THE RETIRED BAKER

The other day I took the old dog, Josh, for his daily wander, which comprises him stopping every five yards or so to investigate with his long proboscis some wonderful new smell or other on pillar-boxes, bollards, kerbstones, coping stones, manhole covers, wooden fencing, drain-pipes, foot-scrapers, blades of grass, ragwort, soapwort, wall pennywort and greater (and lesser) bindweed. Exhausted by being stopped every twenty seconds by a great yank on the lead, I sat down on a bench near the river. I saw an old man hobbling along towards me, leaning heavily on a stick. He was short, and dapper, but very, very lame. He sat down next to me and opened up a conversation. “I used to come here with my wife and sit on this very spot,” he said, “She died a year ago.” I said I was sorry but he waved my apology away. “I had a premonition it was going to happen. I dreamed the night before that I would find her lying in the path and I did.” I asked him about the walking-stick. “I fell down last autumn and split my kneecap lengthways. They had to operate. I’m recovering from that – that’s why I need the stick. I’m 85, you know.” “You don’t look it”, I replied. Indeed, he had a full head of hair and as far as I could see it, his own teeth, so he could have passed for seventy, if one chose to ignore his gnarled, twisted fingers. He answered my look, rather than my question. “Arthritis”, he said, “I’ve been a martyr to it for years. I used to be a master baker. Working those ovens didn’t help my fingers.” He told me he lived in a suburban bungalow and still cooked and cleaned for himself. “I come down here to buy ducks’ eggs – you can’t get them where I live. And to remember my wife.” He said that he liked fishing. “I’ve fished for Scotland – and won medals and trophies. Mind you, that was a while back. I made all my own flies.” He liked gardening and grew prizewinning flowers. “Dahlias, mainly,” he said, reflectively, “Pretty dahlias”. His father had been an engine driver in the locomotive sheds in the west of the city. He had died in 1945. “Fell down one day and banged his head on a fire-iron. Died a few days later of a brain haemorrhage. Just a young man, really. That’s what happened in those days.” I looked at my watch. I had been talking to him for over an hour. “I must go,” I said, lamely, “If I don’t get Josh home within two hours, my wife’s on the phone to James Herriot.” He nodded, and put out his wizened hand. “It’s been good to talk to you. Maybe we can speak again some time.” “I’m down here quite often,” I replied, “With the old dog.” He nodded. “So am I – I like to remember my wife.” It was only when I returned home that I recalled I hadn’t even asked his name. I’d heard his life story and I didn’t know his name. He had learned nothing at all about me, because it simply didn’t occur to him to find anything out. Maybe he was saving that up for the next time we meet. I hope so, though my life is sparse pickings indeed, compared to his.