by Nick Salaman
These thoughts preoccupied her. The Duckett family, that was the name of her hosts, could see that there was something that weighed on her, but they were too tactful to mention it. At least Chrissie and Will and even the bronzed Mrs Duckett could see. As far as Mr Duckett was concerned it didn’t really matter. He confined himself mostly to observations like ‘Oh, man’ and ‘Too much’ whatever the subject of the conversation, smiling with ineffable peacefulness upon all and sundry – except, of course, when those animals that live in sties were mentioned.
As for Ivo McVitie – ‘no relation to the biscuits’ – he kept his watchful observations to himself. There were plenty of them but he did not like to disturb so excellent an assistant nor evoke a repeat performance of the tears of their first meeting.
October gave way to November, and all around the little shops started to put their decorations up.
‘Shall we have decorations?’ Marie asked.
‘Our customers don’t expect decorations,’ he smiled.
‘All the more reason to have them.’
‘Nothing too expensive, now.’
She bought some coloured tinsel and some snow spray and contrived to make Time out of Mind look both festive and mysterious. The grandfather clocks were decked with white beards which gave them a ludicrous but not unsatisfactory appearance. ‘After all,’ said Marie, ‘they are grandfathers.’
Whether because of the decorations or a sudden surge of interest in old clocks, business started to pick up. People had always come from far afield to have their antique timepieces repaired, but now there was a positive queue of expensive cars disgorging pin-stripe-suited men from the West End who would never normally have set foot in the windy streets around King’s Cross.
‘Business is booming, Marie. If this goes on, you can have another five pounds a week.’
It was welcome news. She had decided to save as much as she could so that there might be a little money to put in the baby’s carry-cot when she left it. And indeed, at the end of the month, Ivo included the extra £20 in her pay packet. She was so pleased, she gave him a kiss. She thought nothing of it, but she noticed he’d gone a little red.
He tried to make a little joke about it. ‘What would I have got for an extra £10?’ he asked. ‘No, don’t tell me.’
She liked their days together. They evolved a satisfactory pattern that soon became a ritual. She would arrive at five to nine, open the shutters, and Ivo would come down from his little flat upstairs and start winding the clocks. She would put on the kettle and bring out the biscuits and they would have a cup of coffee and a chocolate McVitie – ‘damn good chaps, these McVitie’s’ – while she opened the mail. Next, they would go through the books to see what bills were getting paid, who needed invoicing and who was ready for a reminder. There were only a few of these. Most of the business was done in cash. Finally they would look at the log to make sure they were up to date with their repairs.
At nine-thirty she would unlock the door and the first customer or two would drift in.
Around eleven, she would bring Ivo a cup of coffee and another McVitie’s at his desk.
‘Not another McVitie?’ he would say in his best Kelvinside manner. ‘We’re just running away with the profits there, Marie.’
For lunch they would have a cup of soup and a sandwich upstairs in his little living room. Sometimes, he would get out a bottle of malt and pour himself a dram. ‘Just one, mind,’ he would say. ‘Two’s no good for the eye. Will you not have one?’
But Marie didn’t like the taste of Scotch. Besides, she thought it might not be good for the baby. There was still little sign of it to any but the most discerning eye, and Ivo’s eyes seemed fully focussed on the tiny intricate matters of his trade. She would, sooner or later, have to tell him what was going on, but somehow she wanted to put it off. She sensed it might affect him in some way.
Ivo lived sparely in his two little rooms. His one indulgence, apart from the dram, was music. He would play her opera through the lunch hour: The Magic Flute, Cosi Fan Tutti, Il Trovatore, Cavelleria Rusticana.
Sitting there with her sandwiches, listening to the music, watching Ivo rapt in his chair with his dram cupped in his hands, she thought: this is what marriage must be like. I could have married Ivo if things had been different. And then she thought: if things had been different, I should never have met him.
At two o’clock, the concert would come to an end. Ivo would collect the plates and Marie, trailing clouds of Mozart, would go down to unlock the shop door. The morning’s pattern would be repeated until four, she would put the shutters up, lock the door again and check the takings with Ivo. By six, she would be on the bus back to Archway.
Their customers were extraordinarily varied. Sometimes it would be a local housewife with her hair in curlers, a cigarette in her face and slippers on her feet who wanted her Westclox mended; or a boy who had broken the glass on his stopwatch. At other times it would be antique dealers and even noted collectors with things that need special parts to be made by hand.
‘There is nobody else in London like you, Mr McVitie,’ said an old man who had arrived in a Bentley. ‘Indeed, I doubt if there is anyone else in the country. What would we do without you?’
‘That was Sir Walter Duchesse,’ said Ivo when the man had gone. ‘And that is part of the movement of a Tompion.’ He indicated a small brass wheel that lay on the counter with two of its cogs missing.
‘A Tompion?’
‘Tompion was one of the greatest clockmakers who ever lived. That wheel was made in 1694. The clock which Sir Walter owns, and which that belongs to, is probably worth £100,000.’
Marie was beginning to see Ivo with new eyes – not just as an original and entertaining employer, but as a craftsman, an artist even, in his own right.
‘Why do you bother with the little local stuff?’ she asked.
‘We always have to bother with the little local stuff,’ he replied. ‘The world is not just made of Tompions, or Sir Walters for that matter. Local stuff is the grass that holds the hill of society together.’
‘Who said that?’
‘McVitie said that. Hear the words of McVitie.’
She smiled at his self-mockery. ‘Hear the words of McVitie,’ she quoted, ‘who present, past and future sees. I think you are a time-traveller.’
‘Not a traveller,’ he said. ‘Oh no. I am a servant of time. I am time’s slave.’
‘What does that make me?’
‘You are time’s slave’s slave. Or, if you like, time’s fool. When are you going to have the baby?’
She gasped. ‘How long have you known?’
‘Some weeks.’
‘Who told you?’
He put his watchmaker’s finger to his nose. ‘I nose,’ he said.
‘Well, you’re very clever,’ she said. ‘I thought it didn’t show.’
‘I come from a large family,’ he said. ‘I was the youngest of eight. My sisters were always having babies. What shall we say? June?’
It was indeed the month when it was due.
‘That’s the time,’ she said.
‘I suppose there is a father, Marie? You’re not one of the virgin Maries?’
‘There is a father. But he’s not around.’
‘Ah. I shall ask no more questions.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I imagine you have a doctor. Ask me if you need anything. And tell me when you want to stop work.’
‘Oh,’ she cried. ‘But I don’t. Don’t send me away.’
‘I won’t send you away. But when the child arrives, you’ll need to spend some time with it. Babies are rather demanding, I seem to recall.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m going to make arrangements.’
Ivo gave her a long look. ‘I’m sure you are,’ he said. ‘Come, we will talk no more of it until you wish to. It is five to one. Let us close the shop and listen to some Handel. You know his “Triumph of Time
and of Truth”? “Bright quirks of music, jagged and uneven, make the soul dance upon a jig to Heaven”.’
He held the door to the stairs open for her. She turned and smiled at him.
‘Thank you, Ivo.’
‘Careful now. No jigging.’
***
The Duckett family, though unusual in many ways, was an undemanding one. Mr Duckett spent most of his time sleeping wherever he could, but Chrissie had given Marie a key to her room so he couldn’t get at her comfortable pillow. He did not in the least resent it. There were many other corners in the house where, as he put it, ‘a cat could nap’. His other favourite dictum was ‘there’s a quack in the old duck yet as long as you know where to squeeze it’. There were not many candidates for squeezing but it didn’t seem to bother him.
Mother Duckett travelled extensively in her room and would occasionally invite Marie in for a trip to Ceylon or California. Her method of travel was very simple. She had a number of props – Chrissie said she’d been a wardrobe mistress in a travelling theatre group once – and her way was to dress the room with a stage palm or cactus, lie on the sunbed for a while, and then come out and drink rum, or tequila or rice wine while playing suitable music on her wind-up gramophone. She would smoke and posture and utter scraps of languages. She always knew, wherever she was, the name of the best hotels. Marie tended to refuse the drink but enjoyed the records which were old and scratched and irreplaceable.
Probably because the parents were so weird, Chrissie and Will were both resolutely normal. Chrissie ran the house and Will provided the money. He was a runner for one of the commercial film companies down in Soho and earned a substantial income, as is the way with commercial people. Chrissie also helped by knitting genuine ethnic sweaters from all over the world which sold for large sums in the West End.
‘How long can you stay in a squat?’ Marie asked her once.
‘As long as you like, until they serve an Order.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A dangerous structure order. If they can prove it’s dangerous they can save us from ourselves.’
‘What about the owners?’
‘If they can prove they need to live here themselves they can get us out. But the owners here are the Council. All they want to do, eventually, is pull the lot down and enlarge the park. But they’ve run out of money for the foreseeable future, so we’re safe for at least three years.
‘Why doesn’t everyone do it?’
‘A lot of people do. But there are disadvantages. You’ve got to find the right building in reasonable condition with a landlord that doesn’t really mind. Otherwise you’re always moving and that’s a drag. I don’t think Dad could take another move.’
Marie looked across at Chrissie. They were sitting outside in the sun with Chrissie’s child in the pram shaded by a plane tree, which grew, secure perhaps in its dendroid intuition – standing against the brick wall at the end of the area – that it would be spared for the eventual park. It was a benign November day, one of those days which, in London, could be any time of the year: almost warm enough to lure Mrs Duckett, with her palm and fire-water, down from her sunbed.
‘What’s it like having a baby?’ Marie asked.
‘Bloody painful,’ said Chrissie. ‘I wouldn’t do it again if I could help it.’
‘Oh,’ said Marie. She had rather hoped Chrissie would say she’d sailed through it. ‘What happens?’
Chrissie turned and looked at her. ‘Don’t you have a doctor?’
Marie swallowed. ‘Yes, of course, but…’
‘What happens is you go into labour, you go to the hospital, you get into a white gown, you get shaved, you go into a labour ward, the pains are coming every minute, the nurses lie you back and the doctor tells you to push. You ask for some gas and the doctor says not till you need it, so you push a bit more and now it’s nearly killing you, so you get some gas, which doesn’t help much, and you push and push till you think you’re going to crack like a blasted oak and suddenly, when you think you can’t take any more, you feel this thing coming out of you, splosh, and they drag the whole lot out and you give a great groan of relief and they say it’s a boy or it’s a girl according to choice, and then you hear the little bugger crying, and suddenly it’s in your arms and you feel weak and wonderful and it really and truly actually does all seem worthwhile for a day or two. That’s if everything goes all right.’
‘What about the cord?’ asked Marie.
‘Oh, they cut that when it comes out.’
‘Is it difficult?’
‘They just get a scalpel, cut it and tie it. What d’you want to know that for? You won’t have to do it.’
‘I just felt I should know. Sort of, if I got caught short somewhere.’
‘You won’t get caught short. They’re dead keen round here on whipping you in in good time. And by the ninth you don’t feel like moving very far afield. Who did you say your doctor was? We’ve got a good one round here.’
‘Oh. It’s … all right. I’ve got one where I work. He’s very good. It’s easier, really. I can get time off, you see.’
Chrissie looked at her, and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I expect you know best. No business of mine.’
Marie put her hand on the girl’s arm. ‘Thank you, Chrissie. It’s really kind of you to let me stay. I don’t deserve it.’
‘Course you deserve it. Will’s crazy about you, or haven’t you noticed? Just as well you’re pregnant or Tessa’d be dead jealous.’
‘Don’t you mind about Will and Tessa?’ she asked.
‘Mind? I’m happy for them. No point in finding trouble where there’s none. We didn’t suit each other, Will and I. But he’s a nice boy. We’re all fine.’
A leaf fluttered down from the plane tree and, puffed by a little breeze, dropped at their feet. Chrissie picked it up. ‘Funny thing about a plane tree,’ she said. ‘You can take all the leaves of all the trees and use them for your compost, but if a single plane leaf gets in amongst them, it ruins the lot. An old gardener told me that.’
Marie shivered. A premonition of something unnameable flew over her heart like a cloud’s shadow.
***
Just before Christmas, a man came into the shop who caused Marie a considerable amount of unease. It wasn’t that she recognised him, but she thought he recognised her.
He brought an old fob half-hunter with him which Ivo said would take a month to mend, it being nearly Christmas. The man seemed unperturbed. Marie surveyed him during the exchange. He was medium height, expensively dressed, with one of those dark coats with a black velvet collar which she had seen Mr Brickville wear when he had come up to the castle. His hair was dark and sleeked back. He had little black eyes, white teeth and a sleek manner. He reminded her of Dicky Henshaw. He was, she guessed, in his early forties. He had just the faintest ghost of an accent. French? Italian?
He turned to her when he had finished his discussion with Ivo, putting his little receipt slip into his wallet and buttoning up his velvet-collared coat.
‘Happy Christmas to you both – and no doubt I shall see you again before the happy birthday.’
‘Happy Christmas,’ said Ivo, and then, ‘say Happy Christmas, Marie.’
‘Happy Christmas,’ she smiled, but she was troubled.
When the man had left, she turned to Ivo. ‘Surely I don’t look so obviously…’
‘What’s wrong with being pregnant?’
‘There’s a lot wrong with being pregnant,’ she said
It was the first time she had ever complained. Ivo looked at her quizzically. ‘You are a strange girl,’ he said. ‘You and your nanny from Pittenweem. I hope that I may be able to help you one day.’
‘You help me already,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t help me more. I’m the plane leaf in the compost.’ She told him more about the disastrous effects of the plane leaf.
‘You are a self-dramatist,’ he said. ‘You should write a libretto, I shall set it to music, an
d then we could sing it at lunchtime. We will call it ‘Lament of a Plane Girl’.
They both laughed. When Marie turned she thought she saw the corner of a velvet-collared coat flicking out of sight to the right of the window.
‘I didn’t trust that man,’ she told Ivo.
‘Then we shall keep his valuable watch until he pays. There is only money,’ said Ivo. ‘Time and money. They both meet here on equal terms.’
He was given to gnomic utterances when he felt like teasing her. For once, she was cross with him.
‘It’s all very well for you…’ And then she stopped. How could he know? How could he be expected to know?
‘I know more than you think, young lady.’
‘What? What do you know?’
‘I know that you are hiding from someone. You have run away from someone.’
‘I’m over eighteen,’ she said.
‘I know you are. But you are still hiding. And I am not sure that you aren’t hiding from something inside you too. No, not the baby. Something that is in yourself, that makes hiding impossible.’
She was suddenly angry. The truth of what he was saying stung her too much. ‘You…’ she stammered in her rage, ‘Wh … what gives you the right to … what do you know? Who do you think you are?’