No Time

No Time

Coming off the ferry late on a Sunday evening, they’d run into traffic, which wasn’t the best possible start to a much-needed and eagerly anticipated holiday.

On the other hand, it was immediately obvious that the Home team had won, and Dublin’s victory over Limerick in the Hurling finals looked as if it would be celebrated long into the night.

The traffic all seemed to be moving west, the same direction they were travelling, and there really wasn’t any significant delay.

“Can you imagine what it’d be like if we’d run into the crowds emptying out of Anfield – whatever the result?” Paul said, as the lights changed and everyone moved off with a brief tattoo of celebratory (non-aggressive) horn blasts.

“Doesn’t bear thinking about!” Katherine agreed. Her opinion regarding football in  general was below zero: what she thought of football’s so-called fans was unprintable.

“Still,” she added, “... at least we’re moving, as you say. I can’t imagine what it must be like getting from A to B when they’re coming out of either football stadium at home!”

Within five minutes, thanks to some strategically placed traffic light controls and roundabouts, they were suddenly looking at the N4 Westbound. Incredibly, the road was almost empty in both directions.

“Where did everyone go?” asked 12-year-old Siobhàn from the back seat. She’d lived all her life in either London or Liverpool, and had no real idea of what “the open road” meant.

“Probably either the pub, or the nearest burger bar!” Paul grinned, as he relaxed and settled himself comfortably for the longest bit of driving he intended to inflict upon himself for the next fortnight. In the land of Guinness, he had no intention of restricting his consumption once they arrived, but he was equally determined not to be sidetracked before reaching their eventual destination. Two hours ought to do it, he thought, glancing once more at the road map. The N4 they were already on passed through the village they were heading for, as near as made no difference. From habit, he glanced at his watch. A frown crossed his brow, and he shook his wrist several times.

“Damned thing must need a new battery!” he muttered, glancing at the dashboard clock. As he did so the digits changed to read 17:45, indicating that this clock at least was still ticking – not that he had any reason to suspect that this was likely to change. He looked again: his own watch had stopped about ten minutes earlier, showing just after five-thirty.

“Tell you what, though: next time we stop, this is coming off! I’m tired of still wearing a watchstrap on my wrist when I take a shower, maybe I can get a real ‘all over tan’ just for once!”

“Dad? Are you feeling alright?"

Paul’s obsession with time and timekeeping had become a family joke over the years, and he had been teased unmercifully about the similarities between himself and the obsessive headmaster portrayed by John Cleese in “Clockwise”. With a grand, exaggerated gesture, he wrestled briefly with the clasp on his watch, flinging it dramatically on the dashboard.

“I’m on holiday! It’s the first real holiday we’ve had for ages, and I won’t be ruled by a bloody watch!”

The look which passed between mother and daughter fairly dripped with the sentiment “Famous Last Words!” Mercifully, as far as harmony in the family was concerned, Paul failed to spot it.

The main road through Meath, West Meath and Roscommon is well laid, but on a Sunday evening you could be forgiven for thinking that everyone else was either sitting down to a superb, sod-the-calories Sunday supper or sleeping off the effects of a surfeit of Sunday afternoon’s liquid lunch. The miles (now recorded as kilometres on Irish road signs) rolled by unopposed, but not without them all realising that the “Forty Shades of Green” in the old music-hall song is no exaggeration when describing the fields and woodlands of Ireland.

As Paul parked the car on the gravel outside the guest house, the owner came bustling out to greet them.

“Céad míle fáilte, I’m so glad you found your way here! How was the traffic? I’ve just brewed a pot o’ tay, you’ll be wanting a drink after the journey ..”

Paul had booked that particular guesthouse on a whim, when he saw the proprietor shared the family surname. When Cathy discovered she also shared Mrs. McDermott’s Christian name (granted, with a slightly different spelling) the coincidence caused her even more amusement.

“The McDermott sept is still strong in Roscommon” she asserted, as she served refreshments. “If you’ve the time, I’ll take you to the family plot in the churchyard: don’t be telling me we’re not related somewhere along the line ..!”

They lingered over Cathy’s ‘tay’ ceremony for as long as it took to do it full justice. The warm, fresh-baked soda bread was Paul’s particular favourite, and Siobhàn discovered that the home made cakes and oatmeal biscuits were totally irresistible.

The churchyard (as with everything else in the village of Drumlion) was only a short stroll away. Nature itself seemed half-asleep. Bats appeared from the church tower, hunting their evening meal: an early owl perched on a gravestone and regarded Paul thoughtfully, but without comment. There was a timeless tranquillity to the late evening sunlight and lengthening shadows against the backdrop of the postcard perfect white-limed church. For Paul, ‘paying respect’ to the headstones of his ancestors in the burial plot was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

Monday morning dawned both bright and clear: hot, dry, and promising to remain that way.

“Blast! The lens has popped out of my specs frame!”

“And we all know you’re as blind as the proverbial without them!”

A quick word from the hostess at the guesthouse about which of the two opticians in the nearby town of Carrick to use, and the problem was solved. The assistant looked most offended when Paul tried to pay for the repair.

“Enjoy your holiday, Sir: your good wife won’t enjoy herself properly if she can’t see where she’s going now, will she?”

If there was one single moment when Paul might have replaced the battery in his watch, this was it. The thought, however, never even crossed his mind. He’d decided not to be a slave to his watch on holiday, and that was that.

“Dad?”

 “Mmm?”

 “Why can’t we buy this red lemonade at home?”

 “Maybe if the English knew about it, they’d invade again to get some for themselves!”

They sat on the banks of the Shannon overlooking the picturesque Marina in Carrick-on-Shannon. A leisurely picnic lunch had reached the “wash it down with a drop o’ the pure” stage, and for Paul and Katherine this meant Guinness instead of the unique Irish red lemonade.

 “Dad?”

 “Mmmm?”

 “You’re not going to believe this .... ”

 “So try me.”

 “My watch has stopped, too. It says eleven-thirty, and I only had a new battery in it just before we came away so that can’t be the reason!”

No amount of tapping or shaking could persuade the offending instrument to resume its appointed function, and after a few minutes Siobhàn tucked it into the pocket of her jeans.

 “Perhaps Ireland’s a place where watches go on holiday!” suggested Katherine.

“In that case, remind me never to take a break in Switzerland!” Paul said, with a serious tone betrayed by the laughter in his eyes  “ They’d probably work overtime, and you’d find yourself coming back before you had a chance to unpack!”

By Wednesday – or maybe it was Thursday, none of them were really bothered by now – Katherine’s watch had also “gone on holiday”. The clock on the dashboard still seemed to work normally, and the ‘Home’ screen on their mobile phones still told the time, but really, as long as they kept track of what day it was and didn’t miss the ferry back to Liverpool, the time of day became less important as the holiday unwound.

As the last few days of the holiday approached, Paul sensed for the first time ever that time was not “running away from him”, a feeling he had always experienced towards the end of any break, when events seemed to crowd together and create a feeling of near-panic with the speed at which they seemed to approach, flash by, and recede into the far distance before he’d had the chance to appreciate and enjoy them.

A final night of carousing and copious quantities of Guinness. Paul had gained a reputation as a good singer in the local, old-world pub, the Thatched Cottage. It was a magnet for all traditional musicians twice weekly, with racks and shelves of well-tuned fiddles and flutes, guitars, whistles and drums freely available for anyone to use if they didn’t have their own instrument with them. It was approaching two o’clock before they made the short trip back to the guesthouse for the last time.

Although he’d had less than four hours sleep, Paul felt fit and well prepared for the early morning start and drive to the Dublin ferry: he might as easily have slept an unbroken ten or twelve hours. The return trip, on a deserted N4 early on Sunday morning, was if possible even less stressful than the journey west.

“Dad?”

 “Mmmm?”

 “If I say, ‘You’re not going to believe this’ once more, will you at least try?”

 Pushing aside the last “Full Irish Breakfast” he was likely to enjoy until the next time they visited the country, Paul sat back and nodded.

For answer, Siobhàn mutely raised her left wrist. The second hand of her watch was sweeping round regularly, although the time it was showing was off by about six hours.

 “It just ... I don’t even know why I bothered putting it on this morning, but it definitely wasn’t working then. Now, it’s as if it suddenly decided ... “

“Watches don’t have a brain, whatever Seiko might try to tell you in their adverts! And you can also take it from me, they certainly can’t suddenly ‘decide’ that now would be a good time to ... !”

“You’d better have a look at this.”

Katherine’s voice was calm, but tinged with an odd nuance which Paul couldn’t quite place. He touched her slim wrist with his usual tender loving care, enjoying the least excuse to hold her hand: a teenager hopelessly, unashamedly, perpetually in love.

His eyes widened as he saw the second hand of her watch jerk, then continue to move smoothly around the dial.

Paul extracted his own watch from his pocket and strapped it on. It was still reading just before six o’clock, which he realised would have been the approximate time when he ripped it off with such a dramatic gesture on the way to Roscommon.

Wordlessly, the family each took the others’ left wrist lightly, just below the watchstrap, concentrating on the dials.

The digital readout on Paul’s watch blurred, then faded, leaving two dots – a colon? – pulsing rhythmically in the centre of the screen. As they watched, the hour and minute hands on Siobhàn’s and Katherine’s analogue displays stirred, and moved to join the second hand, static at the figure twelve on the dial.

A gong sounded on the ship’s PA system. Immediately, the second hands began to move on two of the three watches. The digital readout on Paul’s resolved to 12:00; 01 ..12:00;02  12:00;03 …

“Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, and welcome aboard. The time is now twelve noon, and lunch is being served in the P&O Restaurant … ”

 Word Count 1942