"Maureen!" I cried and hugged her and kissed her. It was impossible to do anything else.
"Suddenly," she said. "Quite suddenly. During the weekend. I was very ill, you know, Roy, and then almost at once I was all right. It was yesterday, and I"ve been in a bit of a trance ever since. I"ve spent this morning buying clothes that we really can"t afford, and having my hair done, and just sitting in the square, and smiling at everything."
I kissed her again.
"How long have this lot been gone?" she went on. "Gilbert"s departed for the weekend and taken the children. Thought I was safely shut away. What"s he up to, I wonder?"
"This lot were here when I left on Sat.u.r.day. Come upstairs, Maureen."
We went up arm in arm, even though I was carrying my canvas bag.
At Mr Millar"s own floor, we stopped, and, for the h.e.l.l of it, I tried the handle of Mr Millar"s own outer door, the door into the pink room with the cornice of flowers. This time, the door opened.
I tried to push Maureen out, but I failed. Mr Millar was hanging there, in the outer office for all to see; and from a large hook, meant for hanging overcoats on a wall, which he, or someone, must have spent much time s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g into the plaster of the ceiling, or rather, I imagine, through the ceiling into one of the wooden joists of my floor above. The most curious thing was that though there was no detectable movement of air in the room, the body swung back and forth quite perceptibly, as if it had been made of papier mache, or some other featherweight expendable. Even the clothes looked papery and insubstantial. Was it the real Mr Millar at all who dangled there? It was remarkably hard to be sure.
A curious thing of another kind was that though, for a long time, I had been scared out of my wits by events in the house (and Maureen perhaps literally so), yet from quite soon after that climactic Sunday, I began to feel reasonably happy there almost all the time, indeed very happy indeed when I thought about Maureen or covered her sweet hair with kisses; and entirely forgot the idea of moving, or as entirely as life ever permits one to forget anything.
The Clock Watcher (1973).
Now that it has all come to an end, so that even the police are "making enquiries", I am trying to keep myself occupied for a little by writing out a story that no one will ever believe. Or no one just yet. Possibly some new Einstein will come to my rescue, sooner or later; and prove by theory what I have learned by experience. That sort of theory is thought up about every second year nowadays, though none of the theories make much difference to ordinary people"s lives.
Perhaps I never was quite an ordinary person, after all. Perhaps I ceased being ordinary when I married Ursula. Certainly they all said so; said I hadn"t thought what it implied, even that I had gone a bit round the bend during the last part of the war. But, when it comes to the point, not many people bother very much about who a man marries; though it can still be different when it is the case of a girl. And of course I had no parents by then.
Will anyone ever read this but me? Well, yes, perhaps they may. So I had better mention what happened to my parents, and remember to put in a word or two about other things like that. My father fell from the top of one of his buildings when I was four years old. Of course it was a dreadful thing to happen, but I was never what is called close to my father, or so it has seemed to me since, and my mother would not let me even go to the funeral, said it would be too morbid an experience for a young child, and left me locked in the bedroom when the procession left the house. Not that you could really call it a procession, I imagine. Especially as it was simply teeming with rain. But possibly I exaggerate that aspect of it as children are apt to do. My mother died during the war I was engaged in fighting. There was nothing unusual about her death. Every second person seems to die as she did, I regret to say.
So, despite a certain amount of chat, some of it fairly hostile, I was pretty much on my own at the time of my marriage, though I had managed to struggle back into my profession, and had a very fair job, all things considered, as a draughtsman with Rosenberg and Newton. I had better explain that too.
Old Jacob Rosenberg had been a friend of my father"s: so much so that he went on keeping an eye on my mother until his own death about a year before hers. (He dropped dead on one of the platforms at Green Park underground station, which is just the way that I myself should choose to go.) His son, young Jacob, gave me a place in the office after I came back from destroying the n.a.z.is. Of course, the Jews are like that: once a friend, always a friend, if you go on treating them properly. I cannot help saying it was where the n.a.z.is went wrong. There was a great deal to be said in favour of the n.a.z.is, of course, in many other ways. The Germans wouldn"t have fought so hard and long, if it hadn"t been so, quite unbelievable actually.
Rosenberg and Newton called themselves architects, but they were really something more speculative than that: more like business men with a good knowledge of construction. Not that they were not on the architectural register. Of course they were. Nor that their methods were not completely clean and honest. I saw enough of what went on to be quite sure about that, or I should not have stayed, however badly I needed a job, as I certainly did when mother proved to have left almost nothing. I think she had expected something appreciable from Mr Rosenberg"s will, but all she got was-of all things-a clock. A clock. Well, the police will find the pieces of it buried in the garden, if they care to dig . . .
I had learned a lot from Rosenberg and Newton before I left them to set up in a similar line of business on my own, though far more modestly, needless to say. I have been on my own for nearly three years, not very long, but my name has become quite well thought of in this extremely prosperous suburb where so many appalling, unbelievable things have been happening to me, without anyone really knowing, though not without some observing-what there was to be observed. And, even there, it is not altogether a case of so many things happening. There is only one thing really; one thing that is capable of indefinite extension.
I am a quiet sort of person really. They say that you won"t succeed in business unless you make friends fairly readily; especially in the property business. Myself, I don"t know about that. I have acquaintances, of course, many of them; but Ursula and I hardly went in for friends at all. We didn"t need them. I had always been rather like that, and now we were wrapped up in one another and thought that third parties would only spoil things. I know that was how I felt; and, as a matter of fact, I know it was how she felt also. And it never seemed to stand in the way of business success: well, quite enough success to satisfy me. I never wanted to be so successful that I should see less of Ursula, and I simply cannot understand all those Rotary Clubs and Round Tables and Elks and Optimists, though I might have felt it right to join the British Legion, if the British Legion had been what it was after the first war. All the same, I like to dress smartly, and that is good for business, whatever they say. I hated the state one got into during the war. But then, though I have certain views of my own, I hated the war altogether. G.o.d, it was ghastly!
I first set eyes on Ursula when she was sitting on a bank by the roadside, somewhere near Monchen-Gladbach. I cannot say exactly where it was. As a matter of fact, we actually went back some years later to look for the place, and could not find it at all. Not that I wish to suggest there was anything peculiar about that, or anything related to what was already very much happening-elsewhere. It was simply that the whole face of Germany had changed by that time, and thank G.o.d for it.
When I originally spotted Ursula, there was no traffic on the roads, first, because all the vehicles had been destroyed or commandeered; second, because in that area there were no roads that remained pa.s.sable except by military stuff, tanks and jeeps. There were no people about either: local people, I mean. Of course it was nothing like the Somme and the Aisne twenty years earlier, nothing at all. It was perhaps more depressing than horrifying; anyway at a first look. The second world war was just over, and some of those whom I knew-not well, as I say-had the pleasant job of routing out the local concentration camp.
Ursula, mercifully, had nothing to do with that. She came from the Black Forest, hundreds of miles to the south. She was an only child and had lost both her parents when Freudenstadt was removed from the face of the earth. She herself had been working nearby as a domestic servant right through the latter part of the war. This seems strange to us, but Germany never really got round to "total war" and all that, although people here think that she did. Of course, Ursula was not properly a domestic servant. She was simply allowed to masquerade as one by the people who lived in one of the big houses, and who, like many of their kind, didn"t care for the n.a.z.is. Ursula"s father was a manufacturer of Black Forest souvenirs, and, Ursula told me, no one interfered very much with that either, until the very last months of the war. I describe him as a "manufacturer", because he seems to have been in a quite big way of business, with many employees, and an agreeable income. Certainly, Ursula went to a costlier school than I did, and she also emerged better educated, n.a.z.is or no n.a.z.is. Though I went to a public school, and a quite well-known one, it was not Eton, and the field is one where the descent from the best is steep. More than anything else, Ursula"s father manufactured clocks; cuckoo clocks, painted clocks, and huge clocks in dark spiky wood or in polished spiky metal that chimed and struck and kept tabs on the phases of the moon, not to say the zodiac. I can be specific because Ursula brought many such clocks into our home; in memory of her father, or otherwise. It was the downfall and ruin of her beauty and of our love.
And how beautiful she was when my eyes first lighted upon her! Her parents being Catholics, she had been named after St Ursula of Cologne, who went on the long voyage and was ultimately martyred with all her virgins, hundreds of them, I believe; and a saint is precisely what my girl looked like-then and for a long time afterwards. She had a gentle, trusting gaze, despite everything that had happened to her; and a mouth like a soft flower at the most perfect moment of its blooming. She was still wearing the maid"s black dress which had been part of her disguise, so to speak; and, again, many people will be surprised to hear that it was made of real silk. Even the fact that this dress was slightly torn and slightly dirty, added to the effect she gave of having something to do with religion. She had no property of any kind, apart from a handkerchief. That was made of silk too, but this time it was a survival from her first communion. It was very small, but it had a wide edging of lace, made-yes-by the Black Forest nuns. Later, she gave me the handkerchief as a treasure to keep. I kissed it and hid it away, but, though it seems incredible, especially to me, I realized in no time that I had managed to lose it. Of course it must be somewhere in the house now, and I never mentioned the loss to Ursula. At the time I first saw Ursula, she was weeping into this tiny handkerchief, and I lent her a much larger one, just as the kind man does in a novel or a show. I was awaiting "repatriation" at the time, and had managed to evade any particular duties now that the destruction was over. No one who missed seeing what we did to Germany can have any idea, and the Germans put it all back in no time; Freudenstadt, as it happens, first of all, or just about.
I took Ursula under my wing at once, right close under it. It was what one did at that time, but, from the very first, I meant more by it than did most of the others, and when difficulty arose about Ursula coming to England, I had no doubt in my heart about a.s.suring the authorities in writing that she was coming to marry me.
I hadn"t seen her for more than three months and I went to Harwich to meet her. Little Attlee had come into power by then, and many of my acquaintance had voted for him, especially, as we all know, those who had been fighting under Churchill. England had started on her long soft greyness, but when Ursula emerged from her grilling by the Aliens Department, she was startlingly well turned out and accompanied by an unexpected quant.i.ty of brand new luggage. She told me that she had managed to avoid "relief agencies" of all kinds, and had always been in a real job of some sort. Ironically, it was a bit different here. Though we all know how run down England was at that time, Ursula was not permitted to take a job at all until after we were married and she had become a British citizen; so that at first she was reduced to working free of charge for a charity. It sent bundles somewhere or other; and, as in Germany, it was amazing how much had remained in back rooms with which to stuff them.
When Ursula arrived, I was back to living in my mother"s and father"s old house, and there was nothing to do but take her there. I was with Rosenberg and Newton by then, and young Jacob Rosenberg knew all about it, and was very kind and decent. Certain others were not; and, oddly enough, when I made it clear that I was about to marry Ursula, seemed not in the least rea.s.sured, but rather the contrary, as I have said. There was even talk of my having brought over a foreign mouth to feed. No doubt it was called a n.a.z.i mouth when I was not actually listening. Of course it is unconventional for the bridegroom to lead the bride from his own front door.
In my mother"s house, Ursula set up the first of her clocks. I had noticed that her shiny baggage at Harwich included a black, oblong box in what looked like leather but was, in fact, a good imitation of leather. The clock inside was a cuckoo, fairly large and in plain dark wood. The bird, which was paler, emitted a sharp, strident shriek, which could be heard at the hour all over the house. At the quarters, including the half, the bird was silent, so at first I reflected that things might be worse. I was working hard both with Rosenberg and Newton (I abominate those who take money without even attempting to give a proper return for it) and also with finishing off the house before putting it up for sale; so that I could sleep like a log even with the cuckoo clock in the same room with me.
But before long the woman next door came in with a complaint about it. She refused to "discuss the matter" with Ursula and insisted upon seeing me. She was quite young, with blonde shoulder-length hair turned outward at the ends, and nice legs. Indeed, she was a nice person altogether, I thought. She said, quite agreeably, that the cuckoo kept her three little boys awake all night. "It doesn"t sound like a cuckoo, at all," I remember her saying. I couldn"t disagree, but replied that clock cuckoos seldom do; which is, surely, true enough? I said I would speak to Ursula about it, and even, at that early stage, so to say, I thought I detected a gleam of scepticism in the woman"s eye, though a scepticism that was not unfriendly to me. "I"ll do what I can," I concluded, and the woman smiled very nicely, and attempted no further argument. I was rather shocked to realize that the wretched cuckoo could be heard at all outside the house.
Ursula did not enter into the spirit of what was, after all, a typically British situation. On the contrary, when I raised the question, in as offhand a manner as I could manage, she became tense, which with her was unusual; and when I suggested that the cuckoo might be silenced at least during the night, bedded down in the nest, as it were, she cried out, "That would be fatal."
I was at the same time astonished-and yet not astonished. I have to leave it at that.
"We could easily have someone in to make the necessary adjustment," I said mildly, though, I suppose, with some pressure behind the words.
"No one may touch my clocks except the person I bring," she replied. Those were her exact words, very faintly foreign in form, though by now Ursula spoke English pretty well, having improved her knowledge of it with a speed that amazed me.
"Your clocks, darling?" I queried, smiling at her. Of course I knew of only one.
She did not answer me but said, "That woman with her hair and legs! What business of hers is our life?" It was curious how Ursula specified the very points that I myself, as a man, had noticed about our neighbour. I was often aware of Ursula"s extraordinary insight; sometimes it was almost telepathic.
Even then, however, it seemed to me that Ursula was more frightened than aggressive, let alone jealous, as other women would have been. I reflected that a foreigner might well be upset by a complaint from a neighbour and uncertain how to deal with it. Already, Ursula was smiling through her sulkiness and telling me that even the sulks were a.s.sumed. All the same, it was obvious that there was a reality somewhere in all this.
Ursula duly did precisely nothing about the shrieking, nocturnal cuckoo. But shortly after the approach by our glamorous neighbour, Ursula and I married and moved on.
The wedding took place, of necessity, in the local Catholic church, and I admit that it was one of the most unnerving experiences I had by then been through, war or no war. The keen young priest was bitterly antagonistic and, at the actual ceremony, kept his burning eyes fixed upon me at every moment the ritual left possible, as if he hoped to sear me into "conversion" there and then, or, alternatively, to scorch and dissolve me from the backbone outwards. And, of course, in those days I had to sign a declaration that all our children would be raised in the Catholic faith. (And quite right too from the Catholic point of view.) Ursula, moreover, seemed different-very different. This was territory that was hers, and not mine: and more, of course, than just territory. I am sure she tried to bring me in too, but there was nothing really possible for her to do about that. Earlier she had been upset when I refused in advance to wear a wedding ring in ordinary life, as it were, in the way the continentals do. But there was nothing for me to do about that either.
Most weddings are matters of equal gain and loss. It is not the wedding that counts, though so many girls think it is. Weddings are, at the best, neutral. Seldom are they even fully volitional.
But I should say at once, very clearly, that Ursula and I were happy, incredibly happy. It would not be sensible to expect happiness like that to last, and I now see that I stopped expecting any such thing a long time ago. Our happiness was not of this adult world, where happiness is only a theory. Ursula and I were happy in the way of happy children. What could we expect, then? But other kinds of happiness are merely resignation; and often abject defeat.
People couldn"t at that period go abroad for their honeymoons, so Ursula and I went to Windermere and Ullswater. They seemed more suitable than Bournemouth or than even Kipling"s South Downs, by now under crops. Ursula excelled me without difficulty in swimming, sailing, and fell-walking alike. Marriage had sheered off the first edge of romance from our actual caresses, but there was a sweet affection between us, as between a devoted brother and a devoted sister, though I suppose that is not an approved way of putting it. I always wanted a sister, and never more than at this present moment.
Our nights were certainly quieter without the noisy clock, though Ursula had brought with her a small subst.i.tute. It did not work on the cuckoo principle, and indeed neither chimed nor struck in any way. Even its tick was so muted as to be inaudible. None the less, it was in appearance a pleasant object, brightly painted; in the modern world, still very much a souvenir. Ursula said that she had merely seen it in a shop window and "been unable to resist it". I wondered at the time from whom she had learned that always slightly sinister phrase; and I fear that I also wondered, even at the time, whether her story was strictly true. This sounds a horrible thing to say, but later it emerged that something horrible indeed was all around us, however difficult to define. I imagine that the little clock that accompanied us on our honeymoon had been constructed by the insertion of a very subtle and sophisticated mechanism into a more or less intentionally crude and commercial case. It purred like a slinky p.u.s.s.y, and when, later, I clubbed it to shards, I daresay I destroyed more than 100 of purchase money.
One curious thing I noticed on the honeymoon. I may perhaps have noticed it earlier, but I am very sure that it was on our honeymoon that I spoke about it. This was that for all her obvious interest in clocks, Ursula never had the least idea of the time.
We were sitting by the water near Lowwood, and dusk was coming on.
"It"s growing very dark," said my Ursula, in her precise way. "Is there a storm coming?"
"It"s getting dark because it"s nearly seven o"clock," I replied. This was in April.
She turned quite panicky. "I thought it was only about three."
This was absurd, because we had not even reached the waterside until well after that. But we had been much occupied while we had been sitting and lying there, so that, after thinking for a moment, all I said was "You need a watch, my darling. I"ll buy you one for your birthday."
She answered not a word, but now looked angry as well as frightened. I remembered at once that I had made a mistake. I had learned the previous year that Ursula disliked her birthday being even mentioned, young though she was; let alone being celebrated, however quietly. I had, of course, without thinking used a form of words common when the idea of a present arises.
"Sorry, darling," I said. "I"ll give you a watch some other time." Oh, that word "time".
"I don"t want a watch." She spoke so low that I could hardly hear her. "I can"t wear a watch."
I think that was what she said, but she might have said, "I can"t bear a watch". I was uncertain at the time, but I made no enquiry. If it was a matter of wearing a watch, we all know that there are people who cannot. My own father"s elder brother, my Uncle Allardyce, is one of them, for example.
In any case, the whole thing was getting out of proportion, not to say out of control. Endeavouring to make the best of my mistake, I kept my mouth shut, tried to smile, and gently took Ursula"s hand.
Her hands were particularly small and soft. They always fascinated and delighted me. But now the hand that I took hold of was not merely cold, but like a tight bag of wet ice.
"Darling!"
I could not help almost crying out; nor, I fear, could I help dropping her hand. I was completely at a loss for the proper thing to do next; as if something altogether unprecedented had happened.
She sat there, rather huddled; and then she gazed up at me, so sweetly, so lovingly, and so helplessly.
I sprang to my feet. "Get up," I cried, in my brotherly way-or the way I always thought of as brotherly. I lifted her on to her legs, pulling her not by the hands but by the shoulders, which was always easy, as she was so pet.i.te in every way. "Get up, get up. We must run back. We must run."
And run we did, without a word of comment or argument from her; though not all the way, or anything like it, because we were staying about a couple of miles off in a sort of apartment house owned by a retired school-teacher named Mrs Ardale.
In theory, I could have afforded something rather better, but the big hotels were either out of action just then or in some way unsuitable. In the end, I had just gone to the Post Office and enquired, and they had told me about Mrs Ardale at once. It seemed a queer way to organize a honeymoon, especially when we are supposed to have only one honeymoon in each lifetime, but Ursula and I were like that from the first-and for some time still lying ahead. In any case, between us the idea of a honeymoon was a bit of a joke, as it often is in these times; but, for Ursula and me, a tender joke, which is perhaps not so usual. Mrs Ardale, by the way, was a divorcee, unlikely though that seems. She never stopped mentioning the fact. She also wore a very obvious chestnutty wig, though Ursula said her own hair was perfectly all right when one was permitted to catch a glimpse of it. I never took to Mrs Ardale, but she certainly kept the place very clean, which was important to Ursula, and food at that time was much of a muchness everywhere, or, rather, little of a littleness. Mrs Ardale used to serve us crabs caught in the lake. Not every day, of course.
Later, we moved on to a less satisfactory place, high above Ullswater. It was a bit of a shack in every way, but, fortunately, Ursula seemed not to mind much, possibly because she was now really getting into her athletic stride, small though she was. She was often a long way ahead of me at the crest of the fell, and she could swim like one of those slender, swift fish that never seem to undulate (or are they really fish?). But it was when we hired a dinghy and went sailing that I felt almost embarra.s.sed by my uselessness and general inept.i.tude. Ursula always looked so competent, and she always seemed to have exactly the right clothes for whatever we were doing, simple though they were. I myself both look and feel better in business clothes-clothes for ordinary life in town. But I reflected that the hire-dinghies could hardly be at their best from a handling point of view after five years of total war and with no tackle yet available for repairing them; and, in any case, I have never seen myself as any kind of sportsman, nor has my health seemed to suffer from it. I liked my darling to be so spry and agile when we were on holiday together. I never minded in the least being shown up by her, though many would have said it would be bad from a business point of view. But at that time it could hardly have mattered, as I was still with Rosenberg and Newton, and not yet self-employed.
Which, needless to say, was why, when we settled down again, we started buying a house in the same suburb, the place where I had always lived. Also, old Newton, young Jacob"s partner from his father"s time, was able to help us a lot there: not only with getting a really good mortgage, but with getting a really good house too, and quite reasonably cheap, as he was in a position to put a little quiet pressure on the man who was selling. The property business is full of aspects like that, and it is useless to deny it. It always has been, and doubtless it always will be, until we mostly become cave-dwellers again, which may be soon. It was a remarkably good thing to have old Newton behind one when one was looking for a suburban house about twelve months after the second world war, especially as he was in local politics, which the Rosenbergs, father and son, always made a point of avoiding.
But Ursula would have done well in one of those caves. I could imagine her, small though she was, in a bearskin, and nothing much else; and coping with all that might arise far better than I can cope with even a luxury hotel, and terribly sweet and attractive all the time, often unbearably so. As it was, she settled down as if she had lived in this steady-as-she-goes suburb all her life. This suburb. This house. We had given more than three weeks to our honeymoon, world scarcity or no world scarcity. Speaking for myself, I could have gone on like that with Ursula for ever. I have a conscience, but few strong ambitions, as I have said. Oh, I can see Ursula"s deep blue eyes now-as they were then-on our honeymoon-and afterwards.
But as soon as we were well and truly in, Ursula brought out no fewer than three more clocks. They were additional to the original cuckoo clock, and, I suppose, to the soft-speaking traveler"s clock also. As it happens, I was never told at the time what became of that one. When I enquired, putting in a good word for the quietness, Ursula simply replied that "it was a once-for-all clock for a once-for-all purpose, darling," and smiled at me knowingly, or mock-knowingly.
"That was a clock I really liked, darling," I replied, but she said nothing in return, knowing perfectly well that, even then, I did not really like any of the others.
The truth was, from first to last, that one could not talk at all to Ursula about the clocks. About many other things, including some that were beyond my own scope, as I am no intellectual; and at almost any time: but never about them-about the clocks. One"s words seemed to slip off her pretty, perfect body, her prettily chosen, freshly ironed dress, and then to dissolve on the carpet around her pink or yellow high-heeled shoes. I have in mind the grey carpet with the big, bold chains of flowers on which I last saw her standing and saying her listless goodbye when I set out to consult Dr Tweed.
I have said that one could not talk on the subject to Ursula. I suppose it would be truer to say that I could not. That, before long, was just the point. Perhaps there was another who could.
But, then, what normal, ordinary person-English person, anyway-could like those particular clocks; or at least so many of them? A single decorated clock, possibly-if the person cared for things of that general type-as I admit many seem to-though fewer perhaps than formerly. I am fairly sure that, at the best, the quant.i.ty of souvenirs brought back to Britain from the Black Forest by the public at large is nothing like what it was when the Prince Consort was alive and setting the vogue, with real trees at Christmas as well. And now it is years after the end of the second world war.
The clocks that Ursula brought into the house were not all grotesque in themselves: not all of them were carved into grinning gnomes, or giants with long teeth, or bats with wings that seemed to have altered their positions from time to time, though never when one was looking (or, once more, never when I was looking)-though some of them were, indeed, carved in those ways. It was more the overall uncouth monotony of the clocks that palled: that, more than the detail work applied to any one of them. As time pa.s.sed, Ursula brought in more and more clocks, until, long before the end, I was almost afraid to count how many. I own it. I am not in the least ashamed of it, and what went on to happen, showed that I had no reason to be.
The clocks were so evenly brown-dark brown. When there was coloured detail, and often there was a ma.s.s of it, the colours were never bright colours. Or rather they were, and, at the same time, they weren"t. I have often thought that the sense of colour is not strong in Germany. Of course, no one country can expect to have everything, and the last thing I wish to do is introduce an element of rivalry. I detest all things like that.
The coloured decoration of the clocks reminded me of fungus on a woodland tree, and there are many who find fungi not only fascinating but actually beautiful. One can eat many of them, if one has to, and sometimes I felt exactly that about the coloured clock decorations. They looked edible-upon compulsion. I imagine that the people who thought up the style in the first place based it upon what they saw in the vast, dark forests around them. The fungi, the teeth, the wings, the dark or shiny brownness. Even the shrieking and calling of the hours and the quarters might have been imitated from the crying of extinct, forest fowl. When there was a chorus of it in the same house, the effect was very much of a dark glade in which some unfortunate traveller had been deserted-or had merely lost his way.
This house is a fair-sized structure for these times, and the clocks were distributed about it very evenly, there being seldom more than three in any single room, and often only one. I fancy (or perhaps I know) that Ursula wanted there to be no room in our house without one of her clocks in it. Distribution was important. It is true that it dispersed the quarterly chorus, but, on the other hand, it positively enhanced the forest glade impression, especially if one were alone in any of the rooms. First, one creature would shrill out, and then, almost instantly, another and another, all at different distances in the house, and with very different cries, and another and another and another; some, one was aware, made of wood, usually carved crudely but elaborately, others made of tin or sheet steel, some made even of plastic. Of course we in the construction business have good reason to be grateful for the coming of plastic, but I like it to keep its proper place, and not set about devouring every other material in the home, as it is very apt to do.
As will be imagined, clocks often spoke simultaneously, but what I found particularly eerie was the sequence of sound that arose when two or more of them not so much coincided as overlapped. This effect, in the nature of things, was seldom repeated in precisely the same form. Clocks only harmonize to that degree when a team of scientists has been at work on the design and setting up (if even then). In this house, the normal tiny variations in the time-keeping led to sounds that were unpredictable and often quite disturbing. And this was true even though most of our clocks spoke but once, however frequently they did it. Not all, however: Ursula had found some expensive pieces in which the bird sang a whole song. One of these vocalists was golden all over, from tail to beak; and lived in a golden schloss with a tiny golden deathshead upon every pinnacle of it. Another was a shrunk-down bird of paradise with variegated feathers, though whether the feathers were real or not I am unable to say. There would seem to be problems in finding feathers like bird-of-paradise feathers except that they had to be one-tenth, perhaps, of the size. What I can testify is that our wee friend squawked as loud as his full-grown cousin can possibly have done in the forest deep.
How could Ursula afford such treasures? Where did she find her clocks, in any case? Only once, to the best of my belief, did she return after her marriage to Germany. That was when she went with me on our little trip around the region where we had met and had become such friends. And, as far as I am aware, she did not then range even near to the Black Forest.
The answer to my two questions appears to have been that a seller of clocks visited our house when I was not there; and that his terms were easy, though in one sense only.
I am reasonably sure that these visits went on for a long time before I had any inkling of them. Needless to say, that state of affairs is common enough in any suburb; matter mainly for a laughter session, except for those immediately affected.
I used merely to notice when I came home, that the clocks had been moved around, sometimes almost all of them; and that every now and then there seemed to have been a new acquisition. Once or twice it was my ears that first told me of the newcomer, rather than my eyes. The mixed-up noise made by all the different clocks had odd effects upon me. I felt tensed up immediately I entered the house; but it was not entirely disagreeable. Far from it, in fact. The truth seemed to be that this tensing up brought me nearer to Ursula than at other times, and in a very real and practical way, which many other husbands I am acquainted with would be glad to have the secret of. For example, we were never quite the same together when we were elsewhere, even when we were together in her own homeland. Then it was more like brother and sister, as I have said; though fine in its own way too. What is more, my response to the clocks could vary almost 100 per cent. Sometimes the real din they made could drive me quite crazy, so that I barely knew what I was doing or even thinking. At other times, I hardly noticed anything. It is difficult to say anything more about it.
Then I began to observe that divers small repairs seemed to have been done. For a long while I said nothing. Ursula could not be made to talk about her clocks, and that seemed to be that. One shakes down even to mysteries, when so much else in a relationship is right, as it was in ours. But on a certain, important occasion, there were two things at the same time.
This house offers a completely separate dining-room (as well as a third sitting-room which I tried for a time to use as a kind of sub-office), and in this dining-room Ursula had set up a clock made like a peasant hut, with imitation thatch, from beneath which Clever Kuckuck peeked out every half-hour and whistled at us. (We were spared the other two quarters-with this particular clock.) During a period of time before the evening in question, it had become obvious that something was wrong with Kuckuck. Instead of springing at us with his whistle, he seemed merely to sidle out, quite slowly; to stand there hunched to one side; and rather to croak than to shrill. He was plainly ailing, but I said nothing; and he continued to ail for a period of weeks.
Then on that evening I heard him and I saw him as he spoke up at the very instant I entered the dining-room. He was once more good as in the factory.
I truly believed my comment was spontaneous and involuntary.
"Who"s fixed Old Cuckoo?" I asked Ursula.
She said nothing. That was as usual on the particular topic, but this time she did not begin serving the broth either. She just stood there with the ladle in her hand, and I swear she was shaking. Well, of course she was. I know very well now.
I think it was this shaking, combined with her rather insulting silence (accustomed though I was), that made me behave badly, which I had almost never done before. Perhaps never at all. I think so. Never to anyone.
"Well, who?"
I am afraid that I half-shouted at her. It is well known that seeing a woman in a shaky state either softens a man or hardens him.
As she just went on silently shaking, I bawled out something like "You"re just going to tell me what"s going on for once. Who is it that looks after these clocks of yours?"
And then-at that precise moment-a voice spoke right behind me. It was a new voice, but what it had to say was not new. What it said was "Cuckoo"; but it said it exactly like a human voice, speaking rather low, not at all like one of these infernal machines.
I wheeled round, and there at the centre of the dining-room sideboard, staring at me, stood a small clock in gilt and silver that had not been there even at breakfast that morning, or, as far as I knew, anywhere else in the house. It was covered with filigree which sparkled and winked at me. It was also very fast. I knew that without having to consult my watch or anything else. Ursula, as I have said, never seemed to bother very much about whether her clocks showed the right time or not, but I had become so conscious of time-at least, of "the time"-that for most of it I knew what it was as if by a new instinct.
At this point, Ursula spoke. Her words were: "A man comes from Germany. He knows how to handle German clocks." She spoke quietly but distinctly, as if the words had been rehea.r.s.ed.
I am sure I stared at her; probably even glared at her.
"How often does he come?" I asked.
"As often as he can manage," she replied. She spoke with considerable dignity; which tended of itself to put me in the wrong.
"And what about you?" I asked.
She smiled-in her usual, sweet way. "What about me?" she rejoined.
And of course I could not quite answer that. My own question had been too vague, perhaps also too idiomatic for a foreigner; though I knew myself what I meant.
"It is necessary that he should come regularly," Ursula continued. "Necessary for the clocks. He keeps them going." She was still smiling, but still shaking also, possibly more than before. I fancy that what had happened was that she had made a big decision: the decision to disclose something to me for the first time. She was bracing herself, nerving herself, consciously drawing upon her hold over me.
"Oh, of course it would never do," I said, sarcastically taking advantage of her, "it would never do if all the clocks stopped at the same time."
And then came the greatest astonishment of that important evening. As I spoke, Ursula went absolutely white and fainted.