The day that Old Man Godger found the clock in his gardening plot
was the day that everything changed.
Till then, the people of Idyllsham Village had been different. Before, the days
wound on, one after another, interwoven into a timeless, seamless patchwork;
existence like a quilt: warm, comfortable, a shroud. If someone wanted to pop
round for a cup of tea and a natter, they would. There’d be no, Oh, look, is that the time! on behalf of either the host or the
guest. Things just ran their course. Things just worked.
In this community, the elders of the village were known as Rumplefarts. When you
entered the period of rumplefarthood, you started to grow a beard. And that was
the only sign of your seniority. People lived for ever, you see, peaceful as
children. Even the older women grew whiskers, but they didn’t even notice them.
It was said that a whiskery maiden proved dividends in the bedroom, when a rumplefart's blood was full of hot summer and he wanted to take up the position
of the donkey and the plough. Those whiskers gave you something to hold onto.
The men and women were equal here; they divided half their time between their
garden plots and half their time sleeping, napping, smoking ‘merryweed’, or
idling indoors. Old Man Godger could often be heard laughing from the little
hut on his plot, blue wreaths of smoke rising from above the swing-set on his
porch, him chortling away at some amusing thought.
Godger’s wife was called Pamela. She worked in the village nursery, teaching the
rimples. Rimples, it should be explained, were what the village-folk called the
children. The rimples grew up and changed as they started to go through
rumplehood: a tricky period in which emotions were charged, voices dropped, and
they became what Godger referred to as ‘pesky little ‘tater-headed buggers’
who’d scrump from his apple orchards and turf up his turnips. These rimples
eventually changed again, growing into wise old Rumplefarts and entering the
time of eternal childhood.
***
One day, Pamela was teaching the rimples about the legend of the rimple
moonies, whom their people were said to be descended from. ‘One night, on the
full moon, eons ago, a strange bush began to dance and sway, This bush had come
from a single unknown seed that had blown in on the West Wind, and as the bush
started to grow, beautiful blue berries fruited, growing fat and succulent.
‘And now, under the full moon, these berries began to fatten and engorge on
their juices, until they fell to the earth – as
children!’ The rimples, sitting on the carpet transfixed, gasped. ‘These
rimple moonies then feasted on the other fruit trees from which they sprang.
The fruits were sweet, and soon they became full. And so they tasted knowledge.
It was sour. They’d had just enough to know they should not eat any more.
‘These foundling rimples then built a village around the bush, which still
resides in the centre square of the village. In time, they realised that the
sun was of greater use than the moon. The sun had filled that original seed
with its vitality. But the moon had made it dance with joy. So every year, on
the full moon nearest the winter solstice, they celebrate Rimples’ Eve, staying
up all night, dancing and drinking mead, and feasting on sunflower loaves,
poppyseed and pumpernickel breads, nettle soup, spiced carrot and parsnip
pudding. And sometimes it’s said that the Rimple Tree in the centre of the
village begins to dance, too, after they’ve offered it mead and bread. But then
again, it’s always Old Man Bardletrump who professes to see the bush dancing,
and we all knows that Old Man What’s-his-Trump likes a drink more’n the rest,
don’t we?’
The children all laughed. ‘And that’s how you became,’ says Mrs Godger. ‘You
are all rimple moonies.’ She beams down at them, from where they sit on the
carpet. ‘Right,’ she starts, patting her lap. ‘Time to go ‘ome! Best be headin’
off now, children.'
The children sigh and moan from the carpet, heads in their palms.
‘Now now, rimples!’ she scorns them, playfully. ‘You’ll get another story
tommorah!’
When Pamela closes the door of the school and plods along the lane
home, she sees her husband clipping nettles and collecting blackberries,
wrinkling his rosy face up in an effort of deep concentration as he filters
through the berries, searching for the fullest, most turgid fruits. He’s
perched on the bottom rung of his little stepladder, and some of Pamela’s
rimples are filing past him on their way home. Up the lane, he sees a dark
outline: two no good young rumples dart into the bushes, knowing he’s spied
them.
As the rimples file past, he says, idly, ‘Rumples should respect their Rumplefarts!’
He pauses, getting his fingers around a particularly thorny stem of the bush.
‘Yes,’ he continues, eating an especially juicy berry, wiping his purplish
fingers onto his denims and slobbering violet-coloured spittle. ‘We Rumplefarts
have spent many an afternoon idling and gomping (that’s what the Rumplefarts
called gardening) in our gomping-plots, and we’re wiser’n we seem. There’s
nothin’ that can’t be learned through a bit of idle thought and hands on. Nope,
there’s no hurry; people are like churned butter: if you heats ‘em up too much
they begins t’ melt!
Godger then realises that the rimples have long gone, but as he looks up the
lane he can see one of them waving back at him. He squints and then smiles,
then steadies himself as he climbs another step to reach some just-out-of-reach
blackberries. ‘That’s right,’ he begins, under his breath, ‘those rumples
should-’
Something whizzes past his face and then a blackberry squelches against his
cheek, several others whipping by with little zipping sounds over his head. The
juice splatters, cool, on his skin, and Godger leans into the direction of the
impact, still holding onto the top of the stepladder. He topples over sideways
in a perfect ninety degree arch.
‘Damn you! You little swines!’ he hollers. He curses from underneath the ladder
under his breath as the rumples, struck with surprise and glee at this almost
unprecedentedly perfect gag, laugh and scatter up the lane. ‘You bloody – you
little – rumple-turds!’ he shouts after them. ‘You come back ‘ere! I knows who
you is! I seen you!’
Pamela sees her husband rolling around on the dusty ground and hurries over to
him. ‘Oh, Neville! Are you all right, my dear?’
He gets up onto one knee and pushes himself up, dusting off the knees of his
trousers. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. But those little beggars won’t be if I gets ‘em!’
‘Neville-Bunglethatch-Godger!’ she scorns. ‘Watch yer tongue!’
‘Sorry, love,’ he says. She glowers at him sternly before noticing the bruised
squelch of berry on his cheek. She dabs at it, wiping it away, pursing her lips
in amusement. He touches his cheek. ‘Ouch! It smarts!’ he says.
She giggles. ‘Still, was a good shot, eh?’
‘You’re not wrong,’ he says.
Looking absently up at the sky, something suddenly grabs Godger’s attention.
‘Pamela. Pam, love,’ he says, pawing his hand absently towards her, fixated.
‘What’s ‘at?’
A harsh wind starts to scowl, sending Pamela’s hair up into a flurry. She
reaches into her handbag and pulls out a scarf, tying it around her head and
knotting it under her chin.
As she looks up at the clouds to which Neville points, she can see what her
husband is so captivated by. The clouds have darkened; they twirl around into a
great funnelling knot. Thunder bellows out and lightning streaks the sky. Then
a hole appears in its swirling centre, tiny from way down where they’re stood.
Godger suddenly points up at the cloud, his finger tracing the trajectory
covered by a small object as it descends in a perfectly straight path towards
the ground.
‘Did you see that?’ he shouts in astonishment. ‘It’s fallen near the
gomping-grounds! Quick, Pamela.’
The two of them hurry up the lane towards the plots, and the
clouds begin to evaporate away into the usual flecks of cumulus that float
across the sky like grazing sheep.
‘What on earth was all that about?’ asks Pamela as they arrive.
But a strange noise has distracted Godger. He kneels down to inspect, and in
amongst his cabbages he finds a silvery object about the size of a side plate.
He puts it to his ear.
Chick-chuck, chick-chock, he
murmurs, chiming the sounds.
‘What is it?’ asks Pamela.
‘I’ve no idea,’ he says. He takes off his jacket and bundles the object into
it. ‘We’ll not tell anyone about it, will we, darlin’?’
‘No, we won’t,’ she says, scratching urgently at her whiskers.
***
When the two of them get in, Godger puts the nestled bundle of
cloth onto their dining room table, whilst Pam sits down in the guest-welcoming
room. With trepidation, he peels back the four corners of the parcel. Sitting
in the middle gaping up at him is the object, its big clear reflective face
framed by silvery metal, and in the middle of it are two thin lengths of some
strange material which seem to sweep around, carving out the spaces between
twelve regular demarcations.
‘What could it mean?’ he asks himself.
He puts it to his ear. Chick-chuck,
chick-tock, tick-tock…. He holds it up in front of his face and notices
that there’s a third little arm that’s swishing round particularly quickly.
‘Well, I’ll be rimple moonified,’ he mutters under his breath. It’s like the blasted thing’s alive,
he thinks to himself. He turns the object around and puts it to his ear. He can
make out regular clicking noises: a faint tick
tick tick, followed by a less regular crink. Just then the door sounds with a few
knuckled thuds.
Pamela, looking out of the window in the other room, says, ‘It’s Old Man
Pickles.’
‘Oh, what’s that grumpy old bugger want now,’ he burbles.
Godger puts the object back in the cloth and parcels it up. Opening the door
with a great grin on his face he hollers, ‘Hello, friend! Come in, come on in.’
Pickles enters into the porch-way. ‘What can I do for you?’ says Godger. ‘Cup
of ruby sapphire tea? Mint and fireflower broth? Sweet red cabbage cordial?’
‘Oh, some tea would do lovely,’ says Pickles.
‘Great, Pam’s in the front room if you’d like to go make yourself comfortable.’
Godger goes into the kitchen, clattering as he fiddles through his cupboards
and larder, fetching jars, cakes and his big copper kettle.
But Pickles had seen Godger in his gomping-ground. He’d seen the vortex, and
he’d seen him bending down investigating something in his patch. He saw the
object fall, whatever it was, which Godger had obscured inside a bundle of
cloth. He can hear Mrs Godger prattling about in the front room tidying, so he
takes his opportunity to snoop. The door to the room opposite the welcoming
room is slightly ajar – somewhat suspicious, being that Rumplefarts always
leave their doors open or unlocked. He pushes it open slightly and it creaks
open. No sound comes from the kitchen, so he enters, peeping round. After he
scans for a few seconds, he notices an unusual bundle on the table. He’s
curious.
Creeping in, he unfolds each corner. He gazes upon the strange miraculous
object. Quartz, it says at
the bottom of its glass face. Strange word, he thinks. ‘Godger?’ he calls out.
‘Sorry, friend?’ Godger says from the kitchen, taking several warm spiced buns
from the kiln.
‘Godger, what’s this?’
Old Man Godger’s blood seems to stop circulating, his heart fluttering like a
little one-winged butterfly. He goes briefly dizzy. Oh no, he thinks, catching the sideboard
with one hand and propping himself up, breathing slowly and collecting his
thoughts.
He shuffles towards the dining room and appears at the threshold, pale as a
ghost. ‘Oh, that,’ says Godger, staring at Pickles as he inspects it.
‘Did you find this?’ says Pickles. ‘Tell me, did this thing come from that
storm?’
Godger stumbles over his words. ‘Y-yes, it did. I – it’s so insignificant, I’nt
it? And how many people saw that storm? No one would have to know about it.’
Pickles scrutinises him. ‘Godger, this thing is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
It’s not of our kind, whatever it is.’
Godger, with his pleading puppy eyes, says, ‘Well, what do you think it is?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ says Pickles gravely. ‘But I’m gonna find out, so help me.’
***
Pickles took the object from Godger’s possession, just to examine
it a little. The next morning, Pickles was rudely awakened by a tremendous
clattering noise. It sounded like a song-thrush was being violently shaken in a
tin, and it was crying out in terror!
‘Well crimple my rimple!’ Pickles roars, falling out the side of
his bed. He can hear the bloody thing all the way from the kitchen, where he’d
left it the night before. Rumplefarts are notoriously idle in their wise years,
unwilling to rise until the sun is at least a touch off its rise-point, near
the zenith. It was only just lightening outside, and Pickles was not used to
this unusual light. He shuts off the alarm, taking a few seconds to inspect the
object before bashing it on its top.
‘Right!’ he says. He huffs back to his room and climbs into bed,
and is so disturbed by the whole ordeal that he sleeps in till down-sun. He
gets up, has tea and then goes straight back to bed again, sleeping fretfully
until morning like a feverish child.
***
The next morning the alarm goes off again. ‘Cursed thing!’ he
mutters into his moss-down pillow. The sound continues crashing on as he lay
there with his hands over his ears. He throws the cover asunder and storms into
the kitchen, bashing the object again to shut it up. He grabs it, puts on his
slippers and patchwork jacket and leaves his cottage, forgetting to close the
door behind himself. He notices that he is the only person awake. Not even the
birds are stirring, and the only sign of life is smoke rising from a
still-smouldering fire-pit from one of the cottages on the other side of the
village. He marches toward Godger’s house and crashes on the door.
Godger opens the door a few minutes later, Pickles still making a hullabaloo
and disturbing all the snoozing rumplefarts, rimples and rumples. ‘What on
earth are ye doin’?’ says Godger, rubbing his eyes.
Pickles thrusts the object into Godger’s chest. ‘‘Ere, you can ‘ave this bloody
thing back! It’s woken me up twice now. I don’t know what it wants! Am I
supposed to feed it? Give it water? Tell me!’
‘Calm down,’ coos Godger, ‘You’re spouting nonsense, Pickles. Get inside before
the neighbours turn you into rumplefart pie.’
Pickles enters and sits down in his welcoming room. Godger enters
with a pot of ruby sapphire tea and pours two cups. ‘Now, what seems to be the
problem?’
Pickles takes the tea and sups it. ‘It’s this bloody thing,’ he says, looking
up and holding Godger’s eyes. ‘I think it’s a demon. It cries – for no logical
reason. And I don’t like how it looks at me.’
‘Pickles,’ Godger says, ‘I think ye’ve cracked!’
‘Listen,’ says Pickles, supping his tea and collecting his thoughts, ‘Look at
this. See this mark, here, see? The seventh one.’ He points at the clock-face.
‘It went off at this point yesterday and the same point today. How does it
know! It must be. It must –’
‘It must what?’ says Godger, amused.
‘Be measuring something,’ Pickles finishes, whispering the words gravely.
Godger leans back, sipping his tea. ‘Measuring?’ he says, idly. ‘Like ye’d
measure out water when making mead, you mean? But measuring what?’ He feels
suddenly dyspeptic. He takes this as a sign that he should have something to
eat. As Pickles sits there entranced by the object, Godger grabs some herby
bread from the kitchen. He comes back with half a loaf and sits down, cutting a
slice and biting into it. ‘Hmm,’ he says. The bread is a bit too thymy for his
liking. ‘I tells yer, in these times it’s getting hard to tell the rosemary for
the thyme,’ he jokes.
Pickles half-smiles at him. He didn’t get the joke, if there was one.
***
Over the next few days, Godger and Pickles tested the object more.
They gave it a nickname: clock,
because they wanted to clock the bugger one. They surmised that it was indeed measuring something. But,
still perplexed, they decided to hold a town meeting. Everyone from the village
came, even the little rimples. If they were going to decide what it meant and
what they should do next, they’d all have to knock heads and see whether they
could get a spark.
A few elders did a headcount and there were only 126 of the 128 villagers
accounted for. ‘Pickles,’ says Old Woman Bunting, ‘Mrs Cornthresher isn’t here,
nor her ‘usband.’
‘Oh?’ says Godger to Pickles at the front of the hall, when all of a sudden Mrs
Cornthresher bursts in through the door. ‘Come! Come quick!’ she cries. ‘It’s
Benjamin. He’s not waking up.’ A great silence overcomes the room.
A great fear hangs above them, pinching the air from out their
lungs.
***
Benjamin Cornthresher is one of the most senior elders of the
village, and when they go to check on him he’s cold as pantry air, his skin the
pale colour of pâté glaze. From this moment on, the villagers realise that
things have changed. They are no longer immortal. New words, such as death and time,
can be heard spoken in the shadowy corners of the village, and everybody starts
to take a much greater interest in this clock. So much so that they take the
thing apart to see how it works, erecting a larger model version of it in the
village square so everyone can see it whenever they want to tell the time.
About a month after the Cornthresher episode, Pickles knocks on Godger’s door.
He is now Mayor Pickles: he asked Godger to run against him but the latter
refused. Godger is now a ghost. He stays in his house all day, refusing to go
out, and just reads his copy of the Daily
Hail. ‘Those rumples are getting worse,’ he’d say to Pamela. ‘They’ve no
respect for their rumplefarts anymore.’ Both of them feel a great unease about
the time ahead.
Godger and Pickles talk about all manner of things. Mainly the future, a word
that is new to Godger. Before, it had only been – well, now, of course. They didn’t
have a word for time previously. They just existed. Trying to explain time to
them before would’ve been futile: it would have been like trying to explain
yeast extract to someone with no taste buds. They’d probably have just tried to
tar their roofs with it.
Before he left, Mayor Pickles, now dressed in suit and tie,
holding a briefcase at his side, says to Godgers, ‘And for goodness sake, man,
will you talk in RP, and stop all this accent business? It’s stupid.’
‘Right-o,’ says Godger despondently, seeing Pickles to the door. Right-o, he thinks to himself. RIP.
***
Over the next few months, Godger becomes more and more paralysed.
His hair starts to grey, where before it was a rich chestnut brown. Rumples
begin to taunt him from outside, and his patch starts to die. Pamela cries
herself to sleep at night, mourning the ghost of her husband. One night, on the
night of Rimples’ Eve, Godger cannot take it anymore. He goes outside to see
what festivities are taking place, but what he sees makes him nearly die.
Across the way, Old Man Judders is with Mrs Peppers. She chortles
to herself, making deep moaning noises, her legs in the air as he holds her in
an adulterous embrace. He looks to his left down the lane and he sees two young
men brawling, before one hits the other around the head with an empty bottle of
mead, guffawing. There is a rumple in his patch outside his house trampling his
now browned lettuces, and another is squatting, drunk, in an attempt to help
fertilise the earth.
His mind now floating somewhere outside his skull, he wanders down
the lane in a daze until he comes to the village square. Several young rumples
are standing around the Children Tree, and they are splashing it with some
liquid from a canteen. One of them pulls out a box of fire-sticks and strikes
it. He gets flame, and holds it up.
‘Stop it!’ cries Godger. ‘Stop!’ he gasps. The young men turn
round, staring at him. All of a sudden, Godger loses his footing and goes down
sideways. A strange pain burns in his chest. It becomes immense, as if his
heart is molten and could explode at any second. He hears footfalls, and then
he passes out.
***
Godger? Godger?
Godger awakens from his bed and looks up to find a towering figure
cloaked in a cape staring down at him from big blue watery eyes, a long grey
spurt of beard erupting from his face.
Who are you? asks Godger.
I am the Wizard, replies the
tall figure. The Wizard of the
Future. And I come bearing a vision for you. The
stranger sweeps out his arm and then turns his head, beckoning Godger to look
outside his window.
From out of nowhere, strange columns erupt from the ground, spurting fumes.
Huge structures, like black churches, their walls laden with innumerable little
grease-marked windows, rise up from out of the ground where the cottages and
plots and verdancy used to be. And now little shops appear on street corners,
and strange objects on four wheels go put-putting down the street.
When Godger looks back at the stranger, he is now dressed in a top-hat and
suit, his shoes polished to a gleam. There’s
more, he says.
Godger looks out of his window again and now he can see futuristic buildings:
huge, glass-fronted structures jutting off in strange angles, scraping the
clouds. Flying cars file past in lanes, the veins of this metropolis. In the
centre square of the village, Godger can now see a museum where the town hall
used to be. What’s in there? he says.
Oh, replies the figure, now
dressed in a brightly coloured foil suit, exhibits,
mainly. Just describing how naïve your people once were. They look upon you as
archaic, quaint. They call this period – your current stage of existence – the
pastoral. They regard you with utter disbelief, as if you are a different
species to them.
Godger’s
eyes grow big and heavy. He looks back at the figure, but he is gone. Where he
was stood, there is now a pile of dust. He looks outside his window again, but
the cityscape has gone. What he now sees sends shivers of fear into his body,
his muscles quivering on his bones like superheated threads of metal: the sky
is a deep orange, and there is nothing but a barren dusty landscape, as far as
the eye can fathom.
Godger gets out of bed and leaves the house, standing on his porch overlooking
the infinite aridity of this desert. A dust devil blows pointlessly across the
landscape in the distance, and pink- and red-hued clouds wander in the boiling
sky. Godger then hears a noise that distracts him.
He looks to his right and sees a small child, dressed in a faded
vest, shorts and sandles, digging in the dirt. The child, a little girl, looks
around and notices him. She surveys him, squinting with one eye. ‘Hey, I know
you!’ she says, laughing. Then she stops, her tone grown suddenly serious. She
holds the stick up towards him, threateningly. ‘You can’t let this happen,’ she
says.
Her eyes become black as oil-slick. Then, with a ruffling noise,
she bursts into the air, her black wings lifting her higher and higher into the
lifeless sky.
***
When Godger wakes up, he is in doors. Pamela is sitting on his
bed-side, stroking his forehead gently, and her eyes are puffy and teary. ‘Hi,
honey,’ she says.
‘Hullo,’ Godger manages, weakly. ‘What ‘appened? Am I – I’m
indoors.’
‘Yes,’ she says, stroking his little white fringe. ‘You’re safe
indoors. You had – they say it’s yer heart, darlin’,’ she says.
‘How long was I asleep?’
Pamela swallows, looking tenderly over her husband. ‘You were
asleep for two months, darlin’.’
Just then Godger hears some voices downstairs. ‘What day is it?’
‘It’s a Monday.’
‘Then shouldn’t you be with the rimples?’ he asks.
‘They’re downstairs,’ she says. ‘They’ve come to see you.’ She
points at the bedside chest. Godger turns and sees some marigold flowers. There
is a big card open, too. He can make out several scrawled messages done in
crayon, the signatures drawn in childish hands. ‘It’s lovely,’ he says, smiling.
‘Yes,’ says Pamela. She starts sobbing uncontrollably.
‘What is it, darlin?’ murmurs Godger.
‘It’s just that – nothin’ means anythin’ no more. Does it? Things
are…’ she pauses, sniffling and wiping her eyes, ‘They can’t be redeemed.’
Godger looks fondly up at her. ‘My darling,’ he says, grinning.
‘What is the measure of a human life? I always thought our lives were perfect.
But they weren’t. We were children before. This way is better. This is how it
should be: a measure of the two.’ He coughs and sputters, his throat raspy and
tinny. ‘A measure of the two,’ he continues. ‘Progress and leisure. Just don’t
forget how to – how to be a child. This is how it should be. This…’ he gasps,
shuddering, and his final breath leaves his body.
Pamela wipes her eyes, and she hears footsteps coming towards the
door. Pickles knocks. But Pamela does not respond. Pickles can hear her sobbing
inside, so he lets himself in. He sees Godger’s lifeless body.
‘Oh, Pam,’ he says. She gets up and hugs him. He holds her tightly,
looking over her shoulder at the once great man. ‘Neville never changed, did
he?’ says Pickles.
‘No, he didn’t,’ she sniffs into his starched collar.
When Pamela and Pickles go downstairs, a few rimples gaze up at
them. They look briefly sad, before Pam smiles down on them. ‘Right then!’ she
booms joyfully. ‘Who’s up for some colouring!’
She sits with the children as they play. Looking back at the
mantle above the hearth, she sees the little silvery clock. It seems to gulp in
gravely, swallowing time. She returns her attention to the children, but then
notices something in the corner of her eye. A single rimple is sat by the
window beneath the sill gazing up at the clouds idly, daydreaming.
