Ten Seconds to Spare, by Hannah Rigg

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

Every September for nine years Tom Gaskarth had beaten me at the Wasdale trials, and every September he had shaken my hand afterwards as if he were sorry about it, which was worse than if he had gloated.

He was standing by the hurdles when I arrived, a long, weathered man in a jacket the colour of bracken, his dog Fly lying at his boots with her chin on her paws. He did not look round. He never looked round. He knew the sound of my van, he said once, the way you know the sound of rain coming.

‘Bessie,’ he said.

‘Tom.’

That was the whole of our conversation most years. Our farms were four miles apart across the fell, and in all that time I had never been inside his kitchen, nor he inside mine. My father had not spoken to his father since an argument about a boundary wall in 1921. Neither of us could remember what the wall had done.

He ran first. I watched from the rail with the rest of them, and I hated, as I always did, how good he was. He hardly whistled. He stood with his crook planted and his free hand in his pocket and let Fly do the work, and she brought the five ewes down the field as if they were on a thread, through the gate, round the post, into the pen. When he swung the gate shut the old men along the rail let out their breath together. It was not a cheer. Up here nobody cheered.

Then it was my turn, and my Tansy went wide at the outrun, and one ewe broke at the cross-drive and ran for the beck, and for a long moment I thought I would lose the lot. I whistled her back. Tansy turned the ewe on the very edge of the water. We penned with ten seconds to spare, and I came off the field with my legs shaking.

I had lost, of course. Seven points. I sat on the tailboard of the van with a flask of tea I did not drink.

Tom came across before the results were read. He stood a little way off, as he always did, as though there were still a wall between us.

‘That turn at the beck,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have done that.’

I looked up. He was not looking at me. He was looking at Tansy, who was lying under the van, panting, filthy to the shoulders.

‘You could,’ I said.

‘No.’ He considered this. ‘Fly wouldn’t have gone that close to water. Never would. I’ve not told anyone that.’ He touched his cap, and walked back to the rail, and when they read out his name he raised one hand without turning round.

It was the first thing he had ever given me. I have kept it ever since.

What impressions does the writer create of Tom Gaskarth? How does the writer create these impressions?

You must refer to the language and structure used in the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.