The Unwound Hour

The carved mahogany counter in Elias Hawke’s shop caught whatever light the narrow street could spare and held it like a promise. It was an old promise: varnished rings, a nick where a hammer had slipped years ago, the faint crescent of a solder mark from a tempering that had been saved by a steady hand. Clocks stood on shelves at odd angles, each dial a face with its own temperament. Some grinned brass-toothed and patient; others, like a woman with a stiffened collar, showed indignation at being handled. There was a smell — oiled cotton, burnished brass, lemon from the soap Lydia preferred — and below that the softer undernote of coal smoke carried in on the morning’s fog.

Cog — the cat who believed his mission in life was to be a living pocket watch — had quite literally adopted a small brass spring as a chew toy and was presently chased from beneath the bench by a staccato of ticking wrists. He scooted between Elias’s boots, tail high like an exclamation mark, and pitched himself up on the counter, causing a tray of screws to rattle in a manner that sounded suspiciously like applause.

“Control your quadruped, Cog,” Elias said without looking up, his voice the dry rasp of long practice. He bent forward and cupped a wheel in his fingers, listening to the thin music it made when he rolled it across the ivory face of his bench. Lydia Wren, kneeling opposite, held a jeweller’s saw and had the concentration of somebody trimming a small secret from the world.

“You named him after a tooth?” Lydia asked, smiling. Her smile was quick and practical, the kind that did not ask permission.

“He named himself,” Elias replied, and his mouth softened at the corner. “I suppose I provided the props.”

She lifted a tiny cog and offered it like a bell. “Do you remember the time he tried to shepherd the town pigeons?” Lydia said. “He scattered them rather, but he moved them.”

Elias chuckled, a flat sound that warmed as it left him. “He has leadership qualities.”

Her hands found the file, their motions sure despite the sinew in her forearms that bespoke months of night classes and morning practice. The way she leaned into the work made Elias think of a bell rope — give it a pull and the sound followed, true and unforced. He watched her, and in the watching there was an affection more exact than any map. It could be coiled and measured, yes, but also liable to spring free.

The bell in the square knifed three strokes. Market day. Lydia glanced toward the window where the lane unraveled toward the quay. Fishwives were already arranging their baskets; the baker down the road would have his pastries stacked like small suns, and men in threadbare coats would haggle over coal in the usual way as if it were a taste rather than a necessity. There was a smell of bitter tea and something sweet that reminded Elias of his late wife’s plum jam — not a memory to dwell in, only a soundboard of what had once been ordinary.

“Arthur Penhaligon will be in by noon,” Lydia said, dropping the saw to rub her hands on her apron. “He sent word.”

Elias pinched the little wheel between his thumb and forefinger and set it gently into a place like fitting a thought into a silence. “He always brings his own clock with him,” he said. “And his manners are wound up tighter than his cufflinks.”

Lydia snorted, and the laugh between them sounded like a small gear freeing itself. It was the sort of companionship that relied on handwork and honesty rather than sentiments pinned up on a wall. They were teacher and pupil, yes; more than that, they were two people who had organized the same small world through the same stubborn craft.