Presence of Mind, by Trevor Ainscough

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

They gave Dennis Mowbray a carriage clock with his name on a brass plate, and the whole of the press shop stood up and clapped.

The works manager read from a card. ‘For presence of mind and personal courage on the fourteenth of March, when Mr Mowbray pulled apprentice Peter Quinn clear of a falling load.’ The applause came again, louder, with whistles from the back where the young lads stood. Dennis looked at the clock in his hands. It was heavier than it looked. Everything was, these days.

Nobody in the canteen knew what he knew. On the morning of the fourteenth he had signed the chain on number three hoist as checked, and he had not checked it. It was a Friday. His dinner was going cold in the cabin and the chain had looked all right, the way it had looked all right for eleven years. Twenty minutes later it had parted like wet string, and he had been close enough to grab the lad by his overalls only because he had been standing there, feeling sick, watching it.

Pete’s mother had come in specially. She was a small woman in a headscarf, and she pushed through the crowd and took both of Dennis’s hands in hers, clock and all.

‘You saved my boy,’ she said. ‘I pray for you every night, Mr Mowbray. Every single night.’

Something rose in his throat and stuck there. He wanted to tell her. The words were ready, lined up behind his teeth like men waiting at the clocking-on machine. It was my chain, Mrs Quinn. It was my signature. But the manager was shaking his hand, and someone had put a pint in the other one, and Pete himself was grinning at him from the doorway with his arm in a sling, and the moment went past like a bus he had decided not to run for.

On the way home the clock ticked in his bag, loud as a heartbeat against his knee. He did not take it out. At the corner of Albany Road he stood for a long time by the pillar box, looking at nothing.

When he got in, he put the clock on the top shelf of the wardrobe, behind the spare blankets, with its face to the wall. He could still hear it.

How does the writer show Dennis Mowbray’s thoughts and feelings about being praised?

You should consider:

• what the writer says about Dennis
• the writer’s use of language to show his thoughts and feelings

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