The Whole Notebook

There was a glove on the top shelf. Ada knew whose clock stood beside it, but not whose glove it was. Blue, thin leather, a small tear by the thumb. She put it on the counter where its owner would see it if they came in. Then she took hold of the kitchen steps again.

She had thought she could get through the back cupboard before opening. At nine she had brought forward only three things: the glove, an empty wrapper and a clock with its job sheet facing the wall. She knew the clock was there. That wasn't the same as having somewhere she could find it.

The bookkeeper had sent a message yesterday. For their next appointment, could she list her outstanding work, not just the amounts? Ada had said yes. Today she had printed the message, not because she would forget the question but because the back of the sheet was blank.

She set a narrow clock on the cleared customer's chair and began looking for the name. Since September the chair had mostly been empty. Occasionally somebody had put a bag on it. Mara's case had gone to the charity shop and wasn't coming back. The empty chair showed Ada just how much room one clock took up in the shop.

In the notebook the owner's name was on a page torn out of the binding. The rest of the page was still attached, with a note about glass. Ada laid the loose half on the table and found the duplicate job sheet. There was a date on it. Not the promised date: the day the clock had arrived. Ready was blank.

She rang the number. A woman answered and said at first that she didn't have a clock.

Ada gave the name on the sheet.

‘Oh. My husband's. Hang on.’

There was shuffling, a hand over the phone, a distant voice asking why he had to come downstairs. Ada held the receiver and looked at the clock on the chair. There was a row of dots in the wood she hadn't noticed before. Close up they were holes left by an old nameplate.

The man came to the phone. He had thought she would ring when she could. They hadn't said there was any hurry, had they? No, Ada said. But now she wanted to agree when he would hear from her. She could assess the clock and come back to him about a repair, or he could collect it.

‘Can't it stay there any more?’ he asked.

‘I want us to know what we've agreed.’

He wanted it back working. Not while his wife was still doing the kitchen, though, he added. They settled on a day in November. Ada wrote it down. She put the same arrangement on the job sheet, with a note of the call. The clock went back on the shelf, its name now facing out.

She didn't make a new computer system. On the big sheet she drew three sections for what the old job sheets said. Definite date. To be arranged. Still to assess. Beside them she left a strip for the new arrangements she was making now. Against the first name she wrote the date of the call and what they had agreed. She had to decide which section each clock belonged in, not which would look nicest beside what she hoped to do with it.

Saskia's mantel clock went in the first section. She had checked the striking mechanism separately; the case still bore the scratches Saskia hadn't wanted restored. The work wasn't ready to hand back, but there was an agreed date. The big round clock from De Zoom went beneath it. Paul Hoving's brass table clock, its parts together in the labelled box, took the third line. The new quote hadn't been accepted. A time to ring him back wasn't an order for the machining.

Two people passed the shop, both looking in. One pointed at a clock in the window. Ada put her pen down and started to get up. They walked on.

On the shelf above Paul's box stood a modern kitchen clock with a cracked rim. This wasn't a movement that another pendulum could bring back to life; it had a battery compartment on the back. Its owner had been open to anything provided it wasn't expensive. Ada had said she would look and ring him. He had come in once afterwards, on a day when she hadn't yet assessed the movement. Since then the clock had stood behind a frame with a larger pane of glass.

She rang. This time she got the right person at once. He said he had bought another clock in the meantime. Ada looked at the crack and almost heard herself offering to mend this one as a spare anyway.

‘Then you'll collect this one unrepaired,’ she said. ‘With the parts it came with.’

‘I'm away for a week next month.’

They went through the days together. The Thursday when Saskia was expected suited him too. It was on paper now, no longer just in a pause between two other arrangements.

A couple came in with a bag of screws. The woman held one between finger and thumb and wanted to know whether Ada had the same in a slightly larger size. Ada searched her trays. She couldn't find it. The man said they had been to the ironmonger's, who had sent them here. She explained what she did keep in stock and wrote down the size they had brought. Then she looked at her sheet. She had checked nine clocks; twenty-five minutes had passed since the last one.

She made coffee and drank it standing by the open cupboard, the cup on the windowsill so nothing could spill on a movement. The owners of the two clocks Mara had included in her example had now been contacted and the first assessments done. Neither had a firm collection day. The man with the dinner party had found another solution for that evening. He hadn't asked again whether the clock might still be there. Ada put both in the middle section.

Beside one job sheet was a short note of Mara's call. Ada had copied it herself. It had been her daughter who raised an expectation. It would have been her daughter who wanted to colour in the box on the spreadsheet now. Ada made a little stroke, but only because her pen had failed to put ink on a letter.

For the lowest shelf she had to kneel. Behind the tall packaging were two movements without their cases, each on its own work stand, the cases on the next shelf. She counted them as two clocks. Not four objects. The labels showed which pieces belonged together. She checked the numbers before getting up. Her left knee wouldn't follow at once. She held the edge of the bench and stood still until the stiffness eased.

She was hungry. It was five to one and the coffee was cold. She wanted to do the furthest corner first. Then the little drawer above the bench. Then she noticed a box whose job sheet she hadn't found.

Ada put her coat on.

She left a notice on the door saying she would be back in fifteen minutes. At the bakery she bought soup in a cup with a lid that wouldn't close. The boy behind the counter pressed it down in three places and showed her how to start at the seam. She thanked him, though she could have worked it out herself. Outside she held the cup in both hands. The heat came through the paper.

Back in the shop she ate on the customer's chair. The clock that had occupied it was safely back on its shelf.

The first caller that afternoon wanted to leave a clock for her to look at. It was still in his car. Ada said she was sorting the work she had already accepted first. She couldn't take on a major repair before the end of November. He asked whether she was going on holiday. She explained that the shop would stay open on the usual days for collections and existing appointments.

‘I'll come back later, then,’ he said.

‘Ring first. Don't leave it on the doorstep.’

He laughed. Ada didn't, but she didn't repeat her phone number either. It was on the card he took from the holder himself.

By the end of Thursday she had checked everything on the three open shelves, but not the cupboard by the back door. There were eighteen entries on the sheet. She slid it under a stiff folder so it wouldn't get folded in with the job sheets and wrote at the top where she had stopped. She could pretend the rest was hardly any work after all. Or she could open the cupboard on Friday.

On Friday she opened it.

Among the nine clocks were two empty boxes. She put the empty boxes aside immediately. A large envelope of old guarantees belonged to no current customer; she filed it with her own records. There was a name card without a clock. That clock had already been collected, the payment recorded beside it. She crossed out the card and didn't count it again.

By half past ten she had twenty-seven names in front of her. On the old job sheets twelve had a definite date. Eight had been left waiting for word from her or a reply from the customer. Seven she hadn't properly examined. The first new arrangements were in the strip on the right. She went back along the entire sheet to the shelves, pointing out each place. Names appearing on two pieces of paper didn't make two clocks. She stopped when each object had a line and each line an object.

Then came the part she had wanted to skip yesterday.

The first unassessed clock looked better from the front than the back. Its owner had asked for a low price, but it needed more than the small adjustment he had brought it in for. Ada couldn't offer a paid repair she herself thought worthwhile. She rang and was told she should have looked at it sooner.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I could have taken it somewhere else in that time.’

‘You could.’

She crossed out the apology she was about to write on her scrap paper. She had already apologised on the phone, and it didn't change his Saturday. They agreed he could collect next week. He wanted to know whether everything was there. Ada checked with him still on the line and recorded the collection arrangement.

She didn't choose the next two customers in that group because they would be easy. She had now assessed their clocks and couldn't take on work that matched what the owners wanted to pay or preserve. One woman said she had expected as much. The other thought Ada needn't have kept hers so long, then. Both would come the following week. She recorded the conversations separately, not three names beneath the word Called.

A fourth clock did get a quote, with a place in the work schedule and time afterwards to watch it run. Ada read the text aloud before sending it. She hadn't added that it might be quicker if things stayed quiet. When she sent the email there was no agreement yet. The box stayed on the shelf with the job sheet above it.

For the fifth, consulting Jeroen was a possibility, but only if the customer wanted it. She noted when she could ask. The sixth needed a simple, limited repair she could fit into November. With the seventh, after an initial closer assessment, she still needed to check something before saying yes or no. She wrote it down. They were all different reasons why a clock wasn't ready yet, and until yesterday she had covered them with the same little phrase.

The bell rang. The owner of one of the small jobs with a date came to ask whether next Saturday still stood. This time Ada checked not only his job sheet but the clock's place on her list. The work was done; the final running checks were under way. She confirmed the arrangement. The man took out his diary and wrote nothing. Evidently the day was already there.

‘See you then,’ he said.

After he left she grouped the five small jobs that could really go back over the next two weeks in her work schedule. Two that first Saturday, three the week after. The four later dated clocks kept their own November days. The sports clock didn't get Paul's freed-up space before Paul had decided; it was a place, not paid working time that had unexpectedly appeared.

Before her break she looked at the money again. Beside the customer names were amounts still to come in and amounts already set aside. It wasn't a list of what she could spend this month. Paul's ninety euros was still customer money. The hundred and eighty for Jeroen's completed examination went on her own expenses list, with a payment date to add when the invoice arrived. He had delivered what she had commissioned. She had delivered nothing to Paul that she could bill him for.

A message from Leonie came to her mobile. She couldn't play next week; there would be others. Ada typed that she wasn't sure she would go. Then she changed it: she would go and see who was there. She didn't want to spend Wednesday afternoon at home looking at the list of clocks. It might be a less enjoyable afternoon. That was different.

Once the sheet tallied, she photographed it for the bookkeeper. She didn't send it to Mara. Her daughter would want to know, at the first section, whether she couldn't ring sooner. Perhaps the question would be fair. Ada first wanted to settle the eight arrangements listed as To be arranged herself.

She reached one woman that afternoon. First the woman wanted to know whether the case would be the same colour again. Ada explained that the work concerned the movement. The woman asked if she could ring back on Monday after discussing it at home. They agreed a time. A second customer could only be reached in the evening. Ada wrote down one call for late that Monday afternoon, with his work number beside it. Not a whole evening for everybody.

Before closing at six she made a new notice for the window. No new major repairs until the end of November. Existing arrangements stand. Usual opening hours for parts and collections. She hung it beside the sign, straight enough to read. It wasn't an attractive website picture. For now people needed to see this.

On her way home she rang Mara and asked if it was a good time. Her daughter said she was still on the bus but could talk. Ada told her she had counted the clocks and wasn't taking on any more large jobs for now.

‘How many?’ Mara asked.

‘Twenty-seven.’

Silence at the other end. Ada passed the greengrocer as he carried in a crate of pumpkins.

‘All with an agreed date?’

‘That's what I'm doing now. I've put them in three groups. Anything that isn't clear, I'll ring about.’

‘Would you like me to look at anything?’

‘No. I wanted to tell you.’

Mara said she had to stand up to let somebody past. Ada heard a zip and the squeak of a bus door. Then her daughter asked how the driving lesson had gone. Ada told her about a cyclist who hadn't signalled and Kamal's coffee almost coming out of its holder on a bend. That last one hadn't been her fault. She said so anyway.

At home she put her bag beside the chair. The photograph of the clock list was still on her phone. She closed it and found the message with the time for badminton. Two o'clock. At least she had remembered that now.