Plain Flour, by Peter Hanbury

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

Mr Rowlands had kept the bakery on the corner of Bryn Street until the year his wife died, and after that he kept nothing but his front step, which he scrubbed every morning as if it had offended him. He spoke to nobody. When boys kicked a ball against his wall he did not shout; he came out and stood there, a tall, stooping man in a cardigan buttoned wrong, until the game drifted away of its own accord.

I do not know why I knocked on his door the week Mam went into hospital, except that our Gareth would be seven on the Saturday and there was nobody else to make the cake.

He looked at me for a long time. Then he stood aside.

He did not teach me so much as allow me to watch. He weighed the flour twice. He cracked the eggs one-handed, without looking, the way other men light a cigarette. When I tried, the shell went in, and he fished it out with a teaspoon and said only, ‘Again.’ His kitchen was spotless and smelt of nothing at all, as if nobody had cooked in it for years.

On Saturday I carried the cake home on his best plate. Gareth blew out his candles, and Dad cut a slice for Mr Rowlands, who had come as far as our gate and no further.

He would not take it. He held the plate a moment, looking at the cake as if it were a letter in a hand he knew, and then he gave it back and went home.

What impressions does the writer create of Mr Rowlands?

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