Luky
TEMPUS fugit (time flies): thus read the words on the face of the grandfather clock belonging to my widowed friend.
The clock, which looks like an heirloom, is really no such thing. You used to see them all over town, priced at around twelve hundred rands.
They'd give the most faded-looking sitting rooms a facelift.
My friend and her daughter came upon one during a shopping expedition and forgot about everything else.
They drove to her husband's business and asked if they could have it.
"Father thought we were out of our minds", the daughter said later.
One knows how it is with men.
They can't understand that women are not interested in clocks in order to measure the time; we have the telephone and television for that.
It's the beauty and essential homeliness of a grandfather clock that would appeal to us.
Nothing less
I suppose my friend's husband tried to do a deal with her on the following lines:
"Look, you want a clock, go to the bazaars and buy a clock.
Get an alarm clock, a quartz one, the best you can find.
I'll even throw in a pot of African violets."
That line would work with most dutiful wives, but it never works with a grownup daughter.
Father ended up hauling out his chequebook.
No doubt he received many kisses in exchange; and was assured by both wife and daughter that he was the best boy in town.
Not for me
The last time I visited my friend, I was introduced to the clock and duly impressed.
I even toyed with the idea of asking my husband to get me one.
But it's strange how much more full-time housewives get out of their husbands than career women ones at times.
Belonging to that latter breed at the time, I was expected to be productive.
Before I worked, I was doing a Unisa course, having my hair done regularly and consuming litres of petrol driving all over town.
Nobody asked me to get a job, but I did and bore the consequences.
They were right, those magazines of the fifties, which said that frail, helpless, clinging wives kept their husband right under their thumbs, whereas positive, assertive females lost out.
So I didn't even ask for a grandfather clock, beyond remarking wistfully that my friend had got one, and that it had added an air of old world distinction and elegance to her living room.
"Excuse me, not now", my husband said, "I've got to watch the news."
After 36 years away from Ireland, he still pronounced it noose.
I was bitter. "Stingy people who won't buy their wives grandfather clocks.
The word you are looking for is pronounced nyooz."
Happiness all around
Some time later I went to see my now widowed friend, and once again admired the clock.
She told me how happy she had been when her husband gave it to her, and how happy he had been that she was happy.
I asked her how it sounded when it chimed, and we waited for it to do so.
But it didn't.
"It should chime, it always does", my friend said, getting rather upset.
But my friend roused herself from her grief and made a note to contact a clockmaker.
Her garden showed signs that that she was getting over her sorrow and learning to cope with loneliness, and she had started playing her beloved cello again.
Good for her.
I thought she would have her work cut out finding someone to fix the chimes of her clock, but when it did chime again, it would mark the recovery of her heart.
And its ticking, peaceful as the purring of a cat or the buzzing of a bee, will always remind her of the pleasure her husband experienced from giving her this, his last gift.
Photograph taken by Catherine Nicolette - use copyright free
