**A Proper Englishman**
Visiting my father-in-law in his village, about sixty miles from the city. The same house where he was born and raised, the one he fled at seventeen to join the war, only to return in ’45 with a stump where his right arm used to be.
“Michael’s not here! Gone for firewood!” Aunt Jean, his wife, sighs. “They’re tearing down the village hall next door—gave the timber away!”
He’s nearly eighty, but still a sturdy old sort. Not like men these days.
“Far, is it?” I ask.
“Oh, no!” She waves a hand. “Just three miles or so.”
My wife and I exchange glances.
Before long, he “arrives.” His transport? An old pram from the seventies, missing its basket, listing under the weight of salvaged planks. He shrugs off the straps, crisscrossed over his chest for tugging his haul behind him.
“There we are!” He beams at his windfall. “Another trip or two, and we’ll be set for winter.”
“How will you saw them, Michael?” I help stack the wood.
“That’s my bench.” He nods at a clumsily cobbled worktable, fitted with contraptions for holding timber steady. Only one arm, after all.
On top lies an old, rusted handsaw with a metal handle—just like my father’s. The same one I learned on. My chest tightens. I want to help—drive him, hire a lorry, anything.
“Can I do anything for you, Michael?”
But he waves me off, slinging the straps back over his shoulder. “Lorries just get in the way. Nearly clip you, speeding past like that!”
And he’s right. The road’s busy—great big lorries thundering through the village, bound for Edinburgh.
“Jean! Off again!” he calls. She steps out to see him off and, once he’s out of earshot, says proudly, “Our provider.”
It dawns on me then. He doesn’t need help. Not really.
What keeps him going is feeling like a proper man—not just any man, but the old-fashioned sort. Never mind that he spent his life as a dean at a university.
I watch him disappear down the lane, that pram rattling behind him, the straps and clothesline harnessed across his chest. Once, it carried my wife as a baby. Now it’s just him and the road, the lorries roaring past, belching fumes in his wake.
I can’t just stand by. My son and I nip to the hardware shop and leave a new Swedish saw on his bench, hardened teeth gleaming in its case.
Five years later, we brought him to live with us. In comfort, he lasted barely six months.
After the funeral, at the wake, I found that saw still in its case, untouched, atop the sideboard. The villagers murmured, “He treasured it. Practical, he was.”
“Aye,” I nodded. “A proper Englishman. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”
