Glenbrook Addendum: Return To Ryton

The Skipper sounded the ship's klaxon for all hands to take their stations they were coming into land and dock ahead of schedule. A fair sea and favourable autumn wind at the back of the Magnatrine Freighter had ushered them into the port of Milford Haven In Wales about two days ahead of schedule. It was now around dawn, and as the crew’s good fortune continued a berth to offload their containers was conveniently available.

John Numan left his bunk. As did the other five big hairy-arsed sailors he shared with. This experience had made him glad he’d never had brothers or joined the military. The stint at boarding school had been bad enough with communal bath and bedrooms. He was Twenty Twenty-two years old and eager to end his brief unplanned stint in the merchant marine, as a second engineer. If he hadn’t signed on for this trip he wouldn’t be home now with all his worldly goods snugly packed into shipping containers. John looked similar enough to the lad of fifteen he had been when he left for America, his brain slightly fuller, he now possessed a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from one of the best Universities for the subject in the world, yet had not felt the need to pursue a doctorate as his mother had. His preference was still for doing things, not talking about them. Physically he had far broader shoulders and a full face of immaculately maintained beard. The clean-cut version of the one his Dad would come home from operations or manoeuvres with before he had been assigned to the New England Loop.

After hastily getting dressed. John raced down the gangway towards the engine room. His appointed station. Practically leaping down the shipboard staircases with gusto. The Port side Mag receiver and emitter array was still acting up for O'Brien the gruff Irish chief engineer of the Bulk Goods Freighter Defiant. John really didn’t want to end his voyage by splashing down into the cold sea below. O’Brien was giving the machine some gentle encouragement as he turned the air of the engine room blue. If this was John’s last act of inspired engineering on this dismal grey vessel so be it. He set to his assigned duties. Three weeks aboard was more than enough time, he could have stripped and rebuilt a lot of this modern mumbo jumbo in that time. O’Brien had not wanted John to modify his engines to get them there even quicker. Some excuse about burning too much fuel. So it had been a slow laborious voyage full of deck swabbing, and crap food.

Around half an hour later they had made their appointed berth and John was finally on UK soil. Welsh soil, but close enough. John didn’t care for these floating ships, even if the Defiant had run smoothly enough and landed with precision and apparent deft ease, barely shaking the crockery down in the galley. A scant few hours from home Chuck had better have wrapped up that case down in London. He needed her waiting dockside with Grandpa Bob’s low loader to get his cars, motorcycles, tools and possessions home. To stash them in one of Grandpa's many sheds or at Great Uncle Eddy’s farm. Eddy had promised John a place to stay, and a barn to store stuff in at one of the ramshackle buildings on his farm. The estate agents and lawyers were still trying to sort out John’s property purchase. Though the cottage on the new property didn’t look too habitable. Even having a qualified solicitor for a sister wasn’t helping much. The old owner needed to move their stuff before John would accept the keys. He had enough of his own junk without acquiring anything new. So many of his mechanical projects were stored at Grampa’s house, yard or warehouse. At his sisters, or Great Uncle Eddy’s. It would be good to have one place with all his tools and equipment. Finally, a proper central base of operations was within reach.  After years of hard work buying and selling whatever he could afford.

Eventually, John donned his faded leather jacket with reverence, put a final comb through his hair with his folding comb, put his kit bag on his shoulder and picked up his toolbox, biding the crew a somewhat fond farewell, he descended the gangplank to find the CMES Colins Mechanical Engineering Services liveried DAF 2605 Truck waiting for him with dual articulated trailers, awaiting the dockside mag dolly crane to carefully deposit John’s containers. This was a crawler as the self-appointed mag flyboys called it. The Truck had been a well-maintained workhorse of Grandpa Bob’s since the ’60s. A Shiny red freshly waxed cab. The dockers were either admiring it or the driver John’s older sister.

If John had shot up in height to be over six feet in addition to bulking out. Chuck had not changed at all. She would attribute that to clean living, and having her growth stunted by her dicky ticker in early puberty. Otherwise, in her words, she’d be a seven-foot-two amazon by now arm wrestling with Wonder Woman and Superman at the same time. Then Chuck theorised she’d be forced to ride only oversized American motorcycles, and wouldn’t be as effective as a private enquiry agent, and that would make life no fun at all.

Chuck's build could be described as nothing but petite; she was a little taller than her Rock idols Joan Jett and Suzi Quattro. Hair of a similar length to Joan Jett’s now but brown, like her brothers.

They embraced as the containers finished loading.

“Johnny the Sailor man, couldn’t you have flown and been here weeks ago?”

Chuck asked with an air of sarcasm in her voice.

“My stuff though.”

He shrugged. The entire family were pretty much hoarders and Chuck knew she was no different. She lived in a warehosue after all.

“Sprocket missed you, Candice and I have been visiting him in the cattery, and Siouxie the Maine Coon has been all over us afterwards.”

John threw his faded green kit bag into the cab of the truck, behined the seats. Tucking his toolbox into one of the many compartments the truck had. He doubted he’d need them his Grandfather never skimped on fleet maintenance.

“I’ll organise a play date with Candice when I’ve got Sprocket settled, where ever I’m living.”

Sprocket was a chill cat. John had wanted a Maine Coon, like his and Chuck’s old Primary School friend Candice had, Siouxie was a wild black-haired cat hence the name. After all, that was an old American cat breed, and he had lived in America at the time. He’d ended up going to the shelter in Providence and meeting a Cornish Rex, a short-haired little fuzzy fellow with daft bat-like ears and fangs. He loved to cuddle, and had immediately taken a shine to John and had ended up riding around in John’s jacket before they’d even left the animal shelter. Sprocket had become John’s shop cat. Moral support if not the world's greatest mechanics mate.

The living situation was in reality up in the air. John had hoped a voyage of over three weeks would have been time enough to sort out the estate agents, and it hadn’t. Even if your extended family owned most of the village and half the county, contracts conveyancing and the like still took forever. Even in this day and age when you could send signed documents from one side of the planet to another in the blink of an eye. It was Nineteen Ninety-Two, for Pete's sake.

Not wanting to have to remove anything from the containers, John climbed into the passenger seat of the laden truck.

“Let's go get him then.”

Sprocket was in quarantine at the lavish Bubbenhall Cattery, where the staff had been doting on him. Responding to his every mew. It was located in the village of the same name over the fields from Ryton on Dunsmore. They’re home. Five and a half miles from The UK’s motor City Coventry. The place their mother grew up and where their only constant childhood home was. The Collins House, a mock Tudor house in the centre of a working orchard, on alarge plot of land, at the edge of the village. That was home to Grandpa Bob’s Garage workshop and engineering lab. This would always be the family home. Ryton was only home to maybe a thousand people all told. But it was home to an Auto Plant Roots then Crystler, now Peugeot, was the principal employer.

The highways and byways of Wales and England remained pretty much unchanged since the creation of the central motorways in the early sixties. There were few Magnatrine Trucks and fliers as they were limited to travel only on the electromagnetically shielded main motorways and only at a prescribed height for safety reasons in case a driver had to bail out for some reason, and the truck was forced to coats to a stop on inertia. At such a low height they didn’t interfere with conventional civil and military aviation. The electrical infrastructure of the United Kingdom was very close together, compared to other nations and not shielded to prevent interference from the more recent Maganatrine technology. When there were heavy thunderstorms in the Village, everyone fired up the generator, as the overhead power lines would be the first thing to go out. Same thing with electro-magnetic interference from flyers. Whereas in the more inaccessible parts of Scotland and Ireland all traffic was ground traffic even if there were a few large electromagnetically shielded ports for Mag Container Ships. In most other places ships and boats were of the conventional variety that ran on old faithful diesel engines and stayed in the water. Despite having the qualifications to do more than just work on the new Mag vehicles. John still greatly favoured the old internal combustion machines. His time in the states had even warmed him up somewhat to their big Detroit engines.

It was around mid-morning when they finally reached Ryton to unload John’s worldly goods at the Alcester farm. A tumbledown working farm a few miles from the village. Grandpa Bob and Great Uncle Eddy had been sat in the farmhouse kitchen drinking tea and shooting the shit, as they often did. It was that or the lounge bar at the local pub, and they were not open yet. They had an old ex-army container handler ready and between the four of them, the cousins and the farm hands. John’s two large containers were offloaded and stored in a corner of the farmyard, out of the way, by one of the barn conversions that Eddy rented out to tourists. Far enough from the working farm yard that the tourists found the view quaint and picturesque, as opposed to being irked by the vehicle noise of a working farmyard.

“Here’s the keys John lad.”

Uncle Eddy stood from the head of the table and removed a subset of keys from a large ring of keys that probably looked more at home at the side of a Victorian jailer. As they all convened for a family meeting around the stripped pine kitchen table. In front of the Aga, with a second breakfast of mugs of tea and enough sandwiches, of bacon sausage and eggs to feed an army. Several old English Sheep Dogs, Alsatians and Springer Spaniels vied for table scraps and positions in front of the Aga. Everything on the table was as fresh as humanly possible and from one of the numerous farms, Eddy owned in the area. The eggs, pork products, butter, milk, from the various heads and bread from the wheat.

“Old Barn conversion is empty, so you take that.”

This was generous of his Uncle. That place could comfortably accommodate a family of eight.

“Thanks, Uncle Eddy”

John looked a little shocked

“This Village needs a new Mechanic who’s not afraid to work on agricultural stuff, particularly for say his loving and generous uncle … at cost.”

He winked and chuckled his old jowls vibrating as he laughed at his own Joke. Eddy Alcester was pretty much the mayor of the village. A ruddy-faced farmer with calloused hands from decades of hard manual work. He was related to the Numans though they’re late grandmother’s family. Though he was a millionaire several times over just in the land he owned, that never made him think of himself as better than anyone else. He refused to put on heirs and act like a country squire. It’s why he was one of Grandpa Bob’s best friends in the entire world.

It was Grandpa Bob’s turn to be generous. He handed John the keys to his old Toyota Landcruiser. Chuck exchanged the keys for his DAF that he would take back to the yard.

“You’d better get that cat of yours, don’t you have a business to run Charlotte?”

He was being formal, business matters tended to do that to him.

“Invoice for the last case is paid, Candice is finishing up with the books, I’m a free agent for the time being.”

Chuck explained

“Well, then you two keep out of trouble then. With my morning off over. I’m heading back to the office and I’ll see you for dinner at seven-thirty.”

Grandpa would probably be cooking, given it was just to be the three of them. The Farmers in the family were about ready for Cocoa and bed by that time. They said their goodbyes to their Uncle and the cousins and went to find the Toyota of a similar era to the HGV. It wouldn’t be comfortable with two of them on Chuck's BSA Thunderbolt, not with the pampered Sprocket, his carrier, his favourite cat tree, beds, and all his other stuff. The cat did not travel light.

“So how is your business?”

John asked a little later on, a purring cat in his arms, one content to be back with his owner and out of quarantine.

“Good, just wrapped up that case for one of the banks down on Canary Wharf, signed a nondisclosure agreement, so I can’t tell you which. One of they’re staff was moving money off the books for shady clients, and stealing from the legit ones.”

Financial fraud. That was pretty familiar to John. Purloined Pensions had been one of their first cases as kids. Back when Chuck had been pretty much bedridden and conducting surveillance on Grandpa Bob’s neighbours at the time. That neighbour had turned out to be a crooked corporate accountant. The village constable PC Rick Berry had been very surprised when a couple of kids had handed him over the case of his career. Still, he’d emigrated to Canada and was with the RCMP Royal Canadian Mounted Police now. Ryton didn’t even have a village constable these days, or a police house. The Numan name still carried some weight with the local constabulary because of cases like that. It paid to have the authorities on your side, owing you favours. Even if Chuck was far smarter than they were.

“Wow, impressive”

Chuck looked humble and smiled

“Handed over a lot of files to INTERPOL who seem happy enough. If nothing urgent comes up I hope to be free to help you out.”

John rolled his eyes

“Whenever that might be”

It felt like all of his money and his future was held up in the contractual perdition known as conveyancing. Almost eighty thousand quid. The majority of his life’s savings. He’d been hustling selling sweets and fizzy drinks since he’d learned about business from his Grandpa as a boy. Then he’d worked his way to doing up bikes from the local scrap and salvage yards. Customising them into desirable BMX style models, adding more gears to mountain bikes. Then higher priced, more desirable Go-Karts, then motorcycles. Always with a side hustle, from the company that would become known as “Spitfire Mobile Mechanics”. Copying tapes, Commodore 64 software then VHS tapes, and hooky multi-game cartridges for Nintendo. John could turn his birthday money from his wealthy family into a generator in a couple of weeks. Then sell that and buy six more. Quickly earning the money for a motorcycle or a car. John was eager to get back to regular business. He just needed the premises first. Then his dealer's licence and insurance.

With even a small retail shop on a garage forecourt, John could make stacks of cash. Plenty of alternative revenue streams. Logs, bags of coal and charcoal. Farm fresh produce from his Uncle and cosuins. There was a tidy profit margin in all of that stuff. Then he’d have parking space and build space. Finally, a place to sell anything with an engine. This was the dream. Chuck was in her mid-twenties and was already at the top of her career with an international reputation. John just wanted to be the man in the village you’d trust with the service and MOT of your car, or trade-in any old scrap before you left it out for the council. To be doing the stuff he’d already been doing for years.

“It’ll come good”

Chuck assured him

“Let's get your cat settled into the spare room at the barn.”

They loaded up the Land Cruiser with all of Sprocket’s things and headed back to the farm. Where instead of checking with his Uncle what he’d like John to be doing tomorrow in way of rent, John and Sprocket tried themselves out playing and fell asleep together on the spare bed. Chuck figured a comfortable bed after many weeks was something they both needed. So left them to it. There would be plenty of time to annoy her little brother now he was home for good. With all the shenanigans and intrigue of Glenbrook behind him.