she knew a lot about Grandfather because, once, a man had come to clean him. The week he came their class had been doing a school project on ‘Time’, so she’d asked him a lot of questions and written down all the answers. Her project had ended up being all about their very own grandfather clock and she had been given a gold star for it.
She had discovered, for example, that when the clock was made, in the olden days, it had been made in three different parts which all fitted nicely together. There was a bottom part, which stood firmly on the floor and held everything else up, and into this slid ‘the trunk’, which had a door in it. You could open the door and see the huge weights and the pendulum swinging to and fro. On top of the trunk was a carved case which held the painted face and the shining brass hands and, hidden behind all this, the actual works of the clock, the most important part. This wooden case also slid on and off and it was called the ‘hood’.
When Mum and Dad read Sally’s project, and admired the gold star, they said that she knew more about the old clock than anybody.
Sally fetched the key and the stool Mum stood on, when she wound Grandfather. But she was much shorter than her mother and she couldn’t reach the keyholes in the face of the clock. So she put the key into her pocket and went into the study where Dad kept all his books.
She found four enormous ones on the bottom shelf. They were so huge and heavy that she had to carry them into the hall one by one. With the books, she made a neat platform and on to this she put the stool. Then, very carefully, she climbed up. The stool wobbled a bit so Sally did everything slowly, to keep her balance.
She still couldn’t reach the holes so she went back to Dad’s bookshelves and fetched four more books. It was quite a tall platform now and the stool felt more wobbly. But Sally was determined to get Grandfather ticking again.
Very carefully, and holding on to the clock very tight with her left hand, Sally opened the glass door that protected the face. She had never been so close to Grandfather before. Now she could see that the little girls painted in each corner had pretty, rosy faces. From down below they had looked like little blobs.
One had a fur coat on, she was Winter. One was picking daffodils, she was Spring. One stood in the middle of a field of golden corn, and was Summer. One held a basket of apples, and was Autumn. In between Winter and Spring there was a moon with a big, kindly face, a moon that moved slowly out of sight as the days ticked by, and changed into the sun. Underneath were some numbers that also changed and, under them, the months of the year. And she could see now that the clock had stopped on the second day of July, the day that Mum had been taken into hospital. Sally stared at the face of the clock and felt like crying.
Just as she took the key out of her pocket, something unexpected happened. William must have crept out of his cocoon of straw and come to see what she was doing. Suddenly, without any warning, he ran straight up the clock, his tiny pink feet scurrying along her bare arm and up her fingers. When he reached the very top he sat on one of the carved wooden roses that decorated the case, staring down at her cheekily, his beautiful whiskers all of a quiver.
The feel of his cold little feet on her skin was such a shock that Sally jumped violently, started to sway, and then to wobble. She knew she mustn’t panic so she stayed exactly where she was until she got her balance again. She was cross with William, so she ignored him.
Carefully, Sally inserted the big old key in to the left-hand winding hole and began to turn it. The clock made gentle creaking noises and there was a dull thudding from inside. She knew that it was the sound of the huge weight banging against the door as it travelled up to the top on its thin, strong thread. When she stopped winding, the clock struck three times. Sally was excited. That meant the striking part of Grandfather was properly wound up again.
But now she had to wind up the part which moved the hands round, and told you the time, so she put the key into the right-hand winding hole.
From on top of the clock, William gave a pitiful little squeak. He wanted to come down again. He liked playing in Sally’s hair, he liked making nests in it. Sally looked up. ‘You’ll just have to wait,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m concentrating on this.’
But William took no notice. He had discovered that it was much easier to run up things than to slither down them and Sally’s nice thick hair spelt safety. To William it was like the safety blanket held out by firemen for someone stuck on the top of a burning building. He bunched himself up into a tight white ball and took an almighty leap.
‘What the— oh no— help. . .!’ The shock of William landing on her head sent Sally grabbing at the clock. She dropped the key and the stool tipped over and crashed on to the floor and she was left hanging on to the clock by her fingertips, clutching at the polished wooden columns that held up the beautifully carved face. She could hear both the weights bumping about very heavily and now Grandfather seemed to have come to life. He had started to move forwards with a terrifying, lurching motion.
There was a strange scraping noise, like a big, obstinate rusty nail being pulled out of something, and the clock was coming away from the wall – it was falling over! It had been screwed to the wall by Dad, but now—
Sally screamed, threw herself to one side, and landed in a heap on the far side of the hall as the clock toppled right over and hit the floor with the most enormous crash, followed by all kinds of weird noises. As she lay on the carpet, quite unable to move for shock and terror, there was a chinking noise, then a lot of funny bonging sounds, then the steady tinkle of glass.
Then, after all the noises, an awful silence fell. Sally shut her eyes tight, she didn’t want to look. But as she lay on the carpet she could hear wheezy, creaky sounds coming from the direction of the clock. It was like a very old person settling down to sleep.
She listened, thinking about Grandfather Bell, who had lived until he was one hundred and one years old. Grandfather Clock was even older, and the thing Mum loved best after Dad, Alan and Sally.
At last, she made herself get up from the carpet. She made herself walk across the hall. She made herself look at the clock. And when Sally saw what had happened, she really did burst into tears and once she had started to cry she felt she would never stop.
Grandfather’s ‘trunk’, the case that held the pendulum and the weights, had split into two pieces. The wooden columns which had risen up on each side of the glass door, holding up the roof of the clock with its two wooden roses, and its pointy carvings, were broken into tiny little bits, and all the other carvings seemed to have vanished completely. It was as if some evil magician had waved a magic wand and turned them into a heap of rubble.
All round the wreckage were pieces of fine glass. The pendulum must have flown out of Grandfather’s insides as he crashed down because the springy piece of metal, stuck on to the shiny round thing that ticked steadily to and fro, was all twisted and bent. Both the weights lay on the carpet and all round them were tiny pieces of wood, pieces smaller than matchsticks.
Only when Sally’s eyes had taken all this in did she pluck up the courage to pull the face of the clock out of the wreckage so that she could look at Grandfather’s face. And when she looked she turned away almost at once. What had happened to it was too awful to see.
The fingers of the clock, once so beautiful, were bent double like hairpins and one had snapped right in two. The moon face still looked out at her, in its kindly way, but the four little girls were all scratched and spoiled. Sharp pieces of glass and metal must have been hurled against them in the fall. They were almost unrecognisable now; in fact they were more or less blobs again.
Sally turned her back on it all and sat down on the carpet,
