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Pluht she would be She’d kind of forgotten that her great-grandfather was a real person, and his brothers and sisters too They’d lived real lives They’d had real hopes and dreams and secrets, and none of it had worked out the way they wanted it to They’d felt like the heroes of their own stories, just like she felt like the hero of hers, but that was no guarantee that everything would work out Or anything

After that false start Rupert wrote quickly, fluidly, with ot the i

It was at one of Aunt Maude’s parties that it happened for the first time She often entertained in those days, in a lavish style that soht was not entirely in line with the sacrifices that we all, as loyal subjects of the King, were expected to make on behalf of the war effort

I suppose hers was a glamorous life, but it never seemed so to us We all knohat it is to be a child, to be innocent, to understand nothing We understood nothing, the five of us Not anything But atched everything

We watched the hired musicians fuss with their instrulasses We watched the ladies wince at their unco at their uncomfortable collars We saw the faces of the servants assume a practiced blankness the moment before they entered a crowded rooe frouests

But talk of the war bored us, and flirtatious chatter bored us just aselse The scene , as such parties are always described, but either way it asted on us The only ones who paid any attention to us were the interchangeable young h the house in an endless parade, and they did so only to try to gain favor with Aunt Maude

Their efforts were uided—an interest in children was not a quality Aunt Maude prized In her eyes it only made them weak and sentimental

An hour or so after the first guests arrived the dancing would begin, and Aunt would drape her long limbs and eventually her entire upper body across the back of the piano, to either the consternation or the delight of the pianist, depending on as playing Our various bedtio, but nobody put us to bed Eventually we Chatwin children would retreat, yawning and fractious, to the back halls and upper stories of Dockery House, as it was known, though Aunt Maude didn’t like the naht it sounded fussy and Victorian Which it did, which is precisely e children liked it

It was on one such occasion that Martin began playing with an old grandfather clock that he found standing by itself in a back hallway He was mechanically minded and could never resist a chance to tinker with so complicated and valuable

As the other boy in the faht have been expected to share his enthusiasm, but I did not I wasn’t one of those keen children ell-defined, clearly articulated interests—I had very few enthusiasaures I don’t wonder that Martin, as I later found out, thought I eak, like those youngAunt Maude But it was in the nature of the cala and spared the weak

I re Martin to stop, he would break it, and Helen defending his, but she worshipped Martin, and he could do no wrong in her eyes I didn’t think it mattered either way, as Maude rarely visited this part of the house If the clock stopped running it would be years before she discovered it, at which point she would decide that it had been that way all along She was a careless woman

Jane said nothing She rarely spoke unless someone questioned her directly, and sometimes not even then

Once he had the cabinet open Martin began repeating “bloody hell” under his breath Even Helen shushed hireat deal ever since our father went to France—the year was 1915, if I haven’t mentioned it, and father was a lieutenant in the Artists Rifles, a regi, was about to embark on a tour of the most brutal battlefields the Great War had to offer I had wandered a little way down the hall to exa, but upon hearing Martin I caht have a row

The clock was a monster, its flat brass dial so richly studded with circles and hands and curious syed over a stool, the better to study it eye to eye, as it were Cool, damp air breathed from inside its cabinet as it would from the mouth of a cave As atched the clock whirred to life and chiht

Little Jane yawned Martin stared at the clock furiously,his own hair without noticing it, as he did when so vexed him

He hopped down

“Bloody hell,” he said “Rupes, take a look inside What do you see?”

I obediently bent my head to look into the cabinet, and Martin pinned my arms and attempted to shove me inside It was his idea of a joke He was always shoulderingsinister in it, ere just bored to sobs

“Leave off, Martin,” Fiona said, but without much conviction

We tussled; the clock wobbled dangerously; he was stronger, but leverage was on otin such a way as to s would have been different had he succeeded But as it was he saw there was no more fun to be had, and he lethard, ered away in a circle to show that he hadn’t really meant it

“Really, have a look,” he said “There’s no works inside No penduluo?”

No one was ued by thiswallpaper Fiona leaned against a wall and rolled her eyes at boys

“All right,” he said “I’ll get in myself”

Martin was deteret some comic material out of this empty clock, one way or the other As the eldest I think he felt responsible for entertaining us He began stuffing himself into the clock’s wooden body I don’t think he expected to succeed—his shoulders were filling out even then—and I remember his curious frohen he reached an arm in and couldn’t find the back He ducked whole upper body inside It looked like stage ic, one of Houdini’s trapdoor boxes

I saw him hesitate, but only for a one We all looked at each other Fiona, irritated at the idea that a trick was being played on her, put her head in next Only seven and se, she barely had to duck She disappeared inside too