A Presentable Case

Saskia had put the clock in a shopping bag, then put that inside a larger bag. At first Ada saw only the red handles. Then came a folded beach towel with a hard wooden corner poking into it.

‘I thought I’d knock it against everything otherwise.’

Ada cleared the counter. The beach towel was bigger than the work surface. She folded it back to uncover the case: dark wood, two little columns beside the dial, a glass door in front of the pendulum. A pale scratch crossed the right-hand corner. A dent at the back had long since darkened to match the rest.

‘My father’s,’ Saskia said. ‘He gave it to me a year ago. He does like it to be working when he comes round.’

‘Has it stopped altogether?’

‘Sometimes. I go to the kitchen and when I come back it’s stopped.’

Ada asked where it stood, whether the cabinet beneath it was steady and what happened to the pendulum. Saskia put her bag on the customer’s chair and looked at the clocks on the wall.

‘It strikes wrong too. Three times at two, I think. I’ve rather lost track.’

‘Do you know whether that started at the same time?’

‘I wasn’t paying attention.’

Ada wrote running and striking mechanism on the job sheet. She asked when the clock had last been examined. Saskia took her phone from her coat and found a photograph of a narrow paper slip bearing another workshop’s name. The date was clear enough to read.

‘They’ve closed down,’ she said. ‘My father still had the slip. He thought at first I’d been rough with it.’

Ada turned the clock carefully, running her fingers along the wood without pressing the damaged spot. Beneath its dull surface, the case had a lovely warm colour. Turning the lamp made the scratch look paler still.

‘We could do something about this as well.’

Saskia bent to look. ‘That’s been there for years.’

‘It catches the eye now.’

‘I’d never really noticed.’

Ada looked at the front again. A little attention would bring out the two columns. She could picture it on Saskia’s cabinet without the pale patch catching every bit of light from the window. The movement had to come first, of course. That was where you began. Still, it was pleasant to return something that looked finished on the outside too.

She added a second line, woodwork, and held her pen above it.

‘I’ll draw up a quote first. Nothing goes ahead until we’ve agreed.’

Saskia nodded. She folded her beach towel, unfolded it again and asked whether Ada would keep it for when she returned the clock.

‘I’ve plenty of blankets.’

Saskia put the towel in the red bag. Ada gave her a slip for collecting the quote, not a repaired clock. Once more, she explained that preparing a quote didn’t mean the job would be finished that afternoon. Saskia wasn’t in a hurry, she said, as long as she knew what to expect.

‘Shall I ring on Wednesday?’

‘I’m closed then. I can send you something on Friday. Or you’re welcome to come in on Saturday and go through it.’

‘Next Saturday, then. I can’t this coming one.’

She asked whether the end of the month would be all right. Ada checked her diary. Next Saturday she had Vermeer at ten. Before that, Saskia could simply come in for a piece of paper; Ada wouldn’t need to bring the clock out of the workshop.

‘Half nine?’

‘I can make that.’

Ada wrote in her name. Once the door closed, she taped the slip to the clock’s tag. The tape stuck to her finger first.

Some days Ada began nothing except the work left half finished the day before. This Tuesday she had drawn towards her the movement of a small clock due back on Friday. Clean parts lay arranged in little containers. Opposite, Hoving’s brass table clock still stood on the rack. It ran longer now than on its first trial, but it had done that the day before yesterday too. Its key dangled on its string.

Ada fitted a new bulb in the lamp above the bench. The old one still worked, but sometimes cast a trembling edge round what she was doing. She had brought a box of bulbs yesterday. In the morning, better light seemed unnecessary; as soon as she bent closer, she could see the difference.

The lamp’s base was in the way. She moved a container, caught a brush with her sleeve and snatched it with her other hand before it fell into the movement. Its tip left a faint stroke on the paper.

She looked at Friday’s clock. Its return date had already changed. First it was to have been ready last Thursday, then Friday; then she had explained to the customer that she wanted to test it for longer. That last part was true. It hadn’t made the earlier work happen any faster.

The landline rang. Ada answered with her surname, as always, and a man said he wasn’t sure he had the right shop. He was from Sportvereniging De Zoom. They had brought in a large clock.

‘The round wooden one?’

‘Yes. Remco de Wit. I brought it myself.’

Ada looked at the low shelf. The clock faced the wall, protected from things passing in front of it. It had arrived in the first full week after her Wednesday decision. Large, plain on the outside, no striking mechanism. Remco had said it hung above the clubhouse coffee machine. Now people had to check their phones to see when training was over.

‘I wondered roughly when you’d be ringing.’

She took the receiver towards the shelf, as far as the cord allowed. The tag hung at the back. She hadn’t written down a collection date. She had said she wanted it back before winter. Somebody had mentioned a tournament. That had seemed further away than it felt now.

‘I haven’t started on it yet.’

‘That’s all right. I just need something to tell the meeting. People are asking if there’s any news.’

Ada fetched her diary. She turned past Vermeer and the next two Saturdays. Hoving didn’t yet have a price beside a date. Nor did Saskia. At the moment they all seemed like clocks she could manage once she got started.

‘Early December should be possible,’ she said.

‘Good. Not right before Christmas.’

‘No, earlier.’

They agreed to speak in the first full week of December about the precise delivery arrangements. Remco repeated it as he wrote it down. Afterwards, Ada wrote it down too. Now it felt like an actual appointment, a date where previously she had only sensed some space.

After the call, she moved the clock to a higher rack where it was easier to reach. It was a large thing to lift, but the weight wasn’t the difficulty. She had to negotiate a box of packaging on the floor. She still hadn’t unpacked the little boxes.

She took them out one by one and put them in the cupboard. For a moment she held on to the empty outer box. It would fit a clock somebody had yet to bring. She flattened it and slid it beside the cupboard. The space on the floor suddenly looked wide.

Before lunch, she put Saskia’s clock on a separate sheet of paper. She noted the scratched corner and the old damage at the back, checked the hands again and recorded her initial findings. It needed servicing before she could promise anything about its running and striking. She worked out the labour from similar movements she knew, leaving a small allowance for parts.

The figure came to two hundred and sixty. Beside it she put ninety-five for the woodwork. The second figure was already on the page when she remembered that Saskia hadn’t asked for it.

Ada read the sheet. The two lines came to three hundred and fifty-five. She copied the total onto the quotation. Woodwork separate, so it wouldn’t disappear into one indecipherable sum. She could explain on Saturday.

She ate a sandwich and laid her phone beside her. Tomorrow’s calendar said badminton. She hadn’t bought a racket. Perhaps another two sessions would tell her whether the handle ought to feel different. Leonie had used a smaller head, or perhaps Ada had only thought so because Leonie’s arm moved faster.

It had been a long time since Ada had thought about anything like that while sitting in the shop. That didn’t mean she wanted the sports bag cluttering the shop again on Thursday. She put her phone away.

Paul Hoving rang while she was copying Saskia’s quotation. The machine was slow to produce the sheet. He wanted to know whether she had anything to report about his table clock.

‘I’ve examined it. Not just listened.’

‘And?’

Ada held the top of the job sheet to stop herself looking at the wrong clock again.

‘There’s work to do. I need to order a part, and the movement needs servicing. As things stand, it comes to two hundred and ninety.’

‘And it’ll work again then?’

‘That’s the idea.’

She could still hear the sentence after saying it. No simple question followed to let her return to what she had and hadn’t found. Hoving asked whether the case would stay in good condition. She said she would handle it carefully.

‘I don’t want it costing much more than the two hundred and ninety.’

‘I wouldn’t go ahead with that without asking.’

‘I mean if you can’t fix it.’

Ada looked at the pendulum behind the little door. Motionless. An hour earlier she had seen the clock running and gone to do something else.

‘No repair, no bill,’ she said. ‘If anything else turns up, we’ll discuss it first.’

Hoving said that was clear. She asked for ninety euros in advance for the materials she needed to order and explained that it would come off the agreed price. He wanted it in writing. Ada prepared a payment request with the price agreement attached. He would read it, then pay.

‘When do you think?’

She looked at the diary with De Zoom’s December entry.

‘I’m aiming to have it finished for you in six weeks. I’ll ring sooner as soon as I know anything.’

‘Then we can have it back on the cabinet for a while. Fine.’

After hanging up, she didn’t go straight to the bench. The paper had fed crookedly through the copier. She straightened it and saw that the bottom of Saskia’s quote hadn’t printed. She made it again.

Hoving’s payment notification arrived shortly afterwards. Ninety. She entered it against his name in the notebook, in the separate column for advances, away from the collected repairs. On the job sheet, she wrote advance paid and the date.

A man came to try an old winding key. She couldn’t check it without the clock, she said. He had thought she could tell from the hole, which he had photographed on his phone. They looked at it together. Taken so close, the photograph blurred the shape. He would come back with the clock sometime. Ada took in no work.

Then she ordered Hoving’s part. She checked the details twice, although the supplier’s page kept jumping to the top. The part was in stock. Once it arrived, she could look further.

Towards five, she put Saskia’s copy of the quote in an envelope. Outside, the sun still warmed the blue wood. Three kinds of paper lay on the counter: a signed receipt for taking in a clock, a price somebody had accepted, a quote still to be read. Hoving’s clock remained stopped on the rack.

Ada pulled Friday’s movement towards her. She didn’t set its glass dome on the job sheet, where the rim would cross the wet ink. First she laid down clean paper. Her hand rested on it a moment.

An hour until closing. She tucked her feet under the stool, checked which screw went back first and began.

The thin parts lay in the order she had removed them. One was on a different piece of paper because its original space hadn’t been free. Ada moved it back, checked that both containers still belonged to the same clock and fetched the drawing she had made while dismantling it. Three short pencil lines and an arrow which would have meant nothing later if she hadn’t drawn it that morning.

A passer-by stopped outside the window. Ada saw only the shadow on the floor. She didn’t wait for the bell. She looked through her loupe again and felt her fingers slow. Moving her hand closer to the work didn’t bring back its ease. She took off the loupe, rubbed her nose and began again.

By the time the little wall clock was back in its case, the opposite side of the street was in shade. Ada didn’t hold it up to the window to inspect it from a distance yet. First, its usual place against the back wall, where it could run without somebody touching it at every question. She hung the dated tag beneath it and watched the pendulum long enough to see that nothing rubbed.

Its tick remained among the other sounds. She wrote down the start time. That one line would have to do for today; there was no point writing ready beside the customer’s name yet.

A pair of shoes had left a streak of sand on the shop floor. Ada took the little dustpan and brush. She glanced at the movement again before bending to sweep up. A loose bristle lodged between two floorboards. She pulled it out, emptied the pan and returned it to the hook beside the sink.

The clock was still running. The brass table clock beside it had stopped. Ada put the plastic cover over the work left on the bench and switched off the large lamp. The small light by the rack stayed on, ready for her to check the hands tomorrow.