
Time
.
When Jack Thomlinson finished work on Thursday evening, he walked home knowing he had but a single day’s work left in him. Fifty-five of his sixty-five year old life given over to working at the docks, and never once late.
Jack will be missed. His face being familiar all over town, not just in the docks where he’d worked his way up from being a tea-boy, till his finish as the dock’s ‘whistleblower’. A very important position he was told when the job was offered to him. Jack came to work at the docks from a ‘special needs’ school to get this job. He wasn’t the brightest flame in his class, suffering severe educational restrictions.
Jack grew to be a happy man for all his problems and was well liked by all who knew him. There were no bullies in this ego driven environment for Jack, those days were long gone. He’d long earned the respect of his workmates by his diligence.
Jack came home to an empty house because Jack had never married, never had a girlfriend, never taken a girl out, but Jack could not walk the streets without women, young and old, asking after him and touching his shoulder and smiling at him. Jack had many friends.
Tonight he will go to his bed wondering what his future will look like. It will feel strange not to have to get up at 5 a.m. on Monday, and for every day after that for the rest of his life.
Jack woke on Friday morning. He rose and made himself ready. Today he wanted to be extra smart. Outside, snow fell lightly, covering the ground in a thin powdery layer. He set off for work a little early, conscious that walking will be a little trickier, and shambled his bent and buckled frame along using his stick, a woolen scarf wrapped a couple of times around his neck, and his favorite flat cap covered his scalp. He looked a lonely figure walking through the town.
The route was the same one he’d trod for five days of every week, for every year of his working life. Much had changed. It was Jack’s responsibility to sound the ‘whistle’ at six in the morning for the start of work, then again at ten, so the men can break for tea. He will then blow the whistle at one pm for lunch, three-thirty for another break, and five pm, not his favorite whistle, to signal the end of the day. Today it would signal the end of Jack’s working career.
Jack made just the one stop on his way to work, to check his watch against the old Grandfather clock at the back of Simpson’s watchmakers. The shop opened on Jack’s first day at the docks, exactly fifty-years ago this very day. He remembered standing there, just fifteen years of age, seeing the old Grandfather clock being lifted into the shop. It took four men to move it gently into position. It was a fine piece indeed. This last time he stood at the window, this time seeing his aged reflection in the window, and looked at the time piece for a long spell. He lifted his left arm and checked his watch against it. Perfect. The old Grandfather clock had never failed him. It kept perfect time.
Jack was about to make his way on through the wintry morning when a man approached him. It was Mr. Simpson (junior.) The son of the shop’s founder, Tom Simpson, who died twenty-years since.
“Hello Jack.”
“Hello young Mr. Simpson, you’re opening early this morning.”
“I am, Jack. I have a special delivery to make this afternoon and I want to be sure that everything is perfect.”
“Must be special indeed to bring you out on a winter’s morning. I was just admiring the old Grandfather clock in the back of the shop. Do you know, young Simpson, lad, I’ve been passing this shop for the last fifty-years, in fact since the day your father opened, and you were but a lad in short trousers. Every morning I looked in here and set my watch by the hands of that Grandfather clock. Never been a minute late, do you know that?”
“Is that so, Jack?” And the young Simpson smiled wildly, as though he knew something no-one else did. “Tell me again. You’ve set your watch by the old Grandfather clock for fifty years and then you’ve gone into the Harbor to blow the work whistle?”
“That’s right, lad. Never been late, ever.”
Mr. Simpson junior roared with laughter and that laughter echoed through the streets of the town.
“Jack, let me tell you something about my father. When I was old enough, I would come to the shop to help dad out and he would stand by the Grandfather clock every day at one p.m. and he would set the Grandfather clock to the whistle at the Harbor. “That Harbor whistle, he said, was never a second early or late. Since dad died, I have done exactly the same thing.”
Both men chuckled at the simplicity of time before Jack bid him goodbye and shambled along toward the Harbor gates.
Mr. Simpson junior was still smiling as he made his way to the Harbor. He drove his smart new blue truck, carrying the carefully packaged Grandfather clock. It had been removed from the shop at the request of the Harbor Authority Board. Mr Simpson junior knew the revered timepiece was going to a good home.
Time, in the end, is only what we all agree it should be.
