Time and the Clock Mice, Etcetera by Peter Dickinson

Author:Peter Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2015-11-12T16:33:05+00:00

Cyrus was always crazy about trees, but they take him seriously these days, outside the family at least. He’s become a world expert on rainforests, so he’s not often in the country, but there he was on TV so I rang him up to say welcome home. In the course of telling him what I’d been up to I mentioned my dealings with the timber merchants, because I thought he’d be interested.

“You’d much better stick to box,” he said.

“I can’t get box, I told you,” I said.

“I’ll look in the back of my shed,” he said.

“I tell you I need six meters of true, knotless, seasoned, ten-centimeter finish box,” I said. “You won’t find that in the back of your shed.”

“What’ll you bet?” he said.

“I’ll eat a pot of your rotten sweet marmalade.”

“It’s a deal.”

“And I’ve got to have them Tuesday, latest.”

“Just give me the exact measurements.”

And next Tuesday, sure enough, I was looking at twelve box-wood rollers, turned, waxed and polished, and a pot of marmalade I’d once sworn I wouldn’t eat to save my life on a desert island. It was a three kilogram pot, too.

The carousel settled on to the rollers as if it had known them all its life, and turned with barely a whisper. The whole job had gone smoothly which was why it was finished three weeks ahead of schedule. I’d call to be pleased.

But I shouldn’t have been pleased with myself.

You could put that on one of Cousin Duncan’s pin-heads. Be pleased, but not with yourself.

It was just luck, things going so sweetly, and once you start taking credit for your luck you’re in for trouble. Fact.

I told the Town Clerk, and maybe he didn’t believe me, so he insisted on coming along early one Sunday morning before anyone was up, to see the clock going. At five to six I lifted the bob of the pendulum sideways along the wall of the weight room and let it swing. Above our heads the two-second heartbeat began, sweet, steady, even, as if it had never been stopped.

We went down and out into the March dawn to watch the hour strike. We heard the click and burr of the warning. The minute hand moved on. The Town Clerk had got me to muffle the bells, because he didn’t want to disturb people, he said, but I guessed he had other reasons. We could faintly hear the carillon. The door on the right swung open and out came the foxes, twiddling on their hind legs. Out came the first dancing woodman and the first fox, then Lady Winter, and then the other woodman and fox, and last of all Lady Winter’s grim mate with his drum.

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