HALLS OF ACADEMIA BY JONAH
This is a work of fiction so be aware that every character herein is also fictitious. If you think you recognise yourself, or somebody else in here - you don't. Some places, and some institutions in here are real, but the people attached to those institutions in the story are not. At least one character is the creation of another author, Jacob Lion, in the USA. My thanks to Jacob for his permission to use his characters in my story.
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Chapter eleven
We slept in for a bit on Wedneday morning. On Tuesday night we had all retired to our own beds but, at some time during the night, Lloyd had repositioned himself between Garret and myself. I didn't know whether he had been indulging in his old habits. He certainly hadn't with me. I don't think Garret would have let him, but you never know.
Pete had moved back in with Jonah which, if you think about it, was the logical thing to do. It did mean, however, that our house seemed quiet. Perhaps we didn't want to stay in all day. Staying in with a seven year old didn't seem the right thing to do.
I cooked breakfast and, while we ate, Garret raised the subject.
"So where shall we go today?"
"How about Bressingham?"
I hadn't been to Bressingham Hall for ages, so that was decided upon. We took Garret's car and headed for Diss. Driving through the town, we drove out again on the Thetford road and were soon at Bressingham Hall and Gardens.
The place is basically a garden centre and a nursery based on an old stately home, but it's attractions include a fairground and several steam railways. The hall owns a collection of narrow guage steam locomotives and an assortment of coaches. The locomotives had mainly first seen service in Welsh slate quarries.
Well we had to have a go at that. In fact our little boy had to ride on every railway available. Some of them wove their way through floral displays, while some found pastoral scenery. We found that we had plenty to occupy our time and we were not at home in Newton until well past five in the evening.
I sat at the table and looked, with Lloyd, through the steam engine books that he had insisted on bringing home with him. Garret was upstairs, on the phone with his father in Massachusetts. I had not spoken to Yori for a long time but Garret came down and tapped me on the shoulder. "My father wants a word," he said. "I've left the phone on the bed."
I stood up and he took my seat as I darted upstairs.
"Hallo Yori," I said.
"Hallo Simon," came the familiar voice from halfway round the world. "I talk to Garret. He say I need to speak to you.".
"Well, I'm grateful to him," I replied. "It's always a pleasure."
"Always pleasure," he agreed, "but not just pleasure. I need to talk to you."
"About?"
"Luke," he replied. "Yesterday I talk to Luke."
"Oh yes?"
"Yes. Now Luke is older his trust fund is no longer administered by Jonah and myself. Luke say he want to spend some money to help with his new nephew. I say he is old enough to do what he want with it, but Luke is good man."
"Well that's very kind of him. Do you know what he has in mind?"
"Yes."
I had known Yori Ito for a very long time. Even so I would never have played poker against him. I was not yielding to pressure either. Once the silence began to stretch, I said,
"Well Yori, it's been good talking to......."
"You have big garden."
I was puzzled.
"Mostly lawn," I agreed. "Must be nearly a quarter of a mile."
"Luke say it is good that you have a big garden."
"Why would Luke want me to have a big...."
"Simon, you should have guessed it by now. What does Luke do?"
"He's a policeman."
"What else?"
"He draws and paints," the penny dropped, "and he's a signalman."
"That is right Simon. You can drive steam engine. Luke can operate signals and Lloyd would like to learn many things."
"So a model railway of some sort?"
"Steam engine, Simon."
I thought of the little engines we had seen at Bressingham.
"A railway big enough to carry passengers? Yori, I don't think...."
"Talk to Luke," he told me firmly.
"It looks as if I shall have to," I replied. "What he's proposing sounds expensive."
"He will explain everything. It is good to talk to you Simon."
Well it had been good to talk to him too. Now I needed to talk to my stepbrother.
That proved to be impossible, so I talked to Rikki instead.
"He's just gone to work Simon. He's on twelve hours tonight, then he has three days off. I'm not expecting to see him in the morning though."
"You're not?"
"No, he's been very excited these last few days. I shouldn't be surprised if you have someone sleeping on your sofa tomorrow night."
"Sofa be damned," I told her. "He can have Lloyd's bed. Lloyd would rather sleep with his dads anyway."
So that was all I was going to find out before morning.
Dowwstairs, Lloyd was putting Garret through his paces with all sorts of questions, none of which Garret knew the answers to. The only answer he could give was, "ask Daddy when he comes down."
I had to explain, to the best of my ability, why engines were painted different colours; why some engines had lots of rods attached to their wheels, while some only had one; why American engines needed big headlamps while British ones had little oil lamps; why tank engines didn't need tenders. Thanks Garret.
Hot chocolate was served for Supper, then I told Garret that we might be expecting a visit from Luke in the morning.
"Hurray - Uncle Luke," said the little boy who I thought had gone upstairs.
"Yes and, if he stays tomorrow night, he's going to need your bed," I told him.
"Yes!" said the boy, punching the air.
"You sure you don't want to at least pretend you're disappointed?" I asked, getting a very puzzled expression for my trouble.
"You just have to love him," I said to Garret, later that evening.
"You won't get an argument from me," replied my partner. "Wht's more, he more than returns the favour."
"Makes you wonder why those other foster parents gave up so easily."
"Nope," Garret responded. "I don't wonder. I just thank God."
Well I couldn't disagree with that.
Thursday morning we were woken by an excited little boy. My radio alarm was telling me all about it being 07:46, and that didn't make me excited.
"Is Uncle Luke coming Daddy," the child wanted to know.
"Yes, I expect he is," I groaned as I rolled out of bed. Tea was going to be needed before I was ready to face Thursday. With any luck Luke, after his 12 hour shift, would be dopier than I was, but that wouldn't make him any later so, like it or not, I had to be up and cooking breakfast.
I quickly flannelled my self down, rather than showering, in deference to the lack of time.
Toast and scrambled eggs were already near to completion when the doorbell rang. It hadn't occurred to me to unlock the door.
In a moment the kitchen door opened and Luke was shown in by a totally naked seven year old.
"Are you sure," Luke wanted to know, "that you're not this child's natural parents? He seems to be quite quickly taking after you."
"Good to see you mate," I told him. "I'm just about to serve so grab yourself a seat."
"Good journey down mate?" asked a showered and dressed Garret as he seated himself at the table.
"Pretty good," Luke returned. "I was through Norwich before most of the traffic got on the road."
"Uncle Luke! Uncle Luke!" shouted the naked one banging his cutlery on the table.
"Clothes," I told him. "You're not getting any breakfast until you're wearing some."
"Ohhhhh!" said the lower lip as he slid from the table. It didn't in any way lessen the ferocity of the earthquake as he shot upstairs though.
Breakfast was usually a lively affair in our household, since seven year old boys are not noted for their reticence - well, ours certainly wasn't - but, on this particular morning, the presence of Luke at the breakfast table had taken his vitality to a whole new level.
"Uncle Luke! Uncle Luke!" he was shouting as he clattered down the stairs.
"What darling?" Luke asked, totally unnecessarily as he could see perfectly well the book of steam locomotives that his nephew was waving on high.
"We don't need that at the breakfast table," I told him - apparently wrongly, since it henceforth formed an indispensible part of the breakfast display.
"You'll be tired after your nightshift, and that long drive," I told Luke. "Do you want us to take Lloyd out for a while so that you can grab some shut-eye upstairs?"
Luke shook his head.
"Got something to show you," he said, his mouth full of toast and scrambled egg.
"Goofle woofle wob woo," said Lloyd, in immitation of a stunt he'd seen me pull.
"That's rude Lloyd," I said treacherously, only to have to silence him with an "Ah!" and a raised finger as he was either going to point out that I had done the same thing on occasion, or that talking with your mouth full is equally rude. I never found out which as my intervention caused him to subside immediately."
Luke was not in the least put out. He simply pulled the boy into a sideways hug, ruffled his hair, then repeated what he had originally said.
Well breakfast eventually got eaten, with a great deal of that sort of thing. We seemed to have two seven-year olds on our hands - though one of them still wore the uniform of the Metropolitan Police. I suggested that he go upstairs and change while we washed up. My partner had to physically prevent Lloyd from accompanying him up the stairs.
I was glad that he did. Since I had my chat with him on that first night, Lloyd had never attempted to touch either of us in that way, but I didn't want his next experiment in that field to be with a police officer.
Luke was back in five minutes, dressed in sweatshirt and jeans, though he still had police-issue boots on.
"Right," he said. "Now I HAVE got something to show you, except for Lloyd, who obviously isn't interested or he'd have socks and shoes on by now."
"Wait up!" screamed the boy as he dashed for the stairs. all three adults collapsed laughing.
We finally got outside to discover that Luke had come in his partner's 4 x 4 rather than in his Merc. He opened the rear door and I came face-to-smokebox-door with a J72. It was resplendant in apple green and bore a nameplate. I didn't need to be told what the nameplate said. This was "Joem", or a scale replica thereof. It was larger than any model I had hitherto seen - much larger than O gauge, and therefore, probably quite powerful.
"It's five inch gauge," said Luke, "and, since your garden is more-or-less level, it will probably pull two or three coaches."
"What does it burn?" Garret wanted to know.
"Coal," replied Luke. "I've got a bag of crushed anthracite but you'll need some track for it to run on. Laying that's going to be the first job."
"Thought it might be," I muttered.
You'll have noticed that, in all this time, there had been no comment from our seven-year old.. That was because his mouth had become immobilised, but it had become immobilised in the open position. This was the moment at which that rectified itself. The mouth closed as a single syllable escaped it.
""Cool!" he pronounced.
"Those two cartons in the footwell are plastic sleepers," said Luke. There are eighteen lengths of rail alongside the passenger seats. We just need to plan where it is to go. The coach is parked on the back seat."
"How difficult is an engine like that to drive?" I asked doubtfully.
"It's a steam engine Simon," replied Luke. "Haven't you ever driven one of those?"
"So a bit complex then."
"For an non-steam driver, perhaps," he conceded. " I have another loco, but couldn't fit them both in. Rikki is bringing the baby-deltic down on Saturday, but I'm going to pop in when I'm finished at Weybourne. That one runs on mobility scooter batteries and is probably better for an inexperienced driver.
"So when did you decide that we needed a railway in our back garden?"
"As soon as you got a boy who would appreciate it." Of course there was no danger that you might enjoy it."
"Come here brother," I said, pulling him into a hug. "If you weren't straight, I'd kiss you."
"I I weren't straight, I'd let you," he replied, "but, as it is, Rikki would get upset."
"What's straight?"
We should have remembered that there was a seven-year old present.
"That board that the engine's on has got castors underneath it," said Luke quickly. "If you can give us a hand getting it down to ground level we can push it round the back. We just need Lloyd and Garret to steady it as we lift it down."
Well that worked and, pretty soon, we had a locomotive in our lounge. The maroon coach might have passed for a Mk.1 but for being a little short for exact scale. There were two cartons of sleepers and lengths of rail were leaned up against our garage wall.