The clock on the tower had stopped. I was not sure how long the hands had ceased to move as I had been sitting at the table outside the café stirring my coffee into swirls. I stirred clockwise then anticlockwise as if to undo what had been done. The clock could have been still for seconds or minutes or longer.
People hurried past the tables outside the café; sometimes a bag or umbrella or the person themselves knocked into my back as they tried to escape the mizzling rain that had started to fall by edging as close as possible to the path under the awnings. No one said: ‘excuse me’ or ‘pardon’ or ‘I’m sorry’. I steadied the cup in its saucer after each encounter and took quick sips of the hot sweet liquid which burnt my tongue. I held the cup to the saucer with my thumbs and index fingers in anticipation of the next interruption.
I would not usually sit outside the café by myself. Not this café anyway. And not on a school day. From my table, I could see the whole of the clock tower. An austere landmark in the town with rich bronze mechanisms that slowly moved behind the glass doors, and harnessed the steam from below ground to generate the momentum and press time forward. The clock tower released steam from the top turret every quarter of an hour and today the steam had merged with the misty fog from the sea front, but the puffs of steam no longer seemed to mark the passing hours.
I thought of all the time wasted. Notions of what should have been, what I could have done, what still might be. And then in turn, how time was eating away at me, withering me, slowly taking the breath from my body. I thought of all the steam that must had been building up under the clock tower like it was holding its breath waiting for the inevitable volcanic geothermic explosion.
People would gossip. When they found out. Time would be taken up with supposition – the whys and wherefores. My hand jerked against the handle of the cup and I spilt some of the coffee into the saucer. This time it was not a passer-by, but my own nervous spasm that I tried so hard to control when it happened. I poured the coffee from the saucer back into the cup. It was a murky brown, and the rich taste was altered by its distillation and was no longer appealing or comforting. I pushed the saucer away and pressed my hands together under the table as if in prayer or rather to hide the evidence between my knees. The coldness of my fingers penetrated my school skirt and tights and I shivered in my duffel coat.
I knew the day was progressing. Even the dull light of the hidden sun had changed in the rain. But the clock had stopped. The chasm of time where I had left him behind at the pier and now, where I waited to be discovered, grew wider and wider. We should have taken the bus. But there was no one at the pier, so we walked.
Was it an accident?
Time obscures memory. Even a memory from earlier today. Did we argue? It was tit for tat, wasn’t it? A push for a push. He was so tall and broad. How was I to know he would trip? The bigger they are the harder they fall, that’s the saying, isn’t it? Who’s to know if I meant it. I meant it, didn’t I? I didn’t mean for it to crack though. For him to crack. For his clock to stop.
Someone knocked into my back again as the weather turned from a drizzle to a slashing rain. The wind picked up and I jarred the table enough for the coffee cup to teeter back and forth and eventually fall over before I could catch the cup. The brown sludge bled over the red plastic gingham table covering and slowly dripped off the far edge. The coffee that reached the ground mixed with the rain on the red paving stones and ran off in the grouting towards the gutter.
I closed my eyes. It was an accident, I thought over and over, as I stood up and placed the cup upright on the saucer. I pulled several paper serviettes out of the dispenser, blotted the table and soaked up the coffee. I stuffed the distained serviettes into the cup. Steam erupted from the top of the clock tower. The hands began to move again. The time between then and now faded and was almost non-existent.
I pushed my hands into my pockets. No one saw me at the pier. If anyone asked and they wouldn’t, would they? But if anyone asked, I wasn’t there – it must have been an accident, surely? As I walked away from the clock tower, I kept close under the awning to avoid the brunt of the heavy rain and caught the elbow of a woman seated at the next table and jarred her hand as she brought her coffee cup up to her lips. The coffee lurched out in large drops and splattered on the red gingham. I almost said, ‘sorry’, but I had nothing to be sorry for really, did I?
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The Gold Shoe Writer 