Not Another Round

On Monday, Ada hung the workshop-day card inside the door. The dated notice had been up since Thursday. She left it there; it also said when she'd be open to customers again. The usual sign remained visible beside it. She read everything once more from outside, then pulled the door shut.

The lock clicked. Through the glass she could see the customer's chair, its seat empty. She tried the handle before letting herself back in with the key. Nobody followed her.

The previous Thursday, she'd accepted a small mechanical wall clock with a pale wooden rim. Its owner knew the limited service they'd agreed and the collection date the following week. It wasn't on the long list she'd made in October. A new job card lay with it on a separate clipboard. She'd examined the work first and kept the hours clear for it. Today she could finish some of it without having to find her place after every ring of the bell.

She made coffee, hung up her coat and put on her apron. Five to nine. Only what she needed for the first part of the morning lay on the bench. The sports club's large round clock still hung in the testing space. It would go back on Friday. The delivery time was confirmed in her diary.

Ada drew the new little clock towards her, reviewed her notes and began. Her hands took a while to get going. For the first quarter of an hour she kept thinking of the customer who usually came on Mondays to ask how his clock was getting on. They'd spoken; Thursday was fine. The arrangement was written down. She almost got up to check the line again.

Instead, she looked at the part in front of her. The light was good. The tweezers didn't quite pick up what she wanted; she put them down and chose another pair. Nobody would come in and see the half-full cup on her bench. She moved the coffee further away anyway.

When she looked up, it was twenty past ten. Someone passed with a large roll of wrapping paper. The bell hadn't rung once. Ada finished what she was doing, put the part safely aside and noted the time.

A shadow moved across the glass. A man bent towards the notice, a plastic bag in one hand. He read the first lines, looked at the usual opening hours and noticed her at the back. Ada raised a hand. He pointed to the door.

She shook her head and pointed to the notice. The gesture felt clumsy. If she stood up, she could explain. Half a minute, no more. She stayed seated. The man read it again, lifted his bag a little and walked away.

Ada watched until he'd passed the window. She didn't know what was in the bag. A clock, perhaps, or a watch. He might only have wanted directions to the key cutter. She entered no amount for lost business on her timesheet. She did get up to put away the coffee pot. Then she read a message about a part, made a short note and left her mobile in the back room.

At half past ten, she sat down again. One part of the service took longer than she'd estimated. She stopped trying to catch up with her morning plan and worked through what was in front of her.

At twenty to twelve, she could put those things aside. She wrote down an hour and ten minutes and looked at the first line. Nine until twenty past ten: eighty minutes. She walked about, smoothed her apron and started the paperwork five minutes later.

Before lunch, she updated the new clock's job card and checked a parts order for another small job. She rang the supplier about the code on the packaging. One letter belonged to a different version from the one she'd selected. They agreed on the right delivery; she sent the confirmation before hanging up. That half-hour had been necessary without changing anything in the clock on the bench.

She took her break from a quarter past twelve until a quarter past one. She ate her sandwiches and walked round to the postbox with two envelopes. She'd finished their contents earlier; this wasn't another trip for a customer. On the way she bought a mandarin because there was exactly one in the bowl beside the till. At home, they'd only ever had mandarins by the netful, she thought, and usually the last two hung about too long. She paid and walked back.

Nobody waited outside the shop. She let herself in without opening up. The notice hung straight. In the back room she made tea and ate her mandarin, the envelopes posted, the peel on a saucer. When the break ended, she stood up.

For part of the afternoon, she could continue the hands-on work. The little clock's construction was familiar, but a scratch on one component showed much more clearly in different light. She noted it and checked again what was needed. The limited service remained as agreed. No extra restoration simply because nobody could interrupt her.

After an hour, she put the clock aside. She took out the station clock's paperwork and checked the transport arrangements. The driver would come after closing on Friday. Remco would be at the club, the existing fixing had been checked, and someone would hold the door. Ada would go herself to install and check it. Paid transport, arranged in advance, with the time allowed on her own job card. Nothing left to a chance phone call to Mara.

Then she sorted the protective packaging and prepared the labelled parts that needed to travel separately. The clock would stay where it was until Friday. On the bench, she left only the clipboard for her final observations. Those preparations and the parts records took another half-hour.

At a quarter to three, the landline rang. Ada looked at it. She didn't answer; the caller heard that day's recorded message. A moment later, someone tapped the window. A woman pointed to the notice and was already walking away. Ada didn't know whether she'd been the caller. She got up, went into the back room and finished her tea. It was cold.

The last hour went better than the first. She could finish a stage of the work without declaring the whole service complete. There was still assembly, checking, then time to observe the clock running. Its owner would collect it the following week. No reason to offer an earlier date just because Monday might otherwise seem to have produced so little.

At four, she put down the tweezers and looked at her timesheet. Four and a half hours of hands-on work. An hour for assessments, job cards and parts. The rest of the six available hours had gone on interruptions, getting up, checking something again before she could proceed. There'd been the usual lunch break as well. That hour wasn't part of the six.

She added it again. An hour and twenty, an hour and ten, an hour, the final hour. Four and a half. The sheet didn't say how much of that she'd ultimately charge for. That belonged to the agreed work and price, not every glance at her watch.

Ada didn't take down the trial notice. She added a small sheet saying she'd be open again tomorrow from nine. The old hours still applied. Then she put her work away and pulled on her coat. There was enough light to see the colour of the shopfront, darkened by the afternoon rain.

At home that evening, she looked at the timesheet once. She'd brought it so she wouldn't be tempted to search for it on the bench on Wednesday. It also held the costs of the accepted work. One Monday couldn't tell her whether customers would come back in January. She hadn't even spoken to the man with the plastic bag. She laid the sheet beside the notebook and put a pan on the hob.

The driver arrived at ten past six on Friday evening. Ada had shut the door behind the last customer and packed the clock ready for travel. Its round wooden rim made the box larger than most parcels she took in. Together they carried it to the vehicle. She checked that all the labelled parts were there, keeping the folder with the delivery record beside her.

On the way, she looked at the house windows. In one kitchen, someone still in an apron was on the phone. The driver asked which entrance they needed. Ada pointed to the side door Remco had mentioned. She rang when they reached the gate. Someone took a while to come and open it; a game was still going on indoors on another court.

Remco de Wit led the way. He held his keys and sports bag in the same hand, something knocking against the metal rings at each step.

‘Back here,’ he said.

A paler circle showed on the wall. The existing fixing had been checked as agreed. Ada inspected it herself and asked where they could put the packaging. The driver waited while she replaced the individually protected parts. Then, with help, she hung the clock. She didn't let go until it sat properly. Remco stood in the middle of the room to see whether it was straight.

‘Like that?’ he asked.

Ada looked from the side. She checked its position and set it running. As she listened, a woman came in with a crate of balls. She put it beneath the clock and asked whether the thing chimed now too.

‘It doesn't have a striking mechanism,’ Ada said.

‘Oh. I'll still have to look at my phone, then.’

The woman picked up the crate. Remco explained that a few people used to call it the station clock, and the name had stuck. Ada watched the pendulum and its clearance from the wood. Then she asked them to leave it in the same position for the first few days and report their observations as agreed.

Remco took a pen from his bag. He'd written his questions on a sheet. The main one was who should be her regular contact at the club. Too many people assumed someone else was keeping track. Ada suggested sticking to the name already on her job card. He wrote that down and put the sheet with his own keys, rather than in her folder.

She took time to check how the clock ran in place. Meanwhile, the driver helped collapse the empty box. He looked at his phone, not his watch. Waiting time was included in the journey; Ada had asked when arranging it. Remco signed for delivery. The clock hung where it belonged. Ada filed the record and looked once more from the doorway.

‘If the sound changes, ring first,’ she said. ‘Then we'll agree what's needed.’

Remco nodded. Behind him, someone tried to trap a ball with his foot, missed and had to chase it. Ada went outside with the driver.

On Tuesday, Remco rang. The clock was running, but since Monday there'd been another sound: a brief rattling tick, not every time. Ada asked him to describe when he heard it. Nobody had worked on the clock, he said. They had put up decorations for an event.

‘Could you show me a short video first?’ she asked.

They agreed he'd send one, then ring back. Someone came in for a watch strap. Ada helped him, opened the box of sizes and let him choose between two colours. When he'd gone, the video was on her phone.

The clock hung in the same place. A narrow plastic pennant moved beside the wooden rim. Now and then, when the sports hall door opened, it touched the case. On the recording it sounded like a second, quicker tick between the ordinary ones.

Ada rang back. ‘Something's touching the case.’

‘That flag?’

‘That's what I can see. If you move it clear, you can listen for the sound again.’

Remco put down the phone. Ada heard voices, something scraping across a table, then a short conversation not intended for her. She looked at the new little clock, reassembled after the trial Monday and now being observed as it ran. Its owner's collection date was still Thursday.

Remco returned. ‘They've moved it. I can't hear it now.’

‘Have someone listen while that door opens too.’

He did. The sound stayed away. They agreed he'd ring if it came back. For now, she needn't take the clock to the shop to try to reproduce something that wouldn't happen there.

After the call, Ada noted what they'd seen and what Remco had confirmed. She completed the delivery record with a short follow-up note. Beneath the old date was today's.

The folder for October's long list was still in the cupboard. Ada took it out and turned the pages. Saskia had collected her mantel clock. Paul's table clock had gone back with all its parts. The three unassessed pieces she hadn't accepted had been collected in November, as had the last job she'd declined. The two clocks Jeroen had taken one Friday in late November had been collected from him by their owners that Saturday. The confirmations followed the consents. The other piece, returned to her through him, had been collected the week after. Every other line had a destination and a date. Now she could close the record for De Zoom's round clock too.

She checked that the final refunds and receipts were filed against the right records. November was now closed. After September's ninety-euro shortfall, October's hundred and the extra assessment invoice, the available buffer stood at three thousand eight hundred and thirty. Customer funds and reserves were separate. The money she was prepared to risk on the trial would have to come from that same pot.

Ada put the old stock folder on the top shelf. The new job card for the pale wooden clock stayed on the clipboard. Its owner would collect it on Thursday if the final checks remained satisfactory. She looked at the time and switched on the bench lamp. There was work for the next hour. The door was open to anyone coming in during today's usual hours.