Chronology
“How much time do you need?”
What I said when I realized I’d missed the train was very unprofessional. I’d kept trying to get away from the people who wanted to talk to me after my lecture, but I couldn’t be rude. The honorarium had been generous and a quiet word from the professor who’d invited me could open academic doors. So I smiled and chatted until what I thought was the last possible minute. And had my cabdriver not hit every red light between the lecture hall and the station—well, maybe I’d have made it.
Irritation flushed my cheeks and hunched my shoulders. The next train was in an hour, and every seat in the station’s tiny café was taken. At least I’d still get back in time to pick up Lucy from her nursery. The Costa Coffee across the road was equally busy, I discovered. Had everyone missed their trains? The rain had shifted into a damp mizzle, just enough to stop people—me included—from sitting outside at the patio tables or the benches outside the station.
I glanced at my watch. Yes, I still wear one, which shocks most people. It’s not even digital, and I’ve actually had kids in my first-year seminars tell me they don’t know how to read an analogue timepiece. So now I teach that, although in a jokey manner, as if I believe they all do know but it’s part of the syllabus. I don’t put it on a test.
Thinking of my first-years reminded me I had essays to mark. I’d planned on getting started on the train. The invitation to speak on Roman timekeeping had come with a first-class return ticket, so I could be sure of a seat with a table. I had six stapled printouts in my bag, and if the coffee shops weren’t so busy, I could have started.
I realized I was grinding my teeth. Why wasn’t time flexible? It was for the Romans. They simply divided the daylight hours into twelve sections, so an hour varied in length depending on the time of year. It didn’t really make for more ‘time’, or less, unless you needed daylight for your task. For those who did, time must have felt like it was mutable, although at the control of the seasons, or the gods.
I didn’t need daylight, just a dry place to sit, preferably with a table and enough light to read the essays. But I wasn’t going to get it until I was on the train. I looked around, my vision blurred by damp. A shop sign caught my eye: Chronos Antiques. With a name invoking the Greek god of time, maybe they’d really be antiques and not odds and ends I remembered from my grandmother’s kitchen. I could browse for a while in the dry, at least.
The bell tinkled as I entered. From behind a desk, a man looked up, grey-haired, spectacled. He looked exactly as an antique shop owner should look. The shop was crowded with items, as these shops always seem to be, but what was on display were truly antiques.
“Do you mind leaving your bag with me?” the proprietor asked. “It would perhaps be safer?”
He had a point. I certainly couldn’t afford to buy anything I accidentally bumped into and broke. I lifted the strap of my bag over my head and handed it to him. He smiled his approval and bent back to his accounts.
I browsed around for some minutes, appreciating the quality of what was on display, mostly porcelain. I stopped by a display cabinet of Wedgwood, including a rare crimson jug. The price tag, as much as my monthly salary, made me gulp. As I stood looking at it, first one clock and then another and another began to chime the half-hour. I followed the sound.
To find myself in a room full of clocks. Mantel clocks, long-case clocks, carriage clocks, ships’ chronometers. French, Swiss, German, English. I laughed in delight. If I’d known this was here, I would have arranged for a friend to pick Lucy up and keep her for the evening and booked myself on an even later train. I could have spent a couple of hours properly looking, not the cursory study which was all I had time for now.
My phone was in my bag, I realized. I went back to the counter. “May I retrieve my phone? And do you mind if I take some pictures of the clocks?”
The proprietor hesitated. “I’m not a dealer,” I said. “I just finished my doctorate on perceptions of time in antiquity. Clocks are both a hobby and a serious study. The pictures would be for personal use.”
“Was it you who was speaking at the museum today?”
“Yes, this afternoon. I missed my train home, or I’d never have found your shop.” I held out my hand and introduced myself. He shook it enthusiastically.
“I wanted to attend, but I couldn’t find anyone to mind the shop. You may certainly take pictures.”
I glanced at my watch again: I had twenty minutes. Back in the clock room, I began to take pictures, using the Notes app to document each one. At some point I heard the owner come in, but he didn’t say anything. I kept working.
“French mantel clock, perhaps 1780,” I said. I’d resorted to voice notes to save time.
“1784,” the owner said. “One of Robert Robin’s.”
“Truly?” Robin had been clockmaker to two kings, Louis XV and XVI. I’d only ever seen one of his clocks in a museum. “You have the provenance?”
“Indeed. I will show you.” He beckoned me back to his counter. From a cupboard underneath, he drew out a box, and from inside it, a set of photocopied papers. “The originals are in a safety-deposit box, you understand,” he said with an apologetic smile.
The clock’s history was neatly summarized: the noble family to whom it had belonged in France; its transfer out of that country as part of a dowry; the inventory of the great house whose contents were sold to pay death duties. I studied them, engrossed. The clocks began to chime again. The full hour.
“Oh, gods.” I looked over at the station in horror. My train left at one minute past the hour. I’d never make it – and now I’d have to call the nursery, beg them to keep my child, and pay the exorbitant extra charge. Which would eat up almost all the honorarium I’d earned today, and it had been earmarked for a new bed for Lucy. She’d outgrown her crib. London was so damned expensive, and my lecturer’s salary so low.
“What’s wrong?” the owner asked. I realized he could see the tears standing in my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve missed my train again, and—”
I explained. He listened, a faint smile on his lips.
“But you needn’t worry,” he said.
“No, I know, it’s futile. But I must ring the nursery.”
“That isn’t what I meant. Come with me.”
Frowning, I followed him back into the clock room. He went straight to one of the glass cases holding pocket watches. I hadn’t looked at them yet. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the case, reaching for the one in the exact centre. It looked extremely old, and unlike any I’d ever seen. He opened it.
“How much time do you need?”
“How much time?” I shook my head. “What do you mean?”
“How much time? To catch your train? Will a quarter of an hour be enough?”
“Well, yes—” I had to extricate myself from this mad old man, phone the nursery and plead with them. What was I going to do if they didn’t have anyone to stay late this evening?
Dizziness struck. For a moment I thought I was going to faint. A panic attack? Then the vertigo dissipated, although I still felt disoriented.
“There you go,” the old man said cheerfully. “Fifteen minutes. Don’t forget your bag.”
Around me, the clocks began to chime again—but they stopped at the three-quarters point. Every one of them, I saw as I looked around, showed the time as a quarter to the hour. But—
Chronos Antiques.
“Are you—” I couldn’t say it. I must be dreaming. Or hallucinating. “Are you—Greek?” I managed.
“I was,” he said. “Once. A very long time ago. Now go and catch your train.”
originally published at A Muse Bouche Review, September 2022
illustration by Tomasz Mikołajczyk from Pixabay