Clock Without Hands

by Gerald Kersh

  “I dare say you know best. I’ll be guided by you, Mr. Reason.”

  Mrs. Obscot went out. Near the gate of St. Timothy’s Home for Waifs and Strays, she met Mr. Bond. He lifted his black hat. Mrs. Obscot said: “Now mind, Mr. Bond, mind you send out all the invitations for the concert!”

  “Without fail, dear lady,” said Bond.

  “Do see that Mr. Gospel is invited, won’t you?”

  “The literary gentleman, my dear madam? The gentleman over at World’s End? Without fail!”

  “I shall be very annoyed with you if he isn’t there,” said Mrs. Obscot.

  “Heaven forbid,” said Mr. Bond.

  She went on her way. Mr. Bond’s smile faded. He entered St. Timothy’s, hung up his hat, cleared his throat with a great rattling noise, and asked: “Which boy gave out leaflets along World’s End Way?”

  “Henry Ford, sir, please sir.”

  “Send him to me.”

  Henry Ford came, with a fluttering stomach and a pale face. Mr. Bond stared him out of countenance and said: “Ford, I understand you distributed some of the concert leaflets in World’s End Way?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Henry Ford, blushing.

  “Right. Do you know a house called World’s End Cottage?”

  “I think so, sir. Yes, please sir.”

  “Did you deliver a leaflet there, Ford?”

  Henry Ford stammered: “Oh, yes, sir, I did, sir.”

  “To whom, Ford?”

  “I gave it to a gentleman, sir.”

  “Did you see anybody else, Ford?”

  “Yes, sir, another gentleman, sir, and a lady, sir.”

  “So, Ford, you gave your leaflet to a gentleman, did you? What kind of a gentleman?”

  “Please, sir, he looked worried. He walked up and down, sir. He smoked cigarettes, sir.”

  “And you gave him the leaflet, did you? You’re quite sure now?”

  “Oh yes, sir, quite sure.”

  “Go.”

  Henry Ford went back to his duties, giggling with relief. He had thought for a moment that somebody had been talking about the strawberries and cream. He was convinced now that there was virtue in prayer. That night, for the love of God and for good measure, he said as much as he could remember of the Twenty-Third Psalm.

  But that evening Mr. Bond talked with his wife, who was matron of the House; a square-cut, resolute woman whom he addressed as “Mama”, although she had never borne a child. She usually had a great deal to say, and uttered every word with decision, inflexibly, and with a suggestion of irony. If she said: “It’s a nice day,” you felt that she could say a lot more to the day’s discredit, if she chose. When she talked she clasped her hands, dovetailed the fingers and pressed the palms together, making one fist out of two.

  Mr. Bond was a large, loose, quiet-walking man with a soft thick voice which could roar like a blast furnace when he was angry, but generally sounded as if his throat was full of fluff and dust and crumbs such as you find in the pocket of an old overcoat. When his voice rose his eyes opened; they swelled like bubbles as his wrath boiled up until they strained out of their sockets and glared through networks of bright red veins. His clothes were neither grey nor black. He dressed himself like an impending thunderstorm in an indefinable darkness, relieved only by the whiteness of his collar and a V of shirt front.

  His wife, when she was angry, narrowed her eyes, swallowed her voice in a great gulp, and said nothing for the time being. She was a thrifty woman and a good manager – she could make one blast of temper last for three weeks; hashing it, rehashing it, warming it up, slicing it cold, mincing it into bitter little rissoles, boiling the bones of it for soup, and reluctantly throwing the indigestible residue to the dog. But Mr. Bond thought nothing of squandering a rage in five minutes. Still, he was rich in anger: he might grow calm in a little while, but there was plenty more where the last one came from.

  They were highly regarded in their circle. There was nothing to be said against them. They were non-smokers, non-drinkers, active in all sorts of good work; and above all, they suffered little children.

  * * * * *

  Mr. Bond was saying: “Just as I was coming in this evening I saw that Obscot woman.”

  “Oh, her. And what’s her trouble now?”

  “I didn’t ask her, Mama. But she stopped to have a little chat with me. She wanted to be sure that that writing man, Mr. Gospel, was coming to the concert. Now I wonder why. I didn’t think that Mrs. Obscot had anything much to do with the Gospels, did you?”

  “Oh, them. Nobody has much to do with them. But now I come to think of it, that niece of hers, what’s her name?”

  “Miss Pocock?”

  “Poor girl, she’s singing at the concert.”

  “Why, now that you mention it, so she is, Mama. But why the Gospels? What have they got to do with it?”

  Mrs. Bond turned down the corners of her mouth and said: “Oh, them. They’re very important people. And they have a gen­tle­man staying with them. A very great gentleman, a critic, a very great critic.”

  “Anyway, Mrs. Obscot made a point of asking me whether we’d sent a concert leaflet to the Gospels.”

  “Quite right, too. The papers will be full of it. There won’t be room for anything else once your Miss Pocock starts singing. It isn’t as if she was only a nightingale, is it? She has the looks that go with the voice, hasn’t she? I don’t doubt for a moment——”

  “My dear, what on earth is the use of talking to me like that. You know Mrs. Obscot.”

  “Oh, her. I know her.”

  “You know what a dangerous woman she is, Mama. I only mentioned it because of that.”

  “Oh yes. Very dangerous. I shiver in my shoes at the sight of her. Well, to cut a long story short, have the Gospels got their precious concert leaflet?”

  “Henry Ford delivered it.”

  “Oh, him! He did, did he?”

  “I particularly asked him about it. But what I meant to say was this: since Mrs. Obscot is making such a fuss about it, I wonder if you could – you know, in the course of passing by – drop in and make certain that they’ve got their leaflet at World’s End Cottage?”

  Mrs. Bond’s eyes became narrow, and she gulped, and said nothing.

  “Oh dear,” said Mr. Bond, “don’t take it like that.”

  “So you want me to go canvassing, do you?”

  “Mama, you know what Mrs. Obscot is.”

  “Well, then, since you’re such a diplomat, you’d better go yourself,” said Mrs. Bond.

  “But damn it all——”

  “I’ve yet to see the situation that is improved by the use of foul language,” said Mrs. Bond pouring the last cup of tea.

  Her husband went out closing the door quietly and deliber­ately.

  He wished to goodness that Mrs. Obscot might choke on her next mouthful of bread. He had a certain dread of strangers; he wasn’t the sort of man who enjoyed paying visits. He feared a rebuff as some men fear death, and never knew just what to say, or how, or when to say it. On the other hand, he had a hunger for the society of desirable people. In little, misty day-dreams he saw himself as a friend of the great, invited to fine houses and received as an equal in his own right. He wanted very much to visit the Gospels, but not in this way, it made him feel indescribably silly.

  * * * * *

  The boy, Henry Ford, feeling that he had been delivered by a special dispensation of Providence from ineluctable torments and punishments, decided to become a Christian martyr, instead of an African explorer. He would get a job as a missionary, with a view to being burnt alive by heathens. He made up his mind that as he burned, he would sing.

  To begin, he wanted to sell all he had and give to the poor. But what had he to sell or give? He took stock of his treasures and found that he possessed a broken penknife, with half a blade, a toy magnetic compass, half an indelible pencil which he used for tattooing anchors on his left arm when he wanted to pre­tend that he was
a pirate, a Chinese coin with a square hole in the middle, a cog-wheel out of a clock, which could be spun like a top, a broken cigarette-holder and a little metal case which had contained a cyclamen lipstick, two-thirds of a pocket comb, and the cup-shaped cap of a thermos flask which he carried in case of shipwreck. There was also the half-crown he had got from Mrs. Gospel.

  Now he had only to find the poor.

  Henry Ford knew several poor boys. There was Baldwin, who had a weak bladder and a nervous tendency to burst into tears when­ever anyone spoke to him; a very wretched boy, whom Mr. Bond found particularly irritating.

  There was Austin, a snivelling boy with a pasty face who, like Huxley’s Ape, was hated for his dirty nose, and whom nobody could possibly love. He, too, was a poor boy, a revoltingly poor boy, to whom tears came very easily, especially at school, where the weakest and most despicable boys with homes of their own kicked him on the shins and punched him in the stomach to enjoy the spectacle of his slobbering grief.

  Again, there was a boy named Fred Jones, who was always in trouble because of his touchy temper. At school, Fred Jones got beaten for fighting; at the Home Mr. Bond beat him for having been beaten at school. And still he fought. Recently he had been doubly punished for saying that it didn’t hurt; and still he stayed dry-eyed; tense, dark, sullen, always ready for another battle. It was whispered that he had a special sort of skin, like a crocodile, which made him impervious to punishment. But once, in the lava­tory – Jones had not been beaten that time – Henry Ford caught him in the act of crying into his sleeve and had asked what was the matter. Jones started up, struck at him, missed, and ran away. Later, Henry Ford gave him the lens out of a broken bicycle-lamp – a burning glass, incalculably valuable on desert islands. After that, they became friends, although they never ex­changed fifty words. He wanted to give Fred Jones something, too, and make him happy.

  He would get change and give Jones half of his half-crown; or, say, a shilling. Perhaps sixpence.

  Next day he sought out Baldwin, the bed-wetter, in the school playground and said: “Come over here, I want to talk to you.”

  Goggling with trepidation, Baldwin shuffled backwards to the nearest wall. Henry Ford came close, fumbling in a pocket, pulled out the broken penknife clutched hard in a tightly-closed fist, and said: “I’ve got this for you.”

  The other boy glancing at the clenched fist, burst into tears, and ran away, crying over his shoulder: “Why don’t you leave me alone? I never done anything to you, did I? I’ll tell teacher if you don’t let me alone!”

  Then Henry Ford was sad. His feelings were hurt. He looked at the broken penknife. It was a very good broken penknife. But in an inexplicable rage he threw it away without taking the trouble to see where it fell.

  He sat next to Austin in the classroom. During the afternoon arithmetic lesson, while the teacher’s back was turned, he fished out his broken cigarette-holder and dropped it in Austin’s exercise book. The teacher turned from the blackboard and said:

  “I’ve got my eye on you!”

  He had not: it was a stratagem by means of which he kept law and order in the chalky badlands of the classroom, but Austin, bursting into tears, cried: “Oo, I never, sir! Please sir, it was Ford, please sir!”

  The teacher was a tired man, a bored man, but not an ill-natured man. “Don’t let me have any more of this nonsense from you, Ford,” he said. “Stop that idiotic blubbering, Austin, and pay attention.”

  Almost punch-drunk with injustice, Henry Ford whispered: “You wait, Austin – I’ll murder you!”

  The teacher said: “Stop that whispering!”

  “Please sir, he said ‘I’ll murder you’,” sobbed Austin.

  “Ford! Come out. Stand there. Now stand still and be quiet!”

  So he stood in front of the class for the remainder of the period, trying to look as if this kind of thing amused him; wink­ing whenever he caught someone’s furtive eye, and occasionally mak­ing a grimace which he intended to be expressive of whim­sical non­chalance – like the face of Rex Darrell, the Battling Duke, whose fantastic adventures covered four or five pages every week in The Knockout. Darrell the Battling Duke was un­con­­quer­able; he went to Mars in a space-ship on the seventh of the month, was back on Earth in a continent under the sea on the fourteenth, and up on dry land winning the heavyweight championship of the world by the twenty-first; always wearing a monocle.

  Henry Ford unpocketed his half-crown, looked at Fred Jones, and screwed the coin into his orbit. He was sure that the teacher was not looking. Yet the teacher saw, and said: “Ford!”

  The half-crown fell; Henry Ford caught it, recovered his bal­ance, and stood, looking foolishly at his feet.

  “Ford,” said the teacher, “I don’t know what can have come over you to-day. Is anything wrong?” He was a good man who in his youth had read Cutcliffe Hyne and wanted to be a wiry little sea-captain with flying fists and a torpedo beard: and here he was, forty-five years old and nailed to a dusty blackboard.

  “No, sir,” said Henry Ford.

  “I’m trying to teach you how to put two and two together. When you grow up and go out into the world, what are you going to do? Give me a job at ten pounds a week or so, to tell you how much you earn every month? Eh?” said the teacher, with sad and weary irony.

  “Yes, sir,” said Henry Ford, before he knew that the words had slipped out of his mouth.

  “I don’t want to have to punish you, Ford. I’m trying to treat you like a human being; but you won’t let me. No,” said the teacher, growing angry, “no! You want to make fun of me. You want to – you want to show off at my expense, is that it? Eh?” And he struck Henry Ford a ringing slap on the head. The boy saw his hand descending, and tried to duck; shifted backwards, and received the slap on his left cheek.

  A slap in the face is a challenge and an insult. But what can a small boy do about it? Henry Ford felt tears coming, tried to hold them, but had to let them go. He wept. The teacher wanted to take him in his arms. But he said: “It serves you right, Ford. Go and sit down now, and – and – and be a good boy.”

  “Sir,” said Ford, and sat in his place next to Austin, who grinned at him with a certain malevolence and made a wet, bubbling noise with his nose.

  “Now, pay attention!” cried the teacher. He gave the class an exercise in compound interest. He was sad, flat and depressed. There was no vice in the man! But once in a while petty irritation gathered and swelled up, throbbing like a whitlow, yearning for a pin-prick. In good time it burst, leaving a pale, flabby emptiness. The trouble was that the thing never burst at the right moment. He never lost his temper with the headmaster, the inspector, the vicar, or any of the governors, although for fifteen years he had wanted to tell them exactly what he thought of them. But no; he became terrible only to small boys, and told them what he did not think of them. And he was ashamed. He walked around the classroom looking over the boys’ shoulders, and paused by Henry Ford’s desk. For one mad moment he wanted to say: “I beg your pardon, Ford; I didn’t mean to hit you, but what with one thing and another I lost my temper” – offering his hand in proper humility.

  But then the bell rang and the lesson was over, and a great weight fell upon the heart of Henry Ford, so that even if he could have found words to say he would not have taken the trou­ble to pronounce them. He turned away. Jones, glaring at Austin, said: “You dirty, rotten sneak!”

  He went to join Henry Ford, who was looking at the ground.

  “Lost something?” asked Jones.

  Henry Ford said: “Penknife. Threw it away.”

  “Help you find it?”

  “Oh, never mind,” said Henry Ford. “It’s only a broken one. If you find it, you can keep it.”

  Henry Ford’s forefinger was exploring the milled edge of the half-crown in his pocket. He still wanted to share it with Jones, but he felt that he had had enough self-sacrifice for one day. They walked to St. Timothy’s without speaking. Austin and Baldwin walk
ed behind them laughing and whispering. Henry Ford was full of hate for these two mean little boys; he despised them for their lack of understanding and loathed them for their treachery. He wanted to hurt them; but at the same time he felt a great love for the taciturn, savage, loyal, tongue-tied friend who walked be­side him. He had an inspiration. He stopped, laying his hand on Jones’s shoulder, and said: “Wait a minute.” Then as Austin and Baldwin came close, he took the half-crown out of his pocket, showed it to Baldwin, who gasped; held it under the nose of Austin who sniffled; and then thrust it into Jones’s hand, saying: “Here you are, Jonesey, here’s half-a-crown.”

  Jones said: “You mean you want to give me this for nothing?”

  “That’s right.”

  Baldwin gasped and said: “Where did you get it?”

  Ford replied: “That, my good fool, is my affair.”

  “Give us one?” suggested Austin. “Come on – one each?”

  Rex Darrell laughed a sinister laugh: “Ha-ha! – You amuse me, my fine feathered friend!”

  Then he walked on with Jones, his left-hand in his pocket, which was always full of large-calibre pistol-ammunition and ten-pound notes; his right hand swinging. With his right hand he could fell an ox. Upon its third finger blazed a diamond bigger than a hazel-nut, the gift of the Princess Florabell, who had accom­panied him in the rocket-ship when he visited the planet Neptune to kill King Krag, who wanted to destroy the earth with atomic rays.

  “Do you want to give me this?” asked Jones.

  Henry Ford fell three light-years and found himself on the gravel that led to St. Timothy’s Home for Waifs and Strays.

  “Eh? Why?”

  Jones, with hellish intuition, said: “I thought you just wanted to pretend to give it to me because of those two. I can give you it back when nobody’s looking.”

  Henry Ford blushed and said: “I gave you it for keeps, Jonesy. What are you going to do with it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jones.

  Stepping out of the sunlight and the open air into the shadows that smelt of floor polish and disinfectant, Henry Ford whispered: “Jonesy, where do you hate most – school, or here?”