The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times

by Xan Brooks

  “Me?” says the imp, his teeth working at a piece of gristle. “I don’t know, can’t remember. Long time, probably.”

  “Poor soul, it must be quite a trial. Big boy likes you needs constant replenishing.”

  “If we sold Queenie, we could eat like this every day.”

  “Queenie,” shouts Uriah. “Queenie, cover your ears.”

  Onward they travel, the spiritualist and his imp. Can this even be counted as Kent anymore? They turn the trap onto a lane that diminishes by degrees until it becomes no more than a rutted woodland track and press on through a light drizzle until they arrive at an open-sided shed that is used to store timber. The two men clear out the logs and wait out the rain. Then Elms departs for a spell in search of kindling and when he returns the old man peers out with inexplicable shyness and says, “Do it again, my dear boy. Show me how it’s done.”

  “Do what?”

  “You know perfectly well.”

  Under heavy cloud cover the flames are brighter than before. When the fat tramp rubs his fingers they curl and dance like the corona around a Christmas pudding. They catch at the kindling and turn from blue to orange. Then Uriah leans in and takes Elms’ hand, marvelling at the warmth that still clings to his skin. And the intimacy of the gesture knocks out Elms’ defences; it makes him loud and sentimental. Choking back tears, he says that he loves old Uriah who has become like a father to him. He wants to make the spiritualist proud. He says that nobody has been as good to him as Uriah has been.

  “God’s little imp,” the old spiritualist says.

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “God’s little imp. That’s what you are. The very last vestige of the irrational world.” He licks his stained teeth and grins shark-like through his beard. He tells the fat tramp that he should not be afraid; that he has been built for great things and that they will do those great things together. Uriah will teach him. He has taken him under his wing. One year from now they will be living like kings.

  “Did the amulet tell you all of that?”

  “The amulet.” Uriah laughs. “The amulet is nothing, it’s worthless. Or rather, it’s two worthless trinkets. Look closely and you can see where I glued it.”

  Warily he puts out his pale fingers in order to study the thing. But the firelight is fitful and it throws spastic shadows – and perhaps Uriah’s handiwork is better than he claims. And perhaps, for whatever reason, Uriah is not telling the truth.

  “I don’t believe it,” he says. “It seems to me it must be worth pots of money.”

  The rain has stopped but the woodland is dripping. Elms parks himself by the campfire, sitting on his heels. And at his back, the old man keeps talking. His talk is torrential, he is swept up in the moment. He says he has spent his life among tinkers and thieves, beggars and frauds. He has been struck by policemen and wintered at a prison. He has bedded too many women and sat with too many widows and has called out the dead enough times to know that what’s dead is dead and that there is no real magic beyond the cheap magic of talk, until one day on the road he spies this fat, unwashed fellow who might have been belched out of nowhere.

  Elms pokes a stick at the flames. “Maybe I should say, ‘My hands have caught fire. Fetch me a bucket of water!’. . .”

  Uriah ignores him; he is building to a crescendo. He booms, “Fifty-eight years I have wandered this earth. And I have never encountered anybody remotely like you.”

  Morning draws in. The track winds on through the trees and presently drops down to parallel a glistening black river, shallow and swift. Uriah uncouples Queenie from the trap and coaxes her across to the water to drink. Elms trots at their heels, his teeth chattering, his round belly swinging. He takes a stone from the beach and attempts to skip it, but the river is rocky and he misjudges the angle. He picks up another and slides it out underarm.

  “My dear, silly boy. You need to find something flatter, with more weight. Slate would be perfect but you keep picking up pebbles.”

  So Elms stoops to collect an oblong stone, the size and shape of a primitive house-brick. This he hoists in his grip, gauging the distance and gathering his strength.

  Staring out over the lacquered surface, Uriah says, “Slate’s what you’re wanting. Not piddling pebbles.”

  This time Elms swings the stone sidearm, very quick, so that it strikes the old man at the point where the skull joins the neck. The impact jars his arm clean up to the shoulder and makes Queenie shake her withers.

  Uriah lands on his side in the shallows. His left leg is kicking.

  Elms stands over him. After a short, shocked moment, he says, “Are you alright, Uriah?”

  “Na-gug,” says Uriah. He toils to get his arms under him and his head from the water. Dark blood is now blotting his upturned coat collar.

  The imp leans in, bends his knees and brings the stone down again. This time the blow is experimental, almost tender, as if by tapping the old man he might somehow revive him. “Gug,” says Uriah.

  Elms discards the stone, rubs his palm on his coat. He says, “I’ll go get some help. I’ll be back very soon.”

  He hastens off the low bank and over to the trail where he finds a tree stump to sit on. There he forces himself to count to fifty in French. As he does so, he kneads his white fingers into the joint of his shoulders and studies the dispute of three squirrels in the boughs overhead. Round and round the tree they go. It makes him dizzy just to watch.

  Back on the shoreline, he turns the spiritualist over and slips the Eye of Thoth-Amon from around his neck. Next he unbuttons the coat pockets and locates a penknife, some coins and a ten shilling note. His gut is joggling. His arm is in uproar. Breathing hard, he drags Uriah out into the rushing water and then turns him loose. The current carries the body about twenty yards downstream before it fetches up against one of those protruding black rocks. He believes he can make out the man’s head and knees amid the egg-white of the foam.

  His shoulder is hurting; his trouser legs are soaked through. He can barely lift the reins to guide Queenie to the track, let alone raise the trap to manoeuvre her back into harness. “Dear old Queenie,” he murmurs. “Poor old horse,” and high above his head the squirrels embark on some fresh altercation.

  When they come back onto the track, the animal finds its rhythm. Elms’ shoulder is sore but he knows the soreness will pass. He has been hurt in the past and the pain never lasts very long. The joint will heal and the trouser legs will dry and everything will be well because great things are forecast. He keeps his good hand on the reins and watches as the path turns away from the rush and roar of the river. It straightens and widens and turns to tarmac again. Half a mile out, he sees a sign for the town.

  4

  Up ahead, the deep dark woods. On the drive out, bouncing in the bed of Coach’s truck, the children discuss the individual merits of the strange, funny men. Winifred admits that while she feels a particular bond with the Cowardly Lion, one struggles to find much to say to him because frankly he doesn’t have much to say in return. As such, she would probably have to claim the Tin Woodman as her favourite, except don’t tell the Lion, because that would hurt his feelings. Edith says that she likes the Tin Man as well, but her preference is Toto. John leaves off sucking his thumb long enough to venture that he quite likes them all, he can’t rightly pick one. Maybe Toto or the Scarecrow, although he concedes that the Lion’s nice too.

  Fred says, “What about you, Lucy? Who’s your best funny man?”

  “I’ve only met them once. I don’t know yet.”

  “Come on, pick a name. You can always change your mind later.”

  On her previous visit she had spent the most time with Toto. “They all seem very nice,” she says hesitantly. “So far, I think the Tin Man might be best.”

  “Ah, Tinny,” says Fred. “He’d be loving this conversation. His ears must be
burning.”

  She is still familiarising herself with her travelling companions: with solemn Edith and spirited Fred and the ungainly John, who is surely too old to be sucking his thumb yet continues to do so with a constant grim application. Overall, she likes them and thinks they like her back, which is just as well, it would be awful if they didn’t. It would make these journeys awkward; they’re so snugly packed. Each time Coach brakes and accelerates, he either throws Lucy against the others or the others against her.

  “Ouch!” says John.

  “Sorry.”

  “Do us a favour, Lucy,” Edith says. “The next time you come, leave your knees and elbows at home.”

  One curious thing about the children in the truck: in terms of their backgrounds, they might be peas in a pod. Like Lucy, it turns out that Winifred lives with her grandparents. Like Lucy, these grandparents manage a public house in north London. And Edith’s situation is only a little different: she is being raised by an uncle and aunt near Alexandra Palace. Her uncle used to own and run his own restaurant until the business went bad and he was forced to close down. Then John explains that he lives with his mother and his mother’s new husband, who is called Mr Parnell. John says that although the house is a decent size, he has to share his bedroom with three other boys, Mr Parnell’s noisy sons, which he does not like, although he supposes it could be worse. It could be four other boys. It could be five. Eventually, after a period of deep thought, he says, “It could be six other boys.”

  It mostly falls to Fred to keep these journeys diverting. Fred pulls faces, sings songs and does voices. Her conversation moves so fast that Lucy has a job keeping pace. One moment Fred is mimicking an Italian gentleman named Mr Falconio, who is apparently engaged in some ornate and ongoing feud with her family. The next she is breathlessly recounting an exchange she had with Coach, or Tinny, or making laughing reference to something she describes as “the Terrible Unmentionables”. Lucy has no idea what this means although she eventually grasps that “the Terrible Unmentionables” is Fred’s convenient, cover-all label for any awkward topic of conversation; for anything that people would prefer to avoid. She supposes it may conceivably refer to the funny men too.

  Fred says, “Nobody likes to talk about the Terrible Unmentionables. John doesn’t like to talk about the Terrible Unmentionables, but then John doesn’t like to talk about anything, do you, John? Poor little bastard, the cat ate his tongue. But I don’t mind, it’s not so bad. Oh, Falconio! Falconio! Don’t bring up the Terrible Unmentionables! Who did you say your favourite funny man was again?”

  Lucy looks up, startled. “Who, me?”

  “No, not you, I’m talking to Falconio. Oh Falconio! Yes, of course you. I’m asking you.”

  “The Tin Man, I think.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right. Old Tinny. You’ve got good taste, Lucy, I’ll give you that. But then everybody likes the Tin Man the best. He’s the most dashing. He’s the most romantic out of all the funny men. The ladies like Tinny and he likes them right back.”

  Edith says, “The Tin Man likes whatever he can get his hands on.”

  “Hooks,” corrects Fred. “But Lucy, what would I do if he decided that he liked you most of all? More than Edith and me? Wouldn’t that be awful? What would we do?”

  “Kill ourselves,” suggests Edith, deadpan. “Kill Lucy. Kill Tinny.”

  “Kill John,” cries Winifred.

  “Oh come on, Fred, that’s your answer to everything.”

  “Kill John. Do it now, why hang about? Kill John.”

  John grins uncertainly. “Shut up you.”

  Fred turns back towards Lucy. “I mean it, what if he decides he likes you the best? He might do, you know. You’re dead pretty, Luce.”

  “Oh no,” she says. “I’m really not, it’s just the dress.”

  “No, you are, don’t make me out as a liar. How dare you accuse me of lying, Falconio. Look at you. And now look at me.” She contorts her face; crosses her eyes. “Look at me, I’m hideous.”

  “No. No.”

  Exasperated, Edith says, “Stop going on. You both look about the same, if that settles the matter. You both look the same. You’re both hideous.”

  Beneath the trees, the funny men. They are brought to the woods in a truck identical to the one that Coach drives, aside from the fact that the bed is covered by canvas, and it is driven by a man named Crisis, who is all but identical too. Coach and Crisis must be siblings, the resemblance is so close; possibly cousins at a push. Both men appear to work together, somewhere close to the forest. She cannot tell whether Coach and Crisis work for the funny men or if it’s the other way around.

  Coach pulls the truck broadside and wrenches the handbrake. “Funny men, meet the helpers. Helpers, meet the funny men.”

  “Delighted and charmed,” says the Tin Woodman, stepping forward.

  Is he truly her favourite? She allows that this might be the case, although who can say, it’s only her second trip out. Fred says that he is dashing, but what does being dashing entail? The Tin Woodman wears a mask made from galvanised copper. This has been painted in skin tones, decorated with a copper-wire moustache, and is evidently held in position by a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles that are not merely looped about his ears but actually fastened in a bow about his head. He possesses a pair of fearsome-looking steel hooks in place of his hands and, from the evidence of his awkward, halting gait, might also be missing a portion of leg. Can a man be considered dashing when he is unable to walk smoothly, or shake hands when he wants, and when there is no obvious means of discerning whether he is smiling or not? Lucy does not know, but she resolves not to judge. The Tin Man is smartly dressed and unfailingly courteous. That helps to make up for all the parts he is missing.

  “All right,” grumbles Coach. “All right now, no crowding.”

  Her next question is this: is the Tin Man the most freakish of all the funny men? Again, she thinks that he probably is, insofar as he gives the impression of being as much metal as flesh. But then none of the four are altogether unblemished and, even knowing what’s coming, she is still taken aback. What a collection they are, with their missing arms, legs and eyes, and their elaborate disguises intended to fill in the blanks. Put them together and you might arrive at one person.

  “Hello, you old bastards,” Winifred is saying. “Hello, funny men. We’ve missed you quite dreadful.”

  Toto says, “Wotcha, Fred, we’ve missed you too. It’s been a shit-awful week, but now the sun has come out. I reckon our little helpers must bring the weather with them.”

  The Tin Man says, “And what a happy bonus to see that Lucy is back. Of course there’s no telling which of our guests will return. One can only be thankful she didn’t decide to run away screaming.”

  “Oh no,” she says. “I’d never do that.”

  “Well, I do thank you, Lucy. You do us all a great service.” And now the Tin Man’s voice seems to be smiling even if his mouth cannot move.

  Take a random group of boys and girls. Throw them together and a hierarchy is established. Each member unconsciously finds his or her own role to inhabit. She has seen it happen at school or on the street and most recently in the bed of the truck, where Winifred is the queen and she and Edith princesses, which leaves poor thumb-sucking John as their subordinate. And here, again, is the very same system laid out anew, because why should the funny men be different from anybody else? Within the first few moments of her opening visit, she recognised Toto as the group’s colourful, confident leader and now becomes aware of the other pieces slotting into place. Winifred is correct: the Tin Man is the dashing gallant, full of rueful good humour, at ease in his skin, and never mind that it’s not skin, while the Scarecrow takes the rank of cool-headed lieutenant. The Lion, she realises, is the lowliest member. He stands off to one side, with a black patch over one eye and his boyish face clenched. The Lion
dislikes company and won’t hold himself still. When Lucy walks over, he retreats a few shuffling steps and shouts, “Hello! Hello!” as a warning to her not to draw any closer.

  Fred says, “You should be thanking me, not her. I can hardly stand to look at you. I think I’m either going to faint or be sick.”

  “Give it a rest, Fred,” Edith says in a murmur.

  “I mean it, I’m not joking. If I start to faint, one of you better catch me. If I start to be sick, it’s every man for himself.”

  There is no picnic on this second trip to the woods. Coach explains that he has been rushed off his feet, he had no time to prepare, and that too much trifle will make the children fat pigs. Instead, he and Crisis suggest hide-and-seek: a spot of exercise to keep them lean and strong. The guests will run off and the funny men can give them a minute or two and then come to find them. At first Lucy worries that they might all become lost, Epping Forest so big and they now far from the road, but Coach reassures her that they have played this game before and drawn up decent rules. None of the helpers, he says, is permitted to run more than a hundred paces in any direction. He is very clear on this score. Anyone who strays further will be disqualified and punished.

  He says, “Yes, I’m looking at you, John. No running away.”

  John nods at the ground.

  “Cheating little get. We had to have us some words.”

  She runs out through the trees, away from the clearing, regulating her stride in order to keep better count. It is a babyish game, she hasn’t played it in years – but the very act of setting forth stirs up happy memories and she is somewhat surprised to find herself laughing. She intends to run the full hundred steps and then plop herself down, but she is only a little over halfway when she alights on a clump of bracken and decides this will do just as well and might outwit her pursuers, who will be casting their net further afield. The sun is up but the birds have stopped singing. The forest is still and it feels a good place to be.