depredations and my mother’s successive “clear-outs” and incinerations, not to mention Matthew’s consignment to the murky recesses (ah, but it seems I am heading that way too) of family failure and disgrace.
It is quite possible, entirely plausible, in fact, that she never knew she had them. There was more “junk” than you would credit, for a woman given to severing herself from the past, in those two old, rotting leather suitcases—one with its brass locks completely seized up. I took it upon myself to open them. Sam seemed unduly angered that I should have done so—I can understand this now—but he calmed down when the contents were made known. In fact, the occasion seemed to mark the end of the dazed, quarrelsome mood into which my mother’s death had thrown him. “I’m sorry I bit your head off, pal.” I didn’t show him the photograph of Uncle Jim. But I showed him the notebooks, which he quickly flipped through, then returned to me with a shrug. And I showed him the cutting of my mother’s singing début. “No, no, you keep it, kid. I’m sorry I yelled at you. You keep it all.” There was the old, avuncular look in his eye.
But my mother had certainly known about Matthew Pearce. And so had I—from an early age—if only because of the clock: the little mantel clock with a rosewood case that was made in 1845 by Matthew’s own father, as a present for his son and his bride, and which has served as a wedding gift over successive generations ever since. Ruth and I received it in 1959. Since our wedding was an impromptu, unannounced affair, we received it rather late in the day. Nonetheless, my mother felt it proper we should have it. It was one of few heirlooms she cherished and didher duty by. It used to tick and chime away, amongst relics—long since discarded—of the “India days” in our old home in Berkshire. I don’t know what my father made of it. Then it kept watch over Ruth and myself, first on our various mantelpieces in London, then in the cottage we bought in Sussex in 1975 and made increasing use of, Ruth’s schedule permitting, up until her death. Now it sits here—that is, on the sturdy mantelpiece of my august Fellow’s chambers—one of a little nucleus of objects I brought with me from the flat. I sold the cottage over a year ago. The cottage, of course, was where Ruth died.
It has a gentle, modest tick-tock. A crystalline, elfin chime. Inlaid in the rosewood, above the face, are little scrolls, rosettes and a pair of cupids. On the hinged brass plate at the back, which covers the winding mechanism, is engraved
M. & E. 4th April 1845
, and above this, the motto,
Amor Vincit Omnia
. All of which my mother interpreted for me long ago, before our Paris days.
“It’s Latin, darling. You’ll learn Latin at school. ‘Love conquers all.’ If only it were true.”
Then she told me the tale, such as she herself knew it, and with a tolerant sigh, of Matthew Pearce. A rare exception to her story-telling habits.
Now that I have the Notebooks, now that I know so much more about Matthew, the clock has taken on a new significance for me—not that it wasn’t always an object of special value. If its discreet face had eyes and a mouth, it could tell me so much more (than even my scholarly surmises) about Matthew—and Elizabeth. It is a simple deduction that Matthew himself must once have opened the little hinged plate and turned the key. But only now does that fact seem extraordinary, mysterious, teasing—like the fact that Matthew wrote the sloping, regular hand (expressing such irregular thoughts) that fill the Notebooks.That when I open their pages, I open, I touch, the pages that he once touched. I occupy, as it were, his phantom skin.
The little brass winding-key, with its trefoil handle, is, so far as I know, the original key. After we acquired the clock (I told Ruth its history), it somehow became Ruth’s self-appointed task to keep it wound. It was a point of some
It is quite possible, entirely plausible, in fact, that she never knew she had them. There was more “junk” than you would credit, for a woman given to severing herself from the past, in those two old, rotting leather suitcases—one with its brass locks completely seized up. I took it upon myself to open them. Sam seemed unduly angered that I should have done so—I can understand this now—but he calmed down when the contents were made known. In fact, the occasion seemed to mark the end of the dazed, quarrelsome mood into which my mother’s death had thrown him. “I’m sorry I bit your head off, pal.” I didn’t show him the photograph of Uncle Jim. But I showed him the notebooks, which he quickly flipped through, then returned to me with a shrug. And I showed him the cutting of my mother’s singing début. “No, no, you keep it, kid. I’m sorry I yelled at you. You keep it all.” There was the old, avuncular look in his eye.
But my mother had certainly known about Matthew Pearce. And so had I—from an early age—if only because of the clock: the little mantel clock with a rosewood case that was made in 1845 by Matthew’s own father, as a present for his son and his bride, and which has served as a wedding gift over successive generations ever since. Ruth and I received it in 1959. Since our wedding was an impromptu, unannounced affair, we received it rather late in the day. Nonetheless, my mother felt it proper we should have it. It was one of few heirlooms she cherished and didher duty by. It used to tick and chime away, amongst relics—long since discarded—of the “India days” in our old home in Berkshire. I don’t know what my father made of it. Then it kept watch over Ruth and myself, first on our various mantelpieces in London, then in the cottage we bought in Sussex in 1975 and made increasing use of, Ruth’s schedule permitting, up until her death. Now it sits here—that is, on the sturdy mantelpiece of my august Fellow’s chambers—one of a little nucleus of objects I brought with me from the flat. I sold the cottage over a year ago. The cottage, of course, was where Ruth died.
It has a gentle, modest tick-tock. A crystalline, elfin chime. Inlaid in the rosewood, above the face, are little scrolls, rosettes and a pair of cupids. On the hinged brass plate at the back, which covers the winding mechanism, is engraved
M. & E. 4th April 1845
, and above this, the motto,
Amor Vincit Omnia
. All of which my mother interpreted for me long ago, before our Paris days.
“It’s Latin, darling. You’ll learn Latin at school. ‘Love conquers all.’ If only it were true.”
Then she told me the tale, such as she herself knew it, and with a tolerant sigh, of Matthew Pearce. A rare exception to her story-telling habits.
Now that I have the Notebooks, now that I know so much more about Matthew, the clock has taken on a new significance for me—not that it wasn’t always an object of special value. If its discreet face had eyes and a mouth, it could tell me so much more (than even my scholarly surmises) about Matthew—and Elizabeth. It is a simple deduction that Matthew himself must once have opened the little hinged plate and turned the key. But only now does that fact seem extraordinary, mysterious, teasing—like the fact that Matthew wrote the sloping, regular hand (expressing such irregular thoughts) that fill the Notebooks.That when I open their pages, I open, I touch, the pages that he once touched. I occupy, as it were, his phantom skin.
The little brass winding-key, with its trefoil handle, is, so far as I know, the original key. After we acquired the clock (I told Ruth its history), it somehow became Ruth’s self-appointed task to keep it wound. It was a point of some
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