Seventy-Seven Clocks

by Christopher Fowler

  He dried his hands on a thick cotton towel. A reflected movement in one of the stalls turned him from the basins. One of the cubicles was occupied. As he watched, the toilet door swung half open. The figure behind it remained in shadow, silently watching.

  The lawyer stepped to one side, trying to see the face. The door swung slowly wide until it banged against the tiled wall.

  He tried to raise the alarm, but the wretched clothwrapped creature ran forward and raised his hands, pressing them over the lawyer’s face.

  After that there was nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  Then it was a second, a minute, an hour later.

  He had no idea how much time had passed, but he was still in the washroom, lying by the basins, feeling dizzy. He checked his ornate gold wristwatch, but had trouble focusing. He had a terrible headache. His neck hurt. The washroom was empty. The cubicles stood with their doors wide, the silence broken only by a dripping tap. He needed to take a short nap. Unable to comprehend what had happened, Maximillian Jacob pulled himself up, picked up his newspaper and weaved his way back to the lobby of the Savoy Hotel. He located a deep armchair in a quiet corner, where he could rest without being disturbed.

  Jerry Gates checked her watch again and frowned. Five to six. Another five minutes until the evening receptionist was due to take over. Through the foyer doors she watched the turning taxis’ beams fragmenting through needles of rain. The street outside the Savoy was the only one in London where they drove on the other side of the road; everything about the hotel was quirky in some way.

  It still hurt to think about last night, but she was determined not to let the pain surface. It had been past midnight when she had finally reached home. She had never seen her parents so angry. Thankfully, Nicholas had ignored her for most of today, except for an acid comment about her tired appearance.

  The hotel was unusually quiet for a Monday afternoon, but the lull would not last long. Many of the three hundred rooms above their heads were being readied for Common Market delegates. They were arriving to attend a conference scheduled to start in Downing Street a week from today, on 13 December. Speakers had been invited from throughout the Commonwealth, too. The staff had been briefed on correct modes of address.

  For the moment, though, the lobby was a haven of peace. A disoriented Italian family stood with maps folded under their arms like weapons, waiting for the rain to stop before venturing out in new Burberry raincoats. Someone was dozing beneath a newspaper in one of the armchairs near the entrance to the American Bar. Nicholas was dealing with a pair of regular patrons, two querulous Spanish women who had been visiting the hotel together for the past thirty years. For many guests the Savoy was a second home rather than a hotel, idiosyncratic and personalized in its handling of their requests, famed for its attention to detail.

  Although she had joined the hotel just a few weeks ago, Jerry had been made to feel like a member of an exclusive, if rather remote, family. Her mother had been upset when she announced her intention of taking the job. Gwen and Jack Gates had long expected her to apply for a position in the family business. For their only daughter to have chosen her own employment—and as a menial—was unthinkable. Jerry scowled at the thought as she gathered up her belongings. Let them think whatever they liked. She was enjoying her newfound anonymity.

  ‘You’re in a rush,’ observed Nicholas. ‘Got a hot date?’ There was no hint of sarcasm in his voice, but she knew better than to trust him now.

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’ She threw a book into her backpack and zipped it up. ‘I’ve got a figure-drawing class.’

  ‘Of course, it’s none of my business.’ Nicholas checked his blond hair in the mottled lobby mirrors. ‘If you’re really interested in studying art, why are you working here?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Jerry agreed. ‘It’s none of your business.’ She noticed now that Nicholas had thin hairy wrists, a bony throat, and sprouting nostrils. He was a dim snob who used his public-school accent to ward off undesirables like a vampire hunter with a crucifix. How could she not have seen this before? His habit of joking whenever women were mentioned should have tipped her off to some kind of sexual inadequacy. Thank God I didn’t unlock the bedroom door, she decided. Hopefully, their weekend encounter would never be mentioned again. Men like Nicholas were concerned about saving face.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Nicholas pointed at the revolving door. The porter was carrying through several pieces of ancient, scuffed luggage. ‘Someone’s checking in. You may as well make it your last job tonight.’

  ‘Thanks a lot.’ She dropped her bag on to a chair and returned to the counter. The man walking across the carpet towards her was tall, broad, and black. His skin seemed an extension of his bronzed leather jacket. Dreadlocks fell in tightly woven strands between his shoulderblades, knotted in complex patterns, like the mane of a lion. She had seen Afros, but nothing like this. Standing amid a jumble of well-traveled bags, he looked like a particularly confrontational piece of modern sculpture. He’s overdoing the rock-opera look, she thought, vaguely irritated.

  ‘Hullo, I’m checking in—Joseph Herrick.’ The voice was softly seasoned with an American accent. As she confirmed the new guest’s reservation and assigned him one of the larger suites she averted her eyes, performing the prime Savoy hospitality function of never appearing surprised. She was, though.

  The elderly Spanish women stared at the newcomer’s heavy motorcycle boots in distaste, lowering their gaze to the ground and up again as if expecting someone to come and remove him.

  Jerry felt like coming to Mr Herrick’s defence. After accepting his registration form she found herself speaking with rather more volume than necessary. ‘Here is your suite key, Sir. If I can do anything to make your stay more comfortable, please don’t hesitate to call me.’

  ‘The personal touch, I like that,’ he replied with a broad grin. ‘Good evening, ladies.’ He smiled politely at the disapproving couple and clattered across the lobby in time to pull the first of his cases back from the porter. ‘I hate to take your job, man, but you’d better let me have those.’ He was loud and friendly as he began hefting the bag straps on to his arms. ‘There’s stuff in here I don’t trust to anyone else, no disrespect to you, Sir.’

  His cheerful attitude made her smile. The English crept into smart hotels as if entering cathedrals. They queried their bills in whispers, slinking to their rooms like criminals. Handsome young black men didn’t stay at the Savoy. It was a time when England was still running The Black And White Minstrel Show on prime-time TV. Liberation remained on album covers and onstage at Hair.

  ‘You’d better check the validity of his reservation,’ Nicholas told her. ‘I mean, this is the Savoy. The other guests don’t want to see . . .’ he searched for the right phrase ‘. . . people like him . . . hanging around our lobby.’

  ‘I don’t see how you can judge someone so quickly.’

  ‘He’s probably in that awful rock musical,’ Nicholas sniffed. ‘Swaggering about in bright clothes just shows a lack of breeding.’

  ‘Funny, I always thought that about the gold-covered white women one sees in Knightsbridge,’ she replied. Before the weekend, Nicholas had kept his prejudices hidden. ‘I’m running late. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  She was returning from the staff room in her Afghan coat when she noticed the sleeping man again. He’d been sprawled in a corner of the lobby with a Daily Telegraph over his face for quite a while now. As she passed Nicholas, she pointed at the recumbent figure. ‘You’d better wake him up.’

  ‘You’re nearer. You do it.’

  ‘I already told you, I’m late.’

  Sighing, she crossed to the chair and gently removed the newspaper from their guest. The unveiled face was florid and middle-aged. A flap of grey hair leaned back from the man’s head like a raised gull’s wing. She recognized the sleeper as a guest who had checked into the hotel on Friday. She tapped him gently on the shoulder. Overhead, the li
ghts in the central chandelier flickered, momentarily dimming the room.

  ‘Mr Jacob, time to wake up . . .’

  Jacob’s lips rattled out a furious blast of air and he sat sharply upright.

  ‘What the devil—?’ His eyes bulged, his throat distending as he lurched forward in his seat. For a moment Jerry thought she had startled the guest in the middle of a dream. Now she saw that he was choking. Before she could take any action, he jack-knifed forward, spluttering and spraying a fine crimson mist from between his teeth.

  She saw Nicholas reaching for a telephone as she tried to hold the agitated guest down in his seat.

  ‘Nicholas, come and give me a hand, he’s having some kind of seizure!’

  The body beneath her was bucking in the grip of violent convulsions. Jacob’s left foot shot out and cracked her painfully on the shin. Together they fell to the floor, landing hard on their knees just as Nicholas arrived at their side.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ he asked, gingerly attempting to grab an arm.

  ‘How should I know? He could be an epileptic. Did you get through?’

  ‘The house doctor’s line is busy.’

  Jacob’s eyes had rolled up in their sockets so that only the whites showed. A glittering knot of blood hung from his chin. Jerry wasn’t sure of the procedure in such a situation. With her knees planted on his twisting shoulders, she grabbed his tie and wadded it into his mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue. She felt inside his jacket and pulled out a wallet, flicking it open.

  ‘What are you doing?’ yelled Nicholas.

  ‘I’m looking for a card that says he has a medical condition.’

  Jacob’s limbs suddenly dropped and he became heavy, sliding flat on to the floor, taking Jerry down with him. There followed a moment of absolute stillness, as if the man’s spirit was wrenching free from his body. With a final bark he emptied the contents of his stomach, flooding the intricately patterned carpet.

  Jerry looked from the fleshy corpse in her embrace to the benign gold cherubs in the ceiling above. She had felt the man die. As the realization hit her, a wind began to rush in her ears and the room distanced itself, telescoping away as the world fled to darkness.

  3 / Vandalism

  London hides its secrets well.

  Beneath the damp grey veil of a winter’s afternoon, the city’s interior life unwound as brightly as ever, and the rituals interred within the heavy stone buildings remained as immutable as the bricks themselves. London still bore the stamps of an empire fallen from grace— its trampled grandeur, its obduracy—and, sometimes, its violence.

  Having survived another day of rummaging through handbags without discovering a single gun, knife, or IRA bomb, the security guards at the entrance to the National Gallery were about to console themselves with a strong cup of tea.

  George Stokes checked his silver pocket watch, a memento of thirty years’ loyal service, then turned to his colleague. ‘Twenty to six,’ he said. ‘In another ten minutes you can nip up and ring the bell. There won’t be anyone else coming in now.’

  ‘Are you sure, George?’ asked the other guard. ‘I make it nearly a quarter to.’

  Outside, bitter December rain had begun to bluster around an almost deserted Trafalgar Square. Flumes from the great fountains spattered over the base of the towering Norwegian Christmas pine that had been erected in the piazza’s centre. The tree stood unlit, its uppermost branches twisting in the wind.

  The roiling, bruised sky distended over the gallery, absorbing all reflected light. The gallery was emptying out, its patrons glancing up through the doors with their umbrellas unfurled, preparing to brave the night.

  As the two guards compared timepieces, the entrance door was pushed inwards and a figure appeared, carrying in a billow of rain.

  ‘Pelting down out there,’ said Mr Stokes, addressing the dripping figure. ‘I’m afraid we’re closing in a few minutes, Sir.’

  ‘Time enough for what I have in mind.’

  The guard shrugged. Office workers sometimes stopped by on their way home to seek solace in a single favourite painting. He took a good look at the man standing before him, and his brow furrowed in suspicion. ‘Do you mind if I check inside your bag?’ he asked.

  There is a mosaic set in the floor of the National Gallery which highlights many emotional concepts: COMPASSION, WONDER, CURIOSITY, COMPROMISE, DEFIANCE, HUMOUR, LUCIDITY and FOLLY are engraved among them. Bill Wentworth was beginning to wonder if these qualities only existed in the flooring. He tugged down the peak of his cap, stepping back to allow a party of Japanese schoolchildren to pass. The excitement of the job lay in the paintings themselves, not in the inquiries of the general public. His fingertips brushed the maroon linen wall of the gallery as he walked. He had entered Room 3 (Germany and the Netherlands). Dark rains drifted against the angled skylights in the corridor beyond.

  It was Wentworth’s first day as a gallery warden, and he had been looking forward to answering visitors’ questions. He’d seen the job as a chance to finally use his art-history training.

  ‘You can forget that,’ his superior, Mr Stokes, had warned during their morning tea break together. ‘Times have changed. Few people ask about the Raphael or the Titian or the Rembrandt any more. They just want pointing to the toilet or the French Impressionists. They’re not interested in the older stuff because it takes more understanding.’

  Stokes was a fan of the old Italian schools. He preferred a Tintoretto to a Turner any day of the week, and was happy to tell you so.

  Bill Wentworth walked slowly about the room, waiting for the last few members of the public to depart. The only sound was the squeak of his shoes on polished wood and the drumming of the torrent on the glass above. The new warden paused before an arrangement of Vermeers, marveling at the way in which the painter had captured these small, still moments in the lives of ordinary people, peaceful figures in light and shadow, opening letters, sweeping their houses, cool and calm and timeless.

  ‘The public are no problem,’ Stokes had informed him. ‘Soon you won’t even notice them. But the paintings take on a life of their own.’ He had gestured at the walls surrounding them. ‘You start noticing things you never saw before. Little details in the pictures, always something new to catch the eye. They’ll bother and intrigue you, and the subjects will make you care for them. Just as well, because there’s bugger-all else to do around here.’

  ‘Surely it can’t be that dull,’ Wentworth had said, growing despondent.

  Stokes had thoughtfully sucked his moustache. ‘I know how to say “Don’t touch that, Sonny” in seventeen languages. Do you find that exciting?’

  Wentworth was still considering their conversation when Stokes himself came puffing in from the main entrance to the gallery, flushed and flustered.

  ‘Mr Wentworth, have you seen him?’

  ‘Who’s that, Mr Stokes?’

  ‘The old bloke!’

  ‘Nobody’s been through here, as you can see.’ Wentworth gestured about him. There was only one exit to the exhibition room, and that led back to the main stairwell.

  ‘But he must have passed this way!’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  Stokes paused to regain his breath. ‘Tall, overweight, with mutton-chop whiskers. Heavy tweed cape and a funny hat—sort of stovepipe, like an Edwardian gentleman. Carrying a carpetbag.’

  For a moment Wentworth wondered if his boss was suffering a side effect of spending so much time surrounded by the past. ‘What’s he supposed to have done?’ he asked.

  ‘I tried to search his bag and he shoved past me,’ explained Stokes. ‘He ran up the steps and disappeared before I could make after him. My war wound.’

  ‘I’ll help you look.’

  The guards marched from the room and headed for the circular stone stairs that led to the lower-floor galleries. They had just reached Room 14 (French Painting Before 1800) when a breathless young attendant slid to a stop beside them.
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  ‘We’ve just seen him on the far side of the Sunley Room,’ he shouted.

  ‘Going in which direction?’

  ‘Away from us.’

  ‘Then he’s heading for the British Rooms,’ replied Stokes. ‘We can cut him off by going through forty-four and forty-five.’

  Aware of the fragile safety of their treasure house, the three wardens galloped through the empty halls in pursuit. As they raced across a side corridor they mistook a member of the public for their quarry and grabbed his arms from either side, causing him to slide over on the floor. The scruffy, balding man rose indignantly and hauled his trailing sepia scarf about him as his attackers apologized, set him on a bench, and thundered on. At the corner of the next room the guards were met by a startled fourth.

  ‘He’s heading for—’

  ‘The new exhibition,’ called Stokes. ‘We know.’

  The British Artists’ section was housed in a series of chambers leading from a central octagon. Here the walls were filled with imposing portraits of forgotten English landowners. Tilted to the public eye and ornately framed in gold, they were overlooked by a splendid glass dome through which rain glittered in a shower of dark diamonds. Wentworth had no time to appreciate this pleasing theatrical effect, however. He had just spotted their suspect standing in the room ahead.

  The four guards ground to a halt at the entrance to Room 37.

  The Edwardian gentleman was standing by the far wall with the carpetbag at his feet, and a cane tucked beneath his arm, looking for all the world as if he had just stepped down from one of the paintings at his back. He ignored them, bobbing his head from side to side as his eyes searched the room. When he found what he was looking for, he reached down into his bag.

  ‘Stop right there!’ called Wentworth, throwing out an arm. The other attendants crowded in behind him. They had never thought they might actually have to guard a painting.

  For a moment, nobody moved.

  The Edwardian gentleman slowly raised his head and turned his attention to his pursuers, as if noticing them for the first time. His eyes glared beneath the brim of his tall hat.