Free The Serpent by Neil M. Gunn Page B

when it came to bargaining for timber and nails and iron in the backyards of contractors’ premises, he was the working craftsman himself, the son who had come back from Glasgow to help his father, a happy, easy-going lad able to talk of Glasgow prices among other things, one of the workers themselves who could fairly ask for wholesale rates, and when it came to some piece of all but discarded junk – ‘och, shove that on your cart’.
    For the first time since returning from Glasgow he knew a genuine happiness, and when his thoughts now wandered freely back to his life in that great city he could recall individuals like Dougal and Bob and Tim with a certain air of amused surmise. What was happening to them now? Was Dougal introducing some raw youth to Huxley? He took a couple of books from the tin trunk under his bed and slipped them into his tool box.
    Apart from feeding and cleaning animals, and an occasional day or two on the hand threshing-mill, there is not much to do on a croft in the winter season. Hanging about a small house in dirty weather is a tiresome business for a young man, and when it got known – as it quickly did – that Tom had a workshop, where one could talk and laugh while the rain pelted or the snow whirled, any or no excuse was good enough for those who had helped him with the harvest to slip away from home to visit Tom at his work.
    A visit to the joiner’s shop or the blacksmith’s was not the same at all, for there real work went on under the eyeof a master. But here at Tom’s work was like play. One could handle a tool, test a fine edge, hold a board for Tom, become absorbed in punching a hole neatly, or even pump the hissing blowlamp. By the time a fellow took it upon himself to pump the blowlamp, he was getting on! Tom’s assistants were of the kind who were secretly proud to be asked to do anything.
    Then one of the lads from the Heights, Jimmy Macdonald, a pleasant brown-faced youth of about Tom’s age, told a story of how his father, chasing a rat, had kicked a leg from under the dresser and torn away the whole of one side. His mother was in an awful state, but his father, who had missed the rat, said the wood was rotten. ‘And was it?’ asked Tom, looking at Jimmy. And Jimmy replied, glancing away, ‘It was, a bit. But I don’t know.’ ‘I must have a look at it sometime.’ ‘Well, if – if you were up that way …’
    Tom spent two whole afternoons and evenings at the job, for much of the wood was worm-eaten. The second evening a few neighbours came in, including one or two girls, and there was considerable merriment and a song or two. Jimmy’s mother took Tom, when the job was finished, into the ben-end or parlour. Tom felt reluctant to charge anything, but at last said he would take the cost of the wood, which was two shillings. She insisted on his taking four. A new dresser would have cost her nearly as many pounds, she said, and she was ashamed giving so little.
    It was the first of small commissions of every kind among the poor crofting folk, who knew the price of things very well, and when they had saved a shilling or two by Tom’s labour the money thus saved was more precious than a gift, and all the more because they knew Tom was satisfied. With his blowlamp and soldering bolt he went amongst them like a wizard. He straightened rods of iron with a nicety that brought a gleam of wonder into the eyes of old men who had never seen the hissing blue flame of a blowlamp and kept well clear of it in case it burst.
    In this way his absences from the evening service of praise increased. His father never said anything to him directly, but his manner seemed to grow more distant, more enigmatic in a grave way. Tom knew that his mothermade excuses for him and perhaps exaggerated the number of shillings he gave her once or twice. Possibly she overdid this and touched in her husband not exactly a note of