Christmas Days always seem to start strangely, and today is no exception.
It's 5am in Crozon, Brittany, North-Western France. I've been at least half awake since 3, and have moved from a fairly uncomfortable bed to a luxurious sofa. I read the first few pages of “Ray Charles: Man and Music” by Michael Lydon, sleepily became stuck on an image of the flatlands of Northern Florida, and then decided to give up and just listen to the ticking of the grandfather clock. I decided to see where the ticking took me.
By daytime, the room I am in is dominated by its south-facing sea view, a captivating and ever-changing panorama of skies and cloud formations, rocks, sea and shorelines that are one minute bathed in sunshine and the next minute cast into gothic silhouette. Stand outside after dark, and your eye is drawn upwards to the stars, especially after about 10.30pm when the streetlights are switched off and the backcloth of millions upon millions of distant stars show up behind the few prominent ones that townies like me can usually see. The dominant sound is the sea, washing back and forth on a pebbly beach about half a mile away, plus the occasional calls of owls having a pow-wow across trees or chimneys above and behind.
But right now, all of that is barred by the window shutters, and if I opened them I'd wake the rest of this sleeping house. I'm acutely aware of the darkness outside, but I can't actually see it. It's like I'm inside an envelope. I know where the opening is and how to open it, and what's outside it, but it's the wrong moment to break out, so instead I have to to focus on what's inside.
Despite the comfort of the sofa and the large pile of Christmas presents in front of me, it's the ticking of this clock that now completely commands the room. It's an impressive old thing, made of probably oak or walnut, and it ticks once a second with a very even rhythm. You know how the sound of some ticking clocks are affected by the weight of the hands, so that as the second hand is dragged up from 7 to 11 it becomes a grudging shuffle, 11 to 1 is all quiet before it stumbles down to 5 like someone running down a hill and struggling to maintain their balance, and finally loitering around 6 and gasping for a rest before the next ascent? Well, there's none of that. This clock just ticks. A slight up note on one tick and a drop on the next, but that might even be a trick of my ears. There are subtler shifts in rhythm. Sometimes I can picture heavy feet pounding up stone steps to a citadel, and occasionally there's something more rounded, like a chain of railway navvies passing blocks or bolts from one person to the next and making neat piles at the end. Yet no matter how long I listen, and how much imagery I try to conjure, the overwhelming sense is that time is just carrying on, at its own pace, totally disinterested in me or anyone else, and I'm helpless to try and tame it.
I start to ask myself questions and to try and play with this inexorable rhythm. Can I synchronise my breathing to it? Not really, I end up breathing too slow or too fast, can't quite get a natural pace. If I could get my heartbeat to fall into line, would it take the 60bpm of a resting athlete or the 120bpm of an incessant pop song? 60 is divisible by three, so why can I only hear these ticks in twos or fours?
Finally, after two hours of listening closely, I've picked up a new sound. In the interval between each tick, as the pendulum turns for its next swing, there's a faint sort of tailing off, slightly lazy or apologetic, like some threads on frayed jeans dragging behind the shoes of someone meandering along a quiet road. Its at odds with the clipped, 'very British' rigour of the rest of the ticking, and in a way I feel like I've found a way in, a chink in its armour. Gradually I realise that I've already conjured several different scenes out of this clock, and with patience it could give me more. Maybe there's something colonial about it: the way that settlers and civil servants in far-flung places tried to assert the reassuring rhythms of their homeland, and usually ended up with something slightly out of kilter. As though, perhaps, the unerring tick of the trusty grandfather clock, uncrated after a month at sea and put up reverently in office or drawing room, just ends up exposing the fact that everything around it will ultimately refuse to conform to its imposed order.
I've time for a coffee and some more about Ray Charles, before the family wakes up and Christmas begins. And before the clock's purposeful walk is drowned out by the chaotic dance of voices, pots and pans, plates and glasses, ripping of giftwrap and post-prandial snoring.
Happy Christmas.
