They both have tempers — a specialist in volcanics, she is loud; he deals in earthquakes, silent and shaking — but this fight is the kidding kind. He is laughing, she is stuttering with disbelief. It is perhaps 1995 and my father has walked in wearing a new gold watch. My parents, coming to it from opposite ends, see the world differently. Mum is careful with money, considerate, counting; dad appears to regard it much as he does the weather, as something always there. But an astonishingly costly divorce means his accounts are foggy, chucking it down, below freezing. My exasperated mother is in vain explaining this, but all dad can say is: a good watch matters.
That Christmas, I ask for my first watch. I receive a Timex Expedition, and when the crown is pressed, the face glows green. I play with it constantly and read by it after lights out. Time moves, though seconds stop ticking and start sweeping. Watches come, watches go. And when I am 25, so does my father. He has been ill, and in a way that unbalances our family; a different kind of earthquake. Like him, the watch bears its ravages. The crown is bent, the gold in dents. The crystal has cracked and so has he. But grief is a flood and the watch gets washed away. I haven’t seen it in eight years now. I see my father most days.
“The watch crown is bent, the gold in dents, the crystal has cracked and so has my father”
It’s around then that I begin to look for a gold watch of my own, and it takes a year but I find a Cartier from the Seventies. I wear it daily until a watchmaker, inspecting its rusted movement, tells me rather sternly that these things are fragile. Time for a Seiko, I suppose. One Friday evening I’m sitting writing when the Scotch I’m drinking opens a new tab and buys me a Rolex.
It is this Rolex I have ripped from my wrist last summer. I am headed to the bus stop in an attempt to abate my crippling addiction to cabs. Talk about false economy. The next morning, a friend tells me he’ll cheer me up with lunch in the French. We meet at noon, skip past cheery into merry and then to buoyancy, though neither of us is safe to swim. We talk watches. His is a ’69 Speedmaster. Mine is from 1953, another Rolex, and small and gold and my own, but it reminds me of another. It is not his but I am not him.
That afternoon as I head for coffee, the watch is taken. Things are worse this time. When I come to, I am furious at myself for this happening, though as the paramedic blots blood from my eye and straightens my stamped knee, I unjustly direct my anger towards the police. I am sure it is lost and so are they. Sighing, they radio it in.
About that time, a retired detective is looking out of his window when he sees a small gold watch being passed between dubious hands and calls the station. A DI who has heard the Soho bobbies’ report picks up the call. Four months later and the DI is looking at me. ‘It’s still not right, is it?’ he says, nodding to my eye, the black substituted for red. A court case is ongoing but the watch is being returned. He asks for its story and I tell him what I have told you. He nods, presses his lips together, and tells me his story. We understand each other. Some watches do not tell time. They remind.
