Victoria, by Wilfred Outhwaite

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

Abel Crowther had tended the engine at Holt Brow Mill for thirty-one years, and in 1903 he still came in on Sundays, when the looms were silent, to keep it company. He called the engine Victoria after the old Queen and spoke to her in a low voice while he worked, as some men speak to horses. He polished the brass rails of the engine house with a rag and a tin of his own mixture, whose recipe he would not share with anyone, not even his son. He could tell by ear when a bearing was running dry, and more than once he had stopped the whole mill by pulling the lever before anyone else had heard a thing. The owner, Mr Lumb, never entered the engine house without knocking. Abel’s chapel went without him on Sundays, and the minister had given up visiting to complain about it. At home he kept a clock he had built from the parts of a broken loom, and it struck the hours a minute before the mill hooter, so that his wife always knew when he would be late.

List five things you learn about Abel Crowther in this extract.