The Rebels

I

I

“I

am Tom Fisher!” That

is what I say to myself in the cold country mornings when the wind blows wild from the bare moorlands over towards Wales. And I say it to myself at night time, when the rain flurries against the window-pane and even the heavy door-curtains move in the draught that steals somehow or other through the c****s in window-frame and lintel. “I am Tom Fisher!”

But do I say it to reassure myself? Is it because these hands upon the coverlet do not look like mine, because the face that stares back at me from the mirror as I shave is grey and lined and old? Because I can no longer make men run to my bidding? Because I can no longer even walk upstairs without help?

I who was once a powerful man am no longer even master of myself. I think of my father, who became an old ma