Exchange Place

The Found Watch

Like most citizens of Belfast who have lived through the Troubles, I have learned to be wary. I look and listen, since you never know who might be watching or listening in on you. And, as a dealer, I have learned to look at things all the more closely. I can scan a market stall and, in a matter of seconds, home in on the gold among the dross: the unprepossessing little cup that turns out to be Meissen; the grimy, pocket-sized, wood panel that is an eighteenth century icon; the vintage Omega Constellation concealed in the depths of a job lot of second-hand watches from various hands. Admittedly, such finds have become rarer as the public becomes more educated by TV antiques programmes, but there is still a world of once-discarded things out there waiting to be discovered. All you have to do is look; yet how many times have you heard that member of the public on Antiques Roadshow, when his or her attention is drawn to a maker’s mark, or a signature on a canvas, say, Oh, how interesting, I never noticed that before? Most people simply don’t look at things, especially things they have owned for years. They are blinded by habituation.

I watch people. I listen in on them. Yesterday I was sitting outside Café Harlem with an espresso when two men in Hugo Boss suits and cheap shoes sat down a table away from me. They plonked their BlackBerries on the table, opened their briefcases, and took out some spreadsheets. Their talk was loud and I wasn’t so much eavesdropping as overhearing. The implications of the team costs should be borne by the financial model … I had just taken out my notebook and jotted down this sentence when I saw a blind man coming towards me, waving his long white wand from side to side like the antenna of a mine-detector. There was a faint metallic tick as it struck a bollard. I saw him adjust his step a fraction in response, and I reckoned he had just pinpointed his whereabouts. The bollard was a signpost, his whereabouts a sonic map, buzzing with echoic input. Ambient noise bouncing off surfaces, muffled by others. On the other hand, I surmised, he might not be blind at all, his accoutrements of cane and dark glasses a disguise. The Troubles might have ameliorated, but I guessed that no one really knew how much surveillance still went on. He negotiated his way through the opening of the sectioned-off pavement area. Tapping the legs of the aluminium furniture, he found the next table to me, sat down, and folded his cane. I took out a packet of American Spirit and rolled a cigarette. When I lit it with a vintage Dunhill lighter he tilted his head towards the rasp of the flint. Blind or not, he saw me in his own way. I got up and left. By now the businessmen were engrossed with their BlackBerries. All this time they had acted as if we did not exist.

When I hear the word BlackBerry I still think of the tangle of blackberry. Bramble. Berries that stain the hands and the lips. You won’t find me on Facebook, and I don’t do much email, though I find the internet useful for all kinds of research. I deal mainly by word of mouth and I like to meet my clients face to face, whether in public or private places. Besides the antiques, I deal in beneficial herbs, as Howard Marks calls them, though I’m no Howard Marks, with thirty-odd identities and paperwork to match; mine is a modest business, a private club that operates on personal recommendation. The herb is ethically and organically home-grown, on an intimate scale that puts it beyond the interests of the paramilitaries. I don’t look like a dope-dealer. Yesterday I was wearing a navy-blue herringbone 1960s Burton suit with a white linen handkerchief stuffed in the breast pocket, white Oxford shirt with a sky blue stripe, brown knitted silk tie, oxblood Oxford shoes, and a grey fur-felt trilby. I am sixty-one. I’d taken to wearing handkerchiefs and hats a good few years ago, somewhat apprehensively at first, thinking my appearance would attract derision, especially from the young; but gradually I realised that the young have eyes only for themselves and that people my age are largely invisible. No one really sees that dapper gent, and I proceed through the city unmolested.

I’m trying to remember what I was wearing that evening outside the Morning Star when I last wrote in the missing notebook. It was October, and the Burton, cut from a heavy, pre-central-heating cloth, would have done well on that occasion. When I took it to Lazenbatt, the last tailor in Belfast, to be altered — it was an inch too big in the chest and waist — he remarked admiringly that the trousers could stand up on their own. But I hadn’t yet bought the Burton suit. I cast my mind back and see myself at one of my wardrobes, selecting a burgundy knitted wool tie with a light blue Oxford shirt, navy and tan houndstooth Shetland wool jacket, grey flannels, and Crockett & Jones tan brogues. I stuffed a blue and yellow paisley silk handkerchief in my breast pocket, took a final look at myself in the cheval mirror, went downstairs, and strode out the door of 41 Elsinore Gardens. I’d be drinking later, so I took the bus into town.

As well as the Muji notebook and Waterman’s pen, I was carrying the watch I had promised to show to my client, 1954 vintage, but in lovely condition, signed Longines and bearing the famous winged emblem. Ten-carat gold-filled rectangular case, about one and a half inches by one. Vintage watches are much smaller than modern ones, and people think they must be ladies’ watches, but not so. This would have been worn by a man of some means. Dial with vertical stripe textured finish, raised gold-coloured cursive Arabic numerals at twelve, three, six and nine o’clock, the other hours marked by batons. Subsidiary seconds dial with cross-hairs, just above the six. Elegant gold lance-style hands. Original crystal, clean and clear. Snakeskin strap. I came across it in a zipped inner compartment of a ladies’ 1950s snakeskin handbag on a stall at the Friday market, and was tempted to ask the dealer how much he wanted for the bag, and keep schtum about the watch; but I have my ethics, so I drew his attention to it. Well, well, he said, fancy that, I never thought to look inside. One of those old wind-up jobs, he said, let’s say, twenty pounds? He looked hopeful. I knew he was doubling his estimate, so I made a face, offered him ten and we settled on fifteen. He thought he’d done well from the deal. Later I would offer it to my client for four hundred. He would say three, we’d settle on three-fifty, and the client would be well pleased. I’d paid Beringer, my watchmaker, sixty pounds to service it, so I’d made a tidy profit. But in truth my buyer would have made a good investment; not that he would ever sell it. So everyone was happy.

On the bus I took the watch from my pocket and checked the time against my own, another Longines, 1948, the year of my birth. Both read two minutes past three, and I was to meet my client at Muriel’s bar at four.