Kitchen Clock

They had bought the house when Lauren was two, and they had grown out of the nursery in their old flat. Three of them moved in, they stripped the old wallpaper, painted the plaster and brick, they hung paintings and planted things in the little square courtyard of a garden.

Lauren was three when the clock in the kitchen started to fail. No-one noticed the exact day it began to lose time, but they were getting ready to go out - Dave’s mother was looking after Lauren and already installed in the sitting room watching Big Brother – and Dave was in the kitchen, on his second glass of red wine, and listening to the cricket, when she came in fully dressed, having done her hair and make up.

“Why aren’t you ready?” she said
“The restaurant’s not booked for another half hour” he said
“It’s booked for eight” she said
“It’s half seven” he said, pointing to the kitchen clock.
“No, it’s eight” she said, pointing to her watch.

And they compared the kitchen clock, first with her watch, then with Dave’s mother’s watch, and finally with the 1-2-3 speaking clock, and concluded the clock was indeed half an hour slow. So they re-set it to the correct time, which it was, for a long while, until it again began to slow down, until one of them missed a haircut, or a dentists appointment, or forgot to ring the other at the right time.

For some reason they never got rid of the clock, they just waited until it lost enough time that caused them to notice, re-wound and re-set it, and hung it back on the wall. It became a kind of running joke, one of them would be running late to do this or that chore, or other important job, and they would say
“Sorry. Kitchen clock”
And the other would say “Ah” in a knowing way, in the conspiracy of shared jokes amongst intimate lives.

She never got rid of the clock the whole time they were in the house. And after it happened, when it was only her, she kept the clock as well. It took her two years to paint over the colours they had chosen, to pick new paintings and new hangings, to weed the garden and put in new evergreen things that would grow up tall and woody, thin and impervious in all seasons. It took her two years to do these things, but she never got rid of the clock.

On Sundays and alternate Wednesdays she got to see Lauren. And every time she took her somewhere, from going to feed the ducks, to taking her to buy new books, or new shoes, or to get a haircut or go to the local fair, she would do her hair, and do her makeup, and try to look nice for her daughter.

She was listening to Sly and The Family Stone in the kitchen whilst straightening her hair when Lauren was six, and the phone rang and she answered it.

“Where are you?” asked a voice. It was Dave.
“I’m getting ready to leave” she said
“You’re late. You were supposed to be here already.” He said
“I’m not late, it’s only two” she said.
“It’s three.” He said. “I’m going to miss my train”
“Shit.” She said. “Kitchen clock”
“I can’t leave her here on her own. Not in the station” he said.
“I’ll leave now” she said. “I’ll be there in half an hour”
“You won’t make it in time” he said. “I’ll have to take her with me”
“Can’t you wait? Please wait.” She said
“You can see her on Wednesday” he said.
“No. Dave. Don’t” she said.
“I have to go.” He said “Do you want to speak to her?” and when she said yes, he put Lauren on the phone.

After she hung up the phone, she stared at the kitchen clock. With its red plastic rim and with the second hand slightly bent, the hand that ticked more unsteadily than the others. It looked back at her, half an hour behind everything else in the room.

She took the clock down, and without a screwdriver to hand, she opened up the back plate screws with a butter knife from the cutlery draw. Inside there were little cogs and gears, and the mechanism, which previously was almost inaudible through the wall and the outer casing, went ‘click, click, click, click’.

She pulled out the remaining screws and the gears, prising apart the pieces with the tip of her knife. And when she had taken it apart, she arranged the pieces on the table cloth and stared at them. And whilst she stared she wondered what her daughter would think, aged six, watching her mother who had no idea how to mend a kitchen clock trying to do so with a blunt knife on a formica kitchen tablecloth. She thought that a child, with their imperious wisdom, would merely ask why she hadn’t bought a new clock years ago, and she, the adult, would have no satisfactory answer. She had no reason for it, and there was no way to explain it to her.