Matthew Returns

By Terry Aspinall

Matthew has been discharged from the British Army after serving 22 years. He returns to Suffolk and the small country side town of Stowmarket, in which he grew up. At first he finds it hard to settle back into the life he once knew. Finding it hard to obtain employment with skills he had picked up while in the Army. However, a shock awaits him when it comes to finding himself a girl friend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terry Aspinall
• Release date: May 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301721092

Terry Aspinall

I was born during the Second World War while my father was chasing Rommel out of North Africa and Italy, for this reason I never saw him until late 1946. I grew up in the sleepy little Suffolk country side town of Stowmarket, and underwent an education that to me seemed an absolute waste of time. Although with that wonderful tool known as hindsight, my reading and writing skills would have served me well in the writing of this book. I should have taken the trouble and given the teachers my full undivided attention and not the girls sitting next to me, while behind me was always the wall. Yes I was a back of class type of guy who was always getting into trouble and talking during class. Upon leaving school I became what was known as a Teddy boy and hung around with the Ipswich town local gangs. Once the novelty began to wear off, and I realised that if I carried on along the path I had chosen, it would only lead me into trouble with the law, so I decided on a complete life style change and joined the Royal Marines. My growing up during this period of time can certainly be attributed to my Royal Marine training, something that is still part of my life to this day. I tell of my service years and of being on active service in Borneo. Upon my release I became very interested and involved in the Rock n Roll music of the day, and helped form a local band in the town of Leiston in Suffolk. I also became involved in the then new sport of hang gliding. Which later lead me to strapping an engine on to my glider, and being amongst the first in the UK to pioneer the sport of Microlighting, and to set a record that still stands to this day. Eventually while working for Bernard Matthews I upped my family and immigrated to New Zealand, to help build a new factory in a small county town of Waipukurau on the North Island. Where I experienced a complete new style of living that my family and I all enjoyed, and took to it like ducks to water. It was a taste of what was to come when after three years I once again up rooted my family and move over the ditch as they say to Australia, but that’s another story?

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MATTHEW RETURNS

© Copyright 2001 by Terry Aspinall

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ISBN : 9781301721092

Published by Terry Aspinall

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Introduction

Matthew has been discharged from the British Army after serving 22 years. He returns to Suffolk and the small country side town of Stowmarket, in which he grew up. At first he finds it hard to settle back into the life he once knew. Finding it hard to obtain employment with skills he had picked up while in the Army. However, a shock awaits him when it comes to finding himself a girl friend.

Short Love Story

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locals or events is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. Returning Home.

Chapter 2. Born Again Worker.

Chapter 3. Haunted By A Moment.

Chapter 4. Fighting A Losing Battle.

Chapter 5. Double Sided Trouble.

Chapter 6. Chaos And Mayhem.

Chapter 7. Picking Through The Pieces.

A Different Ending

Further Publications from This Author

Chapter 1

Returning Home

As Matthew approached the small Suffolk country town of Stowmarket, he was greeted by a large green reflective road sign, informed him that he was about to enter the towns boundary. This would be the first time he had returned to the town after an absence of twenty two years. He had finally returned to his birthplace, to his roots, as he often referred to it. Stowmarket was the town he had grown up in, where he’d enjoyed all of the exciting things that children get up to during their younger years. However, many of the parents preferred to label it as a miss spent youth. This was a little hypocritical when you consider that they had probably gone through the very same experience during their growing up. Matthew believed it to be a case of what he called sour grapes, with them not wanting others to enjoy the same experience they had. He remembered the older generation of the time had a saying for the youngsters, 'Don’t do what I do, do what I say', and we did, otherwise we received what they called a good hiding.

Just before he reached Combs Ford on the southern end of the town he found himself opposite the entrance to the ICI paints factory. It had changed a little in appearance, but that did not stop the memories starting to flood back to him. As a schoolboy he had undertaken a newspaper round to earn a little pocket money. The ICI gatehouse had been the furthest point that this paper round had taken him from the paper shop based in the Ford, as it was known by the locals. He chuckled to himself as he remembered all those cold frosty and sometimes very wet early mornings. Just to give the owners of the houses something of interest to read in the warm comfort of their houses over breakfast, while he was wet, cold and shivering, all for the handsome sum of eight shillings a week. He shook his head as he muttered to himself, that he would never forget those four years of cold morning misery. Although on the bright side it had been an apprenticeship in learning to get up early in the morning that would help once he entered the work force.

Across the slip road that led to the ICI factory main entrance was what Matthew remembered as the Cedars Country Club, a large stately looking building dating back many years. During some of which had been used as a gentleman's club where members could drink outside of the well policed drinking hours and enjoy the comforts of lady friends. This building had been the second from last port of call on while on his so called Needham Road newspaper run.

After arriving in the Combs Ford square, he parked his car in front of the Magpie public house and got out to stretch his legs and have a look around. There had not been many changes since he had left, it was pretty much as he remembered it. The Magpie looked as if it had recently been given a fresh coat of paint and there was a new sign hanging on the corner of the building high above the street. Next to it stood the newspaper shop from where Matthew had sorted his newspapers in to some resemblance of order, so that they came out of his paper bag in the correct order that he visited the houses on his round.

While directly across the road from the Magpie stood a second pub, the Gladstone Arms. With these two pubs being so close together one would have thought that they were in direct competition with each other for the local people's patronage. However, this had not been the case, because each Pub sold its own brand of beer that tasted so totally different from each other. Over the years the locals had acquired a taste for one or the other and knew which brand they preferred. Therefore when heading down the Ford for a drink as it was known, they would only visit the pub that sold the brand they preferred.

Continuing his glance around the square, his eyes next stopped at the old bridge positioned over the local stream that had twisted its way down through the county side from the Combs leather tannery factory, while on its way to join up with the river Gipping a few hundred meters away. Matthew used to tightrope walk across its rounded arched brick parapets, thinking himself good if he managed to balance himself right across the full length of the bridge. Failure to do so usually spelt disaster, ending with him having to jump down on to the road, hopefully missing any oncoming traffic that might have been crossing the bridge at the time. Or on the odd occasion when he had completely lost his balance and had fallen down the other side of the brickwork and ended up in the shallow smelly waters of the stream below.

Next his eyes settled on what used to be old man Chambers Bicycle Shop, this was where the children of the area purchased all the parts they constantly required to repair their bicycles. This was the main form of transport for most children at that time. They were also the days when he was into dirt bike racing and bicycle speedway. However, now the bike shop had gone and in its place was a fish and chip shop, oh well Matthew thought time moves on. Although thinking to himself that at some time it might become a Chinese Takeaway. Anyway everybody have cars these days so there can't be a market for bicycle parts, but fish and chips, well everybody eats them, probably while they sit in their cars. During Matthews time there had been two fishing chip shops within a couple of hundred yards of each other around the square.

Matthew got back into his car and proceeded to drive up Poplar Hill towards Combs. Much was still as he had remembered it, there was a tree missing here and the new house had gone up there, but basically it still remained pretty much as he remembered it. That was until he reached the area he was expecting to find the Prefab houses that used to stand on the Thorny View estate. They had all gone without a trace, and in their place now stood a selection of large detached four bedroom houses. This came as a big shock to him, he had once lived in one of the houses that had been hastily erected just after the end of the Second World War, to house the people in the town displaced by the ravages of war. He had intended stopping just to have a look at them and maybe take a walk round to suck in the atmosphere and scenery that he had once enjoyed. However, the sight of the large monstrosities that were scattered around the site where he had spent his childhood put him off. He drove straight passed heading further up the hill to where his Aunt Betty was now living. Matthew had earlier made arrangements to stay with her until he could found himself a job and hopefully some accommodation.

Aunt Betty met him at the front door and they spent a few moments hugging each other and savouring the moment of their first meeting in just over twenty years. Aunt Betty had been his favourite aunt, the only member of the family who had kept in touch with him during all those years, since Matthew had run away to join the Army. It had been Aunt Betty who had informed him off the tragic news that his Mother had passed away tragically in a car accident, only just a year after he left home. He had not even been able to return to her funeral as at that time he was serving in Northern Ireland. However, Aunt Betty had kept him informed and placed a solitary rose on the grave just for him, as she had each year since.

The rest of that day they spent together just talking and drinking cups of tea, catching up on all of the gossip that both of them had missed out on over the years. Although the conversation kept coming back to what Matthew was intending to do with himself now that he was back in Stowmarket. Firstly he made it plain that he was hoping to settle back into the town that he was brought up in. He would find himself a job, but he wasn’t too sure what he would do. Money was not really a problem after all he had served his full twenty-two years in the service, so he had a full pension to supplement any wage that he might be able to earn. It was going to be hard for him to settle into a new job, especially when interested parties learnt that his skills only incorporated unarmed combat, setting up bobby traps, disarming mines or bombs, and shooting rifles. Saboteur’s skills are not widely required in a small country town and even less in its manufacturing industries. Matthew accepted that there was not going to be many vacancies for those types of skills in a sleepy little town like Stowmarket. Accommodation well that could come later as long as Aunt Betty did not mind him being around and under her feet for a couple of weeks. He was intending to have a bit of a holiday before he even started looking for a job.

Next day Matthew took a bus ride up to the town's market place to have a look around and to get a feel for the town he had chosen to settle back into and make it his new home. However, a big shock awaited him as the town had almost trebled in size, from what he remembered all those years earlier. Stowmarket had now become one of the London overspill towns and had steadily grown with a large influx of cockneys. Here in Suffolk the new comers were offered space, a job, a house and a new way of country side living. However, in their haste, the large numbers that took up the governments offer to escape the cramped housing conditions of the London suburbs, had helped destroyed the unique way of country life that Matthew remembered and had enjoyed as a youngster.

Everywhere he went he could not get away from that unforgettable cockney twang in the peoples voices, as they walked and swirled all around him as he slowly window shopped his way through the town. His most unforgettable memory that first day was that he did not see one person that he remembered from way back. There were no old Teddy Boy mates, no old school chums, no work mates, no nothing. Surely there must be one person still around from his teenage years, they can’t all have moved away and disappeared.

Being Thursday it was Market day and a lot of people from out of town were swelling the ranks of the locals. Matthew began wondering that maybe this was the reason why he was not able to find anybody that he could connect with his past. However, he was also aware that being the daytime most of his old friends if they were still around would probably be working. Although some of them could be on holiday or perish the thought, they might even have died.

The pub that’s where they’ll all be, he thought, I’m bound to find somebody there. So he made his way to the Greyhound, situated by the main traffic lights very close to the market square. The bar was full, but once again he did not recognise one of the happy smiling faces. They were mainly market folk, here for either the selling or buying of live stock or in some other way were connected to the animal sale yards that drew these people to Stowmarket on a Thursday. After downing a small glass of beer, he headed off across the road to the Queens Head Hotel, another well-known haunt for young people all those years before.

This was more like it he thought, as sat around the bar on high stools were a few faces he did recognise from the past. However, there was nobody that he could walk up to and immediately start up a conversation with, but none the less he did know them as people who had grown up in his era. Then as he looked towards the corner he noticed a group of people playing darts and amongst them was the first face he immediately recognised from the past.

It was Brian Lawrence, they both recognised each other at the same time, and walking towards each other with hands out stretch they met up, and shook hands for almost a full minute. Both were smiling and a flood of questions came from each of them. Brian got the drinks in and they settled down at a table by the dartboard, for what turned out to be a long question and answer session that greets most people who have not met for over twenty years.

Brian had been a class mate throughout their entire time at the local secondary modern school. It was Brian who had eventually talked Matthew into joining the Army, so they had a lot in common and a lot to talk about. He had been home on leave after serving abroad for eighteen months and had lots of stories to tell of all his escapades. He had caught Matthew at a time when he had been down in the dumps and at a cross roads in his life. He had big problems to solve, and according to Brian the only way he was going to solve them was to run away and start afresh somewhere. Brian was just offering him an easy way out, somewhere to go, and anyway it did sound interesting and fun, the whole proposition sounded like it was an answer to his prayer. Matthew had pumped Brian for as much detail as possible, mind you he was only hearing the good things the rosy side of service life and what he had gotten up to. Most people tend to gloss over the bad, as if it never happened or even make up a few things to cover it up, the bad is never talked about. He had since learnt that the bad is