Rituals of the Clock
Published 'Writer's Block' 1997
Donald used to enjoy Patience. Especially the clock version, where he dealt out the playing cards in a circle of twelve piles, with four in the middle. Since Mother “went away”, it seemed even more important to “get it out”, play the game to the ultimate turn of the card. Of course, it was a pity he would not be able to run to her in the bedroom to brag of his success, when success eventually came. A pity beyond tears.
Mother used to sit up in a bed whose round wooden knobs at the four corners gradually, over the years, grew bigger than her head. The bolster pillow was double-ramped behind her so that she could eat properly, a thickly knitted bed-jacket slung around the scrawny shoulders and tied with a precarious ribbon at the hollow of her neck. There was a tray which Donald had painstakingly made from a chest-drawer, fret-sawing the wooden sides into curves to fit over the shape of her legs. She often left a gutted egg-shell in a bone china egg-cup together with a few toasted “soldiers” which she had not dipped into the yolk.
“I very nearly got it out, this morning, Mother. The last King was three cards from the end!” Donald often used to say.
“Oh, I’m pleased, Donald. Perhaps next time you’ll be able to go all the way.”
“I certainly hope so, Mother. I’ve never done it so far. Do you want me to take the tray away now?”
The conversation was not exactly the same each day, not word perfect. Reality slipped a notch at each turn of time’s corkscrew. Yet, Donald had not succeeded in this game of Patience during his Mothers lifetime.
Today was a different story. He could not credit the ease with which the cards were slipping away from the clockface. No Kings so far and he was at least as much as halfway through. The cabinet clock in the corner of the parlour slowly struck nine.
He cursed. The next card was a King. Of Diamonds.
Donald placed this King with its back to the meticulously tatted tablecloth, staring up at the blistered ceiling. The object of the game was to go to each number of the “clock”, guided by the numbers on the faces of the cards turned up, Jacks being eleven, and Queens twelve. Every time a King was revealed, Donald had to resort to the middle pile for the next card – so when all four Kings had turned up like bad pennies, Donald’s game was lost. Why he needed to summarise the rules in his mind was not so much because he had forgotten them, but more a ritualised enactment, a cipher, a mantra, a mandala, a fortune wheel...
“Well, how are you today, Donald?’
In Donald’s ears, the King of Diamond’s voice sounded bright, if ingratiating, scintillating like a cut-glass crystal vase.
“Not so bad,” Donald answered, under his breath.
“Have you found the Queen of Diamonds yet?’
“Yes, she sends her undying love, but you can’t see her at the moment, seeing she is face up under old Jack Spade.”
Such conversations constituted the ritual of innuendo. Donald was always a bit odd, his Mother had often thought, with a sigh of world weariness, as she listened to him talking downstairs on his own. Or, at least, that was what Donald thought she must have thought. She used to play cards too, nip and tuck with a patient death.
The parlour was deep from ceiling to floor, and Donald sat upon each chair in turn, as if to enhance the party atmosphere. His bones cracked as he lifted his heavy body from seat to seat.
Mother had frequently told him that he was putting on too much weight in the wrong places. She had taken out his trousers, her needle flashing in the window-light. This activity reminded her of the days when she was a tailoress, with clients who were gentlemen of good breeding, whose trousers needed special care and attention. They wrote down their measurements for her on pieces of paper, rather than have to say them out loud and, later, she smiled whilst sewing in the bespoke crutch-panels. Some even allowed her to be directly involved in the measurements.
“I wondered when you’d reach me,” roared the rubicund King of Hearts.
“You always turn up like a drunken priest for last rites,” said Donald, as he placed this King upon the King of Diamonds. Two to go, and he was about three-quarters through the “clock”. Would this be the day of getting out?
Donald was never to hear the cabinet clock strike again. “What’s a fellow to do if he’s no longer wound up?” the clock complained, wondering if it would ever swing the pendulum as high as this again. The whole house had gone to seed ever since Donald’s Mother had “gone away”.
As Donald flipped over the bottom card at the three o’clock position, he found it was the King of Clubs.
“Hiya, Duckie, want to scratch my black cherries?”
The lack of subtlety shocked Donald, cringing in case Mother heard it from upstairs. But, no worries, Mother was never to hear anything again, ever since the kind men helped her “go away’. Forcing too many yolk-soaked bread-soldiers down her throat, Donald must have known, would bloat her heart. But he did have more time for himself now.
He placed the third exposed King upon the other two. Suspense killed. Excitement was time all screwed up. There seemed to be only five cards left scattered randomly around the clockface. He may “come out’ at last. If only the final card in the middle was the King of Spades. He was tempted to turn up its corner for a sneak preview. But, no, he must play the game, without cheating to the bitter end.
Mother had made pairs of trousers for the Kings, too. The one for the King of Clubs was the most challenging. She did not know whether he “dressed to the right or left” – but nobody understood bespoke tailoring terms like that any more. Mother was indeed the last real made-to-measure cutter in the world. He cringed at the snicker-snacker of her blades.
After the crashing and whirring of gears, the cabinet clock miscounted the hour by give or take one strike. Spent springs and a yellow pus-like oil spread across the carpet, as if a cyborg berserker had been sick. The penultimate card was...
The King of Spades sprung up, its black shovel-blade ripe to slice. It topped the egghead with a splintering crunch – but only gradually did the brain slither out – painstakingly – leaving Donald’s extremities with a tortured consciousness long after the moment of death itself. And the corpse’s curious fingers mechanically turned what would have been the very last card ... only to discover the scissor-tongued joker who should have been taken out of the pack before the game started.
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