Luke Williams: The Echo Chamber

The only object that emits a sound is Father’s pocket watch. It sits upon a pile of maps in the south-east corner of the attic. It has lain there since Father, in a fit of madness, snatched it from his breast pocket and threw it to the attic floor, only later placing it on the topmost map in the pile.

The watch has been well handled. The silver casing is tarnished black. A deep scratch on its underside, an even curve about one inch in length, obscures three words of an inscription, which reads:

Could not our tempers move like this machine,

Not ____ by passion nor delayed by spleen.

And true to Nature’s ____ power,

By virtuous acts distinguish every ____

Embossed on the inner casing, below the Roman numeral VI, is the signature Breguet et Fils . The watch winds at the centre of the dial. The bezels and bow are gold. Originally a pair of tiny diamonds decorated the hands of the watch, although now both the minute hand and its jewel are missing. If I have made a special point of describing the pocket watch, leaving no doubt, I hope, that the minute hand is absent; if indeed I have gone so far as to call the whole chapter Pocket Watch , it is because I know how much I owe to it. After all, it was because of that decrepit piece of clockwork that my parents came together. Listen!

…

There was once a stranger, formerly a watchmaker, who would become a grandfather. He had an address but was never home. He spent his days in second-class compartments, his nights in sleeper cars or station-side hotels. And yet if you looked in the registers of these hotels, the Turnberry, the Great Eastern, the Laharna, the Caledonian, the Liverpool Adelphi or the Yarborough New Holland, you would not find his name but a hundred different names.

There was once a student who would become a father. He was travelling to Balliol College, Oxford, to train for the overseas civil service. His name was Rex Steppman, he had a scar on his chin, and he carried a pocket watch in his left breast pocket.

There was once a stranger, formerly a watchmaker, now a murderer, who would become a grandfather. He had a house in Oxford, where his daughter lived, but he himself was never there. He spent his days in second-class compartments, evading the law, and in one of these compartments, on the London and North Eastern line, he met a student with a scar on his chin, who would become a father, and who carried a pocket watch in his left breast pocket.

Once there was a second-class compartment on the London and North Eastern line. It had twin banks of seats, upholstered in umber. Looking in from the corridor, through the glass-panelled door, one would see it had a window with a pomelle frame, four lamps and marquetry depicting antelopes leaping between palm trees. Beneath the window was a radiator which filled the compartment with an infernal heat. On one particular day, an October morning in 1938, there was a single passenger in the compartment. It was the student. As the 10 o’clock to London King’s Cross heaved itself out of Edinburgh Waverley, he was reading an article entitled ‘An Elephant’s Sagacity’ — the animal had been proceeding along a narrow road in the Punjab, towards a water pump, when she found her way blocked by an unconscious child. Seeing cars approaching, she swept the child up in her trunk, stepped to the roadside as the cavalcade passed, then gently laid the child on the verge and resumed her journey to the pump.

Suddenly, there was a commotion in the corridor. A squat man, dressed in a black suit, brogues, sable tie, with a Bombay Bowler pressed low over his brow, hurried through the corridor, banging his suitcases against the side of the carriage.

‘I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience!’ the stranger said in an exaggerated English accent. He shouldered open the door and surveyed the compartment.

‘May I …?’ he said. ‘You don’t mind if …?’ Without waiting for an answer he entered the compartment. The stranger had a round face, crow eyes and a thin-waxed moustache that seemed to point to ten-past-ten.

The train rolled slowly through the outskirts of the city. Restalrig ambled by, then the green hump of Duddingston Mains. The track curved left, and Leith Strand came into view, with the Firth of Forth beyond. The sky was vast and cloudless and the sunlight came and went.

‘Let me introduce myself,’ the stranger said, holding out his hand. ‘My name is Julien Le Roy.’

‘Rex Steppman,’ said the student, shaking hands without standing up.

‘A pleasure.’ The stranger glanced suspiciously around the carriage then brought his lips to Rex’s ear. ‘What are you reading?’

‘The newspaper.’

‘… which is the very reason I intend to sit beside you! One ought to read the paper on the train. At least this is preferable to taking a window seat, since there’s always the danger of looking at the scenery.’

The student said nothing.

‘Don’t you think?’

The train was gathering speed. Gardens and allotments rushed by, rubbish dumps, radio masts, and, at Joppa, a cluster of houses whose windows threw back a blistering, fragmented reflection of the sun. The line of buildings soon dispersed, and there were green fields and, beyond, the North Sea, broken here and there by tiny white crests.

The student removed his jacket and placed it across his legs. He twisted himself towards the window, hunched his shoulders and buried his head in the newspaper — now the elephant was performing pirouettes, creating a rumpus among crowds of British Indians; now she was fountaining water from her trunk; now producing ice-creams, as if from nowhere, and passing them to small children in the crowd –

The train followed the contours of the cliff top; the sea, indistinguishable from the horizon, was quivering, as if a thousand fish were turning on the surface. Blades of sunlight streamed mercilessly through the window — refracted, splintered — and crept towards the travellers. The stranger began to sing.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,

And better friends I’ll not be knowing,

Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take

No matter where it’s going.

‘A pretty tune, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘But where was I … ah … one should never stare out of the window because the scenery — right at this moment there is a copse — don’t look! — about a mile’s worth passing by. It can make one’s head spin.’

‘But —’

‘Better stick to your Scotsman. ’

‘That’s what I am trying to do! But you are distracting me. Please, leave me in peace.’

‘No need to raise your voice. I haven’t introduced myself properly. My name is Sylvain Mairet —’

‘That is the second name I have heard you use! First you introduced yourself as Julien Le Roy and now you say your name is Mairet.’

‘I have more than one hundred names,’ the stranger said. ‘And what about you? I see you’re studying at Oxford. Balliol — I’d recognize that crest anywhere.’

The student was taken aback.

‘What are you studying?’

‘I’m training for the civil service — overseas,’ he said after a short time.

‘And that is why you keep a pocket watch in your left breast pocket.’

The student placed his hand over the bulge in his jacket, then took the pocket watch out.

‘Where did you get it?’ asked the stranger.

‘From my parents. On my twenty-first.’

‘It’s a pretty one.’ The stranger took the watch and turned it in his hands. ‘You are in company with one of the most illustrious travellers. Phileas Fogg made his journey keeping time with a Breguet.’

‘Breguet?’