Fast Fiction: The Wood Carver
In this story Richard Mallinson distils a family saga into 352 precise words.
Three generations of my family have lived in this house and farmed this land but now it is all over. There is no future for us here. Too much is against us.
However, unlike some farmers, I haven’t been broken in spirit. In fact I’ve already decided on a positive course of action…
I will sell up and then, together with my wife Janine and son Freddie, I’ll move to the village of Edalton, where I have bought a cottage.
It’s already furnished and it will be our home. It has a garden and we will grown our own fruit and vegetables.
And there I’ll set up in business as a wood carver.
The fact is, I love wood and have done so ever since I was taught woodwork at the ‘progressive’ school I attended. No other material can equal it in my view.
My aim will be to create wood sculptures which people will buy and cherish. I will work at them day and night.
I’m worried, though, that I may not be able to earn enough to keep us all and pay for Freddie’s education.
Now my wife comes in. She’s flustered and tearful…
‘I must tell you that I can’t go with you to Edalton,’ she says. ‘I simply can’t, you see there is someone else, he’s very rich, he wants me to go away with him and take Freddie. I know he loves me, when we are settled you’ll be able to visit Freddie as often as you like, I’ll see that he goes to your old school, perhaps he’ll turn out to be more the artistic type…I really am very sorry.’
She leaves the room and I just sit there. I hadn’t imagined that anything like this would happen, even though we’d recently had some serious rows.
Yes, I feel hurt, angry and bloody sorry for myself.
Later…I’ve been thinking things through and I now realise that there may be certain, er, advantages to the new situation, regarding my wife.
But I won’t spell them out.
That would be far too crude, wouldn’t it?
