The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times

by Xan Brooks

  On the morning of the visit she has Beth put out a pot of tea and a plate of ginger cake. For Robert’s sake, it would not do to be rude. This is all her son’s idea; it is he who is paying. If he is determined to squander his hard-earned wages, it might as well be on a ceremonial magician as on a European gypsy who confuses levitation with the act of star-jumping. But gracious, she does hope the boy will see the light before long.

  When the trap pulls up, Beth has the guest take a seat in the library. Mrs Shaw lets him wait for five minutes and then makes her entrance. When she finds the library unoccupied, she returns to the hall. “Beth,” she says. “Dashed fellow’s not there. Did he leave?”

  “No,” says Beth. “He’s definitely in the library. I’d have seen if he left.”

  So Mrs Shaw looks again and sure enough, there he is. He is loitering by the drapes at the window; she cannot imagine why she did not notice him before. She blinks and composes herself and nods a curt greeting. She says, “Mr Magus, you’ll forgive me if I don’t shake your hand. I have an injury which troubles me in damp weather.”

  “I understand,” says the Magus. “You fell and broke your right wrist as a child.”

  “Not a bit of it,” Mrs Shaw retorts. “It was a sprain in the garden. And it was only last week.”

  Up steps the Magus, dressed in rabbinical black. His jacket is unbuttoned, exposing some kind of gaudy scarab pendant, while his head is topped by a bowler hat that he seems at no pains to remove. He has the faint tinge of the Jewry about him, but she suspects that this is for show, a cheap disguise, and that he follows no particular creed. He is pale and obscenely fat and has applied liquid kohl to his eyebrows and lashes in a pathetic attempt to add definition to his bland, creamy features. He less resembles a wizard than a vaudeville comic whose notion of entertainment is to split the seat of his trousers or plant himself upon a rubber horn which simulates the noise of breaking wind. But he treads softly, lightly, with a grace that for some reason strikes her as doubly repulsive. His accent and bearing mark him out as a member of the lower orders – whatever that means in this topsy-turvy age.

  When she invites him to sit he sinks like a feather to the chair opposite hers. In the absence of Beth, Mrs Shaw pours the tea. She says, “I should really apologise for a small untruth. I fell on stone steps and fractured my wrist as a child.”

  “Madame,” he says, “please don’t mention it.”

  “Although I must say, if you had known it was an untruth I do believe you might have pointed it out.”

  “Perhaps I was being polite,” says the Magus.

  “Or perhaps you were bluffing and could not say one way or the other.”

  He collects the teacup and saucer with a delicate motion, his little finger cocked as if to balance its weight; not a single drop spilt on its way to his mouth. He drinks and smiles and lightly smacks his lips. “Madame. Sometimes I perceive things and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I‘m defeated and sometimes I’m not. If your wish is to catch me out and make sport of my errors, then I can promise you that the next hour will pay . . .” He gropes for the correct term. “Handsome dividends.”

  “I am delighted you admit it.”

  “It will be like Christmas morning for little children.”

  Mrs Shaw returns his smile and collects her own tea. “That does rather strike me as an admission of defeat.”

  He says, “What a lovely house you live in, Madame. When I’ve made my own pile, I should reckon to get myself a house very much like this.”

  Mrs Shaw once had two sons and now has only one. She supposes that one was defeated and the other was not, although if she were asked to select the natural victor between Robert and Richard she knows which one she would choose every time – Richard had always been her favourite. But the fates felt otherwise and duly acted, as fates will, with their own perplexing, irresistible logic. It just goes to show that you never know what is coming until it is hard up against you and you can feel its hot breath in your face. She sips her tea and shakes her head.

  Now this fat, foolish fellow is merrily purporting to lay out his credentials. She attends with half an ear as he explains that sometimes he will see things and sometimes he won’t and that lost souls sometimes speak to him and that sometimes he is able to bring comfort to those loved ones left behind. Every time he says “sometimes” he puts a stress on the word, as though he is cautioning an imbecile not to set their hopes too high, and each time he does this his eyes widen, which makes his kohl brows waggle until it is all she can do not to ring the hand-bell and have Beth come and show this man to the door. She catches herself wondering which cabbie drove him up from the station. She prays it wasn’t the younger fellow because the younger fellow gossips and it might cause a stir in the town: the tale of the obese painted buffoon who called in at the Vicarage.

  Once, long ago – he says – he was prospecting in Egypt and searching out the truth regarding certain ancient mysteries. He was travelling with a learned man, a seer of sorts, and out in the desert they uncovered the tomb of a pharaoh. All of this took place before the most recent discoveries, the ones the newspapers are so excited about, and he was left with the impression that this particular tomb was older by far. Inside, he found the fabulous Eye of Thoth-Amon – the very amulet he is wearing today. The talisman, he explains, was fashioned in honour of an ancient deity and it invests the wearer with a power both beautiful and terrible.

  She scrutinises the pendant. It is blue-green, ostentatious, with horny protuberances. It puts her in mind of a sickly stag beetle. She says, “He doesn’t mind that you stole it? Your old deity, Cough?”

  “Thoth, Madame. And no, he wouldn’t, because I treat its powers with respect and only in the service of bringing peace to the afflicted.”

  “And lost souls send you messages by way of the pendant?”

  “Sometimes they speak and sometimes they don’t. We mustn’t be discouraged if they choose to stay quiet.”

  “Why, bless my soul, that makes you a telephone. Perhaps this is how you regard yourself. As a walking, talking telephone.”

  The Magus helps himself to a slice of ginger cake. He appears determined to maintain his happy smile as he eats.

  Mrs Shaw watches him. She says, “I am going to be entirely frank with you, sir, because it would do us both a disservice were I to be otherwise. I hope you won’t take offence at what I have to say.”

  “Madame.”

  “I believe you are a fake, Mr Magus. Which is to say that I don’t believe a single word of your fabulous story about hidden tombs and buried treasure and a grand deity called Cough.”

  “Thoth.”

  “I have no doubt my son has paid you handsomely for this session and I am therefore prepared to witness your charade and to witness it for what it is: a little one-man circus, designed to fool the gullible and amuse those who are blessed with a more sensible outlook. I do hope it’s amusing. It’s rather good so far. Still, it would be remiss of me not to lay my cards on the table. You are a fraud, Mr Magus. In my opinion, I am minded to say that you are more sham than shaman.”

  In the hush that follows, she is aware of the ticking of the clock on the mantel. “Madame,” he says.

  “Please understand that I have no objection to small, shabby men making a living for themselves. I am aware that we live in difficult times. One might even go so far as to commend you on your ingenuity and pluck.”

  The Magus swallows his cake and says, “Your eldest son, Richard Shaw, was killed by a German shell in May 1917. His disc was recovered but the body was not. That’s not unusual. I was in Cambrai myself. It happens all the time.”

  Mrs Shaw bridles. It is her son’s name that does it. “Would this be before or after you discovered your Egyptian tomb?”

  He raises a chubby hand and appears to be concentrating. His eyes are shut and his face screwed tight. She has to
fight a silly urge to rise silently from the armchair and steal out of the room. It would serve him right to open his eyes and see her gone, the horrid little clown.

  A full minute goes by. The carriage clock tick-tick-ticks in her ear. Finally his face clears and he says, “When the shells explode they leave a hole in the ground. The hole is round and as big as a room. It is about the same size as the room we are sitting in now, though not nearly so nice. You wouldn’t like it, Mrs Shaw. There’s no door, or walls or bookshelves. There’s no table or tea, and no window to look out of. Sometimes—” he waggles his brows “—the hole contains nothing at all. Sometimes it contains smoking bits of flesh and bone.”

  She says, “Mr Magus, I am fully acquainted with the horrors of the battlefield.”

  He blinks. “Well that’s jolly good. Is that so? Are you really?”

  “I am.”

  He says, “Richard Shaw met his end in a hole near Arras. It was early morning, May 4th. He was twenty-five years old, a captain in the 62nd Division. There were others with him; none of them survived either. Afterwards, the next day, they were all gathered up and buried together in another hole, a different hole that was dug for the dead from all over. That’s where he rests, Richard Shaw, in a mass grave beside a village or hamlet that is either called Pipurdie or Lepurdie or something like that, I wish it were clearer.”

  If she lifted her teacup he might see her hands shaking. “Oh dear, what a shame,” she says brightly. “Pipurdie or Lepurdie, I do so wish it were clear. Still, one must not be discouraged. Pipurdie or Lepurdie: what a wonderful comfort to know.”

  “Madame, just a moment. I am getting further word besides.”

  “Goodness. How splendid.”

  “Richard Shaw,” he begins and that is as far as he gets. She cannot stop herself, it is all too much, the sound of that name on those wet, smacking lips. She is abruptly furious with Robert for press-ganging her into receiving this belly-crawling slug of a man and furious with herself for allowing herself to be press-ganged, and furious, most of all, with the detestable invertebrate who has quite obviously squeezed Robert for information and then embroidered the information with his own foul flights of fancy. That’s how these people operate. It is how they pull the wool over innocent eyes, but not hers, thank you, the charade is preposterous. Her voice lifting, she says, “That will do, Mr Magus, I’m not interested in hearing further words, particularly if those words are emitting from you. I request you to wait outside, or you might prefer to simply walk back to the station. I hope the weather holds. I confess I have played along for quite as long as I’m willing.”

  “Richard Shaw rests in a mass grave near the village,” the man says hurriedly. “But not all of him is there.”

  “Stop saying his name. Our conversation is over.” She rises from the chair.

  Speaking very quickly, he says, “Not all of him is there, only most of him is there. Some of him is still in that round room in the field. Every last bit could not be collected. So he leaked into the earth and the hole has grown over by now.”

  “Get out.” But when he hops to his feet it is only to ensure that he maintains eye contact. They confront each other across the inlaid glass table.

  He says, “But not all of him is there. We still have more parts to account for and the parts are all precious, aren’t they, Mrs Shaw? You know that better than anyone, don’t you, Mother? Don’t you, Mum?”

  When she moves for the door, he moves alongside her, blocking her exit. “You are acquainted with battle, but are you acquainted with rats?” At this he scrunches his nose and bares his incisors. “The rats,” he says. “The rats, the rats. Down south had the flies but the north got the rats. Out in the trenches they grew big as otters, big as badgers, some said, because there was so much meat to tuck into. And when they gobbled themselves on human flesh it made the fur on their faces turn white. We all saw it happen, it was a right peculiar thing. We could see their white faces in the dark, getting closer and closer.”

  Again she darts at the door. Again he cuts her off. “Beth!” she shouts. “Beth!” She feels physically ill. His eyes won’t leave her face; she cannot break his gaze.

  “Richard Shaw. Richard Shaw. Excuse me for saying his name. I can’t help myself, it’s like he has me possessed. Little parts of him are in a ruined barn. Little parts of him are moving still. He’s been passed about between a good number of rats. Then those rats fucked and made more rats and those rats fucked and made more rats and each one of them carries a small piece of your son. Listen to the Eye of Thoth-Amon. Lay your head up against my breast. Listen to the Eye and you can hear him scratching and squeaking as he runs about in the barn.”

  “Beth!”

  Now the Magus laughs. He could be a close friend who has just shared a joke. He says, “What a jolly nice house you own, Mrs Shaw. And how kind of you to allow small, shabby men to cross your threshold. Fully acquainted with the horrors of battle. Cor blimey, but the war was lovely. You should have come along, Mrs Shaw. Me and you together! It would have been capital.”

  The door bangs open. Beth blows in like a springtime squawl, her cheeks flushed from running and her hair come undone. She sees her mistress totter and swoops just in time to steady her. “Oh, what?” she exclaims. “Is it something about Richard? Did he tell you something about Richard?”

  The Magus leans forward and shouts into Beth’s face. “Richard Shaw is food for rats!” With this he brings up one hand and makes a curious motion, rubbing the pad of his thumb across his index and middle fingers. It is the sort of gesture a trader will make when he is demanding a recalcitrant customer pay him what he’s owed, although Mrs Shaw barely has time to conclude that this makes no sense, that Robert has paid him already, before this whole hideous morning pitches into nightmare. She has no explanation for what happens next and yet it seems to her that this horrible specimen has somehow conspired to strike fire from thin air. Flames spark and gutter about his fingertips. She can feel the warmth against her cheek.

  “Richard Shaw is food for rats! Burn the fucking barn down and you may just bring him peace.”

  The housekeeper’s knees unhinge. Mrs Shaw senses more than sees the redoubtable Beth collapse to the floor. She turns, unthinking, and her hands find the table and the cup half-filled with tea. She grips the handle and flicks the contents, almost certainly intending to put out the flames except that her nerves are twanging and her aim is awry. The tea goes in the Magus’s face and makes his kohl lashes run. Then, as quickly and inexplicably as they appeared, the flames are gone and the Vicarage library is a library again. The man stops rubbing his fingers and swabs at his brows, pinches the bridge of his nose. All at once he appears startled by the recent run of events. His obscene relish has left him; gone the same way as the flames.

  “We got carried away,” he mutters. “I really ought to say sorry.”

  The housekeeper is down but Mrs Shaw remains upright. Summoning the last of her strength, she backs the man towards the door.

  “I’m leaving,” he says. “I’ve been paid, don’t you worry.”

  “The Lord is my shepherd,” Mrs Shaw says. “I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters.” She wants this man vanished. She wants the memory of him expunged. Night after night, kneeling at the foot of the brass bed in her room, identifying white faces in every patch of moonlight, she will pray that, as long as she lives, she never sees him again.

  13

  Stand still. Be quiet. Hold your breath and you can just hear it – that faint, unearthly singing swimming out of the trees. Voices harmonising in a distant corner of the forest – but is it really so distant? Off the road, in the dark, the dimensions telescope and collapse until the figure at your side can feel a hundred miles away while the invisible sources of faraway sounds seem near enough to touch, were you to pluck up the courage and stick out a paw. And i
f you can hear them, then they can surely hear you. So be still, stay quiet. It would not do to alert them, the unearthly singers in the deep, dark woods.

  They have erected tents and kindled a bonfire. Look closely and you can make out its red glow. And side-by-side, the girl and the Scarecrow discover themselves being reeled in like fish, dragging back on the line to delay their approach, testing the ground with their toes for twigs that might snap. “Softly,” he says. “Slowly. Imagine we are the trappers and they are the bear.”

  Out here the forest is honeycombed with clearings – some large and some small, some oblong, some round. The Maudslay trucks sit cooling in one while the magical singers make heat in another. As the girl draws closer she hears them more clearly. They are singing of the old ways and the ancient land, when the forest was not confined to this small parcel of Essex but ran wild across Britain so that the kestrel looked down on a mossy blanket of treetops extending all the way to the western sea. They are singing of the creatures that once lived in the forest: the elves and the centaurs, and the sons and daughters of Adam, who drank clear water from the streams and slept in cool shade and were untroubled by dreams. Hey Nonny, they sing. Hey Nonny No. Now dress up your daughter in green garter and bow.