Findlay longed for that freedom, but all he was, being nothing to them, just a boring mechanic - nothing to the world.
Findlay's father is suffering; he is dying from lung cancer, but still refuses to be admitted to hospital (as seen in an earlier quote). At night he would lie in bed and hear from the room next door his father "wheezing and coughing":.
" A hacking cough, trying to clear lungs that would never clear".
His father used to be a mechanic himself, which explains why in the story Angus McPhail, whom Findlay works with, knows his father - as they used to work together when they were younger. Angus looks after Findlay in work, like when other mechanics make a fool of Findlay:.
"Leave the lad alone, he's no doing any harm".
And when he started working, he sort of took Findlay "under his wings". Angus was the oldest serving mechanic there, lines chiselled across his face as a mark of forty years in the trade.
Many of the name sin this story are quite biographical, e.g. Angus McPhail - a traditional Scottish name. Findlay can be broken down into "Fin" which means "end of", and "Lay" which means "poem/fine verse".
During his lunch breaks Findlay doesn't got to the pub across the road for a re-heated pie and pints of heavy, unchanged out of their dirty overalls - "a uniform-worn with pride". He preferred to remove his overalls and scrub his face and hands - removing the oil from them. The mechanics when seeing him doing this often used to make jokes, wondering if he was " off to meet a lassie". He just wanted to escape from the constant noise and jokes at work. He goes to the park, once there following his usual path he would eat his "piece" as he went. He came to t he park since he had started serving his apprenticeship - for two years. Speaking to no one he enjoyed the solitude of the escape. One day, when it was too wet to sit down in the park, he crossed Kelvin Way, heading towards the fountain.
