by A. M. Howell
“I sometimes wonder that too,” said a small voice.
The girl! Helena spun on her heels, her cheeks warm. She had been so absorbed in her task she had not realized that she had spoken out loud. Except…the girl wasn’t there. But the boy was, just sitting looking at Helena as he chewed on his bottom lip. Helena frowned, took a step towards him. And another. There was something about him that was different from the boys she knew at school. She studied him harder. His small feet. His slim fingers resting in his lap. This…this wasn’t a boy at all. It was a girl! A girl with a boy’s haircut, wearing boys’ clothes.
Helena blinked, thought about the girl she had seen the night before. She and this girl had the same eyes. The same nose. The same short hair. Could they be…yes they were! They were the same person. Helena felt the flush on her cheeks deepen. How peculiar. “Do you like clocks and watches?” she asked. The warmth on her cheeks heightened. It sounded so stupid. Of all the questions swilling around in her brain why had her lips chosen to pop that one out?
The girl’s eyes clouded over and she looked at her knees. “Not especially,” she said, in the same flat voice as before. “Not any more.”
“Then why spend all of your time in the clock rooms?” asked Helena, her brow furrowing. She nibbled on a thumbnail. Her words sounded stupid – again! The questions Helena wanted to ask fluttered around in her head impatiently. Like, why did the girl dress in boys’ clothes during the daytime? (Particularly when she clearly had lovely dresses she could wear instead.) Where was her mother? Why hadn’t Mr Westcott mentioned that he had a daughter?
The girl pressed her lips together, did not reply. With a sigh she pushed herself up off the chair and walked out of the door, as if their brief conversation had never taken place.
Helena whooshed out a breath. “Well that didn’t go very well.” She bent to stroke Orbit’s tail through the bars of his cage. Her cheeks felt tight and waxy as she noticed the small beginnings of a bald patch on Orbit’s front where he had been gnawing at his feathers. This had never happened before. But then again Orbit had never been confined to his cage for such long periods of time before. Her mother had said pecking at feathers was a sign of boredom or frustration. She remembered his screeches last night during the clock inspection. Poor Orbit, his world had been thrown upside down as much as hers. At home he had been allowed to fly around in circles above her mother’s head, squawking with delight. “You should have his tail feathers clipped,” her father had once said. “One of these days he will fly through an open window and that will be the last we see of him.”
Her mother had frowned and vehemently shaken her head. “Imagine if you were denied the right to be active. That is what it would be like for a bird who could not fly.” And that was the end of it. Her father knew better than to argue with her mother over anything to do with her most beloved parrot.
Helena sighed, stood up and walked back to the pocket-watch cabinet. She picked up a large silver watch as big as her fist and unscrewed the back. Where was the hole for the winding key? She ran a finger over the smooth silver insides of the watch. How peculiar. She wasn’t sure how to wind it. She gave the back a gentle tap, held it to her ear. It was ticking well, which meant the previous clockmaker had managed to wind it. She laid it face down in the drawer and ran her fingers around the rim. There was a gentle click and a hinge opened a second back, revealing a small compartment. Inside lay a small folded piece of card. Helena swallowed, looked back at the door. The girl had long gone. Her father’s footsteps echoed from the floor above. Pulling the card out, she unfolded it. Mr Fox. Watch & Clockmaker. Rose Crescent, Cambridge. She turned the card over, her breath catching in her throat as she read the writing scrawled on the back.
That night the ticks and tocks and chimes and strikes of the clocks on the floors below burrowed into Helena, each mechanical movement causing her to toss and turn in her bed. The clocks WILL stop for you too. That meant they had stopped already. For Mr Fox. Her stomach ached and she rubbed at the knot of tension that sat there, stubborn and unmoving. She knew she should tell Father about her worrying discovery, but at dinner that evening he had been quite distracted and pale, scribbling in his notebook while he spooned onion soup into his mouth. After he had scurried away to work on the clocks once more, Helena cleared the table while Stanley washed up. She saw his eyes flicker to several envelopes propped up on the windowsill. Stanley’s eyes were hooded with tiredness as he scraped and scratched at onion burned onto the pot base. He sighed heavily. With a pang of remorse, Helena realized her own worries had caused her to lose sight of the fact that Stanley might have pressing concerns of his own.
Stanley turned, following Helena’s gaze to the envelopes. “My mother writes weekly and gives me tips on how best to keep this household running, although she thinks it strange I see it necessary to do so. My father thinks I shouldn’t be here at all, keeps asking when I’m returning to take up a position as an apprentice.”
“Oh,” said Helena.
“My father’s an engineer, you see,” continued Stanley. “He started as an apprentice in a workshop and now works for Mr Austin – a man who designs and builds automobiles. He thinks I should follow the same path as he did, not be here in Cambridge with all my books. Father is helping Mr Austin find premises for a new manufacturing plant…and when it’s found he wants me to work in it.”
“Goodness. Your father and Mr Austin think that the popularity of these automobiles will increase?” asked Helena, thinking about the rising number of vehicles she was now seeing on the roads in London. Her father thought they were marvellous inventions, often reminding Helena of how excited he’d been that the Locomotive Act of 1896 had seen the good sense to allow vehicles to increase their speed from two to fourteen miles per hour in town. But to Helena these machines were noisy and cumbersome (and were often seen broken down at the side of the road). She preferred the sound of horses’ hooves on cobbles to the vibrations of wheels and screech of brakes.
“Yes, the automobile’s popularity is growing daily,” said Stanley. “Mr Austin says there are around twenty thousand on the country’s roads now and there could be four times that in the next five years. But I don’t want to work as an apprentice. There’s so much more I’d like to know about engineering, things I can’t learn in a workshop. I had a teacher at school who persuaded my parents I should try for a scholarship to the boys’ high school. It turns out I’m rather good at learning, much to my parents’ surprise, and now, here I am.”
“And so now you work here as a tutor?” asked Helena, hoping he would tell her a little more about the girl and the lessons he was giving her.
Stanley nodded. “I saw Miss Westcott’s advertisement in The Times newspaper for a tutor. At the interview I saw Mr Westcott’s collection of academic books, which I thought might assist me with my own education and allow me to save some money too. I accepted the position gladly, but things have turned out a little differently to what I imagined.”
“Oh, I see,” said Helena, as she wiped crumbs from the table. That explained the mathematics book in the kitchen. Stanley was tutoring the girl while also undertaking his own studies. But in addition to that, he was trying to run an entire household on his own. It all seemed rather unfair.
Accepting that sleep was not going to come that night, Helena slipped out of bed and pulled on her woollen socks and a cardigan. Orbit snickered under his night cloth. She lifted it and he peeked at her.
“Mother loves Helena, Mother loves Helena.” Orbit’s voice was as gentle as falling snow. “Lovely bird, lovely bird, you’re a lovely, lovely, bird,” he said, bobbing his head and laughing. It was her mother’s laugh. Bright and tinkling and like a spring waterfall.
A flash of memory – a day trip to go strawberry picking. Her mother’s lips stained red and laughing as the sun beat down on their backs.
Helena’s tongue suddenly felt swollen and too big for her mouth. “Laugh again. Please, Orbit. Laugh again.” Helena h
eld onto the bars of the cage and closed her eyes, imagined Mother was kneeling beside her in her cream lace dress, smelling of lavender and hope. She lowered her head and brushed a tear from her cheek. “Laugh again, Orbit. Please, lovely bird.” But now, distracted by the mirror, Orbit was tapping at it repeatedly, filling the room with tinny pings. Helena never quite knew when Orbit would mimic Mother’s laugh. He could go weeks singing the nursery rhymes Mother had taught him and chattering absolute nonsense, and then clear as day her mother’s tinkling laugh would send ghostly shivers of remembering down her spine. Father used to watch Helena tight-lipped, in the days and weeks after Mother’s death, as she sat in front of Orbit’s cage waiting for him to imitate the one person she wished she could still talk to. When Mother had gone it was like a whirlpool had sucked all of the happiness from the house and Orbit was the only thing that could even a quarter of the way return it.
Helena heard her father cough next door, the squeak of his bed springs. It would not do to disturb him, but that would certainly happen if she did not stop Orbit from playing with the mirror. Unlocking the cage, she opened the tiny door and scooped him out, cupping him in her hands. Placing him inside her cardigan, she buttoned it up until just his head was peeking out. Mother would do this sometimes when he was unsettled and it would calm him, claiming the sound of her heart beating like a drum would be soothing. She would take him for a short walk along the corridor until he settled.
Creeping from her room, Helena ignored the shadows and dark corners, let Orbit nibble on a finger (which nipped but at least kept him quiet). At the top of the stairs she stood and listened, the steady thrum of the clocks drifting upwards. A stifled cough on the floor below. She peered over the bannister, heard the creak of a door. She glanced down the corridor to her father’s room. All was silent now. The other corridor was quiet too. Taking a deep breath, she tiptoed down the stairs, pausing on the bottom step. A light…coming from the longcase-clock room. Helena crept to the door. The sound of breathing came from inside, fast and furious. “My darling Evangeline. My boy,” a voice said.
Helena shrank back into the shadows. Mr Westcott’s voice.
“Will it happen again? My clocks…I fear I am sinking under the pressure to keep them ticking.”
Orbit wriggled, let out a small snicker at the same time the clocks chimed, marking half past the hour. Helena’s feet froze to the floorboards. Had the clocks disguised the fact she was sneaking around Mr Westcott’s house at night, overhearing things she most definitely should not be overhearing?
“My clocks…my clocks…always ticking. It cannot be otherwise…for that would be opening the door to all manner of terrible things…” Mr Westcott murmured.
A pull on the sleeve of her cardigan. Helena started in shock, her mouth opening to form a cry. It was the girl, standing before her in a long white cotton nightdress – her eyes wild and wide as a stormy sky, her short hair standing up in tufty peaks. She pulled on Helena’s sleeve again, pressed a finger to her lips, then pointed to a closed door two along from where they were standing.
Orbit snickered again.
As Helena and the girl stood listening, the ticks and tocks seemed to quieten. The girl’s lips thinned and she grabbed Helena’s hand and pulled her down the corridor.
Helena and the girl stood in silence in the skeleton-clock room, the brass mechanisms beneath their glass domes glinting in the moonlight spilling between a gap in the heavy blue and cream curtains.
Helena held Orbit close to her chest, ignored his increasingly painful nips on her finger.
The girl pressed her right ear to the door, a lock of hair falling over her cheek. “He’s gone now,” she said softly, her voice crackly, like it needed moistening with some of Helena’s father’s clock oil.
“Mr Westcott…is he your father?” Helena whispered.
The girl nodded solemnly.
“I’m Helena,” Helena whispered, thinking that she might have gathered this already from overhearing conversations between her and her father in the clock rooms.
“I’m Boy,” whispered the girl, fiddling with a button on the cuff of her nightdress.
That was the name she had overhead Mr Westcott say in the clock room. “But…that isn’t a name,” said Helena, wrinkling her nose. Standing there barefoot in her long nightdress she very much looked like a girl and Helena wondered how she could ever have thought otherwise.
“Well it’s my name,” Boy whispered fiercely. Her eyes softened as she looked at Orbit, who was wriggling and squirming inside Helena’s cardigan. Her parrot had been well behaved, but as Helena had learned in the past, you should never expect too much from a Blue-fronted Amazon.
“Ouch,” Helena whispered, as Orbit craned his neck and pecked at her arm. “Oh, please, Orbit…be good. I’ll take you upstairs to your cage in a minute.” But those were not the words Orbit wished to hear. With one almighty wriggle, he popped off one of the buttons on Helena’s cardigan which bounced and rolled along the floorboards and with a giant swoosh of his wings, flapped up to the ceiling, grazing the dome of a very tall, and expensive-looking, brass skeleton clock. Helena stared in dismay at her precious bird, her pulse thudding in her ears. If Orbit damaged any of the clocks in here, she and her father would be sent packing…but not before Mr Westcott had taken all of their things away.
“No,” whispered Helena. “Oh gosh…Orbit. Come down at once.”
But Orbit ignored Helena. Why would he choose to obey her when he could at long last stretch out his wings, feel the rush of air between his feathers? Orbit swooped, his wings catching against another glass clock dome, which rattled and shook.
“Careful,” whispered Helena.
Orbit was flying in dizzying circles, small squawks of satisfaction echoing around the room.
“Orbit. Please come down. We’ll get in the most tremendous trouble,” Helena ordered in her sternest whisper.
Boy was standing with her back to the door, her eyes wide with delight, her head tilted to the spectacle above as if she were watching the greatest circus performance she had ever seen.
There was a loud thump and the scrabbling of claws.
Horror climbed Helena’s spine like a vine. Orbit had landed on one of the shelves built into the walls of the room. The wood had been polished to a high shine and his claws clicked as he walked along its length, occasionally bending his neck to peck at the clocks resting on the shelf.
“Oh no,” Helena said in a strangled gasp. “Boy – please help me! If Orbit damages the clocks…”
In a flash Boy was standing in front of the shelf, thrusting out her right arm as if she expected Orbit might choose to fly down and land on it.
Orbit gave Boy an imperious stare and continued tapping at the glass dome of a clock with his beak.
“He won’t come down on his own. We need something to stand on, so we can catch him,” whispered Helena, sure that at any moment the dome would shatter, littering the floor with a million ice-like pieces of glass.
Boy turned and ran to the door. For an anxious second Helena thought she was going to fetch her father to come and help. But instead she picked up the wooden chair beside the door and carried it to the shelf. Helena took a step towards it, but Boy had already leaped onto it.
“Orbit doesn’t know you. Be careful, he does sometimes nip strangers…” Helena paused. Orbit had stopped pecking at the glass dome. He sidled along the shelf, his feet clicking and tapping until he and Boy were at eye level.
Orbit bobbed his head. “Hello, hello, hello. Jack and Jill ran up the hill,” he said in a throaty gurgle.
Boy held out her hand. Helena saw it was trembling. Orbit hopped onto Boy’s wrist and walked up her arm, giving her nightdress an exploratory nip. Boy lowered herself on the chair until she was crouching, and Helena slowly reached across and gathered Orbit to her. He didn’t resist, just pecked affectionately at her fingers.
Helena sank to the floor and cupped Orbit in both hands, the thrum of his
small heart pulsing into her palms. “Thank you,” she said, relief bustling through her.
A rosy flush crept up Boy’s neck. She gave Helena a small smile, the type one conspirator gives another to let them know their secret is safe.
“Why is your bird called Orbit?” Boy’s voice was reed-thin. She licked her lips, waited.
Helena could hear Boy’s breaths, short and fast and expectant. “It was my mother who named him,” she said quietly. Boy looked at her, waited for her to continue. “She said…that when he flew, he orbited her, like the Earth orbits the Sun.”
Boy tilted her head and smiled, as if this explanation pleased her.
Orbit wriggled in Helena’s hands as words rose inside her, like bubbles. “Why is your name Boy? And why do you dress like one? Is it you who draws pictures of flying machines and pins them to the walls…and gave Orbit that present? And…why is your father so… obsessed with clocks?” Helena paused, sucked in a shaky breath. She knew she had bombarded Boy with too many questions.
“My mother had a bird once,” Boy said, reaching to stroke Orbit’s crown. “He was called Maximilian. I thought Orbit might like the mirror he used to play with. It’s sad my father says he must stay locked in his cage all day.”
“Where is your mother now?” Helena asked cautiously. She didn’t want to scare Boy off, have her clam up like last time, but equally she needed some answers to the puzzles this house had presented.
“She’s in France,” Boy said softly. “She has been since last October.”
“Do you mean…on holiday?” Helena asked, thinking that was a rather long time for her to be apart from her family.
Boy’s eyes began to cloud over.
“Sorry,” Helena said. “I’m asking too many questions, aren’t I? If Father were here, I would get a rather large telling off for being impolite.”