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Authors: Morag Joss
Tags: Fiction, Psychological
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and crisp packets for all he cared. She got in.
It took me a day or two to get over the trip. Not for a moment did I feel sorry Iâd done it, of course not. What took it out of me was having to be out there again, I mean on the outside, where nobody knew who I was. It made me feel angry that nobody was able to see that inside I had become so much more myself.
I was angry in the way I was when Father died. Father and his clock that became my clock, and the anger I felt apparently towards him but really, even before I found out he wasnât to blame, towards myself. I havenât gone over the clock business in my mind for such a long time. When I do think of it, I tend to remember the way Father would sometimes give me one of his kind looks when Mother was not in the room, and nod towards the dining room and the direction of the ticking and say never you mind, that clockâs yours when I go and I would look upset and then heâd say youâre not to mind selling it. Itâs to see you through college, you sort yourself out and you be a teacher, now. Like your Dad. He had been an English teacher, I think not a very good one. It was another of the things Mother kept ready in her mouth, seldom said but ready to sting him with, how hopeless he was not to have made it even to head of department, let alone headmaster. I thought I would like to teach history.
So he always meant me to sell the clock, to see me through university. I think thatâs why he never really explained to me how beautiful it was, how wonderfully it was made. He never showed me its workings or pointed out what made it so rare, so fine and valuable, for fear that he would not be able to hide from me how much it meant to him. If only he had! If only he had given me eyes to see his clock for what it was, and the words to understand it. I wouldnât have been so deceived over it later if he had just let me see it as he did. I wouldnât have spent so long cursing his memory and thinking he was as big a cheat as Mother.
After I went on the bus to Bath that day to do all that was necessary to place the advertisement, I resolved not to go out again. How it rained in the week that followed! But on the next fine day I found some paraffin and made a bonfire at the side of the orchard. I burned my old navy coat, and then all my other old clothes. Standing out there watching the clothes go up in flames I went on thinking about Father and the clock, and I remembered another of the things he would sometimes say if Mother was not in the room. I suppose it was the nearest he came to letting me see the clock as he did. I canât remember the exact words he used, but it was something about time passing painfullyâso this must have been in his last year, then, though by some trick of memory it seems to me that he said it at times all through my life, even if time had to pass painfully, even if your minutes and hours offered up nothing but indiscriminate and bigger doses of pain, it was still consoling in a way to have time measured so beautifully, on a clock like his.
And as I watched the old clothes burn I thought how solitary I must look, a woman standing by a bonfire in an orchard in winter. Yet I was not lonely, for I knew that the house and all that it contained would be company enough until such time as my son should come to me.
February
A few weeks later a stale sense of familiarity with what he was doing surfaced in Michaelâs mind. He had had times like this before, times when dark and light became the same, when a part of him seemed to absent itself from the world that his body lived in and inhabit some ditch all of its own. Such times could come upon him without warning, but usually they followed something difficult such as his court appearance. And they were worse in the winter because around the end of the second week, when he might be feeling that he could wash or get out of bed, he would then have to overcome the cold and
It took me a day or two to get over the trip. Not for a moment did I feel sorry Iâd done it, of course not. What took it out of me was having to be out there again, I mean on the outside, where nobody knew who I was. It made me feel angry that nobody was able to see that inside I had become so much more myself.
I was angry in the way I was when Father died. Father and his clock that became my clock, and the anger I felt apparently towards him but really, even before I found out he wasnât to blame, towards myself. I havenât gone over the clock business in my mind for such a long time. When I do think of it, I tend to remember the way Father would sometimes give me one of his kind looks when Mother was not in the room, and nod towards the dining room and the direction of the ticking and say never you mind, that clockâs yours when I go and I would look upset and then heâd say youâre not to mind selling it. Itâs to see you through college, you sort yourself out and you be a teacher, now. Like your Dad. He had been an English teacher, I think not a very good one. It was another of the things Mother kept ready in her mouth, seldom said but ready to sting him with, how hopeless he was not to have made it even to head of department, let alone headmaster. I thought I would like to teach history.
So he always meant me to sell the clock, to see me through university. I think thatâs why he never really explained to me how beautiful it was, how wonderfully it was made. He never showed me its workings or pointed out what made it so rare, so fine and valuable, for fear that he would not be able to hide from me how much it meant to him. If only he had! If only he had given me eyes to see his clock for what it was, and the words to understand it. I wouldnât have been so deceived over it later if he had just let me see it as he did. I wouldnât have spent so long cursing his memory and thinking he was as big a cheat as Mother.
After I went on the bus to Bath that day to do all that was necessary to place the advertisement, I resolved not to go out again. How it rained in the week that followed! But on the next fine day I found some paraffin and made a bonfire at the side of the orchard. I burned my old navy coat, and then all my other old clothes. Standing out there watching the clothes go up in flames I went on thinking about Father and the clock, and I remembered another of the things he would sometimes say if Mother was not in the room. I suppose it was the nearest he came to letting me see the clock as he did. I canât remember the exact words he used, but it was something about time passing painfullyâso this must have been in his last year, then, though by some trick of memory it seems to me that he said it at times all through my life, even if time had to pass painfully, even if your minutes and hours offered up nothing but indiscriminate and bigger doses of pain, it was still consoling in a way to have time measured so beautifully, on a clock like his.
And as I watched the old clothes burn I thought how solitary I must look, a woman standing by a bonfire in an orchard in winter. Yet I was not lonely, for I knew that the house and all that it contained would be company enough until such time as my son should come to me.
February
A few weeks later a stale sense of familiarity with what he was doing surfaced in Michaelâs mind. He had had times like this before, times when dark and light became the same, when a part of him seemed to absent itself from the world that his body lived in and inhabit some ditch all of its own. Such times could come upon him without warning, but usually they followed something difficult such as his court appearance. And they were worse in the winter because around the end of the second week, when he might be feeling that he could wash or get out of bed, he would then have to overcome the cold and
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