Clocks and dates play an important role in the narrative. Lindsay begins to establish this motif already in Chapter 2, when various circumstances keep the characters from keeping track of time during the picnic. In the rest of the novel, the narrator often notes the calendar date and how many days or weeks have passed since the picnic. Additionally, both at Appleyard College and at the Fitzhuberts', the characters often check what time it is. Through the motif of clocks and dates, Lindsay explores the illusion of order that humans find in the measurement of time. 

In Chapter 1, Mrs. Appleyard concludes her send-off speech with a reminder that she expects the group back "at about eight o'clock." This reminder underlines that their freedom is inextricably bound to the rigid world of precise and punctual order. The students and governesses may be leaving the college behind for a day, but they're still expected to orient themselves around the clock. In the following chapter, this proves difficult. Mr. Hussey finds that his "old ticker seems to have stopped dead at twelve o'clock," and Mademoiselle happens to have sent her clock to be repaired. Meanwhile, Miranda has stopped wearing her "pretty little diamond watch" because she "can't stand hearing it ticking all day long just above [her] heart." Reinforcing the mystery of Mr. Hussey's stopped clock, Greta McCraw discovers that her clock has also stopped at 12. It's worth noting that the reader comes across yet another stopped clock much later in the novel. As Mademoiselle and Alice clear out Sara and Miranda's room in Chapter 15, Mademoiselle notices a "stopped clock on the marble mantelpiece," next to a photo of Miranda. As in Chapter 2, the stopped clock hints that something's not quite right.

As the novel proceeds, the narrator frequently makes note of what time it is. In line with this, it becomes clear that certain characters are particularly attached to time and punctuality. It has already been made clear that this applies to Mrs. Appleyard, who keeps track of the time by checking the grandfather clock in the College staircase and the clock behind the desk in her office. The Fitzhuberts have a similar fixation. For instance, Colonel Fitzhubert has a "nightly ritual of altering the date on the calendar of his desk." In addition, "the punctual appearance" of the Fitzhuberts' meals serves to "define and regulate their idle otherwise formless days." Before Irma visits them for lunch, Mike warns her that "unpunctuality was a cardinal sin in a visitor." Mrs. Appleyard and the Fitzhuberts are the characters most committed to upholding European norms and standards. Through their exaggerated fixation on punctuality, Lindsay seems to suggest that the measurement of time merely provides an illusion of control and order.

If the novel starts with Mrs. Appleyard treating time as a sort of protection from the unpredictability of the natural world, it ends with the unraveling of this refuge. Losing control over her surroundings, she also starts feeling haunted by the passage of time: "From the staircase the grandfather clock had become so loud that Mrs Appleyard fancied she could hear its everlasting tick-tock through the study wall." No longer instilling order, the sound of the clock now sounds to her "like a heart beating in a body already dead." While the grandfather clock once bolstered her sense of order and control, it eventually becomes a menacing threat.