The Part That Fitted

The part fitted. That was the trouble.

Ada had wanted to ring the supplier, set the numbered bag beside the phone and say the size was wrong. Then there would have been a mistake that another bag could put right. She had held the old and new versions under the lamp. The fit was correct. She had secured it carefully, checked that nothing was catching and left the clock running.

Nine minutes later it had stopped again.

She hadn't timed it out of impatience. Everything went beside the job sheet now: start, work, interruption, finish. For Paul Hoving she had recorded forty-eight minutes on Thursday for calls, unpacking and comparisons, and over an hour on the clock itself. That was not the same as almost finished. The movement was still on her bench, the brass case on a soft cloth beside it.

She lifted her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. A council vehicle passed the window. Its side brushes turned too fast for her to distinguish the bristles. One wet leaf stayed where it was.

She wasn't to touch the sports club's clock today. She had cleared its shelf and pinned the job sheet above it. The round case took up more space than the movement needed. On the back of the wood was a dark patch where it had hung against the same wall for years. She had rung Remco de Wit about it last week. He had said it didn't matter if it couldn't be seen. She had recorded two minutes' work for the call, then wondered whether that was childish.

She looked back at Paul's movement. Ordering the part hadn't been pointless; the old fitting really hadn't been working properly. But she had thought that was the cause. She needed to assess the clock in front of her, not her first account of it.

On a scrap of paper she wrote what it did. Runs. Loses momentum. Stops. Same short interval again. The words produced no diagnosis. She slipped the paper under the job sheet so it wouldn't vanish into the parts drawer.

Jeroen had called back before ten. His voice sounded more distant than usual. He had a fan on, he said, not because it was hot, but because somebody at the other end of the building had been sawing all morning.

‘Can you have a look this afternoon?’ Ada asked.

‘At a photograph, yes.’

‘I want to know whether it can run reliably without any new lathe work.’

‘Not from a photograph, then.’

She knew that. She could still hear herself trying to narrow the question. Next week was no solution. If he could look today, she would know by tonight what to tell Paul. He asked which movement it was. She gave him the type, the fault and the part she had replaced. Then she waited while he checked his diary.

‘I can fit an examination in this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Not a repair. I need to see what's there once it's all clean and visible. A hundred and eighty to investigate it. You'll get a report and a price for the next stage.’

Ada wrote 180 beneath her note of the time. That wasn't what she had meant the empty space for.

‘And the next stage?’

‘I'll know after I've examined it.’

He wasn't unkind. The sawing behind him stopped. A different, smaller sound replaced it, one she couldn't identify.

‘I'll ring the customer,’ she said.

Paul answered on her second attempt. A radio in the background was immediately turned down. First he wanted to know whether she was ringing to say he could come in.

‘Not yet. I've replaced the part, but it still stops. I'd like a colleague to examine the movement. With the case and the other parts there, so he knows what belongs to this clock.’

‘Will it be at your shop?’

‘Not this afternoon. It will only go if you're happy with that.’

‘What will it cost me?’

She looked at the original agreement on his job sheet. Two hundred and ninety. No repair, no bill. She had repeated his own phrase back to him with a reassuring nod. Now it was in her handwriting.

‘This examination doesn't change our agreement. I'll pay for it. If it needs more work than I've quoted for, you'll have a new price first. You decide whether to go ahead.’

‘And if I don't want to?’

‘Then you get your clock back unrepaired. With everything that belongs to it. And your deposit back.’

He was silent long enough for her to hear the radio switch click. Then he asked the colleague's name. She told him Jeroen's name and where his workshop was, outside the centre. Paul wanted to know whether she would take the clock herself. Yes. Whether he would get the same little door and the same hands back. Yes. He had owned the clock for years, he said; there was no rush that called for swapping things at random.

‘Let him have a look, then,’ he said. ‘But don't do anything I'm committed to yet.’

‘An examination only. I'll put that down.’

She recorded his permission and the time of the call. Then she sent him the message they had agreed on, without adding a likely outcome. She wrote the instructions for Jeroen: examination at her expense, 180, no further work without a fresh agreement. It didn't take long to put the two distinct commitments into words. She read both back before pressing Send.

At noon she locked the shop behind her. Friday wasn't a closed day. She had made a notice: away today from twelve until half past one, open again afterwards. It was small and untidy, with an index-finger smudge beneath half. She hung it at eye level. The street was busy enough to make her feel somebody would start timing her at once.

The taxi was a street away because the driver couldn't get past a delivery van. Ada walked to it with the outer box held close against her. The clock's parts were labelled and protected separately; nothing could knock about. The driver asked if it was heavy. She said no. He wanted to hold the door for her anyway. This time she let him.

Jeroen's workshop had no display window. Its window was high in the wall, with a strip of frosted film across the bottom. Beside the door was a planter full of thin wooden battens. The bell didn't work. Ada could see him at the back and knocked on the frame until he looked up.

‘That's been broken three weeks,’ he said as he opened the door.

‘You hear that a lot in this line of work.’

‘Well, I don't hear it.’

He didn't take the box straight away. First he moved two stacked trays off the worktable and put his own work aside. Ada watched how long it took. There hadn't been an empty hour waiting for her. There was a half-covered machine, a loupe with a larger lens than hers, and a paper cup that couldn't have held coffee for a long time.

They unpacked together. Jeroen checked the labelled bags and the job sheet. He pointed to the new part.

‘That's the right one.’

‘Yes.’

She wanted to tell him how long she had searched. He didn't ask. He turned the lamp and asked when the clock stopped. She gave him her note. He read the times, laid it beside his instructions and wrote Paul Hoving's name on a paper strip for the parts box.

‘I'll ring before four and tell you what I know,’ he said. ‘Not to say it's finished.’

Ada nodded. That was the third time today she had heard the distinction. In him she saw it as care. In herself she had called it delay.

He asked her to wait while he made an initial check. She could watch over his shoulder, at the distance she herself would have wanted a customer to keep. A small shaft wasn't sitting as it should in its bearing. When he shifted its position under the loupe, she saw the slight difference she hadn't been able to judge with certainty in the shop. She had had her doubts. She said so now.

‘You were right to doubt it, then,’ he said.

That didn't please her. She shifted her bag from one foot to the other. Jeroen put it back and showed her where he would look next. He could finish examining it because that afternoon's other work could wait between stages. That didn't mean he could fit the machining in afterwards. His first space for that was in three weeks, and then it would have to be put back into running order and tested.

‘I took it on for too little,’ Ada said.

‘I can't judge that from here.’

‘The price, I mean.’

He picked up her instructions. ‘This price is right.’

On the journey back she sat beside a woman who was trying to fold a shopping bag while they waited at a stop. The fabric was caught in the zip of a little pocket. Ada wanted to take the bag from her and kept her hands on her own knees. The woman pinched the zip between two fingers and pulled the fabric free. Afterwards she offered Ada the empty seat nearest the exit.

Ada reached the shop five minutes before half past one. Nobody was at the door. Taking the notice off the glass brought no relief either. Perhaps somebody had come. Perhaps not. She couldn't tell from the empty pavement.

She put her bag in the cupboard and ate a sandwich while she stood tidying up the morning's work. She cleared the empty space under the lamp and began on the mantel clock. Saskia had made it clear what she didn't want. That didn't automatically make the job smaller, but at least it was still the same job.

Jeroen rang at twenty to four. He had completed the examination. There was wear around the bearing holes and a pivot that needed more than cleaning. He described what could be repaired and what he could only assess again after machining. Ada made two notes and asked him to repeat the order. She knew the words. Now she had to choose which to tell Paul and which belonged only on the job sheet.

‘Can you put that in writing?’

‘I'll send it over now. With the price. If he doesn't go ahead, I'll get all the parts together for return. The examination invoice goes to you.’

‘That's fine.’

The email arrived while she was still by the telephone. She read it on her mobile's small screen and then on the computer: she didn't want an amount cut off at the edge. Jeroen had listed the examination separately. A hundred and eighty, completed. Below it was a new price for the machining, tied to the work described and not charging for the earlier part again. He had named the earliest week he could do it. No polite promise of Friday collection.

Ada added her own remaining work: reassembly, checking, watching the clock run, not counting a brief trial as a final test. The new total for Paul came to six hundred and ten euros. The hundred and eighty for the examination remained her expense; she wouldn't pass it on to him after all. If he agreed, it couldn't be ready before Friday in five weeks' time. She sent the quote; any further work had to wait for his answer. He hadn't bought anything yet.

She rang him. The radio was louder again now. He left it on while she explained what remained wrong despite the part that fitted. Halfway through he asked whether she or her colleague couldn't have known this sooner.

‘When I first assessed it I thought the replacement would sort it out,’ she said. ‘I was too definite.’

‘You said two hundred and ninety.’

‘Yes.’

He asked her to send the message. He wanted to sit at the table and read it. Ada said he didn't have to decide straight away, but that no work would begin without his answer. He asked her to include their original agreement with the quote.

After the call she didn't have to look for the job sheet again. It was still beside the telephone. She took a legible photograph and attached it. On the screen her handwriting looked older than the morning she had written it. She checked the name above the file. Paul Hoving. Not a customer number belonging to another clock.

Outside, the baker was wheeling his racks indoors. She had twenty minutes left before closing. A woman collected a small key and paid cash. Ada entered the payment on the usual list. Then she looked at her time sheet. Her own work on Paul's clock hadn't vanished because another workshop had examined it. She added the journey and the conversations on separate lines. The total was still there when she shut the notebook.

On Saturday after closing she went back for the clock. Jeroen had laid an inventory on the lid of the outer box. They checked it together: case, movement, dial with its hands protected, pendulum secured separately, and the little bag of fixings. The old part was there too, marked as replaced.

‘He hasn't answered yet,’ Ada said.

‘You don't need to wait here for that.’

Jeroen slid her a copy of his report. She had the original digitally. She filed the paper with the job sheet; she liked the idea of having something to hold when Paul rang again. Another movement was already on Jeroen's worktable. She couldn't recognise the type at this distance and didn't go closer. The name on the box was underlined in green.

‘If he goes ahead, ring first to book it in,’ Jeroen said. ‘I'm not keeping the week empty because there's a quote out.’

‘I've told him. That it can't be any sooner.’

‘Good.’

She wanted to ask how he said that to somebody who had known him so long that there was no clear day left between dropping something off and collecting it. But her taxi was waiting outside, right by the door this time, and she hadn't said she had a question. She lifted the box. He held the door without taking it from her.

In the closed shop she placed the complete set on the low shelf where Paul's clock had stood before. A new strip on the box read: awaiting customer's decision. She didn't need to promise anything to know where it was.

Then she went home. On the way she bought an unsliced loaf because the baker's slicing machine was being cleaned. At home she sawed off a slice too thick and ate it with cheese. Her own kitchen table was full enough with just the breadboard and her plate.