The Watch

The Watch

It was lunchtime. My colleagues were talking about something they had all seen on tv the previous Saturday evening. I watch tv sometimes, so I tried to follow the thread.

“Christine and Peter thought they could do it, but they couldn’t agree whether to push or pull,” said Joyce.

“Peter wanted to pull.”

“No, Christine wanted to pull. Peter wanted to push.”

Christine and Peter must have been people from the tv programme, but I couldn’t figure if they were characters in a drama or real people being given tasks to complete. The latter format was apparently very popular. It was called “reality tv”, but I couldn’t see why.

“What time was this programme on?” I asked.

“Seven o’clock,” said one of them.

“Oh, that explains it,” I said. “Seven o’clock is too early for me.”

They all laughed. Nothing else had happened (or had it?), so they must be laughing at what I had said. But why? It wasn’t funny. Did they think I was joking? Or did they see through me?

“Well, if you tell me the title again, I’ll see if I can find it on catchup this evening,” I said. I wasn’t really interested. I just wanted to fit in. But this time nobody laughed. And nobody spoke. They were all looking at me as if… as if they could see through me.

I took a few deep breaths in an attempt to slow down and sync with them. As if my breathing was going to have any effect. But apparently it did, because the next I remember I was getting on the bus after work and settling down to listen to some music. The journey was long, but the seats were very comfortable. I pulled out my walkman and opened it up. The cassette was of an album whose first side I liked much better than its second, and it was wound to the wrong end. I was hip that rewinding or fast-forwarding would run through a walkman’s batteries in no time, so I had taken to carrying a pencil that fitted perfectly into the hole in the wheel that moved the tape on. I inserted the pencil and started to rewind the tape without using the batteries by whirling it around.

After only a few seconds, I began to feel uneasy. Nobody was staring at me, but as I looked around, every time my eyes lit on somebody, they looked as if they had just averted theirs. That look of embarrassment. I had the feeling again, the feeling that I was being perceived as weird or crazy or dangerous. All I was doing was getting my music ready to listen to. But then I began to realise. Almost everybody on the bus had things in their ears. Not big headphones like mine, that wrapped around over the top of your head, but tiny things that sat inside the ear and could have had a medical purpose if it weren’t for the tell-tale wires leading away to nowhere in particular, often just inside a person’s clothing. None of those wires seemed to lead to anything as bulky and obtrusive as a walkman. And finally I realised fully. I must have taken too many deep breaths at lunchtime. I put my musical paraphernalia away and completed the journey in silence.

I looked at my watch. It wasn’t there. I didn’t have one. Oh no, I must have slipped too far forward. I started fumbling for my phone, but neither my coat nor my waistcoat seemed to have any pockets, and my breeches were too tight even to walk comfortably. I looked up and saw nothing familiar: just old houses, built higgledy-piggledy, with only the suggestion of a street running between them. I must have slipped too far backward – a lot! There was a rough-looking sort of fellow standing outside what might have been a pub. He seemed to have time on his hands, so I approached him.

“Excuse me, could you tell me where I am?”

“Why, sir,” he said with a grin, “I should say you was standing just in front o me.”

“I mean this place. What place is it?”

“I should say it was London,” said he. “One of the most up-and-comingest towns in the land. You may have heard of it, sir.”

“I have.” My heart was sinking. “What part of it is this? Does this street have a name?”

“This is Cecil Street, sir,” he replied. “Up that way is the Strand.” His grin had disappeared. He seemed now genuinely concerned for my welfare. “And down the other way is the river, as your nose may already have informed you.” He grinned again, but this time his mien was complicit, not antagonistic.

“Thank you. I… I…” I did not know whether I should offer him some small reward for his kindness, perhaps the price of a glass of ale in the pub he seemed about to return to. But I had no idea what the price of such a beverage was, and I realised now that my earlier search for my mobile telephone would have revealed any wallet or purse should I have had any such item about my person, and that I must therefore be penniless.

“I thank you,” I concluded, and continued on my way, although I didn’t have one.

I wished I had prevailed upon him so far as to inquire what year it was, but was immediately glad that I hadn’t for that would have confirmed his evident suspicion that I was a very odd fellow indeed, and could have led to unpropitious events.

My way, such as it was, led me to the river, where my eyes and ears gave me strong evidence that I was on the film set of some costume drama in the making, but their evidence was unceremoniously swept aside by that of my nose, which, as my informant had adumbrated earlier, delivered by far the strongest sensory impression. In a word, it stank. Stank of what, I asked myself, and was again able to answer in a single word: everything!

And before I had time to enumerate the components of everything, the fresh fish, rotten fish, human bodies, unwashed clothing, human waste, animal waste, living animals, dead animals, offal, lead-based paint, and… everything began to overpower me. I just had time to grasp at the thought that there were living humans in this place and they must have become inured to this and if they could, so could I, when the stench stopped beginning to overpower me and simply overpowered me.

I seemed to have rested for a long time and I was feeling very rested, but also somewhat delicate. And there was a smell, a smell that registered with me even before I opened my eyes. It was another compound smell, but much weaker and less unpleasant than the historic river that had overcome me. If there was a single component that I could identify, it was disinfectant, and I lay a few moments more, basking in the disinfectant. As I opened my eyes, little by little, I realised my mistake. It was not disinfectant, but antiseptic and the compound smell of which it was part was hospitals. Clean, twenty-first-century hospitals. And I was a patient. What could be wrong with me?

“Are you awake now, Silas? How are you feeling?” The voice was a young female one, solicitous and caring. I hadn’t realised my name was Silas. At the last point I could remember it had been Clive.

I wasn’t quite up to answering yet, much less correcting her mistake but I essayed a smile and I think she noticed.

“Did you know you were in the river and two people in a boat pulled you out and called an ambulance? You were very lucky.”

“And the ambulance brought me here?” I ventured, by way of testing my voice.

“That’s right,” said the nurse, perceptibly pleased that I could not only speak, but speak English. “And we checked you over and you haven’t got any serious injuries, but you’d swallowed a lot of river water so we had to pump your stomach and you wouldn’t want to see what came out.”

She was right about the last point. I wondered whether “talkative nurse” was a recognised job description within the NHS.

“Except this one thing,” she went on. “Do you want to see it?”

I raised my head and she dangled in front of my face a delicate metallic bracelet with a tiny watch appended to it. It must have been a lady’s watch from the days when watchmakers believed ladies had much more acute eyesight than gentlemen.

“Would you like a closer look? Don’t worry, we’ve cleaned it thoroughly.”

I took it in my hand. The dial was somewhere between flat and hemispherical, and although I could clearly see the markings for the hours, there was something strange about them and I couldn’t quite determine whether they were marked by digits or some other kind of markings. And then I realised. Instead of twelve points around the perimeter, it had sixteen. And as I adjusted the focus of my eyes, they began to resolve themselves into a familiar pattern of symbols. And of course there was only one hand instead of the terrestrial two.

“What time is it?” I asked the nurse.

“Exactly half past two,” she replied.

I translated and reset the watch. I was free now.

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