by A. M. Howell
Mr Westcott bowed his head. It was as if all the light and life had been sucked from him.
Katherine’s lips twitched as she waited for the clocks to quieten. “Things could be different. I could help you,” she eventually said under her breath. “Why will you not accept my help?” Her voice was cajoling, but also had the force of a knife.
Mr Westcott jerked his arm away from his sister’s hand, took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “There is nothing you can do to help me, Katherine. Evangeline is missing – there has been no word from her for almost a month. My letters and telegrams provide no answers. Don’t you see why the clocks must not stop again? Do you not remember?” he said, leaning towards his sister.
Helena squeezed her hands into fists, desperately hoping that Katherine would answer her brother’s questions.
But she didn’t. Instead, her body stiffened, and a muscle in her jaw twitched. Standing on tiptoes, she gave her brother a fleeting kiss on the cheek. As she turned and swept out of the front door, a single peacock eye drifted from her hat to the floor.
Mr Westcott’s gaze lingered on the iridescent feathered eye. A small moan came from his lips. Turning, he disappeared up the stairs, the leaden thumps of his feet echoing through the house.
Helena’s father bustled past her, Orbit’s cage in his arms. “I shall see you in the morning, my dear. I am fit for nothing but sleep. I shall put Orbit in your room.”
Helena gave him a quick nod, her eyes flitting to the peacock-feather eye and the larger than normal blade of light coming from under Mr Westcott’s open study door. Had an opportunity just presented itself to search a normally out-of-bounds room for clues to the mysteries of this house?
“I cannot go in there,” said Boy, staring at her father’s open study door.
“But we may not get this opportunity again, Boy. Perhaps there are clues inside as to why he is so obsessed with the clocks and where the Fox family’s things are being kept?” Helena held the soft peacock-feather eye in her palm, pressing it with her thumb. A feather-filled memory was tugging at the edges of her brain but would not arrive.
Boy’s nose crinkled. “If Father catches either of us in his study we will be in the most enormous trouble.”
“But we already are in the most enormous trouble. You have lost your mother. I could lose my parrot. The Fox family have lost their things and, for reasons we don’t understand, your father appears quite…ill,” Helena said, slipping the feather into her dress pocket.
Boy leaned back against the wall. “I don’t suppose it matters whether I agree or not. You are going in there anyway.”
Helena threw her a fleeting smile, then pushed open the door. Boy hovered uncertainly at her heels. The wood-panelled walls stared back at Helena accusingly. The heavy maroon curtains behind Mr Westcott’s desk had been drawn. A dying fire glowed in the grate. The room felt cosier than Helena remembered, a place she could imagine sitting and curling up with a book on a wintry day. In front of the fire was an easy chair, a blanket thrown across the arm. Did Mr Westcott sleep in here? She glanced at the family portrait above the fireplace. The two blue-eyed children were close in age to her and Boy. They had a smiley-faced mother and a stern-looking father, but all of them were overshadowed by the huge longcase clock standing behind them. As Helena stared harder at the picture, she saw the faint image of a cherubic moon-face drawn on the small pendulum. It was the same clock Mr Westcott spent so long staring at during the inspections.
“That’s my grandmother and grandfather,” said Boy walking to the portrait.
“And so they’re…your father and Aunt Katherine?” Helena asked, pointing to the children.
Boy nodded. “It’s odd seeing them when they were little. Father says he was not close to Aunt Katherine when they were young. But since Mother went away last year, she has not left our sides. She took rooms at the University Arms Hotel in town, as she says she cannot sleep here for the noise of the clocks.”
“Was that your grandparents’ clock?” Helena asked, still studying the painting.
Boy nodded. “I’ve never liked it. The face on the pendulum is perfectly horrid. For some reason, Father adores it. Maybe it’s because it belonged to his mother. She died when Father and Aunt Katherine were only a little older than us. Their father not long after.” She paused. “I sometimes think Father’s obsession has something to do with that particular clock. It is rare and quite collectable. It gave him a thirst for obtaining more clocks with mechanisms so fragile they must be kept in good working order at all times.”
Helena tore her eyes away from the clock and walked to Mr Westcott’s desk. Maybe Boy was right about her father’s clock obsession? Sometimes the simplest explanations were the correct ones.
Mr Westcott’s dinner tray was pushed to one side, the silver salt cellar upturned. Helena righted it, took a step backwards to open one of the desk drawers. Her boots crunched. Lifting her left foot, she saw a white residue on her heel. She bent, brushed a hand over the floor. Salt. Mr Westcott must have spilled it. Brushing the coarse grains from her hands, she opened the largest of the desk drawers and rifled through the papers inside. There were letters to his printing firm, folders of accounts, but nothing to tell them where the Fox family’s possessions were being held or anything else for that matter.
“What’s this?” Helena asked, pulling out a scrapbook from underneath a file of accounts.
Boy walked over, gave Helena an uncertain look and glanced at the door.
“Go on – open it,” urged Helena, passing it to her. Maybe the squirm of guilt niggling at her would lessen if Boy helped to search the study too.
Boy turned to the first page and Helena gasped in surprise. One of Boy’s drawings of the inner workings of a flying machine had been pasted carefully into the book.
Found outside the skeleton-clock room. 3rd May 1905.
Boy sucked in a breath, turned a page to another of her drawings of the frame and wings.
Found pinned to the wall of the third-floor landing. 23rd May 1905.
Boy’s fingers leafed through the pages until she came to the last drawing of the flying machine’s rudder.
Found next to Mother’s longcase clock. 10th June 1905.
The last one had been pasted in just a couple of days before. Boy traced her forefinger over it. Her eyes were watery. She sniffed. “Father does see my drawings,” she said. Clutching the scrapbook to her chest, she curled up on the chair by the fire and began studying the book intently.
“Boy,” said Helena softly.
“Yes?” Boy murmured, as she leafed through the scrapbook.
“Did you…did you…?” Helena took a deep breath, trying to arrange her words. How should she ask if she had been the one to stop the clocks? She liked Boy, had begun to think of her as a friend. But as much as Helena liked questions, this was a difficult one to ask and she was not at all sure she wanted to know the answer. So maybe it was better not to ask it at all. The clocks had been stopped. The Foxes’s things had been taken. Boy was clearly upset at what had happened. Surely the most important thing now was to focus their efforts on returning the Foxes’s possessions and ensuring the same thing did not happen to their own.
Boy glanced up. Her happiness at realizing that her father did notice her after all had made her normally sad eyes hazy and full of dreams and possibilities.
“Oh…it’s…nothing,” Helena said, turning to look through the remainder of the drawers, opening each in turn and finding not a crumb of anything interesting. Helena pulled the peacock-feather eye from her pocket, brushed a finger over the blue, gold and reddish hues. She had seen a side of Katherine tonight she had previously kept hidden, a rather controlling side. She seemed determined to do the best for her brother at all costs. She knew as much about the clock-winding contracts as her brother. Was she helping him to conceal the Foxes’s things in the stables? Maybe that was why she had been creeping around there last night, trying not to be seen. Hele
na needed to get into the stables, but she somehow thought that to be caught poking around in there by Katherine was something she should fear very much indeed.
The summer night was cool, the rain-tipped grass soaking through Helena’s boots and stockings and chilling her toes. There was no pinprick of light, moon or stars marching across the sky to guide her to the stables this time; she could barely see an arm’s length in front of her. She slowly skirted past the old paint-peeling bench and continued until she reached the row of trees, which stood in front of the stable door.
Helena stared back at the house, to the thin strips of light at the edges of the drawn curtains. Her eyes moved along the row of windows on the top floor to the very last one – the room of books. The curtains were open and light blazed from the window. After Helena had prised Boy away from the scrapbook, she had taken the stairs two at a time, saying she had to complete more drawings at once for her father. Helena knew that nothing would divert her friend from this task. And it was probably better Boy did not come with her to the stables. If she found the Foxes’s things, then it would make her feel terrible for what she had done to the family. The more Helena thought about it, the more sense it made that Boy had been the person to stop the clocks. She knew the whirring clock mechanisms inside and out, would know exactly how to stop them. But if Boy was responsible, then couldn’t Helena and her father relax a little? Boy was upset that the Fox family had lost their possessions, and it did not seem at all likely she would stop the clocks for a second time, causing the same thing to happen to Helena and her father.
Taking a deep breath, Helena pushed through the tree belt and crossed the cobbled courtyard to the stable. She grasped the door handle and lifted the latch. It was locked. Her shoulders slumped. It had not occurred to her that she might not be able to get in. Reaching into her pocket for the candle and the box of matches she had taken from the kitchen, she lit the wick and cupped it in her hands, the orange burn of the flame wavering. She slipped around the side of the stable and walked its perimeter. On the back wall, just above head height there was a small window. The frame was old and crumbling, one of the four glass panes cracked. Helena blew out the candle, jammed it back into her pocket and reached up to give the window a push. It stuttered and grumbled but did not budge. She would need something to stand on to have any hope of getting inside. She glanced around, saw a huddle of old flowerpots. Picking up the largest, she carried it to the window and turned it upside down. A trickle of sweat ran between her shoulder blades. She paused and pushed up her sleeves, heard the hoot of an owl. Standing on the pot, the window was now level with her shoulders. She gave it a firm push. It wobbled. She gave it another push. Helena watched in horror as the entire window frame shuddered, breaking away from the wall and falling back into the stable. Crash.
Oh crumbs. Helena plucked a splinter of glass from her thumb, sending tiny daggers of pain into her palm. Her heart hammered against her ribs as something soft slinked against her ankles. Swallowing a yelp, she saw a black cat was looking up at her, flicking its tail around her feet. A sign of bad luck. Helena forced her breathing to slow, pushed the foolish thought from her head. This would not do. She needed to stay calm and climb through the window. She would worry about how to repair it later.
Hoisting herself up and through the gap in the wall, she landed on the floor the other side with a thud, her feet crunching on broken glass and wood. Dust smarted her eyes and nose and she sneezed. She sucked at her sore thumb, blinked at the gloomy shapes lining both of the long walls. Helena’s fingers trembled as she reached into her pocket again for the candle and matches. The match fizzed and hissed, and the soft glow of light threw wobbly shadows. If Katherine appeared now, she would be in deep trouble. She drew in a sharp breath and steadied herself. The stable was like a furniture warehouse, the type she and her mother and father had occasionally visited down by the docks when a new chair, lamp or looking glass was required. A pathway of sorts had been fashioned down the middle of the room and was edged with furniture of all shapes and sizes – wooden tables with intricately carved legs, heavy armoires, chairs stacked upside down on top of each other like a child’s puzzle.
Helena’s insides folded with disappointment. The furniture in front of her certainly did not match the description Ralph had given her of their things. These items looked expensive, like they belonged inside Mr Westcott’s house. Helena tugged at the edge of a dust cloth to reveal a delicately embroidered blue and cream silk chair. Three lamps with matching fabric shades stood on a small card table next to the chairs. She touched the edges of the fabric. It pulled at her memories. She had seen this pattern before. It matched the curtains in the skeleton-clock room. These were the furnishings from Mr Westcott’s house, things that had been replaced by the clocks. It was as if two giant hands had taken all of the furniture from the house and pressed it together like a concertina in this stable. But if the Foxes’s possessions weren’t in here, what had Katherine Westcott been looking for the other night?
Wedging the candle between the leg of a card table and a chair, Helena scanned the room. Her eyes landed on a stack of travelling trunks pushed against the wall. The brass locks of the top one were unlatched. Helena frowned, peered at the trunks a little harder. They were the type you would use if you travelled abroad. She thought of Boy’s mother, somewhere far away on the other side of the English Channel. She stroked her fingers over the dark-brown leather. The trunks were not dented or pitted, they were smooth and unused. Helena heaved the lid of the top trunk open. Layers of tissue paper fluttered and rustled. She was alone in the dark poking around in Mr Westcott’s things. If he found her in here, she and her father would almost certainly be dismissed. They would lose everything. But as Helena tentatively peeled back the layers of tissue paper, she realized she was wrong – these things did not belong to Mr Westcott. Neither did they belong to Ralph and his father. They belonged to someone else entirely.
Velvet trousers. Cream shirts with ruffles. A tweed waistcoat and jacket. Caps and hats and sturdy boots. Unlike the house furnishings, the boy’s clothes had been packed haphazardly, in no particular order. Helena thought of Boy in her trousers and boots. These were her clothes. Hidden beneath them was a pile of books. She pulled out a copy of Five Children and It and laid it to one side. A bolt of sadness rushed through Helena like the wind as she unfolded a pair of Boy’s navy velvet trousers. Why did she insist on wearing these clothes when her father and aunt were not around? Was Boy’s mother aware of her daughter’s strange habits? Re-folding the trousers and picking up the copy of Five Children and It, Helena buttoned up her cardigan and stuffed them inside. It was time to confront Boy. There were so many unanswered questions. She really needed to find out exactly what was going on and demand some truths.
The house was quiet when Helena returned, her father’s light snores reverberating from behind his closed door. She would tell Stanley about the broken window and offer to pay for it herself in the morning. Something told her she could trust him not to tell Mr Westcott or Katherine about her night-time adventures. Opening the door of the makeshift library room, Helena saw Boy sitting at her desk. She looked up at Helena above the towers of books, the pencil in her hand hovering over a drawing.
“I have something for you,” Helena said, slipping into the room and closing the door behind her. She wove her way through the book maze until she reached Boy’s desk. She glanced at the paper Boy’s pencil was poised over and chewed on her bottom lip. This was not one of Boy’s usual technical drawings. It was a convoy of small flying machines in flight over the sea. Small houses dotted the page where the sea joined the land. One was larger than the others and Boy had drawn curtains in its windows, billowing in the wind. Two figures stood in the upstairs window. Boy and her mother?
Helena reached inside her cardigan, pulled out the navy trousers and the book. She shook the trousers out and held them up. “Look. I found these in one of the old stables. Your other clothes are in there too, an
d the furniture from this house.” Helena paused. “Why do you wear these clothes, Boy? You’ve got such lovely dresses.”
Boy dropped her pencil as quick as a lightning strike. She pushed her chair back, her face becoming paler than the paper she had been drawing on, as she stared at the trousers and the book Helena was still clutching.
Helena’s arms drooped and the trousers brushed against the floor.
“Please put those things back.” Boy’s voice was small and cracked.
Helena placed the book on the edge of Boy’s desk, held the trousers out to her. “But…these are yours…”
Boy slowly took the trousers from Helena and held them at arm’s length as if they might burn her. “You’re meddling in things you know nothing about.”
Helena took a step forward. How dare she say this; she was just trying to help. “I wasn’t meddling, I was looking for the Foxes’s things and thought your father might have put them in the stable.” A wave of tiredness washed over her.
Boy carefully folded the trousers and put them inside her desk. She lay the book on top and shut the lid.
“I don’t understand what’s happening in this house,” Helena said, unable to keep the impatience from her voice.
Boy dragged in a breath.
“If you tell me, perhaps I can help. And even if I can’t help, surely it would be good to talk about it. Mother always used to say, ‘better out than in’.”
Boy tilted her head and looked at the ceiling, trying not to cry. She parted her lips, as if the words were hovering on her tongue.
Helena held her breath. Would this be the moment she would find out the truth, when everything would become clear?
Boy turned back to the table and picked up her pencil. Slumping into her seat she began shading in the pictures of the flying machines, the lead of her pencil pressing so hard on the paper they left river-like grooves. “If only he was still here…” she said miserably.