The Broken Thread

Edmund Calder, Every morning at six,

lit a single beeswax candle and placed it at the foot of the longcase clock.

That clock had been his grandfather’s property.

He whispered a line in Latin even if he barely understood it.

He then bowed to the pendulum as if it were a patient, breathing thing.

Only when the candle’s flame dimmed to a modest spear of light did he unclose the tall oak door, cradle the brass key in his palm, and wind the weights with three slow turns.

It was his most sacred ritual—his way of keeping time honest.

“Ah,” he murmured, as the gears answered with the familiar whirr. “Now I understand. Another day.”

Outside, London yawned open—rain gnawing the gutters, buses offering red parentheses to the grey. Inside the shop on Blackfriars Road, clocks stood shoulder to shoulder like monks at compline. Edmund touched each with two fingers and whispered, “Well then,” as if greeting old friends in a chapel.

The bell over the door jangled.

He didn’t flinch. It was far too early for customers; the city itself was still rubbing sleep from its eyes. He finished the last turn and closed the clock door with a kiss of wood-on-wood.

“Hello?” a voice called. “Hey?”

Edmund straightened. “We’re not open. Not until seven.”

The woman who walked across the threshold introduced the weather in with her. Her hair was starredby rain;

Her mud-streaked coat hung from her shoulders like a flag after a storm.

She scanned the room with the look of someone counting lifeboats.

“Please, I know I shouldn’t be here. But it’s an emergency.” she said.

“Dear me,” Edmund said. “Does it hurt?”

“My father,” she blurted. “His clock has stopped.”

“People often bring clocks that have stopped,” he said gently. “I promise you it’s rarely life and death.”

“It is for him,” she said, voice cracking. “He winds it every morning at six. If it’s not running by seven, he… he refuses to take his medication. Says time doesn’t deserve the gift if it won’t keep faith with him.” She wiped at her eyes, impatient. “I tried to wind it. It’s jammed. He’s seventy-eight. I—well—I panicked. I saw your light. I came. I’m sorry, I should have called, but—”

“Actions speak louder than words,” Edmund said softly. “You did the right thing.” He took in her hands—ink smudged, a printer’s or an architect’s. He took in the tremor. He took his coat.

“What about having a look?”

She hesitated, glancing at the candle. “I’ve interrupted something.”

“My ritual,” Edmund said, smiling. “But Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor wound in one. Come.”

He snuffed the candle—ah well, it couldn’t be helped—and locked up with a word to the clocks (“behave”), then followed her into the rain. It poured in earnest now; in that British way, it wasn’t just raining cats and dogs but entire zoos. “Ugh,” he said, tucking his chin. “We’ll make a long story short, if we can.”

“Sophie,” she said, fumbling with her keys as they reached a narrow row house two streets over. “I’m Sophie March.”

“Edmund Calder,” he said. “On the ball with clocks. Less so with umbrellas.”

She shot him a sideways look and, despite herself, snorted. “So far so good,” she said, though her fingers shook as she opened the door.

Inside smelled of dust and toast—the peculiar widowers’ perfume. By the window sat an old man.

With the stubborn patience of a cat at a mouse hole, he was gazing at the fireplace.

He didn’t turn when they entered.

“Dad,” Sophie said. “This is Mr. Calder.”

The old man lifted a hand. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.

Edmund followed the hand’s path to the mantel, where a carriage clock in tarnished silver sat funereal and still. The little second hand pointed forever to the twelve, a miniature sword held too long aloft.

“Ah,” Edmund breathed. He recognized the make—French, late nineteenth century, bold enough to pretend to be English, charming enough to be forgiven. He lifted it carefully. “May I?”

“If you must,” said the old man. “Tell him, Soph. Tell him it’s an Achilles’ heel. The whole house leans on it.”

Tightened Sophie’s jaw. “We shall cross that bridge just when we come to it,” she said. “Please, Dad.”

Edmund set the clock down on the table and opened the back. He peered in, then frowned. The spring wasn’t broken. The escapement looked sound. The problem was more obstinate: a sliver of torn paper, wedged like a leaf in a drain.

“What have we here,” he said. With tweezers from his pocket (a clockmaker’s fingers were too blunt for such diplomacy), he plucked the paper free.

“Ouch,” Sophie said. “Is that—”

“A note,” Edmund said. He unfolded it carefully.

—Call Dr. Brand. 6 a.m. Tell him the new pills make my hands shake, but I’ll bite the bullet. I’ll take them if the clock says I should.—

The old man huffed. “I wrote that,” he said. “And then forgot to take it out. Eh! Really? God help me.”

Edmund closed the back. He set the clock upright and nudged the hands forward; the mechanism caught with a shy tick. The second hand swung to life. He wound the key gently. “There,” he said. “Right as rain.”

Sophie exhaled—half laugh, half sob. “Wow.”

The old man leaned forward. “So it was me,” he said. “The pot calling the kettle black—blaming the clock for stopping when it was my note jamming its works. What a lovely sister you are!” he added suddenly, and then, embarrassed, “I mean daughter.”

Sophie put a hand on his shoulder. “Hooray,” she said softly.

The three of them sat a moment in the hush that follows reprieve. Rain ticked the windows like a polite auditor. Somewhere a kettle clicked, considering the future.

“Make a long story short,” the old man said. “I made a fuss in a teacup.”

“A storm in a teacup,” Sophie corrected.

“Same difference.” He glanced at Edmund. “How much?”

Edmund, who had rescued many clocks and many quiet catastrophes, said, “Call it a day at nothing. You had already paid in worry.”

Sophie looked up, startled. “You can’t—”

“Don’t cry over spilt milk,” Edmund said, standing. “Also, I have a confession. My ritual was interrupted—no, that’s not right. It was amended. It turns out, as my grandfather used to say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The ritual is meant to wind time so that people can rely on it. Today, that meant leaving the candle early. Besides, if I’m any good at this, it’s because people let me in when the pot is about to boil over.”

“Ah,” the old man said. “He knows which way the wind is blowing.”

Edmund smiled. He went to the mantel. “If it sticks again,” he said, “ring me. But it won’t. The die is cast.” He touched the clock once more, tenderly. “Keep your ritual. The world steals enough as it is.”

He had reached the door when a sound broke the neatness of the moment—a crash in the kitchen, followed by Sophie’s low, fierce “Bugger!”

They hurried in to find a second clock—a wall clock in blue enamel—face down on the floor among a glitter of shattered plate. Sophie stared in horror.

“Oh dear!” she breathed. “I bumped it with my bag. That’s the one Mum bought at Portobello Road on a rainy day when I was ten. She said it was cheap as chips and then haggled for twenty minutes.” She pressed a hand to her throat. “It’s not rocket science—I should have been careful.”

“Easy does it,” Edmund said. He knelt, picking up the clock with slow hands. The enamel had a hairline crack; the glass, crushed. “Hmm. The movement might be fine. It’s the face that’s had the worst of it.” He turned it over, then paused. The back plate had been unscrewed and screwed again recently. He glanced at Sophie.

“I tried to fix it last month,” she admitted. “I watched videos. To make matters worse, I, well, cut corners. I put a bit of tape under the loose bridge and told Dad it was ‘as good as new.’ And then I gave it the cold shoulder because I couldn’t wrap my head around it.”

“A watched pot never boils,” her father said unexpectedly to the floor. “If we stare at the thing, maybe it’ll forgive us.” He looked up, watery but stubborn. “Speak of the devil; your mother would say so. She’d also say—what?—‘let sleeping dogs lie.’ But I can’t, Soph. I can’t let the sleeping dog lie when it’s our memories.”

Edmund looked between them. He felt the tug of his candle across the street—of his monks and their measured patience. He felt, too, the tug of something else. “Let’s take it to my workshop,” he said. “We’ll fix it properly. We won’t put the cat among the pigeons until we’re sure what’s wrong.”

Sophie hesitated. “We don’t want to put you out. We’ve already—”

“Time and tide wait for no man,” Edmund said, shrugging into his wet coat. “Besides, once in a blue moon, a morning needs a new shape.”

“Dad,” Sophie said. “Your pills.”

He grimaced. “If the clock says I should.” He looked at it, beating away freshly. “All right. Take them. You’ve got the best of both worlds, Ed. Your shop and this madness. Go on then. Break a leg.”

Edmund blinked, then laughed. “That’s the first time anyone’s wished me theatre luck for a clock repair. We’ll be back by ten.”

Back in the shop, the candle was a stub of its former promise, a little puddle of golden wax hardening like an admonishment. Edmund relit it. “Hello,” he said. “I’m back. Don’t get bent out of shape.”

He set the blue clock on the bench and opened it up. Sophie hovered at his shoulder, damp hair casting a blackberry scent when she leaned in.

“So,” she said. “Is there such a thing as a sacred ritual for you?”

“This,” he said, gesturing to the bench—the loupe, the tweezers, the tiny screwdrivers laid out like a surgeon’s flatware. “And a few words with a candle. It started as my grandfather’s superstition, or so he claimed. But I’ve come to see it as grammar. Without it, the day is all adjectives.”

“My sacred ritual,” she said, “is calling my dad every morning at eight to comment on the weather. ‘Might rain,’ I say. ‘Might not,’ he says. ‘We’ll see.’ I thought I hated it. Now I dread the day he won’t pick up.” She swallowed. “I’m under the weather about it.”

“Hang in there,” Edmund said softly. He lifted the bridge—the bit Sophie had mummified with tape. “See this? Whoever serviced it last left a sliver of grit under the jewel. It chewed the pivot. That’s why your tape never sat right.”

“So we go back to the drawing board,” she said. “Start over.”

“Exactly.” He smiled sideways. “Want to help?”

“I’ll only make it worse.”

“You might,” he said. “Or you might learn. We’ll make a new bushing. We’ll polish the pivot. We’ll seat the bridge so it doesn’t wobble. No cutting corners. If we can fix this, we can fix anything. Well,” he amended, “not anything. But this, yes.”

For the next hour they worked: Edmund guiding, Sophie steadying.

He said “Easy,” when she fumbled, and she said “It’s okay.” when he fumbled.

When they had to start a step again, they did not sigh. Twice, she said “Ah!” in that small, careful way of someone who has understood a difficult sentence in a foreign tongue. Twice, he said “Well I never!” because she had caught something he had missed.

At last, Edmund set the face back on, pinning the hands at twelve. He turned the key. The clock shivered, then began its tiny, tireless work.

“Listen,” he said.

They did. The shop, filled with the overlapping ticks of a hundred timekeepers, held their attention like a cathedral full of throat-clearing saints. The new tick folded itself into the weave, quiet as a mouse in a wainscot.

Nevertheless, you heard it, once.

It’s impossible you could not hear it.

Sophie smiled. “So,” she whispered. “We did it.”

“Every little bit helps,” Edmund said. “All things come to those who wait.”

She laughed. “I was going to say, ‘Practice makes perfect,’ but yours is better.”

“Not mine,” he said. “When in Rome—quote the Romans.”

She pushed his shoulder with a knuckle. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“Perhaps.” He cleared his throat. “Would you like to carry it back? Or shall I?”

“Let me. I need to redeem myself.”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” Edmund said. “Let’s pack it snug.”

He wrapped the clock in brown paper and string—the old ways, he thought, are not simply quaint; they are sturdy. He tucked a silk bag of desiccant into the parcel. He wrote CALDER & CO. on the top in a neat hand so her father would know whom to yell at if it failed.

They stepped outside. The rain had softened to a sulk. “Oi!” called a cyclist as they navigated the pavement. “Mind the puddles.”

“OK!” Sophie sang back. “Cheers!”

“Blimey,” Edmund said, shaking his head. “London.”

“Bloody hell,” Sophie agreed, and grinned.

When they delivered the clock, the old man had done as promised: the empty blister pack lay on the side table like a white flag.

“Ah,” he said, when he saw the parcel. “Is it the same clock or a better one?”

“Same,” Edmund said. “But smoothed. Like a river stone.”

“Right,” the old man said, and then, unexpectedly, he gathered himself to his feet. He stood a little bent but with ceremony, like a man preparing to propose. “Son,” he said, meaning Edmund, “tell me something. What happens when someone’s sacred ritual is interrupted?”

Edmund opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked at the candle of this house—at the photograph on the mantel of a woman laughing under a yellow umbrella and at the blue enamel clock, now unwrapped and waiting. He looked at Sophie, whose hands were inked and steady, whose eyes watched the spaces between.

He said, “Sometimes the ritual isn’t interrupted. It’s moved. Sometimes time asks you to keep it in a different room.”

The old man nodded, satisfied in that way people are when they hear the truth they were hoping to hear. “Well,” he said. “Then we won’t make a mountain out of a molehill. We’ll say grace at six-oh-five instead of six. We’ll wind the clock at ten. We’ll call Dr. Brand at noon. We’ll not let the bastards grind us down.”

“Dad,” Sophie said, laughing. “Language.”

“Eh,” he said. “What do you think of that, eh?”

They installed the blue clock in the kitchen, where it had always hung—its little pendulum visible through the window in the enamel, a heartbeat anyone could check without invading anyone’s chest. They set the silver carriage clock on the mantel—steady now, no paper wedged in its throat. The house’s ticks braided themselves; the old man sat down as if a subtle weight had shifted from bone to chair.

Sophie walked Edmund to the door. “Thank you. You didn’t have to—” she said.

Shrugging, he said: “It is what it is.”

She tilted her head. “You know, when you first spoke in the shop, I thought you were one of those men who lives to wind things and unwind people. But you’re not.”

“Oh?” He swallowed. He hadn’t expected to care about her opinion enough to be nervous. “What am I, then?”

She looked past him at the rain. “You’re a man who knows how to grasp the nettle. Who doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Who knows that sometimes, to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”

“Wow,” Edmund said, because sometimes only that would do.

She hesitated. “Would you—Ah, now I understand why I’m asking—would you like to come by tomorrow at eight? We might need help with a kettle and a ritual about the weather.”

The city blinked water out of its eyes and looked expectant.

“I’d be delighted,” Edmund said. “But—” He lifted a finger, mock stern. “No cutting corners. We’ll do it properly. Toast, tea, two clocks, and a commentary on clouds. We’ll see if every cloud has a silver lining.”

“Deal,” she said. “And if it all goes south, we’ll try again. It’s not the end of the world.”

He walde into the rain. “We shall cross that bridge the moment we come to it.”

“Break a leg,” she called.

“Speak of the devil,” he called back, because at that exact moment a bus hissed past and sprayed his shoes and he yelped, “Ouch!”

She laughed. “Ah well,” she said, in the doorway, the blue clock beating behind her. “Wasn’t he great!”

Edmund returned to his shop. The candle’s flame stood steady, patient as a lighthouse. He bowed to it. “Enjoy your meal,” he told the morning, and meant it.

He placed his hands on the longcase clock, felt the hum under the skin of wood, and understood: his sacred ritual had not been broken at all. It had been widened—to include a woman who smelled of rain and ink, an old man with a note in his clock, a blue enamel heartbeat, and a city that, for all its noise, had time enough for tenderness.

Smiling he said “Alas,” because even joy deserved an old-fashioned word, “time flies when you’re having fun.”

Then he lit a second candle, for tomorrow, and left it unlit. Some ritual you held to; some you left ready, like a chair at table for a friend who might, at last, arrive.