Diary fragment · 3 min read ·
The Watch That Kept 33
Her watch stops at 03:12 every night whatever the battery, so she starts recording the stop times, and the intervals between them tighten.
- dated: "October"
- narrator: "Selina Croft, proofreader"
12th. The watch stopped at 03:12. I was awake and reading a proof of other people's misfortunes when it went, and I heard the second hand die mid-tick, the small click stopping, which no one ever hears on a watch this old unless they are awake exactly then, as I was. New cell in September. The hands stand at 12 past 3, a proper time, nothing to frighten anyone in the figures.
13th. Again, 03:12, and this time the bedside electric clock says the same to the minute, which is not evidence, since the watch could be lying in step with the clock. I wound nothing and shook nothing. Pressed it to my ear and left it by the lamp.
14th. It started again on its own some time in the morning light, so the jeweller's line about a wet stop will not do either, and I began, because I am what I am paid to be, to write the times down in the margin of a cancelled proof. A column. Left page, top rule.
19th. The list so far: the 12th at 03:12:00 against the pips to the second, the 13th at 03:12:00, the 14th likewise, then the 15th, 03:12 again. I said nothing to anyone. What would there be to say, five stops in five nights at the same minute — that the hour is quiet at twelve past three and I notice the silence?
Then on the 18th it did not run long after starting. Risen with me at seven, dead again by ten past nine. On the 19th, reset at my desk, dead again within the hour. The intervals are tightening. That is the phrase my own eye put in the margin and that is the phrase I cannot now rub out without damaging the proof.
22nd. I have been asked (by no one; by the margin) to be exact, so: after each dark stop the watch gathers itself and runs again of its own accord, and each new run is shorter than the last, roughly, I now believe, by half of the first run's remainder. Whatever is owing on that watch is being paid faster, and the runs are down to minutes. All the stops come round through twelve past three, as a stopped clock stays stopped at the time it stopped, if it is never truly started again.
24th. I set it and did not look, and put my ear to it at the pip: ticking. At 03:12:00, dead. Reset. Ticking. 03:12:33, dead. Reset it and sat up with the proof and the lamp. Ticking. 03:12:15 dead. Last night, reset at the pips: dead at 03:12:00, dead at 03:12:21, dead at 03:12:08, dead at 03:12:04, and the room at each stop exactly as full of quiet as at the one before, only nearer.
26th. I have stopped setting it. Copies of the times go into the margin of the dark proofs, where an author would not dream of looking, and I copy them out the way I copy anything I am to keep: exactly, without correction, and in red, so it can be taken for annotation. The runs now are seconds, and they narrow on 33, and the hour has grown very crowded at twelve past three.
29th. I write the last of these over the electric fire going off, well before the hour. The watch lies stopped on the sill, hands at 12 past 3. Whatever gathers between the stops, it does not mind being written down; it has never once minded being read. I am a proofreader. I have not once been able to mark the error, let alone correct it, and tomorrow the margin has room for one more column, and the night after that has room for only three.