What the Watchmaker Makes

The two of them met at a wedding, both single guests on the outskirts of things. Fringe Company.

‘We were primed for romance,’ he’d later joke.

‘Making up the numbers,’ she re-joined.

He saw her from her left side first, so he didn’t see her right eye.

‘My best side,’ she would say wryly, when he told her this another time.

He liked what he saw: long blonde hair, obviously blow-dried with panache, a pointy little nose, slim tanned arms in a bright dress. A little fantasy ran through his thoughts. He pictured her laughing at his quips, tossing back her head.

Several more drinks in, after the breakfast and first dance had been navigated, and they were introduced face to face. There was money behind the bar for beer and wine, but Edward was drinking a vodka and ginger beer. He didn’t care for freebies; he thought they were demeaning but of course he didn’t say this in public.

They were introduced by a mutual acquaintance. Ailsa was in flaming pink, her hair enraged by curling tongs and frizzing in the heat of the function room. She was arch and impatient, the kind of person who finished other people’s sentences since she would likely put it better. As the groom’s sister in law, Edward had met Ailsa a couple of times. She was an ungracious copious flirt, but Edward was a tolerant man. He made a point of it. Ailsa said, introducing Edward, ‘He has a small piece of spaniel brain in his head, I think. He’s ever so eager to please.’

Edward, although unimpressed by this reduction of his vigilantly cultivated character, ironically smiled and performed a little bow. Feeling suddenly silly, he tried to redeem himself with levity.

‘Slightly less hair on my ears though. And I’m usually allowed on the furniture.’

To his welcome surprise, Angela did indeed toss back her head. She laughed loudly but not ostentatiously. She sounded merry; Edward had been thinking that he needed some merriment in his life. Ailsa, instantly bored, touched Angela on the arm and stage-whispered, ‘I’m off to score some more champagne from that lovely Welshman.’

‘Sure,’ Angela replied, ‘I’ll see if I can be persuaded to become a dog person.’

Edward grinned, charmed. Angela looked straight at him now, and he could observe her right eye. He probably blanched a little, but recovered quickly by looking down at his glass and offering a drink.

He’d never seen anything like this eye. It was as though there were two eyes fused together: a pointed figure eight on its side. Later, when he felt saccharine and poetic, he described it as an infinity eye. The pupil, too, was stretched out, in an ellipse with a thinned middle. The eye looked like there was a mirror placed just off centre, extending it oddly, or like you were looking at it with crossed eyes. It was striking, weird, yet compelling; it marked her out as different, not to say disabled.

Angela looked at him, with her normal and abnormal eyes, watching him struggle not to mention it, correctly imagining his internal monologue: is it more politically and socially correct to ignore it, because it’s no big thing, or cooler to be up front…

He opted out of addressing it.

Later, she told him that she could tell he was in some turmoil about it. Instantly embarrassed, he hid his face, a habit from his teenage years, when the redness of embarrassment only caused more shame, in a cruel cycle he forever rued, or in moments of clarity, he recognised he dwelled pointlessly upon it.

So, ignoring the issue, he continued to flirt. It would have been horribly rude not to; what kind of a person would he be if he couldn’t chat up someone due to a slight, if obvious, physical defect? With tremendous graciousness, he stayed standing and drinking with her for the rest of the evening. Neither of them knew many other guests anyway: he was one of only two of the groom’s school friends present, and he thought the other guy was a plonker. She frequently worked at the same magazine as the bride, but they weren’t exactly lunch buddies.

‘I suspect I was only invited to up the diversity count,’ she admitted after a few more drinks.

They talked about work too – default middle class small talk – but he avoided too much detail on his financial services position. It could bore people, and she didn’t seem like someone who would be too interested in just how much money there was in derivatives (some women he spoke to were extremely interested in this; Edward wasn’t above using this to his advantage). Edward pressed her more though, since she was a freelance investigative journalist.

‘Cool!’ he said, despite himself. What was the word of choice now anyway? If he said ‘interesting’, it sounded like it wasn’t; anything like ‘rad’ or ‘awesome’ made him sound like Bill or Ted. ‘That’s fascinating’ is the excessively earnest option.

Angela looked at him. She thought about saying, I don’t do it to be cool, or to make people think I’m interesting, it is my job. It was all good days and crap ones, same as anyone.

But she didn’t; he was still a relative stranger at this point. It would not be the only time that he would say something he realised was stupid and she would ignore it.

Perhaps predictably, they were staying at the same hotel. Another drink in the bar, bourbons now. He was pleasantly surprised that she said yes to a double. Edward walked Angela to her room, she invited him in and there you go. It was awkward when he had to put his clothes back on, go down to the bar and into the toilet for a two-pack of condoms. He was forced to get cashback at the bar – who had multiple pound coins, at the ready, anymore? Neither of them had been presumptuous enough to bring condoms to the wedding. He stood in front of the machine, reddening (although the bathroom was empty) as he tried to choose the most dignified of the cherry flavoured or ribbed and studded alternatives. Regular was not available – sold out, apparently, to people who like their sex normal thank you very much. He plumped for texture over taste and went back upstairs.

Next morning, neither of them looked unhappy. He joked that he could have saved his hotel fee, not even bothered booking. ‘But I’m not that much of a cad,’ he said. Angela was lost for words at his peacocking, but she thought his slightly helpless air was endearing.  

‘Shall we go get breakfast?’ she called to Edward while he was in the shower. He pretended he hadn’t heard at first, so he had time to think. She asked again as he shut off the water.

‘I’m feeling pretty lazy. Let’s get room service, shall we?’

She looked at him, he smiled briefly and she opted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Three days later, a suitable time lapse in the universally understood rules of dating in a Western democracy, Edward called Angela.

‘The last bloke to ask me out did it over email,’ she said.

‘What did you say?’

‘No! With a little said face! Ha ha.’

Edward couldn’t help himself being a little taken aback. Did she really have enough propositions to just go turning them down?

‘Well, I thought about writing a letter, but decided that would be a bit much.’

‘Hmmm rather chaste. Letters are nice though. But the call is fine. Well done.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So what will we do?’

‘Ah, good.’

‘Good?’

‘I can take that as a yes.’

‘You can.’

‘I thought we’d go for a picnic. It is getting warmer. I know a pretty spot. Wear wellies.’

‘Sounds challenging.’

‘Not as challenging as my devilled eggs. That I plan to supply. For the picnic.’ He genuinely dumbfounded himself with his lines at times.

‘Ok… when?’

They made arrangements and he picked her up.

‘Nice car.’ Edward couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.

The date went well. They talked honestly, Edward feeling relaxed enough to ask her about the eye.

‘Do you curse your luck, or God even, for the eye?’

‘It’s what the watchmaker makes. I don’t complain.’

Edward was silent. He didn’t really know what she meant but he did not want to sound stupid. Edward’s intellect was his greatest pride; he hated the feeling of knowing that he didn’t understand something, or feeling that he wasn’t the smartest guy in the room. He tended to pretend it wasn’t happening. Selective memory was his recourse; clinical time, which excised recollections of each embarrassing moment and misdemeanour, his ally.

After a few more dates, she said: ‘Can I meet your friends?’

‘…sure.’

Edward schemed, orchestrated. He called ‘the boys’, as Angela referred to them, and prepped them.

‘I’m looking forward to meeting her,’ claimed Jay. ‘But what did you think I’d do? Go “Shit, what happened to your eye?!” ‘

‘I don’t want you to act too surprised. Be cool about it,’ he said.

‘Ok mate.’

In the pub, Angela was charming, interesting and funny. Edward was becoming smitten.

Jay told a story the others had heard a hundred times, about his mate, or mate’s brother, or someone’s cousin, who ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam (or was it Prague?) back to his hotel after meeting a really hot girl whose faecal fetish only became apparent a while after he got back to hers.

‘He was so terrified, he literally just ran away!’ Jay finished with relish.

Edward ungraciously hoped that Angela wouldn’t laugh, but her hoot rang out across the noisy bar.

Angela slept with Jay, not that night, but some months later – at the point either Angela or Edward would say this was a ‘serious relationship’. Jay and her happened to be in the same bar after work one day, and each had a few too many. Jay had always had the idea that he was the kind of guy who likes something a little different. He even went with a ladyboy on his gap year. Adventurous!

Jay was less serious than Edward, and more charismatic. Angela felt insipidly obvious. She realised that Jay had chalked her into an invisible but frequently read volume, stored only in his brain, entitled something like Hilarious and Touching Stories from My Life that Show How Worldly, Witty and Devastatingly Liberal I Am. There were plenty of tales in there, frequently public, commonly embellished. Jay refused to tell Edward. The morning after, standing naked at the door of his en suite:

‘He’s uptight. He’ll be so offended. It isn’t worth it.’

Angela was affronted by Jay’s casual attitude. She told Edward, less out of a self-serving desire for closure, even forgiveness, more from a righteous compulsion to expose Jay for what he was.

‘I know,’ said Edward desolately. ‘Jay bragged to Tommy about it, and Tommy told me.’ He didn’t repeat the detail given – Jay had said to Tommy, ‘In the end, I had to flip her over so I didn’t have to look at that weird-ass eye anymore!’

She shifted the receiver to the other ear. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t blame Jay. It was me. I wouldn’t want to trash your friendship.’

Edward felt betrayed of his expectations. He said: ‘I thought you, of all people, would have higher standards than this.’

It was the ‘of all people’ that infuriated her.

‘What, did you think that because I’m not… normal looking I should have some better ethics than anyone else? Is a wheelchair user incapable of being a thief? Can’t a deaf man beat his wife?’

Edward stayed quiet. He recognised his unacknowledged opinion reflected back at him.

She paused, then said, ‘So what shall we do?’

He said: ‘You are the love Luftwaffe,’ and rang off.

Later, he went with Tommy to his check-up. He was in remission for cancer. Leg cancer. Tommy was almost embarrassed to admit it was leg cancer. He usually just said cancer to people, since it sounded so absurd. Why couldn’t he have a macho cancer, like liver, or a vaguely comical sort like testicular?

They talked about Angela.

‘Surely, if she cheated on you, it is a major clue that she doesn’t really want to be with you, and you’re probably best without her.’

‘But Jay? Seriously?’

‘Even for him, this was dickish.’

Edward mulled some more. ‘I called her the love Luftwaffe.’

Tommy laughed like a sewer, echoing and dirty. ‘What does that even mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ Edward admitted. ‘Maybe I read it somewhere.’

‘Great lady,’ Tommy said wistfully.

‘Yeah.’

Then: ‘How’s the pin?’

‘Still fine, thank goodness.’

‘I think she was perfect.’

‘Careful. She did sleep with Jay.’

They went and got drunk.

Edward bought a weekend paper a month later featuring an article by Angela in the magazine. It was about the people of Nunavut, living on seal meat and caribou, hunting with skidoos or even dogs. That was how she said it. Even dogs. The place was only accessible by plane half the year. It had the midnight sun. No respite.

The people there hunted on ice shelves and shot polar bears before they could eat them. Angela referred to them as the indigenous population – self-effacing journalese of a guilty white woman, in Edward’s ireful opinion. He read that they made use of every part of a caribou, and Angela congratulated them on their exemplary stewardship in the write up. ‘What about the eyeballs? I bet they don’t use the eyeballs,’ Edward said to himself.

The problem was that they were killing all the bowhead whales in the arctic sea. This wound up environmentalists something ghastly. It was always worse when it was a large graceful animal.

Edward sent a letter to the editor – well, an electronic mail. Who had the energy for a letter? Even to make such a strong point.

He wrote:

‘Sir: I found the article on the Inuit of Nunavut offensive in its ambivalence. The author could not decide what was right or wrong, and took excessive care to avoid offence to all parties. She was unable to make judgements that were apparent to any reader. Your writer is at pains to be a modern liberal thinker, and is thus terrified of taking any risks. The article is flatter than London streets after the blitz.’

Edward left it anonymous, feeling ever so clever for his closing line – hoping the letter would get back to Angela and she’d recognise his put down. She would see his wit, admire it while suffering his supreme viciousness. She would understand that messing him around was a mistake, regret would flood through her, plant a weight to match his own, but her respect would be profound: he was a straight-shooter, unafraid of tough truths. Now she’d see, now he’d shown her.