Not Everyone Comes on Thursday

At ten to nine, somebody was already waiting outside. Ada saw a beige coat through the gap between two clocks. First she switched on the light above her workbench and put her bag in the drawer. Then she went to the door.

‘You’re early.’

‘You were closed yesterday.’

The woman said it as though there were a connection. Ada turned the key and let her in. She was holding a small red collection slip, folded so many times that the ink had worn away along the crease.

‘I came on Tuesday afternoon as well, but somebody had a ladder on the pavement.’

That had been the window cleaner. The door had been open. Ada didn’t say so. She took the slip and fetched an alarm clock from the cupboard behind the counter. The woman held it to her ear.

‘It never used to be that loud.’

‘It’s right beside your ear now.’

The woman lowered her arm. Ada explained the work she had done, pointed to the amount on the bill and waited while her customer took the plastic wallet containing her bank card from her bag. The new card kept slipping behind the old one.

A man Ada recognised was approaching outside. He held a clock upright against his chest. She gestured towards the empty customer’s chair. For the first time in years, it stood where it belonged.

The woman couldn’t get the payment to go through at first. Her glasses steamed up as she put them on. She said she knew perfectly well how it worked and laid her card the wrong way up on the machine. Ada didn’t move it. She pointed to the diagram.

When the receipt emerged, Ada put it in the plastic wallet with the collection slip. The woman wrapped her alarm clock in a scarf. A little fluff remained on the counter.

‘Will you be going away every Wednesday now?’

‘I’ll be closed every Wednesday.’

The woman looked at the man in the chair, as though he might have something to add. He drew his knees in to let her pass.

Ada straightened the chair. The round impression left by Mara’s case was still there in the seat. Yesterday afternoon, when she had gone back into the shop after her lesson to get her bicycle key, she had touched it. She hadn’t started work. The dust cover on the workbench had been in place and had stayed there.

The man waited until she was behind the counter. Paul Hoving, she remembered now. Years ago he had brought in a wooden kitchen clock which she had never seen back on his kitchen worktop, since customers didn’t invite her round to look.

This time he had a brass table clock. Two little columns stood beside the dial; on the base was a dark patch where fingers had repeatedly touched the same spot. He waited for Ada to spread a soft sheet on the counter before setting it down.

‘It keeps stopping.’

‘After how long?’

‘Depends. Sometimes an hour. Sometimes it’s stopped before I’ve finished my coffee.’

Ada asked whether it stood in its usual place and whether it had been moved. Hoving turned it round to show her the back. Behind the little door, the pendulum hung motionless. A piece of string tied the key to one of the feet.

‘My wife thought something might be catching.’

‘I can have a look first.’

His hand rested on the brass. He cut his nails very short; the skin along the edge of his thumb was a little ragged. As she bent to look from the side, he took his hand away.

Ada checked past the hands and round the pendulum. Having settled the clock carefully in position, she listened. Her customer remained standing at the counter. A tick, an answer, another tick. None of the clocks on the wall kept the same pace.

‘You can hardly tell them apart in here,’ Hoving said.

‘I can hear this one.’

She wanted to see how it ran first. Hoving shifted his weight, his coat rubbing against the counter.

‘When was it last serviced?’

He gave a year, then immediately reconsidered. It might have been two years before that. It ought to say on the old receipt, but he didn’t have it.

Ada wrote his name on a job sheet. Her pen wouldn’t work at first. She scribbled a loop on the edge of an old envelope and tried again. Hoving watched the little boxes.

‘You can fix it, though?’

‘I need to examine the movement properly first. I can’t tell you exactly what’s wrong yet.’

He nodded, then stepped back as though that settled everything. Ada asked for his telephone number. They passed the sheet back and forth once more because one digit was unclear.

The shop phone rang. Ada let it ring once, picked up and heard yesterday’s man asking whether she remembered him. The wall clock with the extra little tick.

‘You said Thursday, but I’m at work.’

‘I’m here until one on Saturday.’

‘I can’t this Saturday. Or the two after that. I’ve already arranged things with my daughter.’

He wasn’t apologising. Ada took her diary from beneath the notebook. A page corner caught on the elastic. She had a space at ten this Saturday.

‘I can do the fourth Saturday,’ the man said. ‘Three weeks after this one. Ten, if that’s possible.’

Ada turned the pages and put her finger on the right Saturday.

‘I’ll put you in there, then. Your name?’

‘Vermeer. V-e-r—’

‘I’ve got it.’

She wrote out the whole name while he finished spelling it anyway. Saturday in three weeks, ten o’clock, bringing wall clock. She read the appointment back. Vermeer repeated the time. His clock was still at home; she pictured the folded paper alongside its pendulum.

When she hung up, Hoving was still standing in front of her. The table clock was running. That wasn’t the same as finished.

‘Will you ring me before doing anything expensive?’

‘I will.’

She copied the job sheet for him and put the table clock on the low rack behind the bench. She attached a name tag to the key, leaving it loose enough not to put a strain on anything. When she returned to the front, a woman with a large shopping bag was at the door.

She only wanted to know whether her clock was ready. Ada had said she would ring on Thursday afternoon.

‘I was passing anyway.’

The movement stood on the far side of the workbench, under a dome to keep the dust off. Ada had intended to put it back in its case and leave it running again. The dial still lay loose beside it. Seeing the woman look towards the bench, she pulled the job sheet closer.

‘I’ll ring this afternoon.’

‘But if it’s already—’

‘It isn’t ready to take home yet.’

The woman lowered her bag to the floor. Ada didn’t want another question about exactly when, but asked one herself: where did her customer live, and would coming back be difficult? Three streets away. Friday would be possible, though not before coffee with her sister.

Ada wrote Friday after eleven on the sheet. When the woman left, she moved the slip to a different place. She had meant to keep Thursday afternoon for the work; now her customer had put it off for her. A piece of luck Ada hadn’t arranged.

By half ten she had handled two movements without being able to get on with either. Her coffee was made but still in the jug. She lifted it off the hotplate and poured half down the sink. There was no need to keep a whole jug hot for one mug.

Her phone gave a brief beep. A message from Mara: Everything dropped off. Car returned too. The photograph beneath it showed the empty car interior. Ada didn’t zoom in. She replied Good. Thank you, then lingered over the empty message box.

Mara’s question about the lesson had arrived yesterday evening, just as Ada was draining the potatoes into the colander. She had typed Fine with one hand. More had happened than that. Kamal had made her wait before releasing the brake, and she had felt the car creep forwards like a slow-moving cupboard. At the first corner she had gone too wide again. Not as wide as last week. He had sent her back past a row of low garage doors, round the same route once more. The third time she had made the turn without seeing his hand move towards the wheel.

When she got home, she hadn’t had to demonstrate it to anyone.

Ada put her phone in the drawer and moved her mug well away from the open movements. She pulled the lamp towards her. Nothing had changed in the movement already on the bench since yesterday. She knew where every little container stood. Even so, she needed a few minutes looking before her hands remembered where to begin again.

She took the first screw with her tweezers. Not too tight: something she had learnt to feel long ago without being able to explain it. She dropped it into the container beside the appropriate parts. Two springs from another clock lay on the small tray in front of her. She set them aside and checked the clean paper beneath her work again.

At the second part, the bell rang.

A boy wanted a new strap for his watch. Ada had nothing to fit this particular watch. He asked whether she had anything he could use temporarily and was already putting the watch down. The strap had torn beside a hole where somebody had been pulling it harder and harder. She had no temporary solution either. She showed him where to find the shop that sold straps, two streets away. He entered the directions on his phone, then stopped beside the empty customer’s chair on his way out.

‘That’s crooked,’ he said.

‘Not the chair.’

He looked as though he didn’t understand. Ada could hear that she had been thinking of something else. She wished him a good day and pulled her stool back up.

Towards lunchtime, people stopped coming. She ate her sandwich at the narrow surface beside the sink instead of at the workbench. Standing there felt awkward. Her plate only just fitted beside the coffee machine. Outside, the woman with the shopping bag passed again, on the opposite pavement. She didn’t look in.

Ada fetched her diary. Vermeer was on the correct Saturday, at ten. She had given the Friday customer a new time. Beside another name she had written Thursday and a question mark. She rang. No answer. She left a message: the little clock needed another day so she could check that the striking mechanism kept doing what it should. She had meant to check it yesterday morning. Yesterday she had been closed.

For a moment she sat with her pen against the edge of her lip. The question mark looked like an invitation to leave things as they were. She wrote Friday beside it.

That day’s entries in her notebook were the alarm-clock payment and a small amount for a spare winding key somebody had collected early. Together they came to less than the takings on her last open Wednesday. She wrote down both amounts, leaving a blank line beneath them.

At half three, the woman with the alarm clock passed the window again. This time she raised a hand. Ada waved back without leaving her stool. Hoving’s brass clock still stood on the rack in front of her. It had stopped after a little over an hour, its hands showing a time that said nothing about the rest of the afternoon.

Ada took the job sheet and added: stops after just over an hour. She put the tag back and looked at the movement she had finally been able to work on uninterrupted. It wasn’t back in its case yet. The top container still needed to be emptied.

She lowered the lamp a little and turned her stool halfway towards the bench.