This short story and its companion piece Tapestry Moth accompany each other, as both the men in the chandlery and the women who conserve tapestries contend with tradition, change and succession. It was interesting to see how Yin and Yang might manage similar scenarios, but gender differences aside, what emerged were their similar experiences of time.

I hope you enjoy yours.

I. All aboard
The clamour of excited children distracted Andy from the deck wear catalogue that lay open on the counter. Half a dozen freshly sun-creamed children were clambering over the steps of the harbour pontoon propelled by the prospect of crabbing. Their brightly coloured buckets and nets leading the way for their less than excited entourage of mothers and minders. Andy watched their progress through the shop’s plate glass window before glancing up at the stock of faded nets and buckets hanging above his head.

The chandlery stood on a margin of land that held its breath at each incoming tide. As stubborn as Canute, it had withstood the North Sea for a century, but each year the tide nudged a little further up toward its door. Andy looked beyond the young company to the sun glinting off wavelets in the harbour. In a week or so he’d be watching the same sunshine striking the waters of the Croatian coast, but more immediately, Mike would be down to let him go for lunch. Sparkling memories gave way to the more immediate question of how many sandwiches there were between him and his holiday. The rasp of packaging tape on boxes upstairs closed in upon his thoughts.

“Make sure that’s well packed – they stopped making those drive shafts years ago.” Andy sensed Mike was on his way down.

The marine leisure industry had dwindled over the years as old sailors found the internet, and the next generation found jet skis worked better with TikTok. Faced with a market receding from both ends, chandlers were closing, taking with them the expertise to resolve old diagrams and dusty catalogues into useful parts and working engines. As Biro gave way to binary, the knowledge needed to keep older boats afloat faded. In the office above the shop, Brad did his best to satisfy the daily stream of enquiries by resolving ill-informed problems into lists of numbers. When successful, calls resulted in orders which briefly passed across his desk as envelopes and parcels. When not, another boat drew closer to her final mooring. Like cars on a motorway, the countless boxes and packets that came to the shop merged into a stream that the untrained eye could barely discern, but which for Brad represented the twisted skein of problems and stories that bound his work together.

Andy’s attention, which had again slipped between fine sand and crystal water, returned to watch Mike’s uneven gait coming down the stairs. Instinctively he reached for his lunchbox.

“Right, you can go now,” an unnecessary instruction, but an affirmation of hierarchy. Andy stood up from his chair without acknowledging Mike and turned toward the door.

Sitting down in the recently vacated chair, pausing only briefly to look at the catalogue that lay open on the desk, Mike reached into the bottom drawer to withdraw the box of tools that would occupy him for the next hour. Oblivious to the activity on the other side of the window, he passed Andy’s lunchtime making a new addition to his collection of brightly coloured fishing flies. As kids hauled up crabs with nylon line, Mike worked assiduously, binding blue braid and golden thread onto a sharp hook. When the bell above the shop’s door announced Andy’s return, Mike was satisfied he’d crafted a delicate and balanced lure that would stay dry atop surface tension.

“I’ll let you get on then,” said Mike, carefully packing away his passion and freeing himself from the threadbare seat.

“Right oh,” came the reply with familiar ease.

Mike headed toward the stairs, and looking back over his shoulder added, “No need to order any more shoes, there’s already enough money tied up on that shelf.”

Andy looked at the depleted stock of footwear and remembered how some years back they’d agreed to diversify the shop’s range to attract a different clientele. Though the business, which had been in the family for three generations, was now officially managed by Andy and Brad, Mike still came in most mornings.

The ring of the bell above the shop’s door drew them both to the sight of a uniformed delivery driver cradling an armful of parcels. As Andy signed the receipt, Mike returned to the counter.

“This one’s taken its time,” he said, taking up the largest of the arrivals in his arms, and once again turning toward the stairs.

Mike had taken over the old dockyard engineering works from his father, and intended for his sons to carry on the tradition. Before they had been old enough for Mike to swap blue overalls for a collar and tie, he’d modified the building to accommodate a shop and office to complement the existing workshop. He countered his father’s scepticism by fabricating a staircase of steel, sturdy enough to support more people and more loads. Forty years later the stairs still stood as a monument to his engineering skill and ambition. Standing before the first tread, Mike adjusted his grip on the box as he’d done a thousand times before and began his ascent. Back at the shop counter Andy watched him gradually disappear into the ceiling, until –

“Ah! For Christ’s sake,” Mike’s cry broke the silence, followed by the sound of the box tumbling back down the stairs.

“Dad!” Andy traced Mike’s footsteps until he reached the foot of the staircase and, intuitively, reached down to place the box into a neater position before looking up to see Mike lying awkwardly at the top of the stairs.

“Don’t move, you might have damaged something.”

“Bloody knee was buggered years ago,” Mike replied, struggling to haul himself up to a seated position. Now free of their burden, his hands reached out for anything that would improve his position.

With the colour draining from Andy’s face he made a conscious effort to speak.
“Don’t try to get up, you might make things worse,” but the message went unheeded from a lifetime of telling rather than being told.

“Brad!” Mike’s summons carried with it more anguish than breath. Distracted from his lists and without a thought, Brad instinctively checked the desk on the other side of the office, and finding it empty, stood up, ready to fulfil another order.

II. Running Repairs
“Blimey Mike, are you OK?”

“What does it look like? Help me up.”

Without hesitation Brad went over to where Mike lay and put his hands under his father’s arms.

“Now lift.”

Andy stood observing, but without moving as Brad and Mike adjusted their unfamiliar embrace.

“Christ, stop!” a grimace of pain flashed across the patriarch’s face.

“I’ll call mum,” said Brad, standing back with a worried look before disappearing back into the office.

Andy climbed cautiously toward his awkwardly inclined father, trying to recall the first-aid course he’d once attended, but his memories were patchy, and focused upon wrestling a kiss from a plastic dummy. He knew Mike wouldn’t want any witnesses to his situation and that the word ambulance was to be avoided.

“The last thing we want to do is make matters worse. Let me shut the shop and call some help.”

“This blasted knee, they said this might happen. It was worn out years ago, maybe now they’ll operate.” Mike approached his own condition as he would a mechanical problem: something to be fixed with expertise and new parts.

“You’re not wrong there, let’s get it sorted out, I know a chap who had a knee replacement and three months later was playing his best tennis.”

“I’d be surprised at that, never touched a sodding racquet in my life.”

III. Waterside
Mike found a deep peace in the upper reaches of the Tweed as it meandered through the Scottish Lowlands to The Borders. He’d spent years exploring the river’s twists and tributaries, to find this particular stretch was his favourite. He cast a brightly coloured fly into the heart of an eddy swirling gently against the far bank. As he watched it skate in seductive circles, a part of him hoped it would go unnoticed; in that moment the simple act of the river bringing his creation to life felt more important than the purpose he’d made it for.

Sitting back in his fishing chair he pondered the threads that he’d tied into a near undetectable deception, when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed three sleek bulges pushing upstream. He caught his breath as a dark head broke the surface tension. The mother otter held his gaze momentarily before vanishing back into the river’s flow. Mike smiled, picked up the rod, and began to reel in the floating fly that had drifted downstream. After three months of exercise, he felt steady enough to walk to where the bank met the water’s edge and retrieve it.

“You’re too bright for today,” he said quietly to himself before returning to his seat and reaching for the box by his side.

IV. Succession
Andy sat behind the shop counter leafing through a catalogue of electric outboards and being impressed by their smart design: a single blade-like rudder packed with batteries and a handle that turned into a tiller. The future would be neater, lighter and without oil – but clothes… people would always need to be dressed. He reached up to the shelf in front of him and replaced the catalogue with another filled with clothes and sunny surroundings.

In the two months since Mike’s operation, Andy and Brad had worked hard to manage the business and reassure their father it was running smoothly. As Mike grew more out of touch with daily affairs, he realised the reasons he’d recited to himself and his family for not retiring were not so relevant. Without the daily litany of other people’s problems, he had time for projects that he’d never quite found the time for.

The model steam engine that sat on the bench before him was a good example. Brad’s apprentice piece had only spun briefly into life before a bearing had seized, silencing its requiem to Savory, Newcomen, and Watt. Now, with Mike’s attention, the union of steel and brass turned again, animated by little puffs of steam that escaped from its miniature stack. Satisfied that the new bearing would run for the foreseeable future, Mike took off his glasses and wiped away the mist that had condensed upon them.