He was to leave his friend’s premises shaken. The office seemed bare. The display case was empty. Boxes were piled in a dusty corner Mr. Jacobs looked older, careworn, and his hands revealed an occasional tremor. “Parkinson’s,” confirmed Mr. Jacobs. “I shall have to give up my profession,” he admitted. “I am let down by my body, as my father was, long before Auschwitz. He was also a watchmaker. But, as you see,” he continued, “there is no call for my craft any longer. People buy disposable watches. Throw-away possessions for a throw-away culture. There is no place for quality or craftsmanship. There is an advertisement for ‘fashion’ watches: a different one for a different day of the week, each one a bargain for ten dollars each. Made in China, not Switzerland. Can you imagine?”
“No,” agreed James. “It is sad. I am sorry.”
“But I will clean your beloved Tissot for you. Please forgive me if I ask for payment in advance.”
As part of a housekeeping exercise at Ludlows, James was clearing unsold stock when he came across an anthology of short stories by John Galsworthy, who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. He read the story Quality, and saw the prototype of Mr. Jacobs in the figure of the shoemaker brothers who go out of business by refusing to compromise the quality of the shoes they make. When he picked up his Tissot, he was even more disheartened. There was an ‘Office For Lease’ sign on the street door downstairs, and it was the landlord who handed him his watch in the office itself. He never saw Mr. Jacobs again. The next time he passed the building on Simcoe Street several months later, he saw it was being demolished to make way for the proposed erection of the high-rise office block pictured on a nearby billboard.
James’ Tissot kept time perfectly, but it was hard to find anyone who would service or clean it, so the service interval lapsed, and the years passed. Stephen soon had a brother and a sister, the family outgrew their apartment and moved to the suburbs. James and Amanda bought a small publishing house together, and despite the ominous predictions of family and friends, made a go of it, returning satisfactory profit year after year by publishing tastefully-bound classics, the mainstay of their business. All this time, the Tissot faithfully recorded the inevitable passage of time, needing only the replacement of its expansion bracelet, steadily ticking its way unperturbed through various crises and celebrations of family and community life, until one day he heard tell of Bao, a young Chinese watch repairer for a Sears store in a suburban mall nearby. But by then, of course, Sears had closed its doors.
When James arrived at the mall, no-one there had heard of Bao, yet further enquiry led him to an upscale jeweller’s nearly an hour’s drive away. The glittering showroom, resplendent in chrome, mirrors, and marble, a regular House of Pride, bore on one of its walls the names of celebrated Swiss, French, and Japanese watchmakers, including Tissot, but when a brassy blonde saleswoman greeted him effusively, he noticed her vivid blue eyes lose their sparkle as soon as he had made it clear he was not interested in buying anything, but merely looking for a cleaning for an unfashionable elderly watch, obviously some sort of sentimental relic for a tediously querulous old man. She condescended to glance at the Tissot. Her face took on a look of haughty disdain.
