Mrs Simnel looked at the little mechanism running round and round on the barn floor and said, in the voice of someone really trying to understand, ‘Eee, lad, but what does it do?’

‘Well, I remembered what Dad said about t’time he were watching t’kettle boiling and noticed t’lid going up and down with the pressure, and he told me that one day someone would build a bigger kettle that would lift more than a kettle lid. And I believe I have the knowing of the way to build a proper kettle, Mother.’

‘And what good would that do, my boy?’ said his mother sternly. And she watched the glow in her son’s eyes as he said, ‘Everything, Mother. Everything.’

Still in a haze of slight misunderstanding, Mrs Simnel watched him unroll a large and rather grubby piece of paper.

‘It’s called a blueprint, Mother. You’ve got to have a blueprint. It shows you how everything fits together.’

‘Is this part of the pro-to-type?’

The boy looked at his doting mother’s face and realized that a little more exposition should be forthcoming. He took her by the hand and said, ‘Mother, I know they’re all lines and circles to you, but once you have the knowing of the circles and the lines and all, you know that this is a picture of an engine.’

Mrs Simnel gripped his hand and said, ‘What do you think you’re going to do with it, our Dick?’

And young Simnel grinned and said happily, ‘Change things as needs changing, Mother.’

Mrs Simnel gave her son a curious look for a moment or two, then appeared to reach a grudging conclusion and said, ‘Just you come with me, my lad.’

She led him back into the house, where they climbed up the ladder into the attic. She pointed out to her son a sturdy seaman’s chest covered in dust.

‘Your granddad gave me this to give to you, when I thought you needed it. Here’s the key.’

She was gratified that he didn’t grab it and indeed looked carefully at the trunk before opening it. As he pushed up the lid, suddenly the air was filled with the glimmer of gold.

‘Your granddad were slightly a bit of a pirate and then he got religion and were a bit afeared, and the last words he said to me on his deathbed were, “That young lad’ll do something one day, you mark my words, our Elsie, but I’m damned if I know what it’s going to be.”’

The people of the town were quite accustomed to the clangings and bangings emanating every day from the various blacksmith forges for which the area was famous. It seemed that, even though he had set up a forge of his own, young Simnel had decided not to enter the blacksmithing trade, possibly due to the dreadful business of Mr Simnel Senior’s leaving the world so abruptly. The local blacksmiths soon got used to making mysterious items that young Mr Simnel had sketched out meticulously. He never told them what he was constructing, but since they were earning a lot of money they didn’t mind.