‘You know, when I was in love, I was always inventing things. A whole array of tricks, illusions and optical effects to amuse my lady friend. I think she’d had enough of my inventions by the end,’ he says, his moustache at half-mast. ‘I wanted to create a voyage to the moon just for her, but what I should have given her was a real journey on earth. I should have asked for her hand in marriage, found us a house that was easier to live in than my old workshop, and I don’t know what else . . .’ he sighs. ‘One day, I sawed two planks from the shelves and attached wheels rescued from a hospital trolley, so that the two of us could glide in the moonlight. I called them “roller-boards”. But she never wanted to climb on to them. And I had to repair the shelves too. Love isn’t easy every day, my boy,’ he repeats, dreamily. ‘But you and I, we’ll climb on to those boards! We’ll speed across half of Europe on our roller-boards!’
‘Can we catch trains as well? Because I’m a bit pressed for time . . .’
‘Oppressed by time?’
‘That too.’
To think that my clock is a magnet for broken hearts: Madeleine, Arthur, Anna, Luna, even Joe; and now Melies. I get the impression their hearts need the care of a good clockmaker even more than mine does.
CHAPTER SIX
Southwards! Here we are, setting off along the roads of France, pilgrims on wheels chasing an impossible dream. What a pair we make: one of us tall and gangly with a moustache like a cat’s whiskers, the other a short redhead with a wooden heart. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, we lay siege to the spaghetti western landscape of Andalusia. Luna used to describe the south of Spain as an unpredictable place where dreams and nightmares co- exist, like cowboys and Indians in the American Wild West.
Along the way, we talk a great deal. In some ways Melies has become my Dr Love, playing the opposite role to Madeleine; and yet, they remind me of each other. I try to encourage him to win back his sweetheart.
‘She might still be in love with you, wherever she is. And she’d still enjoy a voyage to the moon, wouldn’t she, even if it was in a cardboard rocket?’
‘I’m afraid not. She says I’m pathetic, the way I’m always tinkering with things. She’s bound to fall in love with a scientist or a soldier, given how it all ended.’
My conjurer-clockmaker has a wry outlook even when he’s drowning in sorrow. His wonky, wind-battered moustache could tell you that.
I’ve never laughed as much as I do in the course of this fabulous ride. We travel like stowaways on freight trains, sleep very little and eat whatever we can get our hands on. I may have a clock for a heart, but I’ve given up keeping an eye on the time. We are rained on so often that I can’t believe we haven’t shrunk. But nothing can stop us. We feel more alive than ever.
When we reach Lyon, we cross the Pont de la Guillotiere on our roller-boards, holding on to the back of a carriage, and passers-by cheer us as if we were the
In Valence, after a night spent roaming the streets, an old lady treats us like her grandsons and cooks up the most delicious
Feeling clean and perky, we set off to attack the Gates of the South. The city of Orange and its railway police who don’t want to let us sleep in the livestock vans; Perpignan with its early smells of Spain. Kilometre by kilometre, my dream grows thick with possibilities. Miss Acacia, I’m coming!
I feel invincible travelling alongside Captain Melies. Buttressed against our roller-boards we cross the Spanish border, and a warm wind rushes inside me, transforming my clock hands into windmill blades. They’ll grind the seeds of my dreams and turn them into reality. Miss Acacia, I’m coming!
An army of olive trees ushers us through, followed by orange trees nestling their fruit in the sky. Tireless, we press on. The red mountains of Andalusia slice through our horizon.
A cumulus cloud ruptures on those mountain peaks, spitting its nervous lightning a few hundred metres away from us. Melies signals that I should tuck my scrap metal away. Now is not the moment to conduct lightning.
A bird approaches, hovering like a vulture. The circle of rocks surrounding us gives him a sinister air. But it’s just Luna’s old carrier pigeon, bringing me news from Edinburgh. I’m so relieved to see him back at last. Despite my simmering dreams of Miss Acacia, I haven’t forgotten about Dr Madeleine for a moment.
The pigeon lands in a tiny cloud of dust. My heart races, I’m impatient to read the letter. But I can’t catch the wretched bird. My mustachioed Red Indian friend tries to tame him by cooing away, and eventually I grab hold of his feathery body.
But it’s all a waste of time. The pigeon is travelling empty-clawed, with just a remnant of string on his left leg. And no letter from Madeleine; the wind must have snatched it. Perhaps in the Rhone Valley around Valence, where the gusts rush in before sloping off to die in the sun.
I feel as disappointed as if I’d just opened a parcel full of ghosts. I perch on my roller-board and hastily scribble a note.
