The Night the Town Clock Slept
On top of a hill there was a town, and in the middle of the town there was a square, and in the middle of the square there was a clock tower. The clock in that tower had struck every hour for three hundred years without stopping once.
The Clock was alive, the way a cat is alive, and nobody in the town made a fuss about it. It had a voice like the inside of a bell. Long ago, before anybody’s grandmother, a storm had broken its hands, and they had been mended with what was in the kitchen. The minute hand was a darning needle. The hour hand was a soup ladle. On sunny days the ladle shone, and you could tell the time from the far side of the valley.
The clockmaker was Old Tobias, and he had three apprentices. The youngest was Wren. She was not allowed to touch the big tools yet, so she always got the dullest job, which was sorting screws into jars. She did not mind. Wren counted everything under her breath: the stairs to the workshop, the loaves in the baker’s window, the stars over the square on her way home. She could count higher than anyone in town without losing her place. Once she counted every pea in a sack of dried peas. The grocer counted them again to be sure. That took three days, and it came to the same number.
That winter the Clock grew tired. You might think a clock cannot get tired. Try staying up for three hundred years, and then see.
Wren noticed first, because Wren counted the chimes. They had begun to come out with a yawn in the middle: BONG, and a long creak like a cupboard door, and BONG again. When anyone climbed up to wind it, the Clock said, “Not now,” in a voice that shook the pigeons off the roof. And then one afternoon at five o’clock, it struck seventeen.
The baker set his bread by the Clock and always had, so he took his loaves out at seventeen o’clock. They were the strangest shape the town had ever seen. They were tall at one end and flat at the other, with a sort of handle in the middle, and nobody could agree which end to butter.
After that it struck all wrong. Eleven at four. Twenty-two at midnight. The cows on Hill Farm were milked twice before breakfast and once in the middle of the night, and stood about the barn looking at each other.
So the whole town came to Old Tobias. He had a great many keys on his belt. Wren had counted them: fifty-three. There was a key for every clock in town, and three for clocks nobody had ever found. He looked at every one of them, and he did not know what to do.
“It’s tired,” said Wren, from behind the screw jars. “It wants to go to sleep. It’s never had one night, not in three hundred years.”
“It can’t go to sleep,” said the baker. “How will I know when the bread is done?”
“How will we know when to milk?” said the farmer.
“A town can’t do without its hours,” said Old Tobias, and everybody nodded, because everybody was afraid to let it stop.
The eldest apprentice, who was allowed all the big tools, said the Clock only wanted oiling. Up went the eldest apprentice with the big oil can and oiled every wheel in the Clock, all two hundred and twelve of them. Wren counted from the bottom of the stairs, by the squeaks.
The wheels ran sweet and smooth, and the Clock ticked louder. TOCK, it went, all night long, TOCK, TOCK, until the cups rattled on the dressers and nobody in the square slept a wink. The Clock did not sleep either. It was more awake than ever, and crosser.
The middle apprentice, who was allowed half the big tools, said, “It’s the moon. Nobody can sleep with the moon in their face.” So the biggest quilt in town was hung over the Clock’s face, like a cloth over a birdcage. For a while it was quiet. Then at nine o’clock, from under the quilt, very muffled and very cross, the Clock struck nineteen.
The next night was the longest night of the year. Wren went to Old Tobias and asked for the key to the tower.
“You’re not allowed the big tools,” he said.
“I won’t take any tools,” said Wren.
He found the key, a small brass one with red string on it. He gave her the blanket off his own chair as well, and wrapped it twice round her shoulders.
“It’s a long way to morning,” he said.
“I know,” said Wren. “I’ve counted.”
There were one hundred and forty-four stairs up the tower. At the top, Wren pulled the quilt in through the little window and folded it in four to sit on. Then she sat down beside the great wheels, where the moonlight came through the backs of the numbers, and she did not fix anything at all.
“Hello,” she said. “I’ve come to ask if you would like to go to sleep.”
The Clock ticked for a while. When it spoke, it sounded very tired.
“I don’t know how,” it said. “I’ve never done it. And if I stop, who will mind the time?”
“I will,” said Wren. “Just for tonight. I’ll count every second, and I’ll call every hour, and in the morning I’ll wake you.”
“Every second?” said the Clock.
“Every one.”
“You won’t skip any?”
“I never skip,” said Wren.
The Clock thought about it. “Say them out loud,” it said. “So I can hear it being done.”
Just then the needle reached the top, and the Clock struck nine, which came out as twenty-three. And Wren began.
“One, and two, and three,” she said softly, in time with the ticking. “And four, and five, and six.”
At first the Clock ticked along with her. Then it ticked a little behind her, as if it were listening. Then slower, and slower, and somewhere around three hundred and four it went tick and never got round to the tock. It had fallen asleep in the middle, the way a person falls asleep in the middle of a sentence. The needle stopped. The ladle stopped. All two hundred and twelve wheels stood still.
Wren did not stop. She had promised. At three thousand six hundred she leaned out of the little window and called down to the square, not loudly, just loudly enough:
“Ten o’clock, and all asleep.”
Down below, the windows went dark one after another, and the lamps in the square burned low and gold. The baker had left his window open a crack. He heard her, and went to bed.
“One, and two, and three.”
At midnight Old Tobias came puffing up the hundred and forty-four stairs with a mug of cocoa. Wren could not stop to drink it, so he held the mug and she took sips in the gaps between the numbers. Then he sat down on the top step to keep her company, and by half past twelve he was asleep too, with his keys in his lap.
“One o’clock, and all asleep,” Wren called. “Two o’clock, and all asleep.”
Now and then the Clock gave a small whirr in its sleep, the way a dog’s paws run when it dreams. Wren patted the nearest wheel and went on counting.
“Five o’clock, and all asleep.” The sky over the hill went the colour of milk, and down in the bakery a lamp came on.
At three thousand six hundred, for the ninth time that night, Wren stood up.
“It’s six o’clock,” she said. “Time to get up.”
The Clock woke. It gave a yawn that went through every wheel from the biggest to the smallest, and then it struck. The needle and the ladle swung round, all the way round, to six. Wren counted, of course. It struck six. Exactly six, for the first time in a month.
“I had a dream,” said the Clock. “I dreamed I was in a kitchen.”
Down in the square the baker took out his loaves at six o’clock, and they were round and brown and perfect, which after a month was the strangest shape anybody had seen.
Old Tobias woke on the top step and rubbed his eyes. “Fifty years I’ve been mending that clock,” he said, “and I never once thought to ask it.” Then he looked at the brass key with the red string in Wren’s hand, and told her to keep it.
And that is why, to this day, the town clock sleeps on the longest night of the year. The youngest apprentice in the clockmaker’s shop takes the brass key on its red string and climbs the tower to count the hours for it. The baker leaves his window open a crack. The cows on Hill Farm sleep straight through. The Clock dreams of kitchens, and wakes at six, and strikes it right.
And all night long a small voice at the top of the tower counts, one, and two, and three, and calls down softly to the town on the hill: “Ten o’clock, and all asleep.”