The Four O’Clock Stopping Train, by Ruth Eckersley

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

My grandfather had retired from the signal box at Hebden Junction in 1951, but nobody had told his pocket watch. It lay on the kitchen table beside his plate every morning, its lid open, and he consulted it the way other men consulted the newspaper.

‘Kettle’s three minutes late,’ he would announce, though the kettle had no timetable that anyone else knew of. ‘Your gran’s running slow today.’

Gran ignored him. She had been ignoring him for forty years, with great skill.

He did everything by the clock. He wound the hall clock on Sundays at nine precisely, standing on the same stool, and went for the paper at ten past ten. At four o’clock each afternoon he stood at the front window, though no train had passed the end of our lane since the branch line closed. He would stand there for exactly as long as the four o’clock stopping train had once taken to go through, then nod to nobody and sit down.

One afternoon I asked him what he was looking at. He was quiet for so long I thought he hadn’t heard. Then he snapped the watch shut.

‘Checking the line’s clear, love,’ he said gruffly. ‘Somebody has to.’

That evening I found him showing my little brother how to wind the watch, his great cracked thumb guiding the boy’s small one, round and round, very gently, until it would turn no further.

What impressions does the writer create of the grandfather?

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