The Clockwork King

By Richard Gegg

Daniel Walker hasn't found his place in life. For want of anything better to do, he comes back to the Wirral, the place of his birth. He is trying to put his past behind him and carve out a new future, but he has no idea what he is looking for.

He has been brought here for a reason, and now the Clockwork King, whoever or whatever that is, wants him.

Daniel finds himself thrown into a world and a life he never imagined existed, and enmeshed in events that could claim his life. And death may not be the worst fate that awaits him.

The Wirral is not what he thought it was, and nor is he.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Gegg
• Release date: Dec 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311707925

Richard Gegg

Richard Gegg was born and grew up on the Wirral, North-West England, but has lived all over the country since then. He currently lives and works in Birmingham, England.He has worked in industry and as a lawyer. He has been writing all his life, but only recently has decided to take the plunge and start publishing.The Clockwork King is his first novel.

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The Clockwork King

Richard Gegg

The Clockwork King

Richard Gegg

Smashwords Edition

Published: 18 December 2013

ISBN 9781311707925

Copyright © Richard Gegg 2013

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

About Richard Gegg

Chapter 1

I leant over the rail of the pier, watching and listening to the suck and gurgle of the water around the iron columns and beams. I relished the cold salt air, the glint of winter sunlight on the water. For anyone born on the coast, I think it's the same. You don't realise how much you appreciate the savour of sea air until you can't breathe it anymore. That, and of course how much it helps to breathe pollen-free air if you happen to have hayfever.

But hayfever is summer’s problem. This was a Friday afternoon in February. I was standing at the end of the pier in New Brighton, a seaside town that was once the pleasure capital of the North-West of England and beyond. It might have fallen on harder times now. Let's face it, who and what in this country hasn't? But the pier, the Tower, the Ballroom and the Pleasure Gardens still pack the punters in. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if they had all been pulled down. There have been plans aplenty to do so, time and again. But against the odds here they all still stood, the faces of the great Millennium Clock on each side of the Tower the latest investment in the resort, the great domes at each corner of the Ballroom newly cleaned and refurbished, glinting in the sun.

I could hear a howl from the wolves in the Menagerie. I shivered from more than the cold.

I had a little time to kill. The pier had a display of automata, a taste of the great collection held within the Pleasure Gardens. It would at least be warm in there.

I didn’t go in for this sort of thing. Automata had always disturbed me, the way that they mimicked the movements and sometimes even the speech of people, but just imperfectly enough for them to be jarring, alien, and to a small child seeing them for the first time, terrifying.

The fortune teller was a case in point. It stood in the entrance to the display, demanding attention with its dead, glassy eyes and leering smile, the teeth too large, the nose impossibly hooked. It was made all the more unsettling by its chipped gaudy paint and its dusty robes that might have once been scarlet. It was a caricature of the archetypal female seaside crone as medium. It disappeared at the waist into the workings of the machine, the shabby case imprisoning it and hiding its clockwork guts. A dead spider lay curled and mummified in one corner, legs curled around its desiccated body as if in agony. The teller’s hands, carved and painted but without fingernails, hovered over a deck of cards.

I didn’t know why I did it, but I put the required two shillings into the slot. I heard the winding and clunking of the gears as it rasped into its simulacrum of life. The head moved, jerking from side to side as if surveying me through the glass.

‘The cards will tell your fate,’ it said, wheezing through a small speaker in the base.

The hands moved over the deck of cards, a single sweep from the shoulder, the elbows locked. I wondered how the machine’s makers would work the trick of getting the mannequin to turn a card over, to reveal my fate. I couldn’t see any articulation in the wrist or hands.

It didn’t. The hand lurched down, then shot sideways, taking a card with it from the top of the deck. It disappeared into a hole to the side, and I could hear it falling into the bottom of the case.

The head nodded downwards, as if directing my attention. ‘Your fate,’ it gasped. Then it fell silent.

It seemed a lot of money for so short a show. I looked down at the base of the cabinet. Beneath the coin slot was a small basket. The card was there, sitting within it, waiting for me.

I might as well. I picked up the card to read my fate. No doubt it would be something blandly identikit for the tourist, fame or fortune or love or some such.

The card had one word printed on it. ‘Undying.’

Undying what? Love? Fame? Infamy? Life?

I flipped it over. The back was printed only with a repeating chequered pattern like a normal playing card. I turned it back to the front. Unsurprisingly, it still had only the same single word on it.

I had to admit it was intriguing, if nothing else, though somehow I doubted that not dying was in my future.

I suddenly needed to be outside again. As I left, I looked back at the fortune teller in its case. It seemed to be staring straight at me through its black glass eyes, actually looking at me. I could have sworn it was. Of course, it was just a skilful piece of design, crafted by some expert maker, probably a century or more ago now. And it was positioned to catch the eye of anyone entering the display. That didn’t stop me shivering for the second time in ten minutes, nor ever more sure that I had to get out of there. As I said, I just don’t like automata.

I found that the card was still in my pocket, even so.

***

I’m Daniel Walker. Ordinary name, ordinary person, except perhaps for some exceptions. We’ll come to those soon enough.

Like pretty much anyone else’s, most of my story is long and not that interesting to anyone not intimately involved with it. But this part of is about how some things changed, and how I found some of what I was looking for, at least for a while.

And no matter what has happened since, I’m still ordinary, deep down. I try to hold onto that when strange things keep happening around me.

***

I leant again on the rail of the pier, enjoying the sunshine as I let my tremors subside, along with my embarrassment at the fact I was so worked up by a simple clockwork device. A seagull sat on the railing nearby, eyeing me as a source of food or, perhaps, a target. I threw it the last of the doughnut I had bought from the Tower gardens. Sugar was clearly the answer.

It gulped it greedily, and then started eyeing me again, head on one side. In my mind, the bird and I now had a deal. I had fed it, so now it wouldn't defecate on me. I didn't want to be despoiled before this first visit. I wasn't sure that the gull had quite the same view of the arrangement. I looked at my watch. I had remembered to wind it this morning, which was a start. A quarter to two. Perhaps it was time to get going while I remained presentable.

It apparently wouldn't do to keep Miss Lyon waiting.

***

How did all this start? Well, I’d come back to the Wirral peninsula, where I was born, after the hopes I’d had for a new start elsewhere had fallen apart. It seemed as good a place as anywhere else. There’s sun and sea and sky here. That was a start.

I needed something to do while I looked for a job, to give myself a little structure. Perhaps some volunteering? I could balance the altruism of giving my time to others against the fact that it would look good on my CV. And when the Labour Exchange asked me what I was doing to make myself employable, I could look all virtuous and point them to my civic-minded efforts.

So I had found myself, early the previous Monday, in basement-level offices in Hamilton Square. The Square is grandly Georgian, the Town Hall a magnificent listed building in the neo-Classical style. It was part of a grand, unfinished design for the whole of Birkenhead as it boomed, a century and more ago, now. The parts of the plan that were built and have managed to survive, like the Square, are wonderful. The Square has endured bombing, social unrest and, worst of all, urban renewal planning. But it’s fallen on hard times. A little like me, I suppose.

The offices had fallen on even harder times, often the fate of grand municipal buildings when the money runs out. I think it had last been painted before I was born, and the bucket in the corner suggested the strong smell of damp would soon be succeeded by a strong sound of flood and collapse if nothing was done, and soon. The building deserved better, as did the organisation. These were the headquarters of Wirral Community Outreach, and I was privileged to be in the private room of Lavinia Horner, a placement co-ordinator. It was her task to match me with a suitable senior citizen.

Photographs of children and a cat stared down at me from the shelf behind her head. It brought a welcome touch of humanity to the place.

Lavinia looked appraisingly over her thick-rimmed purple glasses at me. It felt as if she was staring at me through two great bruises. I felt somewhat unnerved. I’m pretty sure I’ve selected meat in the same way.

‘You seem quite bright,’ she said cheerily. Gee, thanks. ‘I think I have the perfect person for you. Miss Amy Lyon.’

She passed over a slim folder, with a name and address on it. Miss Amy Lyon, Trafalgar House, New Brighton. No photograph, no details about the lady in question. Lots of previous matched visitors, though. I wondered why she required my attention, then.

‘I think you’ll enjoy talking to her. All her faculties are intact, and she’s pretty mobile. She must be in her eighties at least, but no-one seems to know quite how old she is. She says her birth certificate was destroyed in the war, and that it’s a lady’s prerogative not to tell anyone her age.’

Oh, joy. A character. I closed my eyes and leant back in the plastic chair. It creaked alarmingly. It looked as if had done sterling service in a particularly challenging school and was very much looking forward to a quiet retirement that didn’t involve having prospective volunteers’ bottoms placed upon it.

‘She seems to be without any friends or family. We don't know if they've lost touch with her or if something else has happened, but she’s on her own now. You'll find that she has some, well, interesting opinions.'

‘If she’s lonely, perhaps she should think twice about chewing out all of her previous visitors and sharing her interesting opinions?’

Lavinia smiled thinly, showing too many teeth. The smile did not reach her eyes. Too difficult a journey. ‘I’ll book you in for a visit this Friday afternoon. That’ll be nice for Miss Lyon. Will that suit? Good. Just one word of advice. Don't get her started about the French.’

***

So, it was the appointed hour, two o’clock on that Friday afternoon. I rang the doorbell of Miss Lyon's flat in Trafalgar House, a large Victorian villa now converted into sheltered character homes for the discerning senior citizen. Or so the sign in the car park assured me. The no doubt once-impressive front gardens had been tarmacked, the paint denoting the spaces almost luminous in the dim light. My car shared the place with a Meals on Wheels van and a health visitor's bike. The clouds were low and grey, and it was spitting cold rain, the light already starting to fade. I looked longingly at the covered porch to my right, but Miss Lyon's character home had its own front door.

I hoped Miss Lyon would be quick. She was.

A lady answered the door. There was no chain across the space. She was confident enough, then. She had moved fast whatever her age, which seemed considerable, unless of course she had been waiting for me.

My first impression was to wonder if her birth certificate had been lost in the Crimean war. No, Daniel, that was cruel and inappropriate. I would be nice. At least until she showed her apparently fearsome fangs. I was sure the Outreach programme could find me someone else if the conversation became heated.

She was gracefully thin, dressed in a simple white knee-length dress, cut square across the neck with long sleeves. It was not really suitable for an old lady in winter, but she didn’t look cold, and there was no blast of hot air billowing through the door. Her grey hair was clearly still long and full, done up in a precise bun.

She wore no jewellery that I could see except for a single ring on the fourth finger of her right hand. It was substantial, clearly gold. It looked antique and valuable. It was made in the shape of two hands clasping and joining to complete the circle.

‘Miss Lyon?’

‘You must be Daniel. Call me Amy, please. Come in.’ She smiled at me, revealing an impressively white and complete set of teeth. They seemed to be her own. She had blue-grey eyes, bright in their deeply wrinkled cowls, and strong cheekbones. Her handshake was firm. She was undoubtedly extremely old, but if I could age so well, I would be grateful. Her accent was slightly strange. It sounded like the product of long study to speak as an educated middle class lady of her generation should, but, whether by accident or design, it retained a hint of what I thought might be a Lancastrian origin.

The hall was small, nondescript, except for the woman standing in it.

‘May I take your coat?’ I felt seriously underdressed when compared with this elegant lady. I haven’t worn a suit in a while. No point in my current position, except when looking for jobs, of course. Handing over my battered brown leather jacket to Amy felt entirely wrong, but I did, and without any visible reaction she hung it from a hatstand behind the door. I got the feeling that she would have reacted in the same way if I had handed her an ermine-trimmed cape. She seemed to have poise engrained in her. I wondered where the difficult old lady was hiding. I resolved not to mention the French.

‘Tea?’

‘Please. May I help you?’

‘No, sit down. I am old, not incapable, not yet, at least. That will come, no doubt. Thank you for the gentlemanly thought, however.’ She smiled again, more warmly, and I was struck that in her youth, Miss Amy Lyon might well have been quite beautiful. I wondered if she’d never married, or if she chosen to leave a husband’s name behind. Perhaps I’d find out.

‘The parlour is to your left.’ She turned her back on me and gestured precisely to a door. She strode briskly and erectly down the hall to the kitchen visible through an open door.

The flat seemed spotless, and smelled fresh, almost of salt air. She wasn’t the old lady I had stereotypically conjured in my mind. I began to think I might enjoy this visit.

As instructed, and it was an instruction, I went into the front room, or ‘parlour’ as Amy had called it.

It was impressively, tastefully decorated, with dark furniture from another age. The floor was bare wood, smooth and highly polished, with a Persian rug before the fireplace and two high-backed armchairs at either side of it. There were no other seats in the room. A small fire burned in the grate. The room was pleasantly warm. There was no television visible, nor even a radio. A large dresser stood opposite the window, filled with china and silver in perfect keeping with the rest of the room. There were a couple of nautical paintings on the wall. Apart from guessing that they were from the Napoleonic Wars period, given the preponderance of sails, flags and gun ports, I was none the wiser. Sad to say in a nautical town, but one sailing ship has always looked much the same as another to me.

The room was dominated by a grandfather clock, standing eight feet high. It was not precisely out of place in the room, but it seemed to loom large. Even standing in the corner it seemed the focus of the whole parlour, and in its presence no other word seemed appropriate to the feel of the room.

I walked over to examine the clock more closely. The body was mahogany, ruddy brown with age and polish, the smell of which filled my nostrils as I leaned in. The wood flowed round a huge dial, yellowed with age to an ivory-like yellow. It might even have been ivory. The hours were marked with elegantly painted Roman numerals about an inch high, picked out in gold.

There was something wrong with it, but I couldn't put my finger on it. The ticking seemed to fill the room. Mechanical, remorseless. I shivered.

Miss Lyon - Amy - entered the room, carrying a bone china tea service on a tray. She set it down on a small table between the armchairs, and settled down on one chair. It allowed her a view of the window and the door. I moved away from the clock and sat in the other. All I could see now was Amy and behind her the clock. She sat in the armchair as if in state.

She poured tea into the two dainty cups. I'm more accustomed to robust mugs, and was seized with the fear that I would not be able to hold the delicate china handle. I did not want to drop what appeared to be a valuable antique.

She poured gently steaming milk into the cups and dropped two pure-white sugar cubes into each. So that was how I was having my tea, then. She caught my expression and smiled again. ‘That’s how we had tea when I was a girl, Daniel. I’m afraid I’m therefore quite of the opinion that’s how everyone should take their tea.’

I moved to stand to collect my cup, but she waved me down again. ‘You must allow me to be the hostess, Daniel. It brings back happy memories.’ She crossed the space to me with the careful grace of someone who was used to elegance and precision and who, although reluctantly accepting the changes and losses that time wreaks, is quite determined not to let her standards flag for a moment. The word I was reaching for was 'deportment'.

I accepted the cup and saucer from her. She crossed equally gracefully back to her chair and sat watching me, fingers steepled in front of her, a slight smile on her face, the steam rising from her cup on the table. I was vaguely reminded of Macbeth and cauldrons, albeit as rewritten by Jane Austen.

‘I’m sorry I don’t have anything suitable to eat at this time of day,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid that I was once quite fat, and I try not to fall back into old habits.’

‘I find that difficult to believe,’ I said.

‘Quite gallant once more,’ she smiled, ‘assuming of course that you were referring to my weight and not my habits, but in a long life, I have found that one can be many things. Perhaps being quite fat the least of them.’

‘I could probably do with eating less myself,’ I said. I was feeling increasingly out of my depth here. This was not what I had expected at all. At least I should be able to let her lead the conversation.

She had not shifted her position since she sat down. She was still watching me. It was the equivalent of Lavinia’s appraising stare refined by long experience and great wisdom. And, I suspected, a fair amount of time watching hunting cats stalk their prey. I shuffled uncomfortably in my chair under her gaze, taking a sip of tea to buy some time. I don’t like milky tea with sugar. But this was excellent. I said so. There, a conversational gambit. Clever me.

‘Thank you.’ She let the silence extend. Her smile broadened. Then, perhaps relenting and taking pity on the poor sap sitting opposite, she said, ‘So, what shall we talk about?’ No, no relenting or pity there.

I tried to look calmly back at her, but I hadn’t had the practice. All I could see was this elegantly poised woman, framed by the wings of her chair, and the great clock behind her in the corner. Its ticks sounded loud in a room without conversation.

‘That’s quite a clock. It must be old.’ Should I be making references to advanced age in this lady’s presence? She didn’t seem to mind.

‘Impressive, isn’t it? I’ve had it since it was new.’

That seemed unlikely. Yes, Amy was a clearly very old lady, and while horology is one of the very many subjects of which I have next to no knowledge, this clock was clearly antique.

‘Really? When did you buy it?’

Her smile faded to a ghost, as if she was remembering long-ago pain. ‘A very dear friend gave it to me. I’ve always kept it in remembrance of him, even