And thus, I met my lovely Ruby.
Tiny, tiny thing, so small she had to wear weights in her shoes to stop her floating away, people said.
Ruby was home from school for the holidays and felt the isolation more intensely than ever. She hated her home, hated her responsibilities, hated the shadow of the Time Ball Tower hanging over the whole town. Her father had talked to her about the possibility of going in herself, taking the place of the brothers gone to war, and she had stood screaming for a full ten minutes before she could settle.
I had admired her young girl’s spirit for some time. Never in a romantic way because of her age. I’m not like that. I knew I wouldn’t stand by and have her forced into the Time Ball Tower. Not when I so very much wanted to go myself.
“We prefer to keep it in the family,” I was told.
“I fully intend to become family when the time is right,” I responded.
Ruby never told me how she felt at that moment, but I hope she understood how deep and respectful my admiration was.
Ruby called me a very dear man for stepping forward. “So many of our men are lost, and they were going to make me go into the Time Ball Tower,” she said, her head on my shoulder.
What will I be like when I return? Her brothers were different. Stronger, I think, prouder, more powerful, and judging by the lady attention they received, more attractive, too.
None of it saved them, did it? All lost in that war.
We’ve never seen a keeper come back unchanged. I don’t want to change. I want to stay me.
The prisoners found out about my lack of a war record and my shame in such.
I tried to go to war. I am no coward. The recruiters took me on against their better judgment, pure desperation, but I slipped and fell on boarding the crew ship, breaking my arm and collarbone and a bang on the head needing monitoring.
Didn’t the medics hate me for wasting their time! Fix me up only to send me back home.
Pure fortune. That fall meant I could take the place of my dear beauty Ruby on the Time Ball Tower.
The prisoners found out I didn’t fight in the war and tried to use this against me. They love to find weakness.
They didn’t know how much I’d endured. How much cruelty. All they could do was not enough.
As far from human as they are, they still have power. And yet they are weakened by loneliness, by stillness and boredom, and by the silence they live with.
Tell them stories. Play 1001 nights, draw it out, draw them in, make them want to see you and hear you, and then they will not try to destroy you.
Frightening them with ghost stories keeps them quiet for a while, but it also seems to make them restless at night.
First thing I did when I got to shore was go to Ruby.
It was nearly her sixteenth birthday. She had been begging my father to let her go away to university, to learn something. She knew I would understand. I knew she wanted to live a life, not eke out an existence.
“You do look handsome, far more handsome than I’d remembered,” she said, nervous as a fawn. I made silly jokes, lots of funny little animal jokes.
What do you call a sad bird?
A bluebird!
What’s small and cuddly and bright purple?
A koala holding his breath!
What happens when a cat eats a lemon?
It becomes a sour puss!
Why are elephants wrinkled?
Have you ever tried to iron one?
Why do elephants never forget?
Because nobody ever tells them anything.
She was doing well in school. The headmistress recommended she attend Sydney University to study medicine. But what to do? She couldn’t be a doctor and a wife and mother all, could she?
I clarified things for her. I said, “Women can affect the world around them. But only in close proximity. If they try to go beyond that, they waste their talents. It is in the home, the village, that women can make a difference. Do you want to make a difference? Do you want to bring children into this world who could help to make it a better place, or do you want to be a “professional,” loved by no one? Admired, perhaps. But I have seen that world. And there is no respect for women there.”
I said we should marry. Have our children early. Then we would travel to a place where she could study and become a doctor, too. I would support her. So we married.
The only dissenting voice was one Henry Penfold, a foolish fellow who thought that Ruby was his.
Of course, I promised such things. The lies men tell! Look at poor Harriet and the dreadful Phillip. How poorly he used her, to hear Burnett tell.
My beautiful Ruby, baby growing inside her! People say she is so tiny, her stomach will tip her forwards! How do you carry the weight, they ask her, as if her baby was a burden.
“She’s stronger than she looks,” Ruby’s mother told all those busybodies. Her mother often did not notice much, so sunk she was in grief for her sons, and how could we judge her for that? She looks at Ruby sometimes, as if surprised she is still alive.
They put so much onus on this child of mine we are expecting. It comes from such a line; from the woman Harriet, who the ladies idolize. I hope I will be a good father. And if Ruby does not become a doctor herself (and in all honesty she will not), at least we will name our child for one.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Rossiter Styles
Henry Penfold: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1918
He never wrote it. Rossiter. Can’t read, can’t write. Had his lady write it down. If ever there was one too good for another, it was them, for all his striding about town, handing out instructions.
He didn’t write it. As ever, he let someone else do the hard work. And it killed her. We all blame him for Ruby’s death.
“Weak as shit,” the Executioner told me. “Weakest piece of shit we’ve had out here.”
I told them they could have had Ruby. I said,
“You’ve never seen a woman with a brighter glow than that lovely creature. Anyone who met her adored her. And that…that…”
“…shit,” the Executioner said.
“That shit was the one who married her. By some miracle he did the job required. Can you imagine how beautiful her baby would have been?”
“Tell us how babies are made,” the Baby Farmer said. “Go on.”
And I did, to take my mind off Ruby and how she didn’t live to see the new year or hear her newborn daughter cry. How we had to watch that fool, that Rossiter, present his girl as if he’d created her alone.
He called her Frances, after Dorothy Frances Gray, the first female dentist. His one and only child.
At least at the Tower I could cry. Because I loved her too and I would have kept her alive.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Henry Penfold
Walter Bunting: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1919
Pencil knife fork rolled up paper stick stone fingernail clipping toenail clipping no bacon rind for fear of stench wool straps seagull feather egg shell cigarette butt match stick dried tea leaves china doll arm washed up at shore piece of shoe suitcase handle fishing net fishing line tin can label hair ribbon with strap watch fittings rusted nail pennies. Baby-farming bitch deserves this and more.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. They did not require bathing. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
&n
bsp; All normal for this report.
Walter Bunting
Marshall Moore: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1920
They ask all the time, what’s the time? And me with my Swiss precision watch, made by my own hands, and another in my pocket made by the hands of my father. I say to them, “Tick Tock Time. Time for you to be quiet and think yourselves lucky. Think about where you were born! You could have been born in the Philippines when Jacob H. Smith was about. That man issued an order that anyone over ten should be killed. That could have been any one of you given different circumstances.”
I tell them that and they whine as I should have known they would. “You see? We are not so bad!”
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Marshall Moore
Ambrose McCarty: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1921
This week I took in a visitor. They told me not to, but she was so nice. Older woman and all that. Twenty-three, she is. Nice and smooth as any woman you ever saw. She brought with her boxes and boxes of figs and dates and other delicious items. Pure bribery!
I thought she was coming for me, but she told me she wanted to see her grandfather. She said he was innocent. That he was a good man. She lived with this fairy-tale fantasy. Tell them the truth, I say. Children need the truth, young women need the truth as much as we do. I told her it.
That her granddad killed her aunt and many more. There was plenty of evidence. Then I took her to stand near him. We watched for a while, her sobbing quietly at the look of him and who would blame her? She recovered herself and greeted him as if he looked like a real man.
“Look at you,” he said. Even if he didn’t know who she was he was happy to have someone to talk to.
She said to him, “Granddad, did you do it? Did you kill Auntie Missy?”
He took a great snarl at her. No love there at all. Broke my heart to see her recoil.
They whisper, “I’m innocent.” They all whisper it.
They are trapped. But not in a jail. In their own desiccated bodies.
Oh, she was lovely. We fell in love. We married out there. We had the priest sanctify it and, my word, it was consummated.
When she left, I was tempted by the red flag. Just to be with her.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. They did not require bathing. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Ambrose McCarty
Percy Hennessy: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1922
One of them has turned to sludge.
It happens.
I didn’t want to clean up but who else would?
In the end, you have to decide for yourself what sort of person you are. Who you want to be.
I’m not cleaning it up.
The prisoners tell me there is a cleaner; that person can deal with it.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners did not require bathing. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Percy Hennessy
Ernest Potts: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1923
How casually Ambrose McCarty talks about his visitor, caring little for the consequences. She has become known as the Curse Bringer for all that occurred after.
I hope he enjoyed himself because that was his last chance, too.
He died in a freak accident. Fateful, I say.
Scars from wounds inflicted. Vicious bastards, every one of them. And insane. Crazier now than they ever were. We shouldn’t have had them in solitary for as long as we did. Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes, and I’m the fucker bears the brunt.
Sometimes I feel as if I’m not alone. As if there is someone here. It’s the scent of lemon, lemon-scented cleaner, or something.
I know I’m alone apart from these bastards.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Ernest Potts
Phillip Deeming: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1924
I will not read the files.
Phillip Deeming
Gerard Cook: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1925
Sad story, that Philip Deeming. One of those bleeding hearts, slipped through the cracks. The prisoners ripped his throat out. Wonder if they ever knew he might have set them free?
The evil hearts of men. These things we must do. Is my heart now stone as well?
We’ve had an arrival. Young man. Won’t be young for long. Calls himself Grayson Alexander.
I’ve taken to calling him Lothario. He must have been a lady-killer once upon a time. Even as a teenager.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Gerard Cook
Donald Muskett: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1926
The witch, the Curse Bringer, stands screaming on the shore, like a banshee or something else altogether. “You’re nothing!” she’s screaming at me as if I haven’t heard this every day of my life.
Maybe I am nothing.
But I will be something, when I return.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Donald Muskett
Carl Dyer: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1927
There’s a woman in town who thinks she’ll marry one of them. Quite truly, she thinks it’s a match made in Heaven. We’ve shown her photographs of them, but she thinks we’re lying. She thinks they’re sitting over there preparing themselves for one great love.
It’s Grayson Alexander she’s most keen on. She’s read his letters; what a charmer. What a charming evil twist of a man. I’m not decided yet if I’ll read her letter to him. She’s not much of a speller.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Carl Dyer
Ronald McKeown: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1928
I’m taking over a lot of photographs. Ones my father got in the war when he was in France. Ooh, they’re lovely. Lovely lovely lovely not a living woman alive can be as lovely.
I’ll reward them with a look if they are good and quiet.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Ronald McKeown
Edward Carroll: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1929
He was a nasty one, that McKeown. The filth he left behind, although it was all swept up into one big pile, which is odd that he’d go that far and no further.
What did he do to the women here? Even the Black Widow pu
lls back from me as if she’s terrified and there’s no evidence of her being scared of a thing before.
“Cleaner,” she’s saying, but you wouldn’t call McKeown clean, not even with it all swept into a pile.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Edward Carroll
Peter Rouse: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1930
The troll looks benign up close. From the shore he terrified me, but I see now he is nothing but an outline, a shadow.
I’ll be happy to be without news for a while. It’s too much sometimes. The Fox, as he called himself, he kidnapped a little girl, took the ransom, then gave her back in a blanket.
Strangled.
Her limbs cut off.
The troll seems very benign.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Peter Rouse
Oscar Webster: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1931
Tide of Stone Page 10