28 Oct 2021
Rainn and the Grandfather Clock’s Secret
In times past, when asked: What are you doing here?
Where were you before? My voice would make no sound
I would have to tell how dust gathers a storm.
How, ceaseless is a desert night on bare skin
And what left children alone and weeping.
Looking back now with clear eyes
Beyond the gossamer of late autumn.
I observe an ocean adrift. A small boat, fractured shell.
And I, Rainn; Rainn, the child, the young woman, overwhelmed
Things split apart. And, there comes a time when things cleave together.
A time when, Ink- filled, a trickster transforms the empty page.
Perhaps the lost child, among many of the forsaken, begins to materialise
I don’t start at the beginning but with these three things:
Buzzing through the cracks in long and forgotten windows, a June day in 1962
The sudden rush of a raven- haired girl called Rain, with tinsel in her eyes
And a Grandfather clock with an irregular beat and chime. Outside of time.
The news had come, as if facts being ticked off. Yet for Rainn they jumped out like a surprised jack in the box. Your Father coming’.. you’re going home ..Saturday..’’ Rainn felt her heart almost leapt out of her body. She felt an impulse to yell, but she pulled herself in. She had learned this restraint over the 10 years in this homeless place. Well-practiced was she, in holding things in; numbing down feelings. clamping down her sound, hiding her clenched fist, or a scowl behind often vacant eyes. Now her excitement was palpable, to the nun who had spoken. Rainn thought she detected a faint smile on the nun’s lips. ‘That nun’ as she and the girls referred to her, who had control over their body, mind and all. ‘That nun’, it came to her in a flash, of whom she knew nothing, Nothing at all. Except when you saw her coming, you became as stiff as her starched collar and hood. Rainn often praying, “In the name of the father.. protect me”
Now three days later, Rainn, dashed down the beaten Victorian staircase. Three steps at a time. The door had finally been flung wide open forever. She was, leaving this place of shadows. Breezing in, long- forbidden stirrings among the shadows- air to her lungs, water into her parched throat and light sparkling in Rainn’s eyes. Flowing in would come laughter, the warmth of her Father’s, rough hands, the scent of his tobacco and cologne. Excitement, palpable in tingling sensations, she only felt when her father had come on visits.
As she reached the bottom step she stopped abruptly, beside the Grandfather Clock. There she lingered. Her hand lightly stroked the old mahogany watchman, she had lovingly polished over the years. There, Rainn fell into one of her day dreams. As she stood beside the old man,. She remembered him and images came to her mind… For his presence, singlehandedly made her life more bearable over the years. He had cushioned the steely sharp edges here. Especially after Kathy had gone. And Rainn smiled, on remembering her fright on first hearing his chime, as she climbed the stair case of the East wing. And how he used his chime to protect her. This redwood had been her secret companion and protector as well as a silent witness. Rainn vowed she’d never forget her Grandfather
It was almost 10 years ago in the summer of 1952. Grandfather clock witnessed the girl’s arrival: he had heard sounds that had splintered the air around him: heard the clop -clopping of the Sister's shoes, accompanied by a dragging sound along the corridor. There piercing, inconsolable cries echoed throughout the corridor. Just as the tiny girl, with Sr. Eugenius, appeared in full view, the girl buckled and collapsing. The girl in crisp cotton dress and startled hair, fell to the floor in the space between his feet and the bottom of the stair case.
For over a century, the old man had resided in this gothic mansion of grey, granite stone. Here on the east wing he stood, at the spacious juncture; an inner porch, between two dimly lit hallways. Only receiving light when the door to the right was open onto a row of windows in the corridor beyond. The corridors to the left lay mostly in shadow. Sometimes his pendulum swung, his tick constant. Other times his hands, even when wound up, his hands remained still and he, silent
The truth was Grandfathers ticker struggled to keep going these days. Most ignored him as furniture, heedless to what he was clocking up. No one noticed his hands were made of gold, nor did they comprehend the magnificence of his inner workings. Nobody knew then, a slave -owner, turned abolitionist, had once owned him. No, his story was lost in time. Indeed, he had gone beyond time and space. A steady presence for Rainn, who herself was often lost
This red wood- heavy weight also occupied the spot just opposite the iron-railed, Victorian stair case. A stair -way dented and scuffed by thousands of children’s feet since 1862. He had clocked one million hours of booming voices, commanding children to “Be quiet”, Stay in line, “No galivanting”, to anyone appearing lively. He witnessed the girls, move to commands of a metal gong, whose bellowing dong sounded like it came from the bowels of this site. The children shuffling feet bore the sound of those oblivious to momentum. He had witness her spark her clenched fist and most of all when alone with him her voice - singing out from the depth of her soul......
