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service…’
    Fifty years... My grandfather had been a blacksmith. It was hard now to believe that these pale, almost transparent hands had held the giant tongs or directed the hammer in its mighty downward swing. Fifty years... Five times my own age. And the watch, prize of hard work and loyalty, hung, proudly cherished, at the head of the bed in which he was resting out his days. I think my grandfather spoke to me as he did partly because of the great difference in our ages and partly because of my father. My mother never spoke of my father and it was my grandfather who cut away some of the mystery with which my mother’s silence had shrouded him. My father, Grandfather told me, had been a promising young man cursed with a weakness. Impatience was his weakness: he was impatient to make money, to be a success, to impress his friends; and he lacked the perseverance to approach success steadily. One after the other he abandoned his projects, and he and my mother were often unsure of their next meal. Then at last, while I was still learning to walk, my father, reviling the lack of opportunity in the mother country, set off for the other side of the world and was never heard of again. All this my grandfather told me, not with bitterness or anger, for I gathered he had liked my father, but with sorrow that a good man should have gone astray for want of what, to my grandfather, was a simple virtue, and brought such a hard life to my mother, Grandfather’s daughter.
    So my grandfather drifted to the end; and remembering those restless fingers I believe he came as near to losing his patience then as at any time in his long life.
    One evening at the height of summer, as I prepared to leave him for the night, he put out his hand and touched mine. ‘Thank y’, lad,’ he said in a voice grown very tired and weak. ‘An’ he’ll not forget what I’ve told him?’
    I was suddenly very moved; a lump came into my throat. ‘No, Grandad,’ I told him, ‘I’ll not forget.’
    He gently patted my bind, then looked away and closed his eyes. The next morning my mother told me that he had died in his sleep.
    They laid him out in the damp mustiness of his own front room, among the tasselled chairback covers and the lustres under their thin glass domes; and they let me see him for a moment. I did not stay long with him. He looked little different from the scores of times I had seen him during his illness, except that his fretting hands were still, beneath the sheet, and his hair and moustache had the inhuman antiseptic cleanliness of death. Afterwards, in the quiet of my own room, I cried a little, remembering that I should see him no more, and that I had talked with him and read to him for the last time.
    After the funeral the family descended upon us in force for the reading of the will. There was not much to quarrel about: my grandfather had never made much money, and what little he left had been saved slowly, thriftily over the years. It was divided fairly evenly along with the value of the house, the only condition being that the house was not to be sold, but that my mother was to be allowed to live in it and take part of her livelihood from Grandfather’s smallholding (which she had in fact managed during his illness) for as long as she liked, or until she married again, which was not likely, since no one knew whether my father was alive or dead.
    It was when they reached the personal effects that we got a surprise, for my grandfather had left his watch to me!
    â€˜Why your Will?’ my Uncle Henry asked in surly tones. ‘I’ve two lads o’ me own and both older than Will.’
    â€˜An’ neither of ’em ever seemed to know their grandfather was poorly,’ my mother retorted, sharp as a knife.
    â€˜Young an’ old don’t mix,’ Uncle Henry muttered, and my mother, thoroughly ruffled, snapped back, ‘Well Will an’ his