Category Archives: timeless

Chapter One

The Hour in the Pocket Watch

 

Mr Alderwick lived in a house that looked as if it had been built out of patience.

It was not a grand house. It did not boast towers, or turrets, or anything that might be described as “imposing.” It simply stood at the edge of the village with the steady confidence of a thing that had been there long before anyone thought to ask questions, and would probably remain long after those questions had grown tired and wandered away.

The roof was slate. The windows were small. The garden gate leaned at a thoughtful angle, as if it was considering whether gates truly mattered.

Inside, everything had a proper place, except for the things that did not.

There were books that had moved slightly left during the night. A teacup that sometimes ended up on the wrong shelf. A pair of spectacles that could not be found until Mr Alderwick stopped looking for them, sat down, and began to read without them.

Mr Alderwick would never have described any of this as magic. He would have sniffed at the very idea.

“It is not magic,” he would say to the kettle, which had developed a habit of boiling at the exact moment he turned his back. “It is simply time behaving in an untidy manner.”

The kettle would respond by boiling cheerfully anyway.

On the morning that Chapter One begins, Mr Alderwick woke at precisely six o’clock, as he had done for years, and lay still for a moment, listening.

The village was quiet. Not asleep, exactly. Villages rarely slept properly. They dozed. They listened. They held their breath while the sun considered whether it was worth rising.

Mr Alderwick sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and reached for his pocket watch.

It sat on the small table beside the lamp, as it always did, with its chain coiled neatly like a silver question mark. The watch had belonged to Mr Alderwick’s father, and before that his father’s father, and so on until you reached a person who was mostly legend and possibly never existed at all.

The watch was warm.

That was the first odd thing.

A pocket watch should not be warm. It should be cool and sensible and mildly judgemental. It should tick in a steady manner and remind you that you are late.

Mr Alderwick picked it up.

The brass case felt as though it had been resting in sunlight, though no sunlight had yet reached the window. The face of the watch was plain, but the hands seemed to tremble slightly, as if they were impatient.

Mr Alderwick frowned.

He opened the watch.

The second hand moved, then paused, then moved again, as if it could not quite decide how the seconds ought to behave.

Mr Alderwick held it closer to his ear. He did not simply listen to it. He listened as if he might catch it out.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Then, very softly, as if trying not to be noticed, another sound slipped between the ticks.

A sigh.

It was not a human sigh. It was not even a proper sigh. It was more like the sound a door makes when it has been opened too many times and begins to take the matter personally.

Mr Alderwick shut the watch with a snap.

“Well,” he said to the room, which was full of polite shadows. “We are not doing that.”

The room, being sensible, did not argue.

He dressed slowly, as he always did, because he did not see the point of hurrying when you were going to arrive as yourself either way. He washed, combed his hair, and tied his shoes with great care, as if his laces were capable of feeling insulted by sloppy knots.

Downstairs, he made tea. The kettle boiled the moment he turned his back, as expected. He poured the water, watched the leaves swirl, and considered the pocket watch sitting on the table like a small, silent creature.

He had tried not to notice it being warm.

It had been warm the day before too.

And the day before that.

At first he had assumed it was only the weather, though the weather had been cold enough to persuade the village pond to wear a thin film of ice.

Then he had assumed it might be his own hands. He was getting older, after all. Perhaps he was simply radiating more warmth. Old people did all sorts of mysterious things.

But the watch was warm before he touched it.

Mr Alderwick sat down with his tea, held the watch in both hands, and spoke to it quietly, because it was always best to speak quietly to strange things.

“Why,” he said, “are you warm?”

The watch did not answer in words, which was a relief. Mr Alderwick had no wish to begin his day arguing with an heirloom.

But the warmth pulsed, once, like a heartbeat.

Mr Alderwick’s eyes narrowed.

He had noticed the other thing too. The most troubling thing.

The watch was not simply ticking.

It was ticking ahead.

Not by much. Only a little. A minute at most. Sometimes less. But a watch that ticks ahead is not merely incorrect. It is ambitious.

He opened it again.

The face was clear. The numbers were crisp. The hands moved smoothly now, as if they had remembered what they were supposed to do.

Mr Alderwick compared it to the clock on the wall.

The clock on the wall had never been wrong in its entire existence. It was the sort of clock that considered accuracy a moral duty.

The pocket watch was fast.

Mr Alderwick took a careful sip of tea. He did not like to rush a thought.

Then he did something he had not done in a very long time.

He waited.

He watched the second hand travel round, and he watched the minute hand creep, and he sat so still that even the dust seemed to hesitate.

When the wall clock finally clicked over to six fifteen, Mr Alderwick’s pocket watch had already been there for nearly a minute.

And during that minute, while the village still insisted it was six fourteen, Mr Alderwick felt the strangest sensation.

It was the sensation of having time placed gently in his hands, like a small animal that did not entirely trust him.

The room seemed sharper. The air seemed brighter. The silence had an extra layer, as if the world had taken a breath and was holding it for his convenience.

Mr Alderwick looked down at his hands.

They were the same hands he had always had. A little knobbier, perhaps. A little more veined. The hands of a man who had opened jars, carried wood, repaired chairs, written notes, turned pages.

But for that minute, those hands felt young.

Not young in the foolish way, not young in the running and shouting way. Young in the way a well used tool feels when it has been sharpened.

Mr Alderwick’s tea tasted different.

It tasted like the first sip of tea you ever have, when you are a child and you have finally been allowed it, and it feels like a secret.

He swallowed, and the world returned to normal.

The wall clock ticked.

The kettle clicked faintly.

A bird outside decided to begin its day.

Mr Alderwick closed the pocket watch again, but his fingers lingered on the warm brass.

He did not smile. Mr Alderwick did not approve of smiling at things that might turn out to be dangerous.

Still, he could not deny the truth.

Something had happened.

And the pocket watch had done it.

Mr Alderwick stood, carried his cup to the sink, and washed it. He did not need to wash it immediately. He could have left it. But when you suspect something strange is taking place, it is comforting to perform ordinary actions, as if the world can be coaxed back into behaving properly by the simple act of rinsing a cup.

He dried it and put it away.

Then he took his coat from the peg by the door.

On the peg beside it hung a scarf. On the floor beneath it sat a pair of muddy boots. A sensible man might have cleaned them the night before.

Mr Alderwick was a sensible man.

But he was also a man who had once been young, and therefore occasionally forgot to be perfect.

He slipped the watch into his waistcoat pocket, felt its warmth settle against him, and paused with his hand still on the pocket.

“Just so you understand,” he murmured, “I have no time for nonsense.”

The watch warmed, very slightly, as if amused.

Mr Alderwick opened the door and stepped outside.

The village lay ahead, soft with early morning, the roofs pale, the lanes empty, the hedgerows glittering with cold. A thin mist wandered lazily between the cottages, not in any hurry to choose a direction.

Mr Alderwick began to walk.

He always walked at the same time each morning, down the lane and past the green, because routine was the frame that kept the picture from falling apart.

But today, as he approached the village green, he saw something that did not belong in his routine.

A child stood by the stone wall near the old clock.

She was small, with dark hair tied back in a ribbon, and she had the attentive posture of someone who was not merely waiting, but observing. She was not running. She was not shouting. She was simply standing, looking up at the clock with the seriousness of a person reading a riddle.

Mr Alderwick slowed.

Children were not usually out this early unless something had gone wrong, or something had gone wonderfully right.

The child turned as he approached, and her eyes were sharp, as if they had been polished.

“Morning,” she said.

Her voice was polite, but there was a question hidden inside it.

“Morning,” Mr Alderwick replied.

He would have walked on. He preferred to walk on. The village had plenty of people who would happily speak for hours, and Mr Alderwick did not wish to be one of them.

But the child did not move out of his way.

Instead, she pointed at the clock on the green.

“Is it ever wrong?” she asked.

Mr Alderwick glanced up at it. The clock face looked down at the village like a stern guardian.

“No,” he said. “It is never wrong.”

The child nodded as if she expected that answer.

Then she pointed, not at the clock, but at Mr Alderwick’s pocket.

The pocket watch was not visible, but perhaps its warmth was.

Perhaps it made the air different.

Perhaps it made the world slightly brighter, the way it had in the kitchen.

“Then why,” the child asked, very quietly, “are you always early?”

Mr Alderwick went still.

He could hear the village now. A distant door opening. A kettle beginning to boil. A dog stirring. The beginning of the day, lining itself up neatly.

And in the middle of it, a small girl, watching him as if she had been watching him for days.

He cleared his throat.

“I am not always early,” he said, because it is astonishing how often adults say things that are untrue simply because they want them to be true.

The child did not argue. She simply waited, which is far more unsettling.

Mr Alderwick felt the watch warm against his chest.

He looked down at the child again. She did not look mischievous. She did not look naughty. She looked curious in the way a cat looks curious, as if curiosity is not a hobby but a necessary part of breathing.

“What is your name?” Mr Alderwick asked.

“Nessa,” she said. “Nessa Grey.”

Mr Alderwick nodded.

“Nessa Grey,” he repeated, as if testing how it sounded in the morning air. “And why are you watching the clock?”

Nessa lifted her shoulders in a small shrug that suggested she had been dealing with baffled adults all her life.

“Because yesterday,” she said, “I lost an hour.”

Mr Alderwick’s hand went to his pocket without his permission.

The watch pulsed once, warm and steady.

Nessa’s eyes flicked to the movement.

“I did not mean it like a story,” she added quickly, as if that might make it less alarming. “I mean I was doing my sums, and then I looked up, and suddenly it was dinner time. But I had not finished. And my pencil was still sharp. And the page was clean, like the hour had not happened.”

Mr Alderwick’s mouth went dry.

He looked at the clock again. It stared back, perfectly innocent.

He looked at Nessa.

She was watching him with the calm certainty of someone who has spotted a loose thread and intends to pull it until the whole jumper reveals what it is really made of.

Mr Alderwick swallowed.

“That,” he said carefully, “is very strange.”

“Yes,” Nessa agreed. “So I thought I would find who took it.”

Mr Alderwick felt, for the first time in years, something close to panic.

Not the loud panic of shouting and running, but the quiet panic of a man who has kept a secret so carefully that he has almost convinced himself it is not there.

He had not told anyone about the watch.

Not anyone.

He had not even told himself properly.

And yet this child was standing here, as if she had arranged the morning.

Mr Alderwick stared at her.

Nessa stared back.

The village clock ticked.

The pocket watch warmed.

And somewhere, not in the sky and not in the ground and not in any place that could be pointed to, Tomorrow seemed to lean closer, listening.

Mr Alderwick took a slow breath.

“Come with me,” he said at last.

Nessa’s face brightened, not with triumph, but with the simple delight of being taken seriously.

“Where?” she asked.

Mr Alderwick turned toward his house.

“To my kitchen,” he said. “If you have lost an hour, you should at least be offered tea.”

Nessa nodded as if this was the most sensible thing she had heard all week.

They began to walk together, the old man and the child, down the misty lane.

Behind them, the village clock remained perfectly correct.

In Mr Alderwick’s pocket, the warm watch ticked on, quietly, politely, as if it had all the time in the world.

And perhaps it did.

For now.

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