THE THRIFTY OLD MAN
We visited my father-in-law in his village cottage, a good sixty miles from the city. It was the same house where he’d been born and raised—the one he’d fled at seventeen to join the war, only to return in ’45 with a stump where his right arm had been.
“Michael’s not here! He’s gone for firewood!” Aunt Jean, his wife, sighed. “They’re tearing down the old village hall in the next hamlet. Let folks take what they wanted.”
My father-in-law was pushing eighty, yet he was still a sturdy old fellow—nothing like the men of today.
“How far’s the hamlet, then?” we asked Aunt Jean.
“Oh, not far!” She waved a hand. “Three miles or so.”
My wife and I exchanged glances.
Before long, he “arrived.” His transport was an old pram from the ’70s, rusted and missing its basket, tilting under the weight of salvaged planks. He shrugged off the straps crisscrossed over his chest—rigged to drag his haul behind him.
“There!” he boasted, delighted with his lucky find. “Another trip or two, and we’ll be set for winter.”
“How will you cut them, Michael?” I asked, helping stack the planks.
“Got me sawbench.”
He gestured to a rough-hewn worktable fitted with contraptions for holding wood steady. Just one arm, after all. On top lay an old, rusted handsaw with a metal handle—just like my father’s. The very saw I’d learned on.
My chest tightened. I wanted to help—to fetch the planks in my Land Rover or hire men with a lorry.
“Can I lend a hand, Michael?”
But he wouldn’t hear of it. His one good arm cut me off as he slung the straps back over his shoulder.
“Lorries just get in the way! Rushing past so close to the verge—like to flatten a man!”
And he wasn’t wrong. The road was busy, great long lorries barrelling through the tiny hamlet. The route was a throughway—straight to London.
“Jean! Off again!” he called. His wife came out to see him off, watching as he trudged past the gate. “Provider,” she said, pride in her voice.
It struck me then—he didn’t want help. He lived for this, for the sheer sense of being a proper old-fashioned man. Not just any man, mind—a *bloke*. Odd, for a man who’d spent his life as dean of an economics college.
I squinted down the road, watching the lone figure trudging along the verge, the battered pram rattling behind him, lashed with washing lines and straps looped over his chest. Once, that pram had carried my wife as a babe. He looked like a bargeman from the old days—only instead of riverbanks and barges, lorries roared past, belching soot and fumes.
I couldn’t resist. My boy and I drove to the timber yard. Later, we left a brand-new Swedish saw on his workbench—hardened teeth, leather sheath and all.
Five years on, we brought him to live with us. He didn’t last six months in comfort.
After the funeral, at the wake, I found that saw—still sheathed, untouched—atop the sideboard. The villagers murmured about Michael Robinson:
“Kept it safe. Thrifty old bloke, he was.”
“Aye,” I nodded. “A proper man. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”
