‘Oh dear me,’ said the old man, turning round and glancing at it. ‘How embarrassing! You’ll have to forgive me.’
‘Forgive you?’ asked Noah, surprised. ‘But it’s the clock that’s making the noises.’
At that, the clock issued an offended squeak and Noah started to giggle, putting his hand over his mouth as he did so. The noises reminded him of Charlie Charlton, whose stomach always started to make the strangest sounds when it was coming up to lunch time, and that was the cue for Miss Bright to look at her watch and say, ‘Oh my! Is it that time already? Time for lunch!’
But just as Noah started to laugh, the part of him that had told him he should run away from home made him hesitate and he felt guilty for even smiling. He hadn’t laughed in such a long time, he felt like a hedgehog must feel after he’s emerged from months of hibernation and isn’t entirely sure whether the things that came naturally to him were things that he was supposed to be doing at all. Noah shook his head quickly, throwing the laugh out of his mouth and over into the corner of the toy shop, where it landed on a pile of wooden bricks and wouldn’t be discovered again until late the following winter.
‘That’s a very unusual clock,’ he said, leaning down to inspect it closer. As he did so, the second hand immediately stopped turning, and only when he stepped back and looked away did it start to move again, going faster now so that it could catch up with where it was supposed to be.
‘Best not to stare,’ said the old man, nodding wisely. ‘Alexander doesn’t like it. It puts him off his stride.’
‘Alexander?’ asked Noah, looking around and expecting to see someone else in the shop whom he hadn’t noticed before. ‘Who’s Alexander?’
‘Alexander is my clock,’ said the old man. ‘And he’s quite self-conscious – which is a little surprising really, for I have found that clocks tend to be a bunch of show-offs for the most part, always on the move, always ticking away as if their lives depended on it. But not Alexander. He’d rather we didn’t take any notice of him at all, to be honest. He has quite a temper. He’s Russian, you see, and they’re a funny lot. I picked him up in St Petersburg, at the Winter Palace of the Russian Tsar. Quite a few years ago now, of course, but he still works a treat, especially if you talk politics or religion with him, because that keeps him very tightly wound.’
‘Well, I didn’t mean to offend him,’ said Noah, who didn’t know what to think about this. ‘But he was making some funny noises, that’s all.’
‘Ah, but that’s because it’s lunch time,’ said the old man, clapping his hands together in delight. ‘He reminds me by pretending that his stomach is rumbling. It’s his little joke. The Russians are quite hilarious, don’t you find?’
‘But clocks don’t have stomachs,’ said Noah, sounding puzzled now.
‘They don’t?’
‘No. They have pendulums or balance wheels. And something called an oscillator, which vibrates and keeps the whole thing running correctly. My Uncle Teddy gave me a present for my last birthday, a box set called “Make Your Own Clock in Twenty-Four Hours”. I spent two weeks trying to put it together.’
‘Oh, really? And how did that turn out?’
‘Not well. It’s only right twice a day, and sometimes not even that often.’
‘I see,’ said the old man. ‘But still, you seem to know a lot about them.’
‘Yes, I like scientific things,’ explained Noah. ‘I might be an astronomer one day. It’s one of the professions I’m considering.’
‘Well, I’ll have to take your word for it,’ said the old man. ‘I always assumed it was his stomach but perhaps I was wrong. Anyway, whatever the truth of the matter, it’s time for lunch.’
‘I thought you’d already had your lunch,’ said Noah, whose heart was lifting a little at the idea of food. It had been so long since he had eaten, he was worried he might pass out altogether.
‘I had a little snack, that was all,’ said the old man. ‘Some leftover chicken. And a garden salad. And a few sausages that might have gone off if I hadn’t eaten them today. And a cheese sandwich. And a slice of cake afterwards for a sugar kick. But nothing that you could call a substantial meal. Anyway, I expect you’re hungry, aren’t you? You left home very early, after all.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Noah in surprise.
‘Why, by the condition of your shoes, of course,’ he replied.
‘My shoes?’ said Noah, looking down at his feet and seeing nothing unusual there. ‘How on earth can you tell what time I left home by my shoes?’
‘Look at the soles,’ said the old man. ‘They’re still a little wet and there are small blades of grass stuck to them, although they’re beginning to dry now and are flaking off all over my floor. It means you must have been walking through grass not long after the dew had fallen.’
‘Oh,’ said Noah, considering this. ‘Of course. I’d never have thought of that.’
‘When you’ve gone through as many pairs of shoes as I have, you tend to take an interest in other people’s footwear,’ said the old man. ‘It’s a little quirk of mine, that’s all. A harmless one, I hope. Anyway, that being the case, perhaps you’d like to eat something? I don’t have much in but—’
‘I’d love to,’ said Noah quickly, his face lighting up. ‘I haven’t had anything to eat all day.’
‘Really? Don’t they feed you at your house then?’
‘They do,’ he replied after a slight hesitation. ‘Only, the thing is, I left home before breakfast.’
‘And why would you do that?’
‘Well, there was nothing in the house,’ said Noah, lying.
The old man stared at Noah as if he didn’t believe a word of it, and the boy felt his face begin to grow red. He looked away and caught the eye of one of the puppets on the wall, who immediately turned his own head away, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of a boy who told lies before lunch.
‘Well, if you’re starving,’ said the old man finally, ‘I suppose I’d better feed you. Why don’t you follow me upstairs? I’m sure I can find something up there that you’ll enjoy.’
He walked towards one of the corners of the shop, extending his right hand before him, and the moment he did so, a handle appeared in the wall and he twisted it, opening a door which led immediately to the foot of an ascending staircase. Noah’s mouth fell open in surprise – he was sure that door hadn’t been there a moment before – and he looked from it to the old man, and back to it, and back to the old man, and back to it again. In fact, this could have gone on for much longer if the old man hadn’t put a stop to the madness.
‘Well?’ he asked, turning round. ‘Aren’t you coming?’
Noah hesitated for only a moment. From as far back as he could remember he had been told that it was a foolish boy who went into strange corridors with people he didn’t know, especially when no one knew that he was there in the first place. His father had always told him that the world was a dangerous place, although his mother said he shouldn’t frighten the boy and he just had to remember that not everyone who appeared to be nice really was.