Time

TIME

The old man clutches time to his chest as he mounts the stairs to bed.
He thinks of it as such - time - though a clock is what it is. His
house is dim, full of furtive corners where anything could happen
unexpectedly, or nothing at all, which is the same thing. They smell of
dust and polish, cobwebs and age, those corners. Rather like time. He
treads softly, not wanting to upset the eternity of this moment, but
the stairs creak and groan, and occasionally they squeal. Timber always
protests. It ought to know better, at its age.
The old man carries time everywhere, even on his weekly excursions to
the supermarket. On those trips he places it in a plastic bag,
foam-lined for protection. Occasionally it chimes at inopportune
moments, as it did on that day last November when the supermarket
invited its customers to join the staff in observing two minutes'
silence for the war dead. The silence lasted for only a few seconds
before his plastic bag began to expel a muffled version of the
Westminster chimes. Some customers stared in puzzlement, others in
disgust, and a few smaned. He hadn't cared. Indeed, the chimes
reassured him that time remained robustly functional. Such things
matter greatly.
The old man places it at his bedside, between the glass for his
dentures and the reading lamp fashioned from a Wincarnis bottle.
There's also a digital clock - one of those fancy things with red
numerals and pulsing dots that mark the seconds - which he keeps only
because it came free with a house-insurance policy and he doesn't
believe in waste. He doesn't take it anywhere, for it means nothing of
relevance. Sometimes in the night he'll glance at its message but he
doesn't disguise his disdain. However, before getting into bed he
caresses the thing that means much, the time he carries wherever he
goes. Its face and the weary grain of its wood indicate great age
spanning many generations. He considers this among its greatest
attractions. He smiles with the fondness of a grandparent while
caressing the wood, but only fleetingly. A moment later, twin lines of
concern crease the space between his eyes.
'What happens to you when I'm gone?' he asks softly, voice not much
louder than the autumn breeze at his window. 'Where will you go?'
The old man has no family and fears that his treasured piece of time
will fall into the hands of some heathen house-clearing type who'll
either dispose of it at a car-boot sale or give it away to a charity
shop. Disaster in either case. He decides to make a will specifying
that the treasure must be buried or cremated with him.
The old man finds that as age advances he requires less sleep but he
goes to bed at the same time every night, reluctant to forsake old
habits. Too much is sacrificed too easily these days by too many
people, but he won't succumb. So he lies awake in the near-darkness
gazing at reflections of amber street lights on his ceiling and walls,
and hearing the thrum of traffic on greasy roads. And as he does that,
he recalls the first time he saw the clock, long ago at a funeral. He
doesn't remember whose funeral. Aunt Emily's, perhaps, or Uncle
Percy's. He had only been nine or ten anyway so it didn't matter. In
those days he'd still had a family, all gathered in the poky parlour of
a terrace house that stank of mice. Others had been preoccupied by the
coffin and its occupant but the old man, then a young boy, had been
fascinated by the clock. It stood on a Victorian sideboard flanked by
two ceramic figures of whistling goatherds. He'd been drawn to it,
spellbound, captivated from that moment, and his enchantment had never
died. Not like the contents of the coffin.
The old man doesn't find it strange that though he can't remember
whose funeral it was, he can recall the living faces of all those in
the parlour on that long-ago day. Lined faces, faces ringed by white
hair like halos of rice, long and lean faces, round pudding faces,
faces with fierce brows and doleful eyes. A parade of Dickensian
characters saying irrelevant things about fate and destiny, about it
seeming like only yesterday, and about no one ever knowing the day.
They all had their tales to tell, the serials of their lives behind
them. They are now all dead.
The old man turns his head and looks at his grasp of time and feels
that it links him to those departed lives and to those yet to come, for
time moves forward as well as back. And then he sleeps.

v v v

The old man sits at his bedroom window, perhaps the following night or
a month later. It doesn't matter. He gazes over the lights of a city
from his home high on the hill, like a deity looking at twenty thousand
souls, each represented by a glowing orange light winking fuzzily
through the drizzle. He once visited the British Library on a foggy day
in London and read the transcript of a Sumerian text that talked of
gods transcending physical laws. At least, that's how it would be
interpreted today, although the Sumerians regarded it from a different
perspective. However, the facts remained the same. The gods lived in
the future as well as in the past and the present so they truly became
a part of everything and nothing. They knew all they needed to know,
and could feign unawareness of things that didn't concern them.
The old man gazes down on the lights and chuckles at the things he has
seen in his life.

v v v

In his dream the old man is on a track that winds between a startling
landscape of pastures and corn, of urban blight and dereliction, until
it fades into the gloom of woodland. He is reluctant to progress
further because he can hear sounds from the woodland that cause his
heart to palpitate. Yelps and gasps, snortings and bubbling laughter,
tears and grief. Then he notices an entity staggering towards him
burdened with a huge stone thing such as you see in ornamental gardens,
and of course that entity is himself, but transfigured.
The old man awakens. Strangely, he feels as if the dream is familiar
although he doesn't recall having experienced it before. He thrusts
back the blankets and sheets, swings his legs over the side of his bed
and sits trembling.
Then he reaches out for his item of time and clutches it to his chest,
waiting for night to pass and dawn to arrive so he can again simulate
security - simulate it by showing one of his faces to the world.