The slow bus seemed to be sliding backwards, her emotions melting into that pitch of jealousy which she had been too unknowing to suffer with Sidney. He wasn’t in The Black’s Head, and she didn’t find him in the Radford pub, either. She imagined herself either one step behind or one in front, weeping because she didn’t know whether or not she was being a fool. On her way home she bought supper at the chip van, and Sailor was waiting at the house.
‘Thank God.’ He held her for a kiss. ‘I thought you was gone for good.’
‘How could you think such a thing?’ But there was a lightness in his tone. ‘Have you been in long?’
‘Ten minutes,’ he said.
She spread fish, chips and saveloys, sliding the pan into the oven. ‘Where did you go? I looked everywhere.’
‘I was in The Jolly Higglers.’
She hadn’t gone there, but she couldn’t have called in every pub in Radford. ‘Were you?’
‘You don’t believe me? I was talking to a chap as deals in cars, and I sold him my old banger for a hundred quid. He’s taking it away tomorrow morning. I don’t drive much these days, and it’s only good for the knackers’ yard. Anyway, it’ll help our finances along.’
She sat before him. ‘What have you done with the carriage clock, though?’
He paused from filling his glass. ‘I’ve hidden it.’
‘You wouldn’t tell me lies, would you, Sailor?’ She looked into his eyes. ‘You didn’t sell it, did you?’
He reached for her hand. ‘I love you too much to lie. I suppose you’ll think me a bit touched, but I didn’t like such a valuable timepiece being kept on the shelf for anybody to see and carry away as soon as they broke into the house.’
She was ashamed at having called him a liar. Even if he had been she shouldn’t have said it, and he wasn’t, which made it worse. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll show you.’
He pulled a shoe box from behind cloths and tins of polish jumbled in a cupboard under the stairs, showing her the clock in the bed of a yellow duster. ‘Maybe I am barmy. The notion does occur to me at times, but so many houses around here get broken into that I had a funny feeling somebody would nick it. I like to follow my instinct, as I did when I fell in love with you and asked you to marry me.’
‘And I’ll always be glad you did, Sailor. I can’t think of a better man than you.’
When supper was heated to a tolerable crisp in the stove he fetched a bottle of whisky from behind the settee, which he had hidden as a surprise on coming in, and they laughed at a slyness made innocent only because he wanted to make her happy.
She flooded what was done of the puzzle with light, and saw that it hadn’t much increased. A completed frame hemmed the conflict in, but she longed to see the picture finished, in the hope of finding something about her and Sailor. When it was done she wouldn’t be able to use the table, but she couldn’t bear the thought of breaking it up after years of slotting every piece together. ‘That would bring bad luck on us,’ she told Sailor.
‘I sometimes think the best thing would be to burn the whole lot,’ he said. ‘I’ll never want to see it again after it’s done.’ He assembled a glimpse of clear sea. ‘Look at this space for lost souls, though.’
‘I like it,’ she said. ‘It’s so much part of you. We’ll fasten every piece onto some sticky Cellophane and have it framed. It’ll look nice on the wall above the fireplace.’
‘Anything you like.’ He pounced on another bit of the sail. ‘Your wish is my command.’
‘It’s looking wonderful.’ Both were happiest at such moments. ‘We’re really getting on.’
The face of Roman numbers was plain to see when unwrapped from the cloth. The key stopped unmistakably against the barrier of being fully wound, minutes clicking healthily as if measuring her life and Sailor’s from its snug hiding place. She knelt on the floor to feel its weight, knees sore on standing up and life itching back.
The cloth wrappings dropped from her fingers, and for a moment her heart seemed to stop. She couldn’t see the clock with the eyes God had given her. Or the devil of a timepiece had grown legs and gone walkabout, sending out rays saying come and find me. She pulled everything onto the carpet but it still wasn’t there. Sailor had found a new hidey-hole, and she already heard him making a joke of it. His mind might be unfathomable, but he wasn’t the sort to play a game without good reason, in which case she wouldn’t let the matter worry her, and saw no point asking where the clock had gone.
Whenever the vision of any clock moved across her eyes she searched every cranny, as if exploring the house for the first time, which made it easier not to let Sailor know the clock wasn’t where it should be. Even so, it was nowhere to be found, and from deciding to say nothing so as not to spoil his fun in thinking she hadn’t twigged its disappearance, she said when he came out of the bathroom looking fresh from his wash: ‘Sailor, I can’t find that carriage clock anywhere.’
His embarrassment showed as usual by a firework crackling of knuckles. She couldn’t feel regret at Sidney’s heirloom going west, and didn’t care that she would never see it again, but had asked without intending to.
He faced her across the table. ‘I suppose it’s time I told you. I owed a big bill at the off-licence, and when I showed him the clock he agreed to take it in exchange. Otherwise he would have had me in court.’ He sat as if waiting for a sentence of doom. ‘I’m sorry, love.’
‘I wish you’d asked me.’
‘I should have done. I don’t know why I didn’t.’
First the car, and now this. Money had to come from somewhere for their drinking. Nobody could afford to go at such a rate. She laid a hand on his wrist, unable to bear the least sign of his misery. ‘I’d do anything for you, Sailor. You know that, don’t you?’
He nodded. They were silent, like two thieves caught out instead of one. Speculating as to who was the biggest made her smile, which gave him hope. She would rather not have known, and searching for an explanation as to why she had brought the matter out made her laugh.
The sculptured fixity of guilt on Sailor’s face dissolved. ‘There’s only one thing to do, if that’s the way it takes you. The pubs’ll be open in ten minutes, and it’ll be nice sitting there to forget our troubles, if that’s what they are.’
To prepare them for the walk he took a half-gone bottle from the top of the television and poured two powerful drinks. She liked his style, and his timing, and the first sip of whisky was as welcome as if she had been waiting for it all day.
On their way to the pub it was no longer necessary to keep up with his pace, and she even adjusted hers so that he could stay level. He sat in his usual corner, little framed hunting scenes on the wall behind, pipe well chimneying. His arm lost its slight shake after the enabling liquid of the first strong bitter had gone down.
People who had known him from his caretaker days called out: ‘Hello, Sailor, how are you? Still at that titty-bottle, I see!’
Knowing himself to be a waymark of their ordered lives lit his eyes back to a hundred watts. He only nodded, however, not wasting words, though he liked being popular. What man didn’t, Ann thought, or any man at all, come to that. Some greetings were so brazen she wondered whether he had known the woman before meeting her. Still, such attention only increased his value in her eyes, and the esteem for her in his, and she knew that the more esteem he felt for her the more he loved her, which made the love between them as perfect as any could be.
Walking home hand in hand she stopped to kiss him beneath the corner sodium, not caring what anyone might think. A feeling of carefree youth had come back to her on living with Sailor.