Kate Morton - The Clockmaker's Daughter

He’d read about the concert she was playing in Bath in the newspaper a few days later, and when he saw who the other soloists were, he’d realised what she’d meant. She’d been planning to say goodbye to someone who had once meant a great deal to her.

She had sat on that very same stool six years earlier, when she returned from New York. He could picture her the day she’d come to visit him; he’d been able to see at once that something had happened.

Sure enough: she had fallen in love, she said, and she was getting married.

‘Congratulations,’ he’d said, but her expression made it clear this wasn’t an ordinary announcement.

It turned out that the two parts of the sentence fitted together in a rather more complicated way than he’d assumed.

She had fallen in love with one of the other young musicians invited to be part of the quintet, a violinist. ‘It was instant,’ she said. ‘It was fierce and complete and worth every risk and sacrifice, and I knew at once that I would never feel the same way about another man.’

‘And did he—?’

‘It was mutual.’

‘But?’

‘He’s married.’

‘Ah.’

‘To a woman called Susan, a lovely, sweet woman who he’s known since he was a boy and whom he couldn’t bear to hurt. She knows everything about him, she’s a primary school teacher, and she bakes the most delicious chocolate and peanut butter slice, which she brought to the rehearsal room and shared with all of us before sitting on a plastic chair and listening to us play. And when we finished, she cried, Tip – cried because the music had moved her – so I can’t even hate her, because I could never hate a woman who is moved to tears by music.’

Which might have been the end of it, but there was a third part to the story.

‘I’m pregnant.’

‘I see.’

‘Not planned.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to get married.’

And that’s when she’d told him what Winston had proposed. Tip had met the lad a couple of times: a musician, too, though not like Lauren. A good sort, hopelessly in love with her. ‘He doesn’t mind—’

‘About the baby? No.’

‘I was going to say, that you’re in love with someone else.’

‘I’ve been very honest with him. He said it didn’t matter, that there were different types of love and that the human heart did not admit limitations. He said I might even change my mind in time.’

‘He could be right.’

‘No. It’s impossible.’

‘Time is a strange and powerful beast. It has a habit of making the impossible possible.’

But, no, she’d been adamant. She could never love another man in the same way that she’d loved the violinist.

‘But I love Winston, too, Tip. He’s a good man, a kind man; he’s one of my best friends. I know it’s not usual.’

‘No such thing in my experience.’

She’d reached across to squeeze his hand.

‘What will you tell the child?’ Tip had asked.

‘The truth, if and when she asks. Winston and I agreed on that.’

‘She?’

Lauren had smiled then. ‘Just a feeling.’

She. The girl, Elodie. Tip had found himself watching her occasionally, in turn, across the table at Sunday lunch, mildly puzzled because he recognised something in her that he couldn’t articulate at once; she had reminded him of someone. He realised now, in the sudden focus of her mother’s death, that she’d reminded him of himself. She was a child whose still waters masked her depths.

Tip went over to the shelf where he kept his jar of whatnots and took out the stone, weighing it in the palm of his hand. He could still remember the night the woman, Ada, told him about it. They’d been sitting out the front of the pub in Birchwood; it was summer and dusk, so there hadn’t been a lot of light, but enough for him to show her some of the rocks and sticks he’d been collecting. His pockets were always full at that time.

She’d picked each one up in turn and looked at it closely. She had liked collecting things, too, when she was his age, she said; now she was an archaeologist, which was a grown-up version of the same thing.

‘Do you have a favourite?’ she’d asked.

Tip told her that he did, and handed over a particularly smooth piece of oval-shaped quartz. ‘Did you ever find something as good as this?’

Ada nodded. ‘Once, when I was not much older than you are now.’

‘I’m five.’

‘Well, I was eight. I had an accident. I fell from a boat into the river and I couldn’t swim.’

Tip could remember becoming alert then with recognition; he had a feeling he’d heard this story before.

‘Down I went, through the water, all the way to the bottom.’

‘Did you think that you were going to drown?’

‘Yes.’

‘A girl did drown in the river over there.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed gravely. ‘But not me.’

‘ She saved you.’

‘Yes. Just when I felt that I could hold my breath no longer, I saw her. Not clearly, and only for a moment, and then she was gone and I saw the stone, shining, surrounded by light, and I just knew somehow, as if a voice had whispered in my ear, that if I reached out and grasped it, I would survive.’

‘And you did.’

‘As you see. A wise woman once told me that there were certain items that brought a person good fortune.’

He’d liked the sound of that and had asked her where he could get one for himself. He explained to her that his father had just been killed in the war and he was worried about his mother, because it was his job now to look after her and he wasn’t sure how to do it.

And Ada had nodded wisely and said, ‘I’m going to come and see you at the house tomorrow. Would that be all right? I have something I’d like to give you. In fact, I have a feeling that it belongs with you. That it knew you’d be here and found a way to get to you.’

But it must be a secret between them, she’d said, and then she’d asked whether he’d found the hidden chamber yet, and when Tip said that he hadn’t, she’d whispered to him about a panel in the hallway, and Tip’s eyes had widened with excitement.

Next day she’d given him the blue stone.

‘What will I do with it?’ he’d asked as they sat together in the garden at Birchwood Manor.

‘Keep it safe and it will do the same for you.’

Birdie, who’d been sitting beside him, had smiled her agreement.

Tip no longer believed in amulets or good luck, but he didn’t disbelieve, either. What he did know was that the idea of the stone had been enough. Many times, as a boy – at Birchwood, but more so after they’d left – he’d held it in his hand and closed his eyes and Birdie’s words had come flooding back into his mind: he would remember the lights in the dark, and the way he’d felt when he was in the house, as if he were enveloped, and everything was going to be all right.

Thinking of Lauren and the little girl who was now without her mother, Tip began to have an idea. He had a trove of trolleys in his studio, each loaded with items he had found when he was out walking: things that spoke to him, for one reason or another, because they were honest or beautiful or interesting. He began to pick out some of the finest, arranging them on the bench before him, returning some to the trays, exchanging them for others, until he was happy with the selection. And then he began to mix up the clay.

Little girls liked charm boxes. He had seen them at the markets on Saturdays, lining up at the craft stalls, looking for little cases in which to keep their treasures. He would make one for her, Lauren’s daughter, and he would decorate it with all of the items that meant the most to him; the stone, too, for it had found a new child to protect. It wasn’t much, but it was all that he could think to do.