Firefly Gadroon Read Online Free PDF Page A

medallions had all gone in a steady stream. You’d think they’d learn.
    The knocker clouted three times, bringing me back to earth. Drummer, I thought nervously. I got up to answer the door, my palms sticky like a kid at school meeting his teacher, and me the best antiques divvie in the business. I ask you.
    ‘How do, son.’ There he stood, looking like nothing on earth. Old tartan beret, scarf at the trail, battered clogs, shabby overcoat and enough stubble to thatch a roof. He lives down on the estuary with this donkey since he retired, giving rides to children. What a bloody waste of the world’s last surviving handsilversmith. You’d think he’d live better in his old age, but he likes drunken idleness.
    ‘Er, wotcher, Drummer.’
    ‘Nice day.’ Nervously I started to lead the way round the side of the cottage. ‘How did it go, Lovejoy?’
    ‘Er, not so good, Drummer,’ I confessed nervously.
    He smiled and paused to thumb a bushel of tarry tobacco into his pipe. ‘Improving?’
    ‘Well . . .’ My throat had gone dry. I waited with nervous politeness while he did the fire magic.
    The old man is gnome-sized, a mobile bookend. He’s one of these blue-eyed Pennine men who are gnarled and grey-haired from birth. They seem a special breed, somehow, weirdly gifted and imaginative beyond the ordinary. They tend to speak in odd sentences which have most of the meaning in the breaths between. He looks dead average – until you see him at a benchful of raw silver. Then his rheumy old eyes spark and clear and his arthritic hands instantly become as tough as a wrestler’s and graceful as a temple dancer’s.
    In a puff of grey tobacco smoke we walked into the back garden, Drummer’s smile twinkling brighter at the unkempt state of it all. I ignored his silent criticism. Plants have enough troubles without me making their lives a misery.
    My forge is actually a garage with a couple of brick structures – furnace and hot-sand table – erected near one wall. There’s an end window opposite the up-and-over door. That’s about it, except for a bench made out of old packing cases for tools and any stray pieces of wood I can cadge.
    I offered Drummer the only stool. He sat and reached across the bench for my gadroon. I stared. The instant transformation in him gets me every time. It’s remarkable. From an old codger in clogs he becomes slick, certain, completely in command. He hefted the heavy steel plate about with casual ease. It cripples me just to hold it upright.
    ‘This it, Lovejoy?’ he said at last, squinting along the rim.
    My heart sank. He actually meant: and you’ve brought me here to see this travesty, Lovejoy, you useless berk?
    ‘Er, yes, Drummer. That’s it.’
    He laid it down and smoked a bit. I looked dismally at my gadroon and waited for the verdict while Drummer gazed out on the bushes. It was honestly the best I could do. My arms and elbows still creaked.
    I’d better explain here about the Reverse Gadroon because it’s important.
    I’d been lucky to find Drummer, lucky beyond belief. He’s the last of the real hammermen, a genuine ‘flatworker’.
    In days of yore silversmithing was silversmithing, every task done by eye and hand. The polishers, modelmen, finishers, all did their work. They actually created. And of all these master craftsmen the greatest was the hammerman, because he had the terrifying responsibility of beating plain silver into a thing of miraculous beauty. Without skill and love the final form would be piteous, sterile. But with these two utterly human qualities the luscious virgin silver catches fire. The design draws life and love from its hammerman, finally glowing and throbbing with a pulsating beauty of its own. This explains why some silversmiths were superb, while some silver – even good antique – is only moderately good. There’s a million designs, almost as many patterns as silversmiths. But of them all, none is so difficult, risky and beautiful as