Lizzie laughed lightly. ‘I’ve got it. Effortless and well-practised recreation. I think I can remember that.’ She turned her attention back to the dance floor. Remi the postman twirled past her at that moment with a much older woman held tightly in his arms. He caught Lizzie’s gaze and took the opportunity to propel his partner towards a chair, exclaiming, as he seated her firmly, ‘Mother, you tire so easily!’ His natural momentum from this movement landed him precisely at Lizzie’s side, where he now rustled in his inner pocket for a piece of paper he had taken to carrying with him wherever he went.
‘Your Royal Highness, I have a proposal to make that will greatly enhance the standing of our country in the eyes of our international peers, while simultaneously furthering the perception of its most diligent civil servants.’ He bowed elaborately, scraping one knuckle on the ground at Lizzie’s feet.
‘Oh, really! You must stop that!’ squealed Lizzie, who was unsure whether to be alarmed or amused by the man’s genuflection to her.
Mosconi, hovering nearby, had tuned in, with uncanny instinct, to the potential of his country’s standing being enhanced in the eyes of foreigners, which was something he felt uniquely qualified to care about. He appeared immediately and filled the limited amount of space between Lizzie and the postman.
‘Remi-Post, if you are aware of a matter that is of significance to the minister for tourism or are in possession of information that might or might not impact on the country’s standing then I implore you to follow procedure and make an appointment with my under-secretary who will arrange for you to consult with me as a matter of urgency. With all due respect to our visiting dignitary, I cannot imagine a scenario whereby a direct approach by yourself to her could possibly bear fruit of a material nature.’
‘But, Settimio – Signor Mosconi, sir, my proposal directly involves our royal dignitary and I think it behoves her and you, sir, to grant me an audience.’ Remi glanced nervously behind him as if to check his escape route, should a rapid exit become necessary.
Mosconi turned to Lizzie for approval. She nodded, and in that shared moment, the minister and his visitor had quite clearly collaborated on matters of importance. Mosconi dismissed the postman with a shake of his head, and urged him to follow protocol and pursue a formal audience, immensely pleased with himself and the outcome of the evening.
Lizzie, on the other hand, was suddenly aware of the magnitude of the day’s events and the weight that now lay on her shoulders. As the dancers swayed in front of her, turning their hypnotic circles tirelessly, she felt her eyes begin to close. When she had yawned into her hand several times, she was eventually given permission to retire. She excused herself politely, blaming her exhaustion on her early arrival, and walked slowly back to her room, with the sound of the accordions accompanying her. She hugged the memory of the evening tightly to her and felt a renewed confidence that she could certainly rise to the task Sergio and Angelo had set for her.
On reaching her room, she undressed and fell into a deep, untroubled sleep to the sound of the music playing in the piazza below.
CHAPTER 17
In Which the Visitor Gets a Lesson in Timekeeping
The following day, after a leisurely morning of reading, updating her journal and steadfastly putting off the moment when she would have to make human contact again, Lizzie stepped out of her cool lodgings into the afternoon sun. Deliberately she set off in an anticlockwise direction around the Piazza Rosa to avoid the accusation that she might have snubbed the kind patron of Il Gallo Giallo in favour of the neighbouring Il Toro Rosso. Once again stealing glimpses of the domestic necessities available to the citizens of Vallerosa she made slow progress, stopping every now and then to admire the sheer banality of household wares occupying what was surely the country’s finest retail space. In any other she might have reached for her camera to record the precariously stacked oilcans or rows of unidentifiable brown pickles and preserves. But to turn a tourist’s amused eye on what appeared to be a practical and entirely satisfactory lifestyle seemed cynical and, given the generous courtesies that had been lavished upon her since her arrival, ungrateful.
Today there was activity in the piazza. Scaffolding had been erected on the face of the clock tower and several men were working up high, apparently on the clock mechanism. A dozen uniformed men hovered below, waving their arms and shouting vague instructions or words of encouragement, while twenty feet away a smallish crowd had gathered to watch the progress and to alternate pessimistic shakes of the head with nods of cautious approval.
As Lizzie approached to their right, the now inevitable silence descended upon all three groups of men, onlookers, overseers and workers. Tools, while not downed, were lowered and the unabashed appraisal as the young woman walked by seemed to put the piazza’s very atmosphere into abeyance. Time decelerated and, with it, Lizzie’s pace slowed to an unintended crawl as the air, thick with the complex language of the unspoken, fought to hold her back. Determined to break the pattern that seemed to follow her wherever she went, she raised a hand in a cheery wave, smiling broadly as her eyes swept across all of her admirers, even those peering down from above. That had the desired effect: the men nodded in response and turned back to each other.
Lizzie’s hair swung as she gathered speed. She cut the final corner of the piazza, went towards the scaffolding and then in the direction of the two bars.
The barmen had adopted symmetrical poses. Dario leaned to the left-hand side of his doorway. He watched Lizzie’s approach nervously, compulsively wiping his hands upon his apron from time to time, conscious that a handshake might even be de rigueur on a second visit and anxious that his visitor might find his palm disagreeably clammy. Meanwhile, Piper leaned to the right-hand doorpost of his establishment. His face was stony and, as yet, unwelcoming but his thoughts rested purely on his prospective customer. Had his prayer been broadcast over the piazza’s extensive loudspeaker system, the townsfolk would have heard, ‘Please come to my bar. Please come to my bar. Please come to my bar.’
As the young woman cut a path to the corner of the piazza, she seemed to Piper to be heading, by a clear degree or two, for Il Toro Rosso. His mantra increased in ferocity and he rearranged his face to accommodate the smile that would be his trump card. Lizzie, her mind set firmly on the younger man’s bar, had barely noticed her host in the doorway but now she met his eye and indicated a chair with an unspoken ‘May I?’
Piper stepped out of the shadows and moved quickly to attend to his guest. He could not suppress a quick glance to his right to ensure that his rival had witnessed the decision but caught only a glimpse of Dario as he went back into the depths of his own bar. There was, however, a sizeable audience at the outside tables and many observers, even those with decoration on their epaulettes, were now eyeing his two spare tables. Had one made the leap, many more might have scrambled after him, but no one was prepared to risk undoing hundreds of years of tradition in one hastily calculated moment. So, with the subtlest of shifts, they readjusted their angles to enjoy the view.
Piper was now at Lizzie’s side, a tea-towel folded neatly over his arm, paper and pencil clutched at the ready. ‘Good afternoon. It is a beautiful afternoon, is it not? And what might I fetch you today?’
‘Tea and honey would be perfect, thank you. And perhaps a glass of water?’
‘Certainly. I shall be right with you.’
The simple exchange rang in Piper’s head as he bustled back into his bar. It had shone with authenticity and he was delighted with its flawless execution. He had practised the greeting so many times, then worried that either the words might sound insincere or, worse, he would fluff them altogether. He had awoken that morning with sweat pouring off his forehead and the sound of Dario’s laughter ringing in his ears.
He returned to Lizzie and set about straining her tea with an efficient flourish. Then, before setting the cup finally in front of her he whipped out from under the knotted tie of his apron a paper doily, which he fl
icked into the air, with a superfluous snap of his wrist, then laid in front of her. He placed upon it her cup and saucer and a second saucer bearing teaspoon and honey pot, lid askance.
If he was concerned that his masterful effort had gone unnoticed, he needn’t have worried. While Lizzie was pleasantly surprised by the light colour of her tea and the attentiveness of her waiter, the real object of Piper’s efforts was also watching every movement. Dario turned to his bar and contemplated the large box of shining peanut packets in front of him. Shaking, he lifted it down behind the bar and pulled a couple of bottles of pickles in front of it, then returned to his position at the doorway. While his faithful customers heckled him for more drinks and jostled each other at the bar, he continued his vigil with narrowed eyes. ‘A paper doily!’ he replied, to a baffled Professore Giuseppe Scota, who had politely asked for a beer. ‘Now I’ve seen everything!’
Piper, his confidence building by the second, found time to joke with his other customers while nimbly stepping between the suddenly crowded tables to attend once more to the young lady. ‘Is your tea to your liking, Miss?’
‘Delicious. I’m really getting a taste for it. I found it a little bitter when I first arrived, but it’s incredibly refreshing.’
‘And might I fetch you something to accompany your tea? Some peanuts or potato crisps, perhaps?’
She wrinkled her nose, remembering the aftertaste of yesterday’s stale peanuts, and opted for the crisps.
Soon, Piper was back at her table brandishing a china bowl, hastily borrowed from his kitchen that morning, piled dangerously high with crisps. He placed it in front of her and backed away – a customer had a right to some personal space while paying for the pleasure of drinking and eating.
As Lizzie’s gaze drifted around her, the other patrons nodded and smiled – one or two even tipped their hats. She had been brought up to be a confident, self-assured woman and the solid application of good manners in her upbringing had taught her to make people feel comfortable in her presence. That, though, was being undermined by the constant scrutiny she was under. While she was fairly sure that her own fraud had created the gulf that now prevented her chatting amiably, as she might otherwise have done, she felt that something else, something other than her elevated position, was keeping them from reaching out to her with the warmth she had no doubt they harboured behind their nervous smiles.
An uncharacteristic self-consciousness had invaded and she focused intently on the clock repairs while she sipped her tea.
‘Are you interested?’ asked a man at the table nearest to hers, but he spoke so quietly that she wasn’t sure he had addressed her.
‘I beg your pardon?’ She leaned a little towards him.
‘In clocks. Are you interested?’
‘Well, I really don’t know anything about them, but it’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? It’s a shame that it doesn’t seem to work, but perhaps they’re fixing it.’
Her neighbour nudged his chair very slightly in her direction and tipped his body forwards so that he could talk to her without raising his voice. He was rendered a little self-conscious by his brazen intrusion but confident on his subject. ‘They are. At least they’re trying to. The men in uniform are in charge, and they’re using some of the palace workmen to do the job. Give them another half an hour and they’ll come over here to ask if there’s a clockmaker around. The answer will be no. They’ll fiddle around a bit more, then probably take the scaffolding down. They do this in the run-up to every election. The president issues a demand that the clock be fixed. They scamper around like headless chickens. The clock doesn’t get fixed. End of story.’
Lizzie turned to examine the speaker more carefully. He was young and attractive. Too young and attractive, in fact, for the weight of irritation and bitterness that she had detected in his voice. ‘Well, that’s a great shame. It seems such a waste that it doesn’t work. Will it ever be fixed, do you think?’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’
Lizzie picked up her cup, put it on his table and shuffled her chair across so that she could continue the conversation without having to strain to hear him.
The two other men at the table were clearly embarrassed by the exchange and examined their fingernails with an intensity that, though a little grubby, they probably didn’t deserve.
‘Let me introduce myself. I’m Miss Lizzie Holmesworth. I’m here on … on official business. But for the next few weeks I’m just taking in some of your beautiful scenery – seeing the sights, meeting the locals. And you are?’
‘I’m Pavel. And this is Elio, the potter, and his apprentice, Armando. Pleased to meet you.’ Elio and Armando smiled, then continued to study their fingernails.
‘So come on. Spill the beans. You said that the clock wouldn’t get fixed if you had anything to do with it. What’s it done to upset you?’
Pavel looked up at the tower. From where they were sitting it was impossible to see the clock face, but they could easily see the complex mechanism and the profile of the small door through which four effigies should emerge to announce the hour. Right now, a workman was crouched down and peering through the doorway. ‘And again?’ His words rang out but the clock remained stubbornly silent.
Pavel took a swig of beer and spoke into the space in front of him. ‘My great-grandfather built that clock. Not alone, of course, he had quite a big team under him. My grandfather looked after it all his life and the other city clocks too. But by the time my father inherited the business, the team had dwindled to just himself. He was up and down ladders each and every day, working really hard to keep everything ticking, just right. He was a real perfectionist, more so perhaps than his father or grandfather. If all the clocks in the city didn’t chime exactly together, it drove him wild.’ Pavel smiled at the memory. ‘They cancelled his contract. I don’t know why. He’d been in and out of Parliament Hall every day of his life but they didn’t even tell him in person. He got a letter from the minister of finance saying they were reviewing all the service contracts granted by the government and his position was now duplicated by the workmen responsible for other palace maintenance. Clocks were the same as boilers, apparently, so the plumbers got the work.’
‘That’s terrible – after such a long history of being involved with the clock and everything. How sad.’ Lizzie was genuinely shocked by this callous treatment and raised a hand to her chest, leaving her fingertips resting lightly on her heart.
Pavel nodded. ‘It gets sadder. It killed him.’
Elio interjected: ‘They might be tyrants but I think it would be hard to pin your father’s death on the government. He lived for, what, another twenty-five years? And there never was a happier man in all of Vallerosa.’
‘He dropped dead twenty-five years to the day after receiving that letter. Do you not think the ignominy played on his mind throughout his adult life? He was devastated, a shadow of his former self after his humiliating sacking. They might as well have put a gun to his head. Regardless of all of that, he was getting on in years but he had an apprentice, and that apprentice should have carried on with the contracts – that’s the way it should have happened.’
As if on cue, the workmen began to climb down the ladders. The military man clearly in charge of the operation approached the bar with a confidence that ensured many of the drinkers sank lower in their chairs and pulled their caps further over their eyes.
‘I’m looking for a clockmaker. Is there a clockmaker around here? You!’ He indicated Elio. ‘You know everyone around here. Where can I find a clockmaker?’
Elio shrugged and took a slow, insolent drink of his beer. Armando, beside him, stood up slowly, put his cap on his head and left the bar while the official stood and watched. The military man swung back, his eyes trained on the potter, whom he watched through narrowed eyes as the young man smacked his lips and had another swig. Impatient, the official wandered on, scanning the occupants of remaining tables, then going off to enquire of th
e shopkeepers.
Lizzie wasn’t sure why the exchange had discomfited her. When she had made her pact with the president she had feared she might, inadvertently and irrevocably, have aligned herself with his government. She wondered now whether she would be able to distance herself sufficiently from the regime to befriend some of these men, the people who, by dint of age alone, she was probably more naturally akin to.
She leaned towards Pavel, removing her sunglasses to look at him properly. ‘I’m really sorry to hear your story. You must miss your father terribly. What happened to the apprentice? Did he stop making clocks?’
‘No. Some say he’s better than the clockmaker before him. I doubt there’s a watch in the whole of Vallerosa that he hasn’t repaired.’
‘Others say,’ said Elio, ‘that without him, the country simply wouldn’t keep running!’ He and Pavel laughed together, revealing twin sets of startlingly white teeth.
‘I hear,’ said Pavel, in a conspiratorial tone, ‘that he is extremely good with his hands. And it isn’t just the country’s clocks that get the benefit of his fine tuning.’
‘That’s not quite what I’ve heard!’ said Elio, looking earnestly at Lizzie but unable to disguise the humour in his eyes. ‘I’ve been told that his own mechanism runs a little fast.’
Lizzie looked from one to the other and joined in with their laughter. She met Pavel in the eye. ‘You’re the clockmaker, aren’t you?’ She paused. ‘But I don’t understand. They need you – why don’t you just help them? Wouldn’t it be so much better just to fix the clock?’
Pavel grew serious. He didn’t answer while he meticulously rolled two cigarettes and chucked one across the table to Elio. Elio immediately lit his, while Pavel tucked his own behind his ear. He breathed out his response. ‘They insulted my father and our profession. I’ll fix their clocks for them when they make appropriate amends. But not a moment before.’
The Museum of Things Left Behind Page 13
