her own arm, though this was the most definite sensation she had for several minutes. Jane made tea. Elinor had a cup in front of her. When she looked at the floor, Chris was not there.

“Where is he?” Elinor asked.

Jane gripped Elinor’s hand. She sat opposite Elinor. “The doctor took Chris to the hospital. Chris is in good hands, you can be sure of that. This doctor delivered Bill. He’s our family doctor.”

But from Jane’s tone Elinor knew it was all useless, and that Jane knew this too. Elinor’s eyes drifted from Jane’s face. She noticed a book lying on the cane bottom of the chair beside her. Chris had chosen his dotted-numbers book to give to Bill, a book that Chris rather liked. He wasn’t half through doing the drawings. Chris could count and he was doing quite well at reading too. I wasn’t doing so well at his age, Cliff had said not long ago.

Elinor began to weep.

“That’s good. That’s good for you,” Jane said. “I’ll stay here with you. Pretty soon we’ll hear from the hospital. Maybe you want to lie down, Elinor? — I’ve got to make a phone call.”

The sedative was taking effect. Elinor sat in a daze on the sofa, her head back against a pillow. The telephone rang and Jane took it. The hospital, Elinor supposed. She watched Jane’s face, and knew. Elinor nodded her head, trying to spare Jane any words, but Jane said, “They tried. I’m sure they did everything possible.”

Jane said she would stay the night. She said she had arranged for Ed to pick up Bill at a house where she’d left him.

In the morning Weed-Killer came, and Jane asked Elinor if she still wanted the job done.

“I thought you might’ve decided to move,” Jane said.

Had she said that? Possibly. “But I do want it done.”

The two Weed-Killer men got to work.

Jane made another telephone call, then told Elinor that a friend of hers named Millie was coming over at noon. When Millie arrived, Jane prepared a lunch of bacon and eggs for the three of them. Millie had blond curly hair, blue eyes, and was very cheerful and sympathetic.

“I went by the doctor’s.” Millie said, “and his nurse gave me these pills. They’re a sedative. He thinks they’d be good for you. Two a day, one before lunch, one before bedtime. So have one now.”

They hadn’t started lunch. Elinor took one. The workmen were just departing, and one man stuck his head in the door to say with a smile, “All finished, ma’am. You shouldn’t have any trouble any more.”

During lunch Elinor said, “I’ve got to see about the funeral.”

“We’ll help you. Don’t think about it now,” Jane said. “Try to eat a little.”

Elinor ate a little, then slept on the sofa in the kitchen. She hadn’t wanted to go up to her own bed. When she woke up, Millie was sitting in the wicker armchair, reading a book.

“Feeling better? Want some tea?”

“In a minute. You’re awfully kind. I do thank you very much.” She stood up. “I want to see the pond.” She saw Millie’s look of uneasiness. “They killed those vines today. I’d like to see what it looks like.”

Millie went out with her. Elinor looked down at the pond and had the satisfaction of seeing that no vines lay on the surface, that some pieces of them had sunk like drowned things. Around the edge of the pond were stubs of vines already turning yellow and brownish, wilting. Before her eyes one cropped tentacle curled sideways and down, as if in the throes of death. A primitive joy went through her, a sense of vengeance, of a wrong righted.

“It’s a nasty pond,” Elinor said to Millie. “It killed a carp. Can you imagine? I’ve never heard of a carp being—”

“I know. They must’ve been growing like blazes. But they’re certainly finished now.” Millie held out her hand for Elinor to take. “Don’t think about it.”

Millie wanted to go back to the house. Elinor did not take her hand, but she came with Millie. “I’m feeling better. You mustn’t give up all your time to me. It’s very nice of you, since you don’t even know me. But I’ve got to face my problems alone.”

Millie made a polite reply.

Elinor really was feeling better. She’d have to go through the funeral next, Chris’s funeral, but she sensed in herself a backbone, a morale — whatever it was called. After the service for Chris — surely it would be simple — she’d invite her new neighbors, few as they might be, to her house for coffee or drinks or both. Food too.

Elinor realized that her spirits had picked up because the pool was vanquished. She’d have it filled in with stones, with the agent’s and also the owner’s permission of course. Why should she retreat from the house? With stones showing just above the water it would look every bit as pretty, maybe prettier, and it wouldn’t be dangerous for the next child who came to live here.

The service for Chris was held at a small local church. The preacher conducted a short nondenominational ceremony. And afterward, around noon, Elinor did have a few people to the house for sandwiches and coffee. The strangers seemed to enjoy it. Elinor even heard a few laughs among the group, which gladdened her heart.

She hadn’t, as yet, phoned any of her New York friends to tell them about Chris. Elinor realized that some people might think that “strange” of her, but she felt that it would only sadden her friends to tell them, that it would look like a plea for sympathy. Better the strangers here who knew no grief, because they didn’t really know her or Chris.

“You must be sure and get enough rest in the next days,” said a kindly middle-aged woman whose husband stood solemnly beside her. “We all think you’ve been awfully brave.”

Elinor gave Jane the dotted-numbers book to take to Bill

That night Elinor slept more than twelve hours and awoke feeling better and calmer. She began to write the letters that she had to write — to Cliff’s parents, to her own mother and father, and to three good friends in New York. Then she finished typing her article.

The next morning she walked to the post office and sent off her letters, and also her article to her agent in New York. She spent the rest of the day sorting out Chris’s clothing, his books and toys, and she washed some of his clothes with a view to passing them on to Jane for Bill, providing Jane wouldn’t think it unlucky. Elinor didn’t think Jane would. Jane telephoned in the afternoon to ask how she was.

“Is anyone coming to see you? From New York? A friend, I mean?”

Elinor explained that she’d written to a few people, but she wasn’t expecting anyone. “I’m really feeling all right, Jane. You mustn’t worry.”

By evening Elinor had a neat carton of clothing ready to offer Jane, and two more cartons of books and toys. If the clothes didn’t fit Bill, then Jane might know a child they would fit. Elinor felt better for that. It was a lot better than collapsing in grief, she thought. Of course it was awful, a tragedy that didn’t happen every day — losing a husband and a child in hardly more than three months. But Elinor was not going to succumb to it. She’d stay out the six months in the house here, come to terms with her loss, and emerge strong, someone able to give something to other people, not merely to take.

She had two ideas for future articles. Which to do first? She decided to walk out into the garden and let her thoughts ramble. Maybe the radishes had come up? She’d have a look at the pond. Maybe it would be glassy smooth and clear. She must ask the Weed-Killer people when it would be safe to put in another carp — or two carps.

When she looked at the pond she gave a short gasp. The vines had come back.

They looked stronger than ever — not longer, but more dense. Even as she watched, one tentacle, then a second, actually moved, curved toward the land and seemed to grow an inch. That hadn’t been due to the wind.

The vines were growing visibly. Another green shoot poked its head above the water’s surface. Elinor watched, fascinated, as if she beheld animate things, like snakes. Every inch or so along the vines a small green leaf sprouted, and Elinor was sure she could see some of these unfurling.

The water looked clean, but she knew that was deceptive. The water was somehow poisonous. It had killed a carp. It had killed Chris. And she could still detect, she thought, a rather acid smell of the stuff the Weed-Killer men had put in.

There must be such a thing as digging the roots out, Elinor thought, even if Weed-Killer’s stuff had failed. Elinor got the fork from the toolshed, and the clippers. She thought of getting her rubber boots from the house, but was too eager to start to bother with them. She began by hacking all round the edge with the clippers. Some fresh vine ends cruised over the pond and jammed themselves amid other growing vines. The stems now seemed tough as plastic clotheslines, as if the herbicide had fortified them. Some had put down roots in the grass quite a distance from the pond.

Elinor dropped the clippers and seized the fork. She had to dig deep to get at the roots, and when she finally pulled with her hands, the stems broke, leaving some roots still in the soil. Her right foot slipped, she went down on her left knee and struggled up again, both legs wet now. She was not going to be defeated.

As she sank the fork in, she saw Cliff’s handsome, subtly smiling eyes in the photograph in the bedroom, Cliff with the blade of grass or straw between his lips, and he seemed to be nodding ever so slightly, approving. Her arms began to ache, her hands grew tired. She lost her right shoe in dragging her foot out of the water yet again, and she didn’t bother trying to recover it. Then she slipped again and sat down, water up to her waist.

Tired, angry, she still worked with the fork, trying to pry roots loose, and the water churned with a muddy fury. She might even be doing the damned roots good, she thought. Aerating them or something. Were they invincible? Why should they be? The sun poured down, overheating her, bringing nourishment to the green, Elinor knew.

Nature knows. That was Cliff’s voice in her ears. Cliff sounded happy and at ease.

Elinor was half blinded by tears. Or was it sweat? Chun-nk went her fork. In a moment, when her arms gave out, she’d cross to the other side of the pond and attack there. She’d got some roots out. She’d make Weed-Killer come again, maybe pour kerosene on the pond and light it.

She got up on cramped legs and stumbled around to the other side. The sun warmed her shoulders though her feet were cold. In those few seconds that she walked, her thoughts and her attitude changed, though she was not at once aware of this. It was neither victory nor defeat that she felt.

She sank the fork in again, again slipped and recovered. Again roots slid between the tines of the fork, and were not removed. A tentacle thicker than most moved toward her and circled her right ankle. She kicked, and the vine tightened, and she fell forward.

She went face down into the water, but the water seemed soft. She struggled a little, turned to breathe, and a vine tickled her neck. She saw Cliff nodding again, smiling his kindly, knowing, almost imperceptible smile. It was nature. It was Cliff. It was Chris.

A vine crept around her arm — loose or attached to the earth she neither knew nor cared. She breathed in, and much of what she took in was water. All things c from water, Cliff had said once. Little Chris smiled at her with both corners of his mouth upturned. She saw him stooped by the pond, reaching for the dead carp which floated out of range of his twig. Then Chris lifted his face again and smiled.