The Clock People

by Mark Roland Langdale

  Alfie didn’t say anything but his smile widened to that of an upturned crescent moon as he winked at Scarlet as if to say, ‘He’s alright, Wilbur’s alright, not exactly all fine and dandy but he’ll survive. Now, later we might have to leave him in the oven in the dolls’ house à la Hansel and Gretel story, but we won’t have to make a miniature coffin made of matchsticks and bury him in the flowerbox.’ Scarlet blew out her cheeks. This had been some adventure but she knew that was only half the story. In fact the story had only just begun in earnest as they said in old storybooks, and there would be plenty more twists and turns before it had reached story’s end, and they all hoped the story would have a fairytale ending and not a grim one… tick tock, tick tock, tick…

  26

  In Hot Water!

  Luckily Alfie and Scarlet got home before their parents shut the shop at six o’clock and even luckier for them was that their parents were doing a stock check that evening. Scarlet sneaked Alfie back into the house, not under a cloak of invisibility but under her skirt! The first thing Scarlet did when she got upstairs was strip her brother, throw his clothes in the sink, run a hot bath and make sure he got into it, knowing like cats how much little boys hated to bathe! ‘Now, here’s a scrubbing brush, make sure you scrub yourself until you’re as clean as a tin whistle.’ Of course Alfie being Alfie did nothing of the sort, he simply played battleships with his toy boats in the bath so Scarlet once again had to play mother. The noise Alfie made while Scarlet was scrubbing his back you would have thought he was being skinned alive. In the end Scarlet had to shove a flannel into his mouth to keep him quiet!

  Scarlet hurriedly scrubbed Alfie’s dirty clothes in the kitchen sink and then, being of inventive mind, put them in the oven at a low heat to dry. By the time the stock check was finished nobody would be any the wiser, even if by this time both Alfie and Scarlet would be looking like Red Indians, so red of face were they from running about like headless chickens on a hot plate!

  ‘You didn’t have to scrub off all my skin, I look like a Red Indian!’ yelled Alfie as finally Scarlet pulled the plug from his mouth, or the flannel if you want some semblance of the truth.

  ‘Keep it down, do you want our parents to find out what you’ve been getting up to?’ Scarlet growled back scrubbing even harder, then her growl turned to laughter as she added, ‘Anyway, if you look like a Red Indian then you’ll be saved from all the Red Indian tribes who live in London, although that still leaves the cowboys, most of whom work on the building sites, according to Father!’

  ‘What I’ve been getting up to?! What I’ve been getting up to?! You’re just as much part of this caper as I am, the female William Bonnie Scarlet the kidder!’ snapped Alfie defending his own honour.

  ‘I’m quite bonnie, thank you, and I’m not the one in the bath, bonnie lad, or the one whose clothes are in the oven, and I’m not the one who normally gets into trouble. Who do you think they’re going to believe? Sweet old innocent whiter than white Cinderella with her white bonnet, or the Demon Barber of Fleet Street Potts wearing his black Fedora?!’ snapped Scarlet letting her little brother have it with both barrels.

  ‘That’s the trouble with you, sis, you’re as good as Goldilocks so I know you would never stab me in the back. You never have and you never will, it’s just not in your nature, that’s why I always watch your back,’ replied Alfie splashing Scarlet with hot water and soap bubbles.

  ‘It’s a pity that most of the time it appears I’m watching my back from my own flesh and blood. Perhaps I should get a milliner to make me a mad hat with wing mirrors on it so I can see you coming, little brother!’ Scarlet replied scornfully. Alfie’s favourite expression was ‘I couldn’t be more sorry if I tried’, and he said it with a mischievous look upon his face which meant ‘I couldn’t be less sorry if I tried, although perhaps I could, as frankly I can be pretty trying at times!’

  ‘I would tell you to grow up, Alfie Potts, but in all honesty the only hope of that happening anytime soon is if I stretch you on the rack in the Tower of London!’ Scarlet added haughtily. ‘Perhaps this will cool you down, Mr Potts, the great builder and inventor of the lighter-than-air flying machine,’ scoffed Scarlet with a glint in her eye.

  ‘I would love to grow up so big I became a giant like Jack then I could lord it over you and everybody else in London, then I could pick all the best jewels out of the jewel box in the heavens above,’ Alfie grunted standing tall while at the same time imagining for England. Then Scarlet did something most out of character: she went to the sink, filled a jug up to the brim with cold water, then went to the fridge where she emptied out a tray of ice cubes into the water then slowly poured it over her little brother’s big head.

  ‘Nooooooooooo!’ Alfie cried as the cold water hit home so that it soon felt as if he were bathing in the Arctic Circle.

  ‘Now, Alfie, I thought I told you not to make any noise. Do you want to be sent to the Clink for crimes against your parents? Anyway, my dear Alfred, it could have been so much worse, so much worse. Here I cite two examples to prove my point: a) a bath in the Thames or b) having a bucket of ice water poured on your head without the champagne bubbles to soften the blow,’ Scarlet beamed winding her brother up like a clock as she walked out of the bathroom with a smile on her dial wider than the biggest moondial in the heavens above – that of the Man in the Moon. Then Scarlet peered around the bathroom door determined to add insult to injury and said as sweet as you like, ‘Oh and one more thing, baby brother, best get out of the bath, we don’t want you catching pneumonia, now do we!’

  Alfie just scowled at his sister, too much in a rage to think of a suitably witty reply. Where was Oscar Wilde when you needed him? Probably drowning his sorrows in a magnum of champagne after the critics took a dislike to his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, I would imagine.

  Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, the hands of time silently moved both forward and backward while not moving at all. Later still, as the second hand ran rings around the little hand, and the little hand ran rings around the big hand, a giant mirror clock hanging in the imagination of a certain clockmaker by the name of John Joseph Merlin ran like clockwork. The clock of the mind was a most curious clock indeed and one that, like the Clock People’s golden antique fob watch, never needed to be wound.

  ‘Come on, keep up, slow coach!’ the minute hand cried to the hour hand as it passed it by for the umpteenth time.

  ‘Have you heard the story of the tortoise and the hare?’ the hour hand replied a little sarcastically.

  ‘No, haven’t time to listen to stories. Places to go, people to see,’ replied the minute hand abruptly.

  ‘Come on, slow coach!’ the second hand said to the minute hand whizzing by. You see the second hand felt sorry for the big hand who had taken the minute hand in hand and showed it the ropes when it first clocked on, and was determined to give the minute hand a lesson in time-keeping it wouldn’t forget in a hurry.

  *

  ‘Well, it looks like you’ve been busy,’ Mrs Potts said coolly as both Alfie and Scarlet turned as white as Greenwich Park when it snowed.

  ‘Y-e-s,’ they both said nervously trying not to look as if anything out of the ordinary had happened that day, and in truth nothing out of the ordinary had happened. However, something out of the extraordinary most certainly had. In Alfie, Scarlet, Tippy and Wilbur’s short life stories the event of the extraordinary was fast becoming nothing out of the ordinary. Alfie was as good as gold. Anyone would have thought he was looking to play little Lord Fontleroy on the stage at the Empire Theatre, such was the winsome look he gave his parents. From the Artful Dodger to Little Lord Fontleroy in the blinking of a dragonfly’s magical eye – even Scarlet was impressed with her brother’s acting skills. If he played his cards right he may be up for the part of Raffles the jewel thief in the next West End production. And after that perhaps stretch the run to Broadway if the critics l
iked his performance.

  ‘If I didn’t know better I would have said the fairies have been for a flying visit and tidied the house before they left,’ Mr Potts laughed. Scarlet and Alfie laughed a little too hard, as if they were on stage in a farce. Scarlet was conscious of over-egging it and nudged Alfie in the ribs as if to say, ‘Don’t overdo it or they’ll cotton on that something is not right.’

  Luckily Mr and Mrs Potts were far too tired to sense something wasn’t right, far too tired, and after supper went directly to bed… tick tock, tick tock, tick…

  27

  The Museum of Miniatures

  The next morning Alfie was up with the larks and was excited about something or other. Perhaps it was from the excitement of the day before. But Scarlet thought there was more to her brother’s excitement than that, even though, in truth, the last few days had conjured up enough excitement for a whole lifetime for these two partners in grime.

  ‘Come take a look, sis, I’ve built my own museum, the Museum of Miniatures, and at the centrepiece of my collection is the Paper Flyer. Obviously I couldn’t ask Wilbur to stand next to the plane all day long, so I used one of my toy soldiers who looks quite a bit like Wilbur if you ask me, although I don’t suppose he thinks so,’ gabbled Alfie, his tongue running away with him, so it was a wonder Scarlet could understand a word he had said.

  Scarlet pulled herself out of bed and walked over to Alfie’s side of the room, a room which was normally a cross between a pig sty and a toy junkyard. Sitting under a Victorian glass dome was the paper plane, cleaned up a little and held together with string and glue, much the same as Wilbur and Orville Wright’s plane the Flyer had been in 1903. This was the date when it had achieved man flight for the first time, although Icarus may have had something to say about that little historical fact. Alfie had even written a brief history of this short but historic flight on a card, along with the builder of the plane’s name, that of Alfie Reginald Potts, and Aviator Wilbur Wigglesworth. Co-pilot who bailed out before the flight was at its end, Aviatrix Tippy Handle, was given a mention in such tiny print it was as if it had been written by a fairy hand.

  Scarlet felt Tippy Handle should have been given centre stage as the pilot, as in her eyes Wilbur was her wingman. It seems Scarlet had reimagined herself as the puppet mistress as she dangled the paper plane over the city of London, hanging on strings as if on a giant planetary mobile or aviation mobile in this curious case.

  To Scarlet’s imaginative mind the museum looked like a cross between a model of the Museum of Mankind – Boykind in this even more curious case – and the Crystal Palace Exhibition in Hyde Park. Alongside the glass dome were various dried creatures: frogs, toads, spiders in matchboxes, a moth with a hatpin stuck through it. There was even the skeleton of a rat held up with wires standing there like it was a dinosaur in the Science Museum. This was a miniature horror show guaranteed to give you a bad case of the night horrors or your money back.

  ‘I’m going to charge a farthing for looking around. There’ll be a guided tour of course and a programme to explain the various exhibits, which will cost a halfpenny. All the exhibits on display can be bought for a small fee, as most are easily replaced, apart from the centrepiece of the exhibition, the Paper Flyer. I thought I might be able to fit her into a paperweight so as to preserve her for all time,’ said Alfie earnestly holding the lapels of his dressing gown as if he were the greatest showman of them all, P.T. Barnum.

  ‘What happened to the bird that was inside the glass dome?’ Scarlet enquired with a quizzical look on her face.

  ‘Ah yes, the bird, well, don’t worry about the bird, it was as dead as a dodo already stuffed to within an inch of its life and probably the afterlife too. I buried it in the flowerbox. Well, I think it deserved a properly burial, after all we don’t want to be haunted by the spirit of a dead bird, now do we?’ Alfie said bowing his head solemnly.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose we do want the spirit of a dead bird haunting our bedroom, Alfie Potts, very considerate of you, I’m sure. I think you’re going to be the new P.T. Barnum, the master of the freak show. Mind you, don’t bury anything else in the windowbox or the hanging basket, we don’t want a miniature Hanging Gardens of Babylon on our hands!’ Scarlet replied haughtily, sounding like Queen Victoria during her unamused phase. Scarlet was only surprised Alfie hadn’t let the canary out of its cage to fly free so he could put the birdcage in his museum, claiming a ghost bird was haunting it. Or, going one better, housed the whole Museum of Boykind in the birdcage. Truth was, he had thought about it but decided in this case it was a step too far, even for him. That wasn’t quite the full story, for Alfie knew that a birdcage would have overshadowed the rest of his miniature museum, and the Museum of Boykind was far too large to be housed within a birdcage.

  If Alfie had used the birdcage in the Museum of Boykind it would have looked as if a giant had picked up the girders and structure of St Paul’s Cathedral without the building’s concrete overcoat and lifted the roof off the Museum of Mankind, or the Crystal Palace Exhibition, and plonked it down inside one of these fantastical buildings. Any engineer worth his salt, like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Christopher Wren or Alfie Reginald Potts, would have seen this as a serious engineering, no, no and one not easily forgiven or forgotten by the luminaries of the architectural landscape. This would have been yet another white elephant that dear old London Town did not need, as, according to some engineers and architects, they already had far too many as it was!

  Most people had no idea that a large semi-circular clock face made of glass, designed by Charles Shepherd, was made to stand above the entrance to the Crystal Palace. The clock had four hands and used Roman numerals to mark the passage of time. Alfie’s eye for detail did not stretch to such complications as this unusual clock. However, he had stood a carriage clock at the entrance to his miniature museum which was a nice touch. The public would know if they were wasting their time or not. Not, Scarlet imagined, most decidedly not, for while Alfie was running his Museum of Boykind into the ground it kept him out of her hair!

  In the real Museum of Mankind in London they kept the most curious of things like African shrunken heads, death masks, stuffed extinct animals and the like. Scarlet’s mother said most people wouldn’t be seen dead in the place, leaving the museum to be haunted by a lot of old ghosts or men who looked so deathly pale they may just as well have been ghosts. These ghostly-looking men, Mrs Potts proclaimed, were the proprietors who ran the Museum of Mankind, a bunch of old fossils who were giving the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum a run for their money. Mrs Potts had a good sense of humour, mind you, as she said herself she had to having a son as unpredictable and mischievous as Alfie, the original Artful Dodger… tick tock, tick tock, tick…

  28

  Time to Rewind the Clock

  ‘Where on earth am I?!’ Tippy exclaimed looking all about her. Though she did not know it she was still on the head of the thief. Then, not for the first time, everything went black just as suddenly. Someone appeared to have turned the gaslight on then switched it off again.

  ‘Stovepipe hat, don’t like it, makes me look like Isambard Brunel, and this one makes me look like the Mad Hatter!’ snapped the thief trying on different hats in front of the mirror to see if any suited. ‘Perhaps I can get a milliner to make me a hat with a working clock face set into it. Well, as my moniker is the Time Thief it wouldn’t be proper if I did not have such a fantastical crafted piece of headware on my head, now would it?’ ‘No it would not!’ replied the man in the mirror doffing his imaginary hat to his mirror image.

  Tippy was peering through a forest of thick black hair that she imagined was the Black Forest, but at a pinch she could just about make out a giant face staring into a looking glass. She immediately recoiled as she saw the face was that of the thief. ‘I’m not far from home, the watch must be close by. If I can get back home I can tell everybody what is going on an
d then they can help us,’ mumbled Tippy under her breath.

  Tippy waited for the giant to fall sleep then she began her search for the watch. It was time to rewind the clock, or so Tippy imagined as she tried to get a handle on this whole time and space thing with all its many complications. The antique gold fob watch was either in the giant’s coat pocket or resting on the dressing table. It took half the night to find her way home, but by the time she had her heart felt as light as a feather. It was paramount that she got her story straight in her head before entering the mechanism, otherwise the Elders would think she had gone quite, quite mad. Tippy had a mind to wonder if the Elders wanted her telling her story at all. The more likely story was they wanted it hushed up.

  The Elders didn’t mind who their master was as long as their home was safe and life continued like clockwork. The world outside barely existed as far as they were concerned. It was the way it had always been and the way they wanted it to stay. The Elders’ worst fears were that once the young tasted the outside world they wouldn’t want to stay in the confines of the watch, then as the Elders died out who would repair the mechanism? Once the watch needed repairing everything would change and not long after that the watch would be discarded for a new, more up-to-date model, and after that it would be melted down for scrap metal. Then their small little world and way of life would be lost forever, as would their home.

  In a way Tippy could see the Elders’ side of the story. It was just a pity they couldn’t see the other side of the story – hers, Wilbur’s and other young folk’s who wanted a more expansive way of life. This expansive way of life did not include working all the hours the Clock God sent their way. There must be a happy medium, some middle ground so both young and old could be happy with their lot. If there was a way, then it was Wilbur and Tippy’s job to find that way and if they got lost along that way then it was just a risk they were both willing to take.