Rönneberga is an old family manor. When Lennart Heijken is born, his proud father buys his newborn a grandfather's clock that will follow him through his life and see him become a student, an officer, a married man, and eventually an old man.
Architect Sture Ahrengren walks out of his job with an architecture firm with the support of his wife Kristina. He gets a position with an old friend, Balstar Ekberg, who has a big engineering job going. But Sture gets entangled in a romance with Ekberg's wife, Helena.