TM1: The Time Keeper
The Time Keeper
Elspeth Davie
It was taken as a matter of course that at one time or other during the summer he would be showing people around his city. Renwick was a hospitable man and for certain weeks it was a duty to be available to visitors. The beauty of the place was written on its skyline in a sharp, black script of spires, chimneys and turrets and in the flowing line of a long crag and hill. It was written up in books. He had shelves devoted to its history and architecture. It was written on anti-litter slogans with the stern injunction that this was a beautiful city and it had better be kept that way.
Sometimes the people he took on were those wished on him for an hour or two, friends of friends, or persons he’d met by chance passing through on their way north. They were all sightseers of a sort and the first sight they wanted to see, particularly if they were foreigners, was himself. Well, he was on the spot, of course. Yes, he had to admit he probably was a sight and even worth looking at in a very superficial way. At certain times he put on his advocate’s garb – a highly stylized get-up, dark, narrow and formal. A bowler hat went with the suit and an umbrella which – because of the windiness of the city – often remained unrolled. He was never solemn about the business. He was the first to point out that it was traditional wear – a kind of fancy dress or disguise. ‘And there are plenty of them about these days,’ he would say. ‘We ourselves are falling behind in the game. Look at all the people either dressing the part or the opposite of the part!’ but there was no need of excuse. Visitors enjoyed him in his dress and were disappointed to discover he seldom wore it when the Court was not sitting. Sometimes however they were lucky. And he had a face that went with the garb – a rather masked face, long and grave with hair well plastered down over a neat skull as though to show what an extreme of flatness could be achieved in comparison with the dashing wig which he might later put on.
Renwick’s hospitality didn’t mean that he was always a patient man. There was a good deal of exasperation and sharpness in his character, and he shared with many of his fellow citizens a highly argumentative and sceptical turn of mind. He developed it and was valued for it. That hint of the suspicious Scot in his make-up was well hidden. The impatience was not so well in check. It boiled up silently at dullness. It occasionally exploded at stupidity. As time went on he had begun to be impatient with those visitors who insisted on taking a purely romantic view of the city. It was not, after all, made up only of interesting stones, nor were the people going about their business on top of these stones particularly romantic. Certainly not. They were a common-sense, very business-like lot and more to be compared to down-to-earth scene-shifters doing their jobs against a theatrical background.
That was made clear to an American couple one afternoon as they stood with him in one of the oldest graveyards in the city. There was a great deal to see and a lot to hear about. Renwick had given them something of the turbulent history of the place and listed the succession of famous persons who had been buried here. They in their turn exclaimed about the ancient monuments and walls. They touch the moss-covered dates on headstones. It was getting late. The three or four still left in the place were slowly making their way out. In the distance a blonde girl was moving round the dark church between black and white tombstones. But Renwick’s couple were all for lingering in the place until the sun went down. Renwick felt a sudden flare of impatience rise inside him. He directed them to look up and out of the place. From where they stood they could see, rising on all sides, the backs of houses and churches, and beyond that a glimpse of the bridge which carried a busy street over a chasm. Cars and buses crossed it. People went striding past. ‘But look up there,’ he said pointing. ‘We are rather an energetic crowd. You can see we’re in a hurry. You’re not going to find your ordinary citizen of the place sitting around at old stones for long. I believe you might find it hard enough to get him to stop and talk for any length of time unless there was very good reason for it. For better or worse – that is our character!’
The American didn’t deny this. They had already attempted to detain people on the bridge. They had sensed the bracing air. Now, polite but silent, they stared down at an angel whose round and rather sulky face was crowned by a neat, green crewcut of moss and backed by frilly wings sprouting behind his ears. Cautiously they mentioned the old ghosts of the place. ‘But just behind you,’ came the brisk voice, ‘there in that wall, there are still lived-in houses. Look at that window for instance.’ It was true that in the actual ancient wall of they place they were looking into the room of a house. Sitting in the open window was an old man being shaved by someone standing behind. At first they saw only a hand holding his chin, the other hand drawing a razor along his cheek. But while they watched the job was done. The head of the old man and his middle-aged daughter emerged from the window. It was close enough to get a clear sight of them – keen, unsmiling, both staring down with eyes which were shrewd but without much curiosity, as though they had seen decades of tourists standing just below them there on that particular spot in the churchyard.
‘You see there are more than just angels around us,’ said Renwick tersely. ‘There are also ordinary, busy folk getting on with their own jobs.’ The young couple looked for a moment as though they might question the busyness and even the ordinariness, but had thought better of it, especially as they had seen Renwick look openly at his wrist.
Renwick counted himself a polite man. Lately, however, he had given in to this habit, common to persons of consequence in the city, of glancing at his watch – and often while people were actually talking to him. He believed that he was indicating in the politest possible way that he was a very busy man, that even in summer his time was limited. But as the habit grew not only visitors but even friends began to see the wrist shoot out, no longer surreptitiously but very openly. Those who still hung around after that had only themselves to blame. And as well as the watch he was very well up in the tactics of the engagement diary. ‘Well, certainly not tomorrow, nor the day after. This week’s out, in fact. Next week? Full up, I’m afraid. No, I have a space here. I think I can just about manage to fit you in.’
Acquaintances might sound grateful but they felt squeezed and sometimes throttled as they watched him writing them into the minimal space between appointments. Just as Renwick was proud and yet irritated by the romantic reputation of the city, so he felt about the supernatural history of the place. He was good-natured about disguises, masks of all kinds. He understood the hidden. But the guise of the supernatural he didn’t care for. He had lost count of the number of times he was asked about the witches and warlocks of the city, medieval apparitions hidden down closes, the eighteenth-century ghosts of the New Town. Grudgingly he pointed to deserted windows where heads had looked out and stairs where persons without their heads had walked down. Reluctantly he led willing visitors to the district where the major had made his pact, pointed out infamous tenements and doorways blasted with the Devil’s curse. ‘And now you’ll want to see the spot where the gallows stood – and you’ll not mind if I leave you there. I have to keep an eye on my time. The fact is I have a good deal of business to attend to between now and supper.’
Friends dated his concern with time back to a year when his post brought new responsibilities. Others pointed out that busyness was all a matter of choice and that the time-obsession was common to most middle-aged men once they’d begun to feel it making up on them. ‘And worse things can happen to a man than working to a tight schedule,’ remarked a colleague as they discussed others in the profession. ‘We’ve had a few good suicides by his age, and quite a tearing of the silk. There was McInnes letting it all rip and making off for the South Seas. And Webster? Wasn’t it the stage he’d always yearned for, never the Bar? Yes, retired now, white hair to the shoulders – happy enough they say, and no guile in the man at all. Still, meeting him late on summer nights in loopy hats with orange feathers gave some people more of a turn than seeing the Devil himself. ‘Other names came up. They decided if it was nothing more than a little touchiness about time – Renwick was doing well enough.
By midsummer a stream of holiday-makers were on the streets. Renwick would become impatient – or was it envious? – at the idea of an endless enjoyment of leisure. How could they wander for days and weeks, sometimes for months? From early spring when the first few aimless visitors arrived he would begin to take note of the city clocks. Not that he hadn’t known them all his life – the clocks under church spires, the clocks on schools and hospitals and church towers. He’d seen brand-new timepieces erected in his day and had attended the unveilings of memorial clocks. But now he counted them as allies in the summer game, to give him backing when the wristwatch methods had no result. It was his habit, then, to stare about him for the nearest clock – if it was old so much the better. Having alerted visitors to its history it was an easy step to exclaim at the time of day, to excuse himself and make off at all possible speed to the next appointment.
During one summer Renwick had several visitors of his own for a short time. He enjoyed their stay. They knew the city well. It was not always necessary to accompany them, but he had the pleasure of their talk in the evening. Later, however, he was asked if he would help a friend out with four visitors who had been staying in the city, and, with little warning, were landing on him for twelve hours. The friend had to be out of town on the evening of that day. Could Renwick possibly take them round for half an hour or so? Yes, he could do that. When the time came they turned out to be two middle-aged couples from the south who had not set foot in the city before this visit. But they had read the necessary books. They were well primed with history and they knew legends about every door and window frame. They had expected smoky sunsets and they got them. They knew that on certain nights there might be a moon directly above the floodlit castle. The moon was in the prescribed spot the first night they’d arrived. They did not mind bad weather. They said that gloom and darkness suited the place. They liked the mist and even the chill haar that could swirl up out of the sea after a warm day. They were amiable and they had an equal and unqualified love for all the figures of the city’s past.
That evening Renwick had taken them down into one of the closes of the Lawmarket and they were now standing in a large court enclosed by tenement walls. There were a few people besides themselves in the place – a group of youths with bottles bulging at their hips, a fair-haired girl holding a guidebook and three small children who had rushed in after a ball and out again. It was getting late and a few small yellow lights were showing high up on the surrounding walls.
‘If only we could get in and see some of those weird old rooms,’ said one of the wives, staring up.
‘And speak to one or two of the old folk,’ her husband added. ‘There’ll be ones up there with many a tale to tell of the old days.’
‘Many a tale?’ Renwick straightened his shoulders. He directed a rather chilly smile over the heads of the group. ‘No doubt there might be tales – and ones not so very different from our own. Of course those particular rooms you’re looking at have all been re-done. They are expensive places, very well equipped, I should imagine, with all the latest gadgets. You’ll find quite young, very well set-up persons living there, I believe. You’ll get your dank walls, poor drains, black corners in a good many other places. But not up there!’
They had been with him now for half an hour. Renwick had begun to check the various times on their watches with his own, and murmuring: ‘I will just make sure,’ had walked down the few steps at the far end of the court and out to where, overlooking street and gardens, he could see the large, lit clock at the east end of the city. ‘I must be off in five minutes,’ he said when he came back, ‘… letters to attend to… a paper to prepare…’ They asked if they would meet him again. He explained that he might or might not meet them in a couple of days depending on his work. ‘Do you work all through the holidays?’ someone innocently asked. Renwick made a non-committal gesture to the sky. At the same time he noticed that the fair-haired girl who’d been wandering about for some time between their group and the shadowy end of the court, had come forward and now stood with them directly under the lamp. Stunning. Not nowadays a word he was in the habit of using. But what other word for this particular kind of fairness? Straight white-blonde hair, fair eyebrows against brown skin, and eyes so pale they had scarcely more colour than water. A Scandinavian – the intonation was clear in a few words she spoke to one of the women, but she was also that idealized version which – along with its opposite – each country holds of another part of the world – strikingly tall, strong and fair – and no doubt outspoken. Renwick waited for her to speak. She lifted her arm with the back of her wrist towards him. She tapped her watch. ‘You have given us your minutes. Exactly five. Your time is up,’ she said. The others laughed. Renwick smiled. So she had seen his clock-watching, heard his work programme, had simply stopped in passing for a laugh. But attention was now turned her way. They were asking questions. And it appeared that in her country the light was different. The sun, they gathered, was very bright, the darkness more intense. Different, she made it plain, though not of course better. They took it in, unblinking, while they stared. It seemed they got the message on light in a single flash and with no trouble at all. The girl left the place soon afterwards and to Renwick it seemed that his two couples were slowly merged together again, and he with them – all welded into the state called middle-age. No amount of good sense, God-given wisdom or hard-won experience, and least, least of all the beauties of maturity were ever going to mend this matter. There they were. Some light had left them.
One way or another this was to occupy him a good deal during the next day. It was not just that at some stage of life the optimistic beam had been replaced by a smaller light, but that from the start even his awareness of actual physical light had been limited. It was hard for him to imagine variations – how some lights sharpened every object and its shadow for miles around while others made a featureless flatness of the same scene. He tried to imagine those regions of the world made barren to the bone by the sun, and others soaked by the same sun to make ground and water prosper from one good year to the next. He thought with relief of white cornfields nearer home and imagined with a shock of hope streams so transparent you could see the fish, leaves and stones shining in their depths.
The phone drilled at his skull. ‘Tomorrow evening – would it be possible for half an hour if you can manage to spare the time? Both couples were leaving the next morning. Yes, it would be just possible to fit it in. they would meet at the bottom of the street leading from Palace to Castle. They would walk slowly up. Another voice joined the first in thanking him.
‘The weather has been disappointing for you today,’ said Renwick as he waited for the moment to put the phone down.
‘No, this is how we like it,’ came the reply. ‘Clear, sharp, with a touch of frost.’ This might pass with those who knew him as a description of himself. Or not so rough. Exact perhaps – though some might put the complimentary touch, others a hatching of black lines. Renwick said he was glad to hear it and replaced the receiver thoughtfully.
The next evening was overcast with a slight wind which sent the black and white clouds slowly across the sky. ‘They were waiting for him eagerly. ‘A disappointing evening,’ he said as if to test them again. On the contrary they were enthusiastic. This was the city at its best, at its most characteristic. Renwick saved his disappointment for himself. They walked slowly up, going in and out of closes, through doors and arches. They saw the sea through openings and climbed halfway up stairways worn into deep curves. Renwick led the way through the darker wynds. He answered questions, apart from this he said little. The street grew steep, crossed a main road and went on up until it opened out to the broad space in front of the church of St Giles with the Law Courts behind. It was growing dark and from this rise where they were standing they could see down almost the whole length of the street illumined by blue street lights. It was a favourite point of viewing for tourist buses and their guides and there were still a few about. People were roaming around the precincts of the Courts and going to and from the church.
Renwick looked round and stared pointedly at the large, lit clock of the Tolbooth, big as a harvest moon. Further down the street were smaller clocks. Automatically following his eyes, the others stared too. They got the message. Time was important even to citizens of an historic city. Things must move on. Turning back again Renwick saw the blonde girl a few steps away. She had been looking at the church. Now she was making a beeline for his group. So he had been watched again, scrutinized no doubt as an exhibit of the place, one worth remembering perhaps, but remembered with a good deal more amusement than respect. She had reached the group now and stood waiting until the couples wandered off to make the most of their last minutes of sight-seeing – then she remarked: ‘You have very few angels inside. I have seen the churches. Some of them are very beautiful and very bare.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Renwick. He lectured her gently on the reasons for it. ‘Any angels we do have are mostly outside,’ he added, ‘hidden away in cemeteries.’ And if it came to angels it was true enough the blue light had given her own face a marbly shine, her hair a touch of green. But her eyes had neither the exalted nor the downcast look of churchyard angels. They were too direct, too challenging for an angel’s eyes. She was not the kind to be hidden away. He was going on to an explanation of the spot where they were standing when something struck him. ‘I am not a guide,’ said Renwick.
‘Well I think you are,’ said the young woman. ‘You keep them all together. You keep the time. That is important – how you keep the time. Clocks are important, very important indeed. Clocks are – how do you say? – they are very much up your street.’ Saying this, she made a quick survey of the street from top to bottom as he had done some minutes before. Her performance managed, miraculously, to be both amiable and derisive. She made way genially for the others when they came back and after some talk with them went off again.
There was nothing to take him out the following evening. Nobody demanded his time. Yet the next night after supper he was out trudging up the High Street again. The place was still crowded and he made his way around groups at corners and through lines of people who were spread out across the width of the street. This time he felt the need to look about him with the eye of a stranger. Many times he stopped to stare at familiar things and once in a while, as if from the corner of his eye, managed to catch some object by surprise. It was a warm night. Far above him he saw rows of elbows upon windowsills and shadowy heads staring down, and above the heads a rocky outline of roofs and steep, black gable walls blocking the night sky. Sometimes he turned back for a closer look at the scrolls or archways or to search for some small stone head over a door. He had become a tourist among tourists, staring at persons and buildings – critical, admiring, sometimes bored, sometimes amazed at what he saw. He grew tired. His own feet looked strange to him as he stepped on and off the kerb or dodged the slippery stones on uneven bits of pavement. He plodded on. His face confronted him, unawares, in dark shop windows, and different from the conscious face in the bedroom mirror. This person looked distraught, looked lonely, battered even, and hardly to be distinguished from some of the down-and-outs who wandered in and out of nearby pubs.
Renwick had come a long way. The Castle was now in view and it was giving all of them the full treatment. He had seen this often enough – illumined stone and black battlements against a sky still red with sunset. To crown all – a huge, white supermoon breaking through clouds. Renwick found himself in the midst of a large group, all turned that way, all staring as if at a high stage. They were a long time staring. Suddenly, as if at a warning buzz in the brain, Renwick resumed citizenship. He was proud yet impatient of the wide eyes around him. He glanced at his watch, heard his own voice repeat familiar words:
‘Yes, that’s how it is – very dramatic, very spectacular. Illumined? Yes, very often. The full moon? Yes, don’t ask me how – it seems often to be full and very well placed, though more romantically speaking than astronomically I would say. You must remember though – we are not only a romantic city. Far from it. Yes, yes, of course there’s stuff coming down, but have you seen the new things going up – the business side of things? In other words we are a busy people. Time moves on, you see. It moves on here as in every other place, ‘He looked a man of some consequence, a very busy man with a full timetable to get through. They made way for him. He wished them good-night, passed on.
He was alone now and walking in a quiet side street. The moon and the red sky were behind, the illumination blocked out by high office buildings. He was making for home. Once he stopped in passing for a word with an acquaintance, until they reminded one another of the time and quickly separated. Five persons made up on him and passed, talking animatedly, and Renwick recognized the cadence of this tongue. The blonde girl was walking with three others and a young man. The man was native to the city. The rest, he noted, were all tall, all fair, all dressed with a flair and colour that stood out even in the dark street. It this was the northern myth it was coming over in style. The girl gave him a wave as they went by.
‘A fine night,’ said Renwick.
‘Yes,’ the girl called back. ‘And how about your moon tonight? Have you looked yet? Has it turned into a clock?’ He heard her answering the young man, heard her say in a voice – low, but audible to touchy ears. ‘No, no, not moonstruck. He is a time keeper. The man is clock-mad!’ She made some remark to the others in her own language. They laughed, looked back over their shoulders and gave him a friendly wave. All five went on their way, noiseless, in rubber soles, and disappeared round the next corner.
But Renwick’s shoes were loud on the paving-stones, the footsteps rang in his ears like a metronome. But what were they counting out? Minutes or stones? He stared round once, then turned his back again. This moon had looked cold and white as a snowball. Yet his moonlit ears burned as he walked on.