Tom's Midnight Garden

At Castleford, Hatty initially seems nervous, looking around to see if she is being observed. Before skating, she pins her long skirt above her ankles and frees her hands from her fur muff (a handwarmer fashionable among Victorian ladies). She and Tom skate side by side, although Tom’s skates leave no mark on the ice. Hatty laughs when the cord on the fur muff snaps and it flies across the ice. She does not try to retrieve it. 

As they travel further, most of the skaters they encounter are men, and some offer to escort Hatty. When they reach Ely, Tom and Hatty go to the cathedral and climb the tower. Tom reflects that he still has “plenty of time” to tell Hatty how he intends to stay in the garden indefinitely (191).

Peter wants to dream of being with Tom in the midnight garden. However, when he falls asleep, he sees the tower of Ely Cathedral. Meanwhile, Tom and Hatty look down at Ely and the surrounding landscape from the top of the tower. Tom senses Peter’s presence before he sees his brother emerge from the tower’s staircase. When Tom points Hatty out to his brother, Peter is shocked, observing that she is “a grown-up woman!” (195). Peter then disappears as he wakes up.

Hetty panics when she realizes how late it is. When they return to the ice, few skaters remain. A group of men warns Hatty that the ice is beginning to thaw and that someone has already fallen through upstream. 

As Tom and Hatty skate in the moonlight, a young man calls out from the riverbank. Hatty recognizes James’s friend Barty and accepts a lift home in his gig (horse-drawn carriage). Tom sits invisibly between them. Hatty is initially shy but soon relaxes as she and Barty talk about their love of skating. Tom is bored by their conversation and annoyed when Hatty seems to forget that he is there. Suddenly, he feels tired. By the time they reach their destination, Tom is invisible to Hatty.

On Friday morning, Gwen wakes early and discovers the apartment door wedged open by Tom’s slipper. She finds Tom fast asleep in bed. When he wakes, Tom is distressed and shouts, “No! Not this Time! Not now!” (205). Since he is due to return home on Saturday, Tom only has one more chance to remain in the past. He hopes that when he visits the garden that evening, it will be early summer, and Hatty will be a little girl again.

That night, Tom opens the back door to darkness. He runs forward and crashes into the fence surrounding the yard’s trash cans. Sobbing, he runs inside and screams Hatty’s name. The house’s tenants wake up, including Mrs. Bartholomew, who was dreaming about her wedding day. Alan gently carries Tom upstairs and apologizes to the other tenants.

When Tom wakes up on Saturday morning, he is overwhelmed by sadness, realizing that he must return home without seeing the garden again. Alan is angry with Mrs. Bartholomew, as she has asked Tom to personally apologize for disturbing her in the night. The Kitsons agree that the demand is unreasonable, but Tom volunteers to do as Mrs. Bartholomew asked.

When Mrs. Bartholomew opens her door, Tom is struck by her dark eyes and the strange way she looks at him. She touches his arm, declaring, “You’re real: a real, flesh-and-blood boy” (214). Mrs. Bartholemew reveals that she is Hatty and that she heard Tom call her name in the middle of the night. Inside her apartment, Tom recognizes the barometer from the Melbournes’ hallway. There is also a portrait of Barty, which Mrs. Bartholemew explains was painted soon after they married. 

Tom is disbelieving, remarking that Hatty cannot still be alive. However, Mrs. Bartholemew explains that she was a “Late Victorian,” born near the end of Queen Victoria’s reign. Tom observes that he last met Hatty on the day they skated to Ely. However, Mrs. Bartholemew states that this was not the last time she saw him.

Mrs. Bartholemew reveals that it was 1895 when they skated to Ely together. On midsummer eve, the day before her wedding to Barty, she left her ice skates in their hiding place for Tom with the note. That evening, the weather was stormy. As she watched the lightning out of her window, she saw Tom in the garden. A moment later, lightning struck the tallest fir tree, felling it. 

After their wedding, she and Barty lived happily on a farm in the Fens. They had two sons, but both were killed in World War I. Her cousin James gradually sold off the house’s land, and new homes were built around it. The only remnant of the old garden was Tricksy, who remained standing in a nearby garden. When James emigrated, the house and its contents were auctioned. Barty bought it for Hatty and converted the building into apartments. When Barty died, she returned to live in her old home.

Mrs. Bartholmew reveals that she always loved the grandfather clock. When she was a child, she deliberately miscounted the hours it struck, getting up while everyone else was in bed. Mrs. Bartholomew remarks that now that she is old, she often dreams of the past. However, since Tom arrived at the house, her dreams have been more vivid, frequently returning to how she felt as a young girl, when she longed for a playmate.

Tom realizes that when he visited the garden, he was experiencing Mrs. Bartholomew’s memories. He admits that when he arrived at the house, he was also longing to play in a garden with a friend. Tom also notes that recently, Mrs. Bartholomew’s dreams have turned to winter and skating. Mrs. Bartholomew explains that as she relived growing up and getting married, Tom became “thinner” until he vanished. Last night, she was dreaming of going to the Fens after her wedding when Tom’s shouting woke her.

Mrs. Bartholomew reveals that before leaving home, she carved a long cat and a hat into Tricksy’s trunk to represent their names. When Tom recounts how Peter loves his stories about the garden, Mrs. Bartholomew insists that they should both come to visit her. Tom promises to do so, realizing that he is finally happy to go home. As Gwen waits for Tom downstairs, she is bemused to see him hug the old lady goodbye “as if she were a little girl” (228).