A Moment in Time

It was not far off half past five, and the night was drawing in. End of January and a wet, chilly night; the rain slanting down. I sat behind the counter, polishing cloth in one hand and a pretty French gold lady's watch with a miserable, shitty movement in the other. As I mused desultorily about why it was always the French who united the best cases with the worst movements, I watched the passers-by hurrying homeward, umbrellas, held in front of their faces; a vain defence against the piercing rain.

"Well, that's it for tonight," I said to myself. I hadn't had a customer since mid-morning, which had left me free to get on with some satisfying work. Ben, my case man, a retired cabinet-maker, had come in this morning. He had done a lovely job on a walnut long-case, and I had spent the afternoon cleaning the movement and setting it up. He was an Edward East, eight-day clock, and he was now keeping perfect time. Through the lenticle glass I could see the slow, stately movement of the polished brass pendulum, and, as I worked I could hear him singing out the hours and quarters on his beautiful silvery bells. It would be a wrench to return him to his home, the Belgrave Hall Museum, where he kept some very distinguished company.

"Soon be time for a cup of tea", I said to myself. The door opened and the bell jangled on its iron spring. She closed her umbrella and stood it by the door, then walked up to the counter and opened her capacious handbag. A pretty dark-haired, dark-eyed young woman in a raincoat. Mid-twenties; dressed for an office job. Wet through and surly.

"You look as if you could do with a cup of tea. I was just going to make one."

Never hurts to make a friendly overture to a potential customer. They don't grow on trees, people who want watch and clock repairs. She didn't refuse, so I continued,

"Dry yourself off with this towel, and I'll put the kettle on."

I did not wait for an answer, and pushed off back to my tiny kitchen. By the time I came back with a tea-tray and a plate of biscuits, she had dried her hair and brushed it into some semblance of tidiness. Set out on the counter on the piece of green baize I kept for the purpose, I could see two wristlet watches and a gold half-hunter. My business is also my lifelong obsession, so with a muttered excuse-me, I left her to be mother whilst I was putting my glass in my eye, and reaching for the first wrist-watch. It was a lady's watch, maybe fifty years old, by the Swiss maker Longines, best known for aviator watches and chronometers. At least this one would have a good quality movement.

The second watch was a UK Military issue Smith's Astral. A good solid workhorse of a watch, but of no particular value. Automatically I checked that it was not overwound, but one or two turns of the crown and the watch started to tick and the second hand to go round.

The third watch was by a Birmingham maker, Geo. Harrison. I would have to look him up. I popped the case, and dropped the movement gently into my hand. The case was hallmarked Birmingham 1911, and it and the Albert were eighteen carat gold. Ten years before it would have been worth little more than scrap gold value, but the dressy young men with money to burn we were starting to call "yuppies" were taking to flaunt gold watches and chains with their dinner clothes, so the prices were going up fast.

Altogether a nice lot. Not of huge value, but a nice bit of cash. I looked up at her.

"I take it you're selling these."

"Yes, they were my mum and dad's. I've got people coming to look at the books and furniture, but my brother thought these had some value."

"Some value, yes. Have you price in mind?"

"No. I was hoping you would make an offer."

I am not one of those people who will not show my hand. So I opened the negotiation.

"I can give seventy for the watch and chain, Twenty for the lady's watch and five for the gentleman's."

"Ninety-five. Round it up to the hundred?"

"Ok. You've twisted my arm." We both laughed.

She signed the purchase book as the law requires, writing Sarah Elizabeth Tisdall, in a neat schoolgirl hand. We drank out tea and munched digestives companionably, and chatted.

"Is this your shop? You seem rather young to be in charge."

"Yes, that's my name over the door. I planned to go into this business sooner or later, but the chance came when I was only nineteen. So I thought, why wait?"

"How did that come about?"

"Well, January three years ago I went to one of Neale's fine art auctions in Nottingham and had a totally wasted afternoon. I was driving back down the Six Hills Road and I saw a notice saying auction tonight at Cotgrave Parish Hall. It was pouring with rain, but I thought I should at least view the auction, so I stopped. Viewing was almost over, and, apart from a porter smoking a fag I was the only one there.

"The furniture and pictures were crap, but, looking through the boxes of miscellaneous, I came to a better than average lot. Under the hunting prints and cracked meat-plates, I saw a battered cigar box. In it was a little cloth bag. I shook the contents out and found a small enamelled lady's verge watch, the bezel all crusted with yellowing stones. It looked like a fake Breguet, made by Samson or one of those firms, but, if so, it was by a maker I did not know. I decided to have it anyway. Even if it was a repro it was a damned good one, with lovely deep blues and greens in the enamel work., and a delectable pastoral scene on the back.

"I put it back in its sock, and walked across the road for a pint and a cheese and onion roll. When I got back to the hall, it was slowly filling up, but it was clearly a local crowd, and I could see only one dealer, Maurice Denny, a cheapskate who worked with a couple of knockers. I knew he would try to run me up just out of jealousy, but he would not be hard to scare off.

"My lot was number 89. I started in buying the lots of miscellaneous starting from number 85. I bid a pound, Maurice ran me up to a fiver then dropped out. Same thing with 86. 87 had a couple interested, and it went to eleven pounds. Maurice dropped out a seven, and I dropped out at ten.

"88 dropped to me for a fiver, and we came to number 89. I bid my usual pound, and the bidding started.

"There was some interest in the room. After twenty pounds, the bidding went up in fives. At fifty the last bidder fell away, and I got my lot for fifty-five.

"I was well pleased, but kept my poker face. Then the funny thing happened. The old couple who had run me up, came over to me a bit nervously, and asked if I could possibly sell them the rather good watercolour of Ely Cathedral. They came from Ely, and the artist was their grandmother. They would gladly give me fifty pounds for it. I snapped their hands off.

"The watch was a Breguet with a documented history. It had belonged to Adrienne, the Marquise de Lafayette, and she had been painted holding the watch open in a portrait by Prud'hon now at Versailles. If I never had another coup like this in my life, I would be an exceptionally lucky man. I sent it to auction in Zurich, and made enough money to buy this shop and the flat upstairs, and start my business."

As I talked, I had opened the drawer at the back of the counter, and pulled out a sheaf of photos. I picked out two large colour prints of the watch, front and back. Although the first sight made my heart race, I had to admit that to the untutored eye it did not look all that special, with its little cramped face, the rather gaudy enamelled pastoral scene covering the 22 carat gold, and the crust of little gemstones which happened to be yellow diamonds.

You want to see beauty? I have a Thomas Tompion verge watch, recased by his brilliant son-in-law George Graham that looks as if it were made by an angel. Simple, consummate chaste elegance. Never for one moment would I have kept something as vulgar as the Breguet for myself.

Ok, so I have got to be a bit of a bore, droning on and on. I suppose it comes from working alone for most of the week, and living alone since my mother died. The young lady listened so attentively and with such sympathetic eyes, that I just ran off at the mouth unstoppably.

She said the last thing I could possibly have expected.

I've got to be home in two hours, but you can take me to bed if you like."

How cold she seemed! I did not understand, and, to my shame and regret I responded as coldly as she seemed to me.

"That's a better offer than cleaning the waiting room clock from the station. Come upstairs why don't you?"

I moved towards the stairs. To my surprise my off-putting tone didn't seem to have any effect on her. She preceded me up the stairs to my flat without a word. As she mounted the steep, narrow staircase, I had plenty of time to admire her slim ankles and smooth, muscular calves under her knee-length pin-stripe skirt, and the rounded, generous bottom just visible under her tailored jacket. This pretty, likeable girl is as lonely as I am, I thought.

In the bedroom - I was thankful that I had made the bed that morning - we stripped off our clothes in silence and, in silence, began to exchange kisses and caresses. I remembered that I had a package of three in the bedside drawer, but as I pulled it out and showed it to her - still, oddly enough, in silence - she shook her head and broke the silence:

"No, please, I just want to feel you inside me. I am pretty safe at this time of the month, and I really hate those things."

We rutted on that bed like animals.

No. Not really like animals. Animals rut because they are driven by a biological imperative to reproduce. For us the act was all. She was wet and I was erect, and we had no use for foreplay. I slammed into her, and she slammed right back. She drove her pubic bone so hard against mine that we shuddered, and then we set up a frantic rhythm, as if she was desperate to get to a climax before me, and I to get there before her. As it was in a minute or so we shuddered to an intense orgasm and I think that at the same moment we realised that we had been holding our breath the whole time. We started to laugh, and she started to cry. Soon she was sobbing in uncontrolled grief. stroked her hair, cuddled her up to my chest and murmured endearments and made comforting noises.

Her name was Sarah, but she preferred Sally for reasons that soon became apparent.

As the intensity of her crying subsided, she started to talk in a low, uninflected voice, as if she was trying to drain out the passion that would otherwise drown her.

"My mum and dad died in their bed last winter. They were gassed with carbon monoxide from a faulty gas fire in their bedroom. I came into the room when dad did not get up for work, and found them lying there, not pale, but bright red in the face. Mum died in her sleep, but Dad came to just enough to vomit up his supper before he died. I loved them, and I miss them every day of my life.

"The house was left jointly to my sister and myself. My sister is twelve years older than I am, and we have never got on. She married a man much older than herself, as joyless and sour as she is. Our parents' house was much better than theirs and so they gave up their lease and moved in with me. I have not had a moment's happiness from that day to this.

"I am not a very strong-willed person, and I hate rows and conflict. The pair of them bully and browbeat me all the time, My happy home-life has become a total misery. They belong to some damned Adventist sect that seems to be designed to make people miserable. Their sabbath is Saturday, so on Saturdays they are in chapel all day long, and of course on Sundays everything is closed anyway. If I get home late from work they give me the third degree: Where have I been? Who have I been with? What have I been doing? I am only here now because they go to a bible study group every Wednesday evening 'til about nine.

"They pressure and pressure me to go to their accursed meetings with them. They say that, because I won't go along with their loony ideas that they must avoid association with me to escape contamination. So they want me to move out and leave the house to them. But I've got nowhere to go, and nobody to go to."

She wailed this last bit out and began to cry again. After a minute or two, she composed herself again.

"I am so sorry I used you like this. You seem like a nice man. I am sorry to go all weepy on you like this, but I am at my wit's end. Do you know, I was a virgin when I lost my parents? Now I jump into bed with strangers just for a little human contact. Pathetic isn't it?"

We lay there naked. But by now, sex was the last thing on our minds. We were giving and taking comfort at something close to an infantile level. I sucked on her breast as she stroked my hair. After a while I got up and made some tea and brought it back to bed. I found that, to reclaim a shred of dignity she had put on her underclothes, so I did the same. We lay and looked at each other and smiled a smile of mutual understanding.

As she was leaving, she suddenly said,

"Are you at all interested in gold coins? My dad had a cigar box full, mostly sovereigns, and some guineas. Anyway, are they any good to you?"

"Yes of course. I use a little bit of gold in my work, and I buy a bit of scrap gold. If they're collectable coins, I would have to talk to a numismatist friend of mine, but ordinary used coins are worth their bullion price. I can get a price for you with no trouble at all."

She smiled broadly.

"How about I bring them round to show you? Same time next Wednesday?"

Sally did not wait a week. On Saturday she walked back into the shop with a cigar box of coins in a Finefare carrier bag. We went upstairs once again and made love again and again. There was no desperation this time, just a quiet relaxed intimacy that gave us both what our souls craved. At around eight, she began to look at her watch.

"Don't go." I urged. "Please don't go. Stay the night. Stay with me."

She stayed with me. I hope we are never parted. Weekdays she goes to work at the Town Hall, Saturdays she looks after the walk-in customers whilst I work out the back.

Her sister can have the house - we don't need it.