The View from Castle Rock

discarded pieces with interesting designs, which one could take home.
    In the evening we went to the station, the old Grand Trunk, or the Butter and Eggs, as it was known in London. One could put an ear to the track and hear the rumble of the train, far away. Then a distant whistle, and the air became tense with anticipation. The whistles became closer and louder and finally the train burst into view. The earth shook, the heavens all but opened, and the huge monster slid screaming with tortured brakes to a stop…
    Here we got the evening daily paper. There were two London papers, the
Free Press
and the ’
Tiser (Advertiser).
The ’
Tiser
was Grit and the
Free Press
was Tory.
    There was no compromise about this. Either you were right or you were wrong. Grandfather was a good Grit of the old George Brown school and took the ’
Tiser,
so I also have become a Grit and have remained one up to now… And so in this best of all systems were governments chosen according to the number of little Grits or little Tories who got old enough to vote…
    The conductor grasped the handhold by the steps. He shouted, “Bort!” and waved his hand. The steam shot down in jets, the wheels clanked and groaned and moved forward, faster and faster, past the way scales, past the stockyards, over the arches, and grew smaller and smaller like a receding galaxy until the train disappeared in to the unknown world to the north…
    Once there was a visitor, my namesake from Toronto, a cousin of Grandfather. The great man was reputed to be a millionaire, but he was disappointing, not at all impressive, only a slightly smoother and more polished version of Grandfather. The two old men sat under the maples in front of our house and talked. Probably they talked of the past as old men will. I kept discreetly in the background. Grandpa didn’t say outright but delicately hinted that children were to be seen and not heard.
    Sometimes they talked in the broad Scots of the district from which they came. It was not the Scots of the burring R’s which we hear from the singers and comedians but was rather soft and plaintive, with a lilt like Welsh or Swedish.

    That is where I feel it best to leave them-my father a little boy, not venturing too close, and the old men sitting through a summer afternoon on wooden chairs placed under one of the great benevolent elm trees that used to shelter my grandparents’ farmhouse. There they spoke the dialect of their childhood-discarded as they became men-which none of their descendants could understand.

Part two. Home

Fathers
    All over the countryside, in spring, there was a sound that was soon to disappear. Perhaps it would have disappeared already if it were not for the war. The war meant that the people who had the money to buy tractors could not find any to buy, and the few who had tractors already could not always get the fuel to run them. So the farmers were out on the land with their horses for the spring ploughing, and from time to time, near and far, you could hear them calling out their commands, in which there would be degrees of encouragement, or impatience, or warning. You couldn’t hear the exact words, any more than you could make out what the seagulls on their inland flights were saying, or follow the arguments of crows. From the tone of voice, though, you could generally tell which words were swearing.
    With one man it was all swearing. It didn’t matter which words he was using. He could have been saying “butter and eggs” or “afternoon tea,” and the spirit that spilled out would have been the same. As if he was boiling over with a scalding rage and loathing.
    His name was Bunt Newcombe. He had the first farm on the county road that curved southwest from town. Bunt was probably a nickname given him at school for going around with his head lowered, ready to bump and shove anybody aside. A boyish name, a holdover, not really adequate to his behavior, or to his reputation, as a grown man.
    People sometimes asked what could be the matter with him. He wasn’t poor-he had two hundred acres of decent land, and a banked barn with a peaked silo, and a drive shed, and a well-built square red-brick house. (Though the house, like the man himself, had a look of bad temper. There were dark-green blinds pulled most of the way, or all the way, down on the windows, no curtains visible, and a scar along the front wall where the porch had been torn away. The front door which must at one time have