by A. M. Howell
Mr Westcott pressed a hand to his mouth and shook his head, as if the words were chiming in his brain and would not settle.
“It was you then…who stopped the clocks again this time,” said Helena.
Katherine nodded.
“But Mr and Mrs Fox almost ended up in the workhouse!” said Florence crossly.
A faint blush stole onto her aunt’s cheeks. “I am sorry for that. I searched the stables, thinking maybe Edgar had stored the Foxes’s possessions in there and I could return them.”
So that was why Katherine was in the stables that night.
“I spoke with Terence, the solicitor’s son. I knew he and Bertie had been good friends. I asked him to try and find out where their possessions were being stored. But he would not tell me anything,” said Katherine with a curt sigh.
“But this is…terrible. What have I done? It means my drawing up of the contracts was…foolish and misguided. Mr Marchington did not agree with the clock contract, he has been telephoning daily to try and persuade me to withdraw it. But I refused to listen as I was so intent on trying to prevent another tragedy. The Fox family – I must somehow make it up to them,” said Mr Westcott, the slow realization of his actions contorting his features.
“Don’t worry, Father,” said Florence. “Terence Marchington decided to help us in the end. Stanley will have gone to return the Foxes’s possessions as we speak.”
Mr Westcott gave his daughter a thin but relieved smile.
Katherine’s steely eyes settled on Florence. “Your father is unfit to run the family firm. I have offered my help many times, and each time it has been refused. With Bertie gone, it would not occur to him to allow you to inherit the business when you come of age. The only option was to clear a path for both of us, to find a way I could run the firm and pass it to you at an appropriate time.”
Florence gasped in horror.
“But…Katherine…that’s preposterous,” blustered Mr Westcott, wringing his hands together.
“So that is why you stopped the clocks?” said Helena. “To make Mr Westcott appear quite obsessive and mad, to get him locked up in an asylum so you could take over the family firm?”
“You are almost as clever as my niece,” murmured Katherine, giving Helena an approving look. “Edgar did not realize I had seen Evangeline’s telegram setting out her plans to return. I sent a telegram back immediately and asked her to come home later than planned, brought her here to the cottage I had rented. When Edgar went to the station thinking Evangeline would be there, I stopped the clocks while he was out and took the telegram, knowing that when he returned his superstitions would cause him to think something dreadful had happened to her. It had the effect of making him quite unsound of mind, as Dr Barrington has confirmed.”
“But Father isn’t mad,” protested Florence, standing up, her eyes flashing. “Rather than helping him, you made his superstitions worse, you made him think he was ill. How could you be so rotten?”
Florence’s mother gave a silent and pale-faced nod of agreement and stood up next to her daughter.
“I thought by stopping the clocks this evening, Edgar’s descent into his obsessive and irrational behaviour – helped along by Florence’s and Helena’s actions – would be complete,” Katherine said, the words rolling off her tongue as if she took great pleasure in them.
Helena’s jaw dropped open.
“Whatever do you mean, ‘actions’?” asked Florence.
“Dressing like your brother Bertie and returning the household objects made your father even more unwell. I’ve arranged for Dr Barrington to take him to the asylum tomorrow. It will do you the world of good, Edgar.” She threw her brother a wispy smile.
“Unbelievable,” muttered Florence, her eyes aflame.
“Oh, how this saddens me, Katherine,” said Mr Westcott quietly.
Katherine turned to look at her brother.
“You are my only sister. I trusted you…thought so highly of you,” Mr Westcott said, his eyes filling with tears. “There was no need to be envious. All those years growing up, I wanted us to be close, could never understand why we weren’t.”
Katherine swallowed, her eyes lowering to the rug. “Well now you do.”
Mr Westcott fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose.
“This is quite absurd, Katherine,” said Evangeline Westcott. “You expect me to let Dr Barrington take Edgar away from us, and for you to take over the business?”
“Why ever not?” said Katherine with a small shrug.
Helena stared at Katherine in amazement. She did not appear the slightest bit sorry. While her misguided actions related to a want of greater opportunities – some of which were difficult (if not impossible) for women to gain – what she had done was cruel and very wrong indeed. Helena thought about Florence and the letter she had sent to the Wright brothers – the books her aunt had bought to encourage her, the tutor she had employed. She thought of Stanley’s determination to follow his own path in life, not the one his parents had assumed for him. She thought of the bright-faced women she had seen with their books. She had no doubt that their paths to learning had been difficult too, but she was sure they would not have resorted to such dastardly measures to achieve their ambitions.
Florence’s mother was twisting a handkerchief in her hands. It had a bluebell pattern in one corner – the same pattern as the handkerchief Helena had found in Katherine’s coat pocket in her hotel room.
“I am quite confounded by your irresponsible behaviour and the hurt you have brought my family, Katherine. At the very time we needed your kindness and understanding,” said Mr Westcott, standing between his wife and daughter. He looped his arms around their shoulders and pulled them both close.
A fleeting look of disbelief passed over Katherine’s face, as if she could not quite believe that her family did not understand her actions. As Katherine watched Florence and Evangeline sink into Mr Westcott’s embrace, Helena thought she saw a hint of regret in her eyes. Katherine rubbed her delicate nose, opened her mouth to speak. Was she about to apologize? Then with a small (and slightly sad) shake of her head, she placed a hand to her lips and turned away.
Helena had heard enough. The questions buzzing around in her brain had been answered, just not quite in the way she had expected. She stood up and walked to the door, glancing back at the Westcott family’s pale and shocked faces as they absorbed these new truths about each other. She, Florence and Orbit had brought the family back together again, but she had a feeling it would take them quite a while to recover and become the family they once were. But in the meantime, her precious bird was still soaring above the treetops. However was she to get him down?
Helena sat beside her father on the riverbank under a sunny sky. It was as if solving the mysteries of the house of clocks had helped peel back the clouds and summer was at last rising around them like a fountain. Her feet skimmed the top of the rippling water as she tipped her head, caught a glimpse of a blue and green wing as Orbit flew above a willow tree. “Orbit,” she called hoarsely. “Come down. Please come down, lovely bird.” The breeze rustled her hair, rushed past her ears. “Orbit,” she called again into the silky air, as a copper-winged butterfly fluttered past.
Helena’s father placed a gentle hand on her right shoulder. They had been walking along the riverbank all day, her father carrying Orbit’s cage as she held up pieces of apple or handfuls of seeds, trying to coax her parrot down. Occasionally he had swooped low enough for his tail feathers to skim the top of her head or her arms, but then he had swooped away again.
Punters on the river had pointed, amused at the parrot singing nursery rhymes in the treetops.
Cyclists had waved and laughed.
Walkers had stood and watched their efforts sympathetically.
When Helena had returned to the house the evening before, with Orbit’s empty cage, her father had watched wide-eyed from the doorstep as Evangeline Westcott climbed out o
f the carriage, followed by Florence and her father. He had witnessed Mr Westcott tell his sister it would be best if she returned to London immediately.
Katherine had bristled at the suggestion, but she had not argued. Before leaving, she’d turned to Florence and Helena. “Keep up with your studies,” she had said, high spots of colour rouging her cheeks. “I hope life holds things for you that were never possible for me.”
Helena hoped Mr Westcott would be able to forgive his sister in time, that they would find a way to move forward into a happier future. Although, from the distraught looks on the Westcotts’ faces, it seemed it would be a while before that happened.
“It was most alarming,” her father had said the previous evening, taking the empty cage from Helena’s hands. “My train was delayed, and I arrived back to an empty house…stopped clocks…everyone gone.”
Helena had cried then and explained about Orbit, slumping into her father’s arms as he soothed her and stroked her hair, promising they would return to the meadows at dawn the following day to try and catch her Blue-fronted Amazon. But they had been at the water meadows at dawn, at midday and soon it would be dusk, and Orbit would still not come down.
“Please come back,” Helena cried to the sky again, dinging the mirror on the side of his cage.
Florence had found her mother and Helena was glad about that. But her own mother was gone and would never come back and now the very last part of her had taken to the skies. Her chest ached for the feel of her mother’s arms, the throaty gurgle of her laugh as she taught Orbit to speak and sing.
“He is all I have left of Mother. I can’t bear to be apart from him,” Helena said, her voice breaking.
“Oh, my lovely Helena. Orbit isn’t all you have left of Mother. She is in here.” Her father tapped at his own chest, over his heart. “She is part of you and always will be.”
“But her laugh…I will never hear it again,” Helena croaked.
Her father pulled her close, the bristles of his beard catching in her hair. “Mother adored that bird. But Orbit mimicked her, that is all. He is a bird and birds like to fly. Do you remember how Mother would let him out of the cage and he would swoop around the room in circles?”
Helena, gulped back her tears, nodded.
“It was a terrible struggle to get him back into the cage. He loved being free the best.”
“But he’s a pet,” Helena said in a small voice. “Perhaps if we wait here tonight, he’ll come down.”
“Birds will always return when they are hungry or cold. But do you think he sounds like he wants to come down yet?” Helena’s father asked softly. “Perhaps Orbit needs a little adventure of his own.”
Helena thought of the small, enclosed cage and Orbit’s plucked feathers on the floor. She thought of the poor dead birds on Miss Westcott’s hats. Then she looked at the huge never-ending sky, full of the type of possibility a bird may long for. Tears burned at the base of her throat.
Helena’s father wiped her damp cheeks with his handkerchief, which smelled of clock oil, metal and wood. “I have been thinking. Perhaps we don’t need our own clockmaker’s shop. Maybe I have been overly ambitious, blinded by the idea of it. I suppose it stopped me from dwelling too heavily on our own loss.” He paused. “I should take a job which allows us to spend more time together. I am sorry, Helena. I fear that since Mother died…I have buried myself in my work and neglected you a little. I am so proud of you, how you have helped me at Mr Westcott’s house. Your questioning nature, how you have helped bring that family back together again. You show real aptitude with the clocks, too. I would very much like you to continue to help me…if that would please you?”
Helena gave him a shaky smile through her tears.
Helena’s father dropped a kiss on the side of her head. “I think perhaps we should return to the house. I was talking to Mr Westcott this morning about the clocks. He is wondering about donating them to a good cause – suddenly seems rather keen to get rid of them altogether – particularly his mother’s clock. He has asked if I would be interested in helping to establish a museum. It would not bring in the same money as a clockmaker’s shop. But maybe we need a fresh start? Perhaps we could talk about it…when things have settled a little.”
Helena pulled at a long blade of grass and squashed it into her palm. She did not love the clocks in quite the same fierce way that her father did, but it was true that working on the mechanisms was absorbing in a way that sewing wasn’t and Father said she’d demonstrated a talent for it. He’d suggested she had other more surprising talents too – listening and watching and making bold decisions to help piece a broken family back together again. She thought of Katherine and her longing for personal fulfilment and how it had driven her to make terrible decisions. She thought of Florence and her drawing skills and her wide-cheeked smile and “whoop” when she finally opened the letter from the Wright brothers – which invited them to go to London to talk about their flying machine ideas! She thought of Stanley, who would soon be studying at Cambridge University. Much to his delight, the Westcotts were so grateful at the way Stanley had kept the house running all this time, they had offered him free board and lodgings for as long as he was in Cambridge, as well as a position tutoring Florence at the weekends. There were many ways to live a life and suddenly the impossible did seem more possible after all.
Helena listened to the sound of her father’s retreating footsteps rustling over the grass. She sighed, looked to the sky and the scudding clouds. “I’ll come back tomorrow, lovely bird,” she whispered. “I’ll come back every day until you come down.” Her words were carried high by the wind to the tops of the trees, into the stirring leaves and creaking branches, where a blue and green parrot sat preening his wings, his beady eyes flashing in the dulling light. A familiar laugh echoed over the trees like a tinkling waterfall and Helena’s heart both ached and sang at the same time.
Orbit’s head bobbed once, twice, three times, then with a gentle flap of his wings he swooped high into the wide possibility-filled sky, as Helena took a deep breath and stepped towards her own possibility-filled future.
A. M. Howell has always been inspired by the stories around her, and how imagination can unlock the secrets of the past. While visiting Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds, Ann-Marie became fascinated by the huge collection of clocks there which all belonged to one man. She began thinking about what an obsessive collector of clocks might be like and after a visit to the Science Museum in London, a story idea began to develop…
A. M. Howell’s first novel, The Garden of Lost Secrets, was published to great critical acclaim in 2019. A. M. Howell lives in Suffolk with her husband and two sons.
www.usborne.com/lostsecrets
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Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds is home to a fine collection of clocks, watches and timepieces, once owned by local collector Frederic Gershom Parkington. I’ve visited the museum a number of times, often wondering what inspired Gershom Parkington to collect all of these clocks. I began to think there might be a mysterious reason for this, but after doing some research I decided that he just really, really liked clocks! At that point the idea of a story about an obsessive collector of clocks had begun to seed in my head. On a visit to the Science Museum in London we walked around the Clockmakers’ Museum, packed full of interesting timepieces (including two featured in the book – one of John Harrison’s chronometers and a table clock supposedly owned by Sir Isaac Newton). It is a great place to visit, particularly at midday when the clocks chime and strike. An idea began to develop. What if the obsessive owner of the clocks in my story paid a man and his daughter to keep the clocks ticking and chiming at all costs? And what if these people had something very precious to lose if the clocks did stop?
As I plotted my first draft, I researched different types of clocks and spent a very happy hour at Moyse’s Hall Museum with their resident clock winder, who demonstrated how the dif
ferent longcase clocks were wound, and I even got to wind one myself! I watched YouTube videos of clocks striking to get a feel for the different sounds they make and a friend at work lent me his pocket watch which sat quietly ticking on my desk.
The Edwardian era might not seem a particularly interesting time in which to set a novel – it’s the period between 1901 and 1910 during the brief reign of King Edward VII. But in 1905 women were already beginning to fight for their rights, and great inventions and social changes were occurring, including the development of flight, inventions like the vacuum cleaner and the more widespread use of telephones and electricity – all things I’ve brought into the story.
I wanted the events in this book to take place somewhere that would provide a fitting backdrop to the dramatic social changes occurring in 1905. I had the idea of setting the story in Cambridge as I used to live and work in this beautiful city, with a prestigious university at its heart. But while the university is often the first thing you might think of when Cambridge is mentioned, there is an ordinary working population who live there too. In 1905 there were workhouses for the poor and the two cottages which housed nineteen families mentioned in the book did exist. However, the book is fictional, and Mr Westcott’s home, Hardwick House, and the cottage in Grantchester at the end of the book are figments of my own imagination, as are Stanley’s and Florence’s attempts to help the Wright brothers!
