| A Pocketful of Time by Michael Graeme "I realise the pleasure it gives me has little to do with its value, or the time that it keeps... ... and more with the times it has known." |
A Pocketful of Time by Michael Graeme He was a sharp suited man, the jeweller, and he had an air of superiority about him that I didn't like. Nor did I like the way his nose seemed to wrinkle as I laid my pocket-watch on the counter before him. He picked it up gingerly, as if afraid of catching something and then he squinted at it through his eyeglass, tightening his face into a fierce sort of expression. After a moment, he shrugged carelessly and handed it back. "No, you'd be wasting your time," he said. "It's in very poor shape, I'm afraid. You'd be better throwing it away and buying a new one." My heart sank. It was the same story all over town and I almost cursed the day the old watch had come into my life. I'd been so sure there was something special about it. _____ It had begun in Liverpool, with an hour to kill before boarding the ferry and a casual browse through the biggest car-boot sale you ever saw. I'd been working away all summer but now, I was going home. It was also to be my last long job in England so I thought, while I had the chance, I'd see if I could pick up a little memento of my time there. The pocket-watch was almost hidden on a rickety stall, beneath a tangle of bent and weary silverware. Most of the stuff looked beyond repair, all scrap to be melted down. But the watch seemed in one piece. It was its age that drew me, the dial tinged with yellow, the high domed glass covered with a multitude of little scratches and the silver case tarnished to the colour of a stormy grey sky. And it seemed to say: "Here I am, down here. Look!" I asked the woman who ran the stall if it still worked. "I wouldn't know,
love," she replied and then explained how she'd
picked it up from a house clearance, weeks before and had
never even thought to try it. There couldn't be much wrong I thought, and I kind of liked the look of it so I offered her eight pounds and we settled on ten. Then I pushed it into my pocket and rushed off, to catch the boat. It was later, when I stood by the handrail, watching the docks and the old Liver-birds slip by, I thought to look at it again. It had a solid, reassuring feel as I turned it in my hand, its tarnished case gleaming darkly under the twilight sky. I tried to open the back once more but this time, I must have caught a little lever for before I knew it, the whole thing seemed to turn itself inside out, the movement swivelling round on a hinge to lie flat in my palm. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, like a jewel, ornate, crafted by a long forgotten hand and breathtaking in its complexity. There was a makers name, too, engraved with a bold flourish: Kavanagh, Dublin. For a moment, I was almost disappointed my English memento had turned out to be from Ireland. But then I got to wondering how it might have come to England in the first place. In the pocket of an immigrant worker, long ago, perhaps? And I know it might sound daft but I got to thinking how the watch must have passed through so many hands since then, it's little coiled heart beating time through all the triumphs and calamities of mankind, since its maker first wound that key. Carefully, I closed it up and tucked it back into my pocket. It needed a little work but I'd sort it out somehow. I'd have the best jeweller in town take a look at it, for I knew in my bones I'd stumbled upon something very special. _______ It was a pity every
jeweller I tried was less enchanted by it than I,.... "But surely," I said. "There must be something you can do." "It's very old," replied the jeweller. "I could never get the parts. Even if I could, it would be very expensive and with a pocket-watch like that, I'd never guarantee how well it might tell the time." That night I sat in the kitchen at home with the watch hung on the little wooden stand I'd made specially for it. Around me, on the table were the books I'd borrowed from the library: Watch Repair for Beginners; Old Clocks and Watches. Well, I'd thought if I couldn't find someone to repair it, then I'd do the job myself. But it only took one look at its delicate innards and another at my great, clumsy fingers before I pushed the books away in despair. It was beyond me . Then Kathleen looked up from her lace-work and gave me a smile. God bless, her - the times she'd looked on, sympathetically, while I ran round on some wild goose chase. "Perhaps it's not the Jewellers you should be thinking of," she said. "Why not try Riley, the antique fella, down Main Street? He might know someone." _______ Now, Riley's shop reminded me of the junk I'd seen at the car-boot sale in Liverpool. He stood there in his thread-bare tweed, almost as old and dusty as the stuff he was selling. "It might make a bit as scrap," he said."The case would melt down nicely. I'll give you twenty pounds for it." Not bad, I thought. I could be shut of my troubles and ten pounds in profit. But as I watched him rolling it round in his hand, weighing it up with the shrewd, unromantic eye of the merchant, I began to feel uneasy. I thought of the craftsman who'd made it and of the many palms that might have turned it lovingly, ponderously, by warm firesides down the ages, and then I heard Riley talking of breaking it up for scrap. "Well, thanks," I said, rescuing it from his grasp. "But I only thought you might know someone who could fix it for me." Riley shook his head at my folly. "Well... I suppose you could try Sam Nolan," he said, scribbling a telephone number down on a scrap of paper. "He fixes clocks and things, but I warn you, he's a little eccentric." He bit his lip, then. "Thirty pounds?" he added. Even as I closed the door behind me, I could still hear his final offer: "Thirty five?" he called. But I was gone, heading for the nearest telephone box, hot on the trail of Sam Nolan. I found him in a tumbled down farmhouse at the end of a long, muddy drive and in a room where every inch of wall was filled with clocks - Grandfather clocks, Cuckoo-Clocks, Pendulum clocks, and clocks the likes of which I'd never seen before, all ticking, a mad but gloriously busy sound. His bench was covered in pocket-watches and bits of pocket-watches, springs, tiny screws, curiously shaped metal plates and a whole arsenal of mysterious tools. Sam sat there on his stool and gave me a welcoming smile. He was middle aged, with just a few grey hairs clinging willy-nilly to his shiny head and as I handed him my timepiece I noticed his fingers, long and nimble, like a concert pianist. "It's very old..." I said, almost apologetically. "And... it won't run properly... It keeps stopping....." Sam looked at it and gave an encouraging nod of appreciation. He rolled it over and nodded again. Then he flicked it open and squinted through his eyeglass at the ornate mechanism. "Ah, the balance is bust," he said, softly. "It's always the way - one careless bang and its gone." From the sad shake of his head, I gathered this was very serious indeed. "And I suppose you can't get hold of the bits these days, eh?" I said. He gave a little laugh. "I'd be surprised," he replied. "It was made in eighteen hundred - see the Hallmarks?" "Eighteen hundred! But... that means it's nearly.... two hundred years old!" "Ah, that's no great age," he went on. "I've a couple of watches here a good deal older. Sure. I can get it going, for you. I'll make a balance, no problem, and it'll clean up like new." He snapped the case shut and gazed upon it, thoughtfully. "Just think," he said, "When this watch was made, William Wordsworth was but a spirited youth.... and motor cars and railway lines hadn't even been dreamed of." "And we had sailing ships," I added. "We were navigating the darkest corners of the world in little wooden boats under sail....." Sam shook his head in a sort of dreamy reverence. Then he sighed. "You must be very proud to own it." I was, and pleased, too, that at last I'd found someone who understood my obsession, for I was sure he felt the same way about every clock and watch in the room. Oh yes, Sam Nolan was the man for me, I thought, until he told me what it would cost. "A hundred pounds," he said. "Well, there's a lot of work, tinkering around to get it running just right. Anyway, it's worth much more. Why then you might even sell it back to Riley for three times that..... Did the fella really have the cheek to offer you just twenty pounds for it?" I laughed to cover up my unease. Sam Nolan might as well have asked me for ten thousand. There was a long list of other, less frivolous things Kathleen and I could do with a hundred pounds. And I hadn't come this far just to sell the thing. I wanted to keep it. I wanted to treasure it. "Well, I'll have to ask the wife," I said. Then I turned sadly and took my leave. Driving home I felt its weight pressing upon my chest as it nestled in my shirt pocket and I smiled at the irony. Perhaps the old timepiece should have chosen a wealthier man than me that day in Liverpool. What did I want with this great lump of metal, anyway? I had a dozen watches already, cheap electronic things but they were good enough for a clumsy chap like me and any one of them could tell the time to a split second. Why, even when it was new, the books said an old fashioned watch like this could barely keep time to better than twenty minutes a day. Kathleen was waiting, anxious to know how I'd got on. When I told her, she gave me a hug. "Ah, well," she said. "Of course you must have it fixed. We've some money put by and anyway it's your birthday soon...." Now, as I write, it hangs from its wooden stand, ticking away as merry as you please. The clock in the hall struck ten but a few moments ago, yet the pocket-watch insists it's still a quarter to. But what does it matter? Considering it was beating time two hundred years ago, I'll not be worrying about a quarter of an hour. And looking at it swinging there, the light from my lamp making little sunbeams dance on its ancient silver case, I realise the pleasure it gives me has little to do with its value, or the time that it keeps... .... and more with the times it has known. _________ ~ First published March 1996 ~ ____________ The Story behind the Story You can buy a radio controlled clock for around the price of a music CD. These devices display the most accurate time on the planet, yet people are still willing to go out and pay hundreds of pounds for a far less accurate time-piece, one made of gears and levers and springs. I also have a liking for mechanical timepieces and the above story is based on my attempts to breathe life into a sadly neglected Thomas Russel pocket watch, made in Liverpool in 1900. From the moment I picked this watch up from a junk market, I could not look at it without thinking of the hundred years of history recorded in the sweep of its hands. Copyright © M Graeme 1996 |
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