The Egg Timer
By Katy Archer
Inspired by a true story
The egg timer on the shelf looked like any other household ornament. It was made of ordinary wood: probably oak, nothing special. The glass was yellowed with age. The small opening between the two halves was coated in time’s debris. But the sand–the reason the tree had been chopped and the glass blown–had all but disappeared, rendering it useless. It had become meaningless clutter on a kitchen mantelpiece.
A young boy was playing with the egg timer one morning, turning it around in his free hand; a welcome distraction from a disappointing breakfast.
‘Mam, I ‘eard ‘is Lordship ‘as eggs every day,’ he said to his mother. He was eating alone. His elder brother was working his shift in the nearby pit with their father. They had both left home before dawn with their snap wrapped in old handkerchiefs and stuffed into filthy pockets. The young boy was facing what remained of the loaf that had made their sandwiches. His slice was all crust and no bread.
His mother, Mary, didn’t answer his veiled complaint right away. She was on her hands and knees, emptying the ash pan for the coal fire.
‘Yer’ll eat what I give yer and be grateful, ‘ear me? And stop messin’ on wi’ that useless thing!’ she said, picking herself up from the floor and wiping her sooty hands on her apron. Admonished, the lad dropped the egg timer to the floor. It bounced away, landing next to the cellar door. The last remaining sand inside disappeared, leaking from unknown crevices between glass and wood.
Mary wished she hadn’t snapped at her son, but talk of better things only made her despair. She knew it wasn’t an outlandish claim, about the eggs. She imagined his Lordship, who lived in the Big House a short walk from her rundown cottage, had an egg cup for every day of the week, with an egg to match. But what was the point in thinking about it?
Still dissatisfied with his meagre breakfast, she sent the boy to the village school with a gnawing ache in his stomach. There he’d learn his letters and numbers and then promptly never use them again when he inevitably went down the pit, like his brother and father. But he was only ten, too young to go just yet. Lucky he was born at just the right time, for you couldn’t send bairns down nowadays, there being laws against that sort of thing.
Mary spent the rest of her day cleaning the house of muck which had been brought back from the pit, and which would inevitably be traipsed through again that evening. As she worked, she couldn’t get the thought of those eggs out of her mind. And it doesn’t help, she thought, as she picked up the timekeeper and put it back on its shelf, that I’m married to a man as useless as an egg timer without any sand, sitting in a house without any eggs.
They both offered nothing of value whatsoever.
Jim had made a mistake. And he didn’t have long to fix it.
‘Mam will ‘av a fit when she finds out,’ his eldest son said to him, jumping from the back of the wagon they were both travelling on, home from a long day digging out the seam. As it plodded slowly away along the uneven road, Jim held out an arm to stop his son heading straight down the overgrown garden path and through the front door. He put his free hand on the rickety gate and looked his son in the eye.
‘What she dunt know waint kill ‘er,’ he said. ‘And keep yer mouth shut on the subject if yer know what’s good for yer.’
Maybe he’d be able to keep his wife in the dark: she’d never found out about the extent of his debts before. So what if this flutter had cost him a bit more than usual? What the eyes don’t see, the heart can’t bleed over. Anyway, he had a plan to fix it.
From where they stood, father and son could see the Big House down the hill and in the distance, partially obscured by the budding blossom of the trees in the wood. Them in the Big House never had to worry about debts, he thought. They were swimming in money. They could gamble as much as they wanted, win or lose, no consequences. And they didn’t have to work. But Jim had to go to that pit, day in, day out. And for what? A pittance he could never seem to improve upon, no matter how hard he tried.
At the dinner table that evening, his wife set a full plate of stew in front of him. Jim straightened up, picked up his fork—the only one in the house with all three prongs still attached—and cleared his throat.
‘Think it’s time young ‘un joins us down pit,’ he said, as if he was just commenting on the weather. He shoved a large forkful of gravy-laden food into his mouth, chewing purposefully.
Mary stiffened. ‘’E’s too young.’
‘I were younger than ’e is now when I first went down!’ E’s a strappin’ lad. I’ll ask around, see if they can mek use of him.’
Mary sat heavily in the only empty chair remaining around the table, depositing a half-full dinner plate in front of her.
‘They’ll not ler ‘im, it’s against law nowadays,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
‘We’ll just tell ‘em e’s a bit older than ‘e ‘is. Add a few years. All bairns round ‘ere are small anyway, until they do some proper work.’
‘‘e needs to finish school.’
Jim rolled his eyes. ‘Hah! School.’
‘There’s only a year or so left. Won’t you let ‘im finish?’
Jim didn’t respond. He sucked the top row of his teeth with his tongue, catching gristle from the stew. He narrowed his eyes. She tried again.
‘What’s brought all this on anyway?’
‘He’s goin’!’ Jim shouted,. ‘An’ that’s my final word on it.’ He pounded a fist on the table to make his point, rocking his plate so that little specks of gravy splattered across the table. ‘Or ’av you got summat else to say?’
Mary had felt the sharp sting of her husband’s belt and his heavy fist enough times to know that arguing never helped, especially when his temper had broken. Her youngest, head swivelling between them, said nothing. Neither did his older brother. They were used to arguments like this, their father talking about them as if they weren’t in the room. What was there to say? They saw what happened to their mother when she disagreed with him. Instead, the silence was filled with the sound of food being eaten, the chink of metal cutlery on chipped plates. Mary’s dinner remained uneaten.
Jim was thinking of the extra wage his youngest son would bring in. A perfect solution to his problem, and it had only taken a few hours to solve. He’d find time to tell his debtor as soon as he could; the money was coming.
There’d been an accident. The gossip spread through the village quickly, women running to neighbouring houses, aprons and mouths flapping. Some sat at open windows to tell anyone who might be passing. The men in The Green Dragon sucked their pipes with grim faces.
How did it happen? Do you know?
The story goes like this: Mary and Jim were walking down to the Big House early on Sunday morning. He’d said he had someone to see before church. They were turning the corner, that sharp bend by the gate, when a green motorcar came into view. It was driving towards them with his Lordship inside, quick as you like. Well, I know them roads aren’t wide and there was an awful lot of fog about. So Jim slips or loses his footing and the next thing, he’s under the wheels. Dead. It was an awful mess, they’re saying.
Mary wasn’t hurt, thanks be, but she’s got her two boys to feed. She was said to be fretful with worry that the little one would have to start working, to make enough for them to live and make rent. His Lordship, he’s a kind soul, he felt dreadful about the whole thing. They say he’s still white as a sheet. He’s said to be giving them a small stipend, to help them through. And we know they sent Mary food, too, we all saw them deliver it in that same green car that hit Jim.
The poor woman. And poor Jim. What a way to go.
The egg timer looked like any other household ornament. The lightly stained wood, the yellowing glass. But the sand inside was strangely grey and coarse. If you looked at it closely, you’d soon realise that it wasn’t sand at all. It looked more like dust.
Two sons sat around a table. Their mother opened a box filled with six hen’s eggs, straight from his Lordship’s own chicken coop that morning. She had a pot on the boil, the water just about right. She took the egg timer off the shelf and placed it at the head of the table, opposite an empty chair. She motioned for her youngest to turn it. As he did, she carefully placed three eggs into the water.
When the dust had run through the small gap to the bottom of the timer, the eggs were ready, with a perfectly runny middle. She placed each one gently into its own egg cup before taking them to the table, where thick slices of buttered white bread were piled up on a plate, cut into soldiers. The perfect meal for her growing boys. And now, one less mouth to feed.
She barely thought about her husband anymore. She didn’t think about the accident either. It was all a blur. The glint of the headlights as the car drove towards them; the call of the pheasants as they rose into the thick, foggy air, startled by the loud engine; the look on Jim’s face, that split second before he hit the car and realised what she’d done.
She’d asked if he could be cremated. It saved her money on the plot in the churchyard, money that she’d expected to have to give to the groomsman at the Big House. Jim had made a wager with him, a big one, and as usual, he’d lost. As he always did. But his Lordship had sorted that all out, along with all the other kindnesses he’d shown Mary since Jim had passed.
A cremation also meant they wouldn’t have to put on a show of taking flowers up to the churchyard at Christmas. There wouldn’t be a headstone. Mary had told people she wanted to keep his ashes at home, but didn’t elaborate when people asked why.
Their breakfast finished, Mary set her boys to work in the garden. Jim had never bothered with it, but she knew the charity from the Big House wouldn’t last forever. As the head of the family, at least until her eldest was properly of age, she was responsible for their keep. Whistling softly as she glanced through the window, watching her boys hoe the ground and plant their seeds, she smiled as they laughed and joked together.
Mary picked up the newly restored egg timer and placed it back on the shelf. It still looked like any other household knick-knack. She smiled as the final seconds ticked by, the grey dust settling into the bottom of the timer.
She was glad her husband was finally useful for something.
Katy Archer works as a Managing Editor for one of the Big 5 publishers and lives in London with her husband. She is originally from South Yorkshire.