Aunt Ada was dead, and the entire family was in uproar. Adela was weeping on the fainting couch. Albert and Alfred, who had both arrived that morning from far flung corners of the globe, were in a heated argument over who should inherit Aunt Ada’s silverware set. Adolphus, Aunt Ada’s beleaguered greyhound, lay morosely on the carpet. Angus was trying in vain to get the poor thing to eat something, while eavesdropping on his cousins’ conversation. The silverware set? Really? Of all his aunt’s possessions, that’s what her two sons were arguing over? .
Angus had not liked his Aunt Ada very much. To say that anyone did like her tended toward overstatement. In the end, she was a bitter old woman who showed kindness only to her dog. While her sons were pursuing business ventures in the Andes and the Dolomites, Angus had returned to his aunt’s deteriorating manor house, and… did his best. When he’d arrived, the house had been falling into disrepair; the moth eaten curtains, drafty chimneys, and several not-insubstantial holes in the roof proved too much for the manor’s dwindling staff. And so, Angus had taken it upon himself to clean the place up. He had the leaks fixed and the windows washed. He had the silver, tarnishing from disuse in the root cellar, polished and displayed in all of its former glory. He hired a piano tuner for the dismally out of tune piano in the drawing room, and a locksmith for the rusty, corroded locks. All of this he’d done without complaint, and often without permission from the matriarch. Occasionally she hobbled her way through the house and barked admonishments about the library being too bright (most likely from the freshly cleaned window panes), or her room being too hot (a result, no doubt, of the chimney repairs). But for the most part, Angus was allowed to go about his business in private. He lived, not in the house itself—for that would have been impertinent of him—but in the groundskeeper’s house. He had attempted to rejuvenate the manor’s once-magnificent gardens, but alas, it seemed the soil was severely malnourished, and nothing he planted even sprouted. All that was left of the garden were a few dying topiaries.
And so this was how Angus had spent the last ten years of his life, up until last week. Aunt Ada had passed away peacefully in her sleep, her mouth an unbecoming grimace even in death. Angus placed his hand on the greyhound’s head, and looked up at his cousins.
“Margrite has been wanting new silverware for our summer house in Cologne.” Alfred said.
“And what of MY summer home in Manorca? Are Bethany and I to make do without?”
“Mother would have wanted her finest silver to go to her eldest son. It’s as simple as that.”
“Age has nothing to do with it!” Albert insisted, his voice a rickety squeak.
Angus looked into the deep, sorrowful eyes of Adolphus the greyhound. Angus could think of only one thing in the entire manor house that he hoped to inherit from the old woman. In the foyer, in a little alcove that the butler thought should have been used for a new fangled telephone, stood a stately grandfather clock. It had belonged to Angus’s father. It deserved to be displayed in a place of honor, but Ada insisted that it be placed as far away from her bedroom as possible, saying that its chiming kept her up at night.
It was made from the finest mahogany, and its intricately carved face had tortoise shell moons encircling it. Angus had been enamored with the clock since he first caught sight of it in his father’s study as a little boy. And every week for the past ten years, when he was done with his rounds, he personally wound it himself. (Much to chagrin of the ancient butler.) Now, looking up at Alfred’s red, splotchy face, and Albert’s prim, upturned nose, he was filled with unexpected disgust. Did these people know nothing of true craftsmanship? They didn’t deserve Aunt Ada’s silverware, much less her magnificent clock. He stood up abruptly, intending to speak his mind, but Albert and Alfred didn’t even notice. Only Adela looked up form her perch on the couch, her tears momentarily silenced.
Angus turned on his heel. He exited the upstairs library and descended the stairs. He passed through the parlor and into the foyer, where he was greeted by the solemn face of the grandfather clock. The tortoise shell moons winked at him in the gloomy light. He wrapped his arms around its midsection, and lifted with all his might. It was slow going, but Angus felt his spirits surge with righteousness as he lifted the clock a few inches off the ground and traveled a few feet with it. And thus Angus made the journey out the front door of the manor house and across the grounds, pausing every now and then to catch his breath. He finally lifted it over the threshold of the groundskeeper’s cottage, and positioned it in a corner of his living room. It was too grand for his home, of course, but he didn’t mind. He was doing a service, if not to Aunt Ada’s memory, then to the house he had tended for ten long years. He would look after this clock until the day he died.
While Angus was admiring his personal inheritance, his sister Adela stood in the library window. She had watched Angus’s progress through the low flung mist, while her cousins argued in the background. Each of them wanted something of this house, though why her brother chose a clock was beyond her. Clocks were too impersonal, too strict in their persistence towards some unknown fate. She wanted something to care for, something that needed her as much as she needed it. She crossed to the library entrance and sent one last look over her shoulder.
“Adolphus, come,” she said. The greyhound hesitated, then rose with the gracefulness of a dancer and loped toward her. The dog nuzzled her hand, and together they descended the steps, leaving the brothers to argue over the fate of Aunt Ada’s silverware.
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