Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2023 13:53:24 +0000
From: Jonah
Subject: Halls of Academia  Chapter 13

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.

This story is brought to you, at no charge, by Nifty.  Nifty does not
charge either me or you to publish this story, but if does cost money to
publish it.  Please consider donating to Nifty to keep this site going.
https://donate.nifty.org/

Chapter thirteen

The following Monday morning there was indeed a meeting with the social
services director.  Mrs. Treadwell had lied about being ordered to conceal
Lloyd's history from us.  In fact, she had been concealing it from the
director too.  In later months a police investigation into the home would
reveal that some children had been abused there.  It had become the
practice to ensure that those children lucky enough to be fostered were
returned to the home before they could say too much.

Mrs. Treadwell had already had to inform the director that she now thought
she had been wrong about Adam.  By Tuesday morning Mrs. Treadwell was
looking for another job and we had been assigned another case worker - Miss
Linda Knight. We needed a case worker because we had just informed the
director that we wished to start adoption proceedings.

There was no point in telling anybody that Adam no longer lived in Essex
since there was no case.  I was sure that Pete and Adam would be better off
staying with Jonah, and he was never going to complain.

By the following Friday, all track had been laid and two garden sheds had
been installed.  The first was in the farthest corner of the garden and it
served as an engine shed.  "Joem" lived in there, together with baby-deltic
number D5920.  The diesel ran on batteries and Lloyd soon learned to drive
her.

The other shed had been painted cream, with a green door, and I was
installing my lever frame in there.  I didn't often go into school during
the holidays, but my stack of metal lived in there along with the school's
stock.  There were two reasons for that.  Firstly, there was a workshop at
school and, secondly, students often needed something that the school
didn't have.  It didn't bother me that students were often using my own
material, any more than it bothered the school that I used their workshop.
The twelve lever frame was being meticulously engineered, complete with
simple tappet locking for the levers, while the signals had been ordered
from the firm in Lincolnshire that Luke had mentioned.  Garrett had worked
out how to set wooden bases into the lawn for the signals when they
arrived.

 Lloyd had settled in comfortably with us and, for the most part, the only
time he shared our bed was when we had visitors who needed his room. He
did, however, always invade our room during thunderstorms. He was no longer
afraid of them, but found our room the better place to view them from.
Watching and appreciating thunderstorms was, apparently, a spectator sport
to be companionably shared.

And his old trouble?

Lloyd didn't indulge in sexual activity with adults (nor with other
children so far as we could tell).  That had just been blown out of
proportion by Mrs. Treadwell and Mr. Stuart for reasons of their own.  He
enjoyed a hug, or a kiss on the forehead.  He liked his back or his feet
rubbed, both of which helped relax him if he was stressed, and he liked
games that ended with him tickling or being tickled. None of that is out of
the ordinary and there is no reason to believe that Lloyd was other than a
well-balanced and contented child.

School holidays, as every child knows, do not last for ever.  Lloyd was
returning to his old primary school, although he would be a year higher. As
a seven year old, he would be one of the youngest in his class, for another
month at least.

Garrett was also returning to the Halls of Academia.  He had swapped
classes and moved up a year to avoid Lloyd being in his class. Lloyd had
been dismayed when he learned about this, but he accepted that it was
probably for the best.

My branch of the Halls of Academia was a City Technology College, though I
still always called it a school.  I occasionally had friendly altercations
with students who told me,

"It's a CTC Sir."

I always firmly pointed out that CTC was Carbon Tetrachloride, which our
seat of learning was not, but I always ended by magnanimously allowing them
to call it a CTC outside my classroom door.

"But it's a school in here," I always finished.

The massed rolling of eyes must have come close to shifting the Earth off
its axis, but nobody ever argued further.

The truth is that, at almost thirty-two years old, I had apparently
transmuted into a dinosaur - a friendly one - but a dinosaur none-the-less.

Of course, school only took up part of our time, even though the nights
were starting to draw in.  Garrett usually took Lloyd home, unless one of
them had to stay late for any reason.  I would pick Lloyd up then.  Back
home, Lloyd wasn't old enough to be getting homework yet, but Garrett often
had marking.  Since two of my subjects were technical, I didn't get so much
of that.  My third subject, Religious Studies, brought in a small amount
only.  It was surprising that that was still in the syllabus.  Our
principal was one of the old school and harked back to the days when the
only compulsory subjects were Religious Knowledge. and Physical Education.
I called our CTC a school in his study too, but not when other members of
staff were present.

Am I rambling?  Well I am thirty-one you know, and that's old - you just
ask Lloyd.

I'm conscious that I haven't told you what happened to Marion.  She was
tried and convicted for attempted murder, but her counsel succeeded in
convincing the court that the balance of her mind had been disturbed.  She
was committed, indefinitely, to a secure mental establishment where she
immediately went on suicide watch.  That wasn't because of any reason why
she might harm herself, but because she was pregnant.  They had to be sure
that she wouldn't do anything that might harm her child.  Pete and Jonah
had already told Social Services that they would look after the child when
it was born, so Adam could look forward to having a little sister to help
to look after.

Any road up, as Jonah would say, enough of that branch of the family - for
now. For us, "home from school" far too often meant that the baby-deltic
was going to be pulling trains.  Lloyd, when remonstrated with, pointed out
that the weather for running trains would not last indefinitely, and that
it was nearly Christmas.

Where did that come from?  Christmas was nearly four months away.  It was a
frightening thought, since we had never had a small child to try to create
the magic for before, but it was still NOT nearly Christmas, was it?

A few weeks later, Garrett had to drive up to Lincolnshire to collect the
signals that we had ordered.  The firm didn't like sending things by
couriers since couriers were apt to break things. The collection of
semaphore signals in the back of Garrett's car, when he got back, were
stupendous.  We couldn't wait to start installing them.  In fact we didn't
wait.  Saturday evening saw a two-arm bracket standing outside the signal
box and a ground signal at the exit from the engine shed. I had
manufactured some cranks and pulleys at school so it was not difficult to
connect them to the signal box using chain and plastic-coated steel wire.
The rest of the weekend saw the other signals installed and Lloyd was
taught the art of driving to signals.  He was told the extreme penalty for
driving past a signal at "danger" without authority ( a punishment that,
except on railways, fell into disuse after the Spanish Inquisition).

At the beginning of October we had a hearing at the County Court.  We had
started adoption proceedings for Lloyd and Miss Knight had been calling
round regularly.  This was partly to keep an eye on us but, mostly, to help
us with the process.

Lloyd looked forward to her coming, which is something that you couldn't
have said for Mrs. Treadwell. In fact he called her Linda, since she had
asked him to.  I couldn't imagine him calling Mrs. Treadwell "Ermintrude".
I don't even know if that's her name, but it sounds suitably bovine.

The court hearing included private interviews for each of us, as well as
some pretty in-depth interviews in court, but the judge eventually told us
that we were full-time adoptive parents for our little boy.  Social
Services would still keep an eye on us for six months but he could take our
surname.  That gave us pause.

Garrett and I were legally partners, but neither of us had taken the
other's surname.  That was mainly because the name "Khan" has religious
connotations, although I'm a Christian, as was my father before me.  We
discussed it between us and then advised Lloyd that, while it was up to
him, we'd recommend that he took Garrett's surname to avoid complications
later on.  He was happy with that.  He'd heard people who knew we were
attached call me by Garrett's surname, and he knew I never corrected it.

The judge took in all this and agreed that it sounded very sensible, so he
promptly made an order for adoption papers to be made out for Lloyd Edward
Ito.  Since we were in Norwich already, it made sense for us to eat out -
so we did, and then we took home one very happy little, almost eight-year
old little, extremely cute little boy.

The End