Clock Without Hands Read online

  CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS

  GERALD KERSH

  With a new introduction by

  THOMAS PLUCK

  VALANCOURT BOOKS

  Dedication: For Helen Pacaud

  Clock Without Hands by Gerald Kersh

  First published London: Heinemann, 1949

  First Valancourt Books edition 2015

  Copyright © 1949 by Gerald Kersh

  Introduction © 2015 by Thomas Pluck

  Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

  http://www.valancourtbooks.com

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the copying, scanning, uploading, and/or electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher.

  Cover design by Lorenzo Princi/lorenzoprinci.com

  INTRODUCTION

  Gerald Kersh has been nearly forgotten longer than most writers will ever be remembered, but his work endures, hardier than lichen, the only living thing that actually seems to extract nourishment from stone. Kersh was the kind of writer beloved by other writers, who are always amazed that the rest of the world hasn’t caught onto him. With this reprint, that may change. You’re reading this through the valiant efforts of Valancourt Books. I first read Kersh thanks to another persistent champion of his work, Harlan Ellison.

  Harlan and I had a brief correspondence, back in the days be­fore the Internet, when finding something as simple as the source of a quotation, or even what a Nash Rambler looked like, became an archaeological adventure worthy of Indiana Jones. Search­ing through libraries, requesting inter-library loans, digging through periodical catalogs, scanning Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, re-reading entire texts to find a reference, and yes, writing letters to famous writers, in the hope that they could answer your question and relieve you of the madness consuming you.

  The quote was:

  “. . . there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.”

  It had been quoted by Harlan Ellison in one of his Kyben stories; I had found nearly all of his books, and scoured them to find the source, to no avail. So despite Mr. Ellison’s pleas to fans not to write him and take time away from his writing, I rolled a sheet in the old typewriter and sent it off. You see, I wanted to collect some Kersh, and back then even the collection Harlan had edited, Nightshade and Damnations, had been out of print for over a decade.

  As a student, collecting and finding rare old books was quite the luxury; there was no eBay or AbeBooks, with bargains to be had. Instead there were Book Finders, people who made a living or a side job hunting books for you, and charging fifty ’80s-era bucks for the service. I couldn’t spend my hard-earned ramen money on the wrong book, so I fired off a missive to one of my literary heroes, and got back a letter that has since taken on a life of its own and had its fifteen minutes of fame on the Internet, been enshrined in Letters of Note and shared on FlavorWire as “a great literary burn” or some such, when in actuality, Mr. Ellison had been kind enough to give me the answer that I’d sought and also take time to share his admiration for Gerald Kersh’s unher­alded talents.

  The quote comes from the story “Busto is a Ghost, Too Mean to Give Us a Fright,” which you can read in Nightshade and Dam­nations, which has thankfully been reprinted by Valancourt and collects some of Kersh’s best stories. The quote showcases Kersh’s in­nate humanity, his ability to paint a full-fleshed character’s DNA, what makes them who they are, in just a few beautifully crafted words.

  Nailed down, and in torment. Behind the angry mask lies a Prometheus, waiting for the carrion bird to take his liver. Those lines have haunted me ever since reading them, and bring a spark of empathy when dealing with people who lash out at every­one around them. It doesn’t forgive all their trespasses, but it reminds me that they too, are human, despite all behavior to the contrary.

  So I don’t regret writing Harlan one bit; I still have the letter, and cherish it. My only regret is that his response sufficiently cowed me into not writing him again, to say thank you. I thanked him online, and after the letter was shared on Letters of Note, we had another brief correspondence, and he did remember it. That led to my being asked to write this introduction, and it’s quite fitting that this book was chosen, as it contains another of Kersh’s greatest characterizations, one where he captures the impossible, the face that fades into a crowd, the everyman who is the crowd:

  He was something less than nondescript – he was blurred, without identity, like a smudged fingerprint. His suit was of some dim shade between brown and grey. His shirt had grey-blue stripes, his tie was patterned with dots like confetti trodden into the dust, and his oddment of limp brownish moustache resembled a cigarette-butt, disintegrating shred by shred in a tea-saucer.

  You’ll read that again in the opening pages of Clock Without Hands, itself a master class in character, the dark needs of the human heart, the fickle nature of journalism and our own interest in the lives of others, bullies and murder trials, and so much more. Kersh can do more with a story than many can with a novel; with this novella, he does more than others do with a series (and with his masterpiece Fowlers End, he packs more humanity than many lauded writers have done in their entire life’s work).

  His economy of words, his rich but not florid prose, and always, his deep and empathic observation of human nature, have been a great influence to me and many writers before and after. Look into the blank face of a Clock Without Hands, and see for yourself. If he is new to you, I envy you the experience of reading Gerald Kersh for the first time.

  Thomas Pluck

  December 2014

  Thomas Pluck is the author of the World War II action thriller Blade of Dishonor, Steel Heart: 10 Tales of Crime and Suspense, and the editor of the anthology Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT. He hosts Noir at the Bar in Manhattan, and his work has appeared in The Utne Reader, PANK Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Needle, Crimespree, and numerous anthologies, including the upcoming Dark City Lights, edited by Lawrence Block. You can find him online at www.thomaspluck.com and on Twitter as @thomaspluck.

  CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS

  Several years ago, when newspapers had space to spare for all kinds of sensational trivialities, John Jacket of the Sunday Special went to talk with a certain Mr. Wainewright about the stabbing of a man named Tooth whose wife had been arrested and charged with murder. It was a commonplace, dreary case. The only extra­or­dinary thing about it was that Martha Tooth had not killed her husband ten years earlier. The police had no difficulty in finding her. She was sitting at home, crying and wringing her hands. It was a dull affair; she was not even young, or pretty.

  But Jacket had a knack of finding strange and colourful aspects of drab, even squalid affairs. He always approached his sub­jects from unconventional angles. Now he went out on the trail of Waine­wright, the unassuming man who had found Tooth’s body, and who owned the house in which Tooth had lived.

  Even the Scotland Yard man who took down Wainewright’s statement had not been able to describe the appearance of the little householder. He was “just ordinary”, the detective said, “sort of like a City clerk”. He was like everybody: he was a nobody. At half-past seven every evening Wainewright went out to buy a paper and drink a glass of beer in the saloon bar of the “Fire­drake” – always the Evening Extra: never more than one glass of beer.

  So one evening at half-past seven John Jacket went into the saloon ba
r of the “Firedrake”, and found Mr. Wainewright sitting under an oval mirror that advertised Bach’s Light Lager. Jacket had to look twice before he saw the man.

  A man has a shape; a crowd has no shape and no colour. The massed faces of a hundred thousand men make one blank pallor; their clothes add up to a shadow; they have no words. This man might have been one hundred-thousandth part of the featureless whiteness, the dull greyness, and the toneless mur­mur­ing of a docile multitude. He was something less than non­descript – he was blurred, without identity, like a smudged finger­print. His suit was of some dim shade between brown and grey. His shirt had grey-blue stripes, his tie was patterned with dots like confetti trodden into the dust, and his oddment of limp brownish moustache resembled a cigarette-butt, disintegrating shred by shred in a tea-saucer. He was holding a brand-new Anthony Eden hat on his knees, and looking at the clock.

  “This must be the man,” said Jacket.

  He went to the table under the oval mirror, smiled politely, and said: “Mr. Wainewright, I believe?”

  The little man stood up. “Yes. Ah, yes. My name is Waine­wright.”

  “My name is Jacket; of the Sunday Special. How do you do?”

  They shook hands. Mr. Wainewright said: “You’re the gentle­man who writes every week!”

  “ ‘Free For All’ – yes, that’s my page. But what’ll you drink, Mr. Wainewright?”

  “I hardly ever——”

  “Come, come,” said Jacket. He went to the bar. Mr. Waine­wright blinked and said:

  “I take the Sunday Mail. With all due respect, of course. But I often read your efforts. You have a big following, I think?”

  “Enormous, Mr. Wainewright.”

  “And so this is the famous . . . the famous . . .” He stared at Jacket with a watery mixture of wonder and trepidation in his weak eyes. “With all due respect, Mr. Jacket, I don’t know what I can tell you that you don’t know already.”

  “Oh, to hell with the murder,” said Jacket, easily. “It isn’t about that I want to talk to you, Mr. Wainewright.”

  “Oh, not about the murder?”

  “A twopenny-halfpenny murder, whichever way you take it. No, I want to talk about you, Mr. Wainewright.”

  “Me? But Scotland Yard——”

  “ – Look. You will excuse me, won’t you? You may know the sort of things I write about, and in that case you’ll understand how this Tooth murder affair fails to interest me very much. What does it amount to, after all? A woman stabs a man.” Jacket flapped a hand in a derogatory gesture. “So? So a woman stabs a man. A hackneyed business: an ill-treated wife grabs a pair of scissors and – pst! Thousands have done it before; thousands will do it again, and a good job too. If she hadn’t stabbed Tooth, some­body else would have, sooner or later. But . . . how shall I put it? . . . you, Mr. Wainewright, you interest me, because you’re the . . .”

  Jacket paused, groping for a word, and Mr. Wainewright said with a little marsh-light flicker of pride: “The landlord of the house in which the crime was committed, sir?”

  “The bystander, the onlooker, the witness. I like to get at the, the impact of things – the way people are affected by things. So let’s talk about yourself.”

  Alarmed and gratified, Mr. Wainewright murmured: “I haven’t anything to tell about myself. There isn’t anything of interest, I mean. Tooth——”

  “Let’s forget Tooth. It’s an open-and-shut case, anyway.”

  “Er, Mr. Jacket. Will they hang her, do you think?”

  “Martha Tooth? No, not in a thousand years.”

  “But surely, she’s a murderess, sir!”

  “They can’t prove premeditation.”

  “Well, Mr. Jacket, I don’t know about that . . .”

  “Tell me, Wainewright; do you think they ought to hang Martha Tooth?”

  “Well, sir, she did murder her hubby, after all . . .”

  “But how d’you feel about it? What would you say, if you were a juryman?”

  “The wages of sin is . . . ah . . . the penalty for murder is the, ahem, the rope, Mr. Jacket!”

  “And tell me, as man to man – do you believe that this woman deserves to swing for Tooth?”

  “It’s the law, sir, isn’t it?”

  “Is it? They don’t hang people for crimes of passion these days.”

  At the word “passion”, Mr. Wainewright looked away. He drank a little whisky-and-soda, and said: “Perhaps not, sir. She might get away with . . . with penal servitude for life, Mr. Jacket, do you think?”

  “Much less than that.”

  “Not really?” Mr. Wainewright’s voice was wistful.

  “She might even be acquitted.”

  “Well, sir . . . that’s for the judge and jury to decide. But to take a human life . . .”

  “Do you dislike the woman, Mr. Wainewright?”

  Jacket blinked at the little man from under half-raised eye­brows.

  “Oh good Lord no, sir! Not at all, Mr. Jacket: I don’t even know her. I only saw her for an instant.”

  “Good-looking?”

  “Good-looking, Mr. Jacket? No, no she wasn’t. A . . . a . . . char­womanish type, almost. As you might say, she was bedraggled.”

  “As I might say?”

  “Well . . . without offence, Mr. Jacket, you are a writer, aren’t you?”

  “Ah. Ah, yes. Not a handsome woman, eh?”

  “She looked – if you’ll excuse me – as if she . . . as if she’d had children, sir. And then she was flurried, and crying. Handsome? No, sir, not handsome.”

  “This Tooth of yours was a bit of a son of a dog, it seems to me. A pig, according to all accounts.”

  “Not a nice man by any means, sir. I was going to give him notice. Not my kind of tenant – not the sort of tenant I like to have in my house, sir.”

  “Irregular hours, I suppose: noisy, eh?”

  “Yes, and he . . . he drank, too. And worse, sir.”

  “Women?”

  Mr. Wainewright nodded, embarrassed. “Yes. Women all the time.”

  “That calls for a little drink,” said Jacket.

  He brought fresh drinks. “Oh no!” cried Mr. Wainewright. “Not for me: I couldn’t, thanks all the same.”

  “Drink it up,” said Jacket, “all up, like a good boy.”

  The little man raised his glass.

  “Your good health, Mr. Jacket. Yes, he was not a nice class of man by any means. All the girls seemed to run after him, though: I never could make out why they did. He was what you might call charming, sir – lively, always joking. But well; he was a man of about my own age – forty-six, at least – and I never could under­stand what they could see in Tooth.”

  He swallowed his whisky like medicine, holding his breath in order not to taste it.

  Jacket said: “Judging by his photo, I should say he was no oil-painting. A great big slob, I should have said – loud-mouthed, back-slapping, crooked.”

  “He was a big, powerful man, of course,” said Mr. Waine­wright.

  “Commercial traveller, I believe?” said Jacket.

  “Yes, he was on the road, sir.”

  “Make a lot of money?”

  “Never saved a penny, Mr. Jacket,” said Mr. Wainewright, in a shocked voice. “But he could sell things, sir. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. Throw him out of the door, and back he comes at the window.”

  “That’s the way to please the ladies,” said Jacket. “Appear ruth­less; refuse to take no for an answer; make it quite clear that you know what you want and are going to get it. He did all that, eh?”

  “Yes, sir, he did. . . . Oh, you really shouldn’t’ve done this: I can’t——”

  More drinks had been set down.

  “Cheers,” said Jacket. Wainewright sipped another drink. “Are you a married man, Mr. Wainewright?”

  “Married? Me? No, not me, Mr. Jacket.”

  “Confirmed bachelor, hm?”

  Mr. Wainewright giggled; the whisky was
bringing a pinkness to his cheeks. “That’s it, sir.”

  “Like your freedom, eh?”

  “Never given marriage a thought, sir.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if you were a bit of a devil on the sly, yourself, Mr. Wainewright,” said Jacket, with a knowing wink.

  “I . . . I don’t have time to bother with such things.”

  “Your boarding-house keeps you pretty busy.”

  “My apartment house? Yes, it does, off and on.”

  “Been in the business long?”

  “Only about eight months, sir, since my auntie died. She left me the house, you see, and I thought it was about time I had a bit of a change. So I kept it on. I was in gents’ footwear before that, sir, I was with Exton and Co., Limited, for more than twenty years.”

  “Making shoes?”

  Mr. Wainewright was offended. He said: “Pardon me, I was a salesman in one of their biggest branches, sir.”

  “So sorry,” said Jacket. “Did Tooth yell out?”

  “Eh? Pardon? Yell out? N-no, no, I can’t say he did. He coughed, kind of. But he was always coughing, you see. He was a heavy smoker. A cigarette-smoker. It’s a bad habit, cigarettes: he smoked one on the end of another day and night. Give me a pipe any day, Mr. Jacket.”

  “Have a cigar?”

  “Oh . . . that’s very kind indeed of you I’m sure. I’ll smoke it later on if I may?”

  “By all means, do, Mr. Wainewright. Tell me, how d’you find business just now? Slow, I dare say, eh?”

  “Steady, sir, steady. But I’m not altogether dependent on the house. I had some money saved of my own, and my auntie left me quite a nice lump sum, so . . .”

  “So you’re your own master. Lucky fellow!”

  “Ah,” said Wainewright, “I’d like a job like yours, Mr. Jacket. You must meet so many interesting people.”

  “I’ll show you round a bit, some evening,” said Jacket.

  “No, really?”

  “Why not?” Jacket smiled, and patted the little man’s arm. “What’s your address?”

  “77, Bishop’s Square, Belgravia.”