Snake wrapped around two daggers on an arm

The shed roof came down in the sleet on Tuesday, so I've had to clear everything out, and I found your grandad's two daggers at the bottom of the old seed tin, still wrapped in the oilskin he never trusted. You'll remember he kept them for grafting and stripping bark, not for anything sinister, whatever the Hendersons liked to say. The blades had gone dull, and a snake had wound itself round them, or rather the rust had, grey and scaled like the bark of a wet elm, with green where the verdigris had run down the steel like sap from a split stem.

The snake's head was the strange part. Someone, years back, had scratched an eye into the rust, a big round eye with a curl of a brow, and the rain had kept it open. I stood there with the tin on my hip and felt looked at, which is daft at seventy-one. I took the daggers down to Mr Okafor in the village, who grinds for the butcher. He charged me four pounds and said the steel was good underneath, and I was glad to hear it, because it means your grandad wasn't wrong about the metal.

I'm not writing to ask you to come home and take up the knife trade. You've made your choice in Leeds and I hope it pays. But I want you to have these. Take the sharper one to the bench on your next visit and let the boy at the bench show you the edge. Leave the other in the shed, where the snake can keep an eye on the damsons.

Love, Nan