The Dream Garage, Revised

The dream garage has been expanded. It was five spaces, which Tiny now regards as "a starter garage, for students". It is now ten. I was not consulted.

The engine control room at night

Yuki had the evening watch in the engine control room, and he had told Tiny, and Tiny had told me, that if we brought tea and did not touch anything, we could sit in for an hour. This is how invitations work on this ship. They pass through three people and arrive with conditions attached.

The engine control room at night is a strange and beautiful place. It sits above the engine room behind thick glass and heavy insulation, so the roar of the machinery becomes a deep, distant hum that you feel through the soles of your shoes. Inside it is cool and calm and dim, lit mostly by banks of screens. There are diagrams of the main engine, showing each cylinder in green. There are gauges for temperatures and pressures I do not understand, and alarms that, Yuki assured me, would be very obvious if they went off. There is a desk. On the desk, last night, was a sheet of lined paper.

On the paper, in Tiny's handwriting, it said: Dream Garage.

The list

I reproduce it here as written, in Tiny's order, which he insists is not a ranking but which he defended exactly as if it were one.

1. Porsche 911 GT3 RS.
2. Ferrari 488 Pista.
3. Lamborghini Huracán Performante.
4. McLaren 720S.
5. BMW M4 CSL.
6. Mazda Miata Turbo.
7. Audi R8 V10 Plus.
8. Jaguar E Type.
9. Toyota Supra.
10. Land Rover Defender 110.

I want to draw your attention to number six.

"That is my car," I said.

"Yes."

"It is between a BMW M4 CSL and an Audi R8."

"Yes."

"It is not, objectively, in that class."

Tiny looked at me with the patience of a man who has explained a lashing system to a passenger. "It is a dream garage," he said. "In my dream, you are bringing it. It has a turbo. It stays."

I do not think I have ever been more moved by a list.

Disputes

There were disputes, naturally.

Yuki objected to the Huracán on the grounds of fuel efficiency, and produced, I promise you, a calculation. Tiny overruled him on the grounds that this was a dream and in dreams fuel is free. Yuki said that even in dreams there should be standards. He has now added a column for this.

I argued for the E Type over the Audi on the grounds of beauty. Tiny agreed so quickly that I suspect he had put it at number eight purely to see if I would say so.

We both agreed the Defender was there for practical reasons, to tow the other nine home when they broke down, and that it would itself break down, and that this was part of the experience.

A visitor

Around ten, Big Kev appeared in the doorway, holding a mug of coffee that I suspect had been there since about four in the afternoon. He looked at the list. He read it twice. He took Tiny's pen.

At the bottom, he wrote "11." and then, in large capital letters, "HER", and drew an arrow pointing through the glass towards the main engine.

"Fourteen cylinders," he said. "Eighty thousand horsepower. Biggest garage in the world." And he handed the pen back and left.

Nobody argued. There is no arguing with that.

The brass object

At the end of the hour, as we were gathering mugs, Tiny reached into his overall pocket and brought out a small rag bundle and put it on the desk in front of me.

Inside was the piece of brass I had turned in the workshop last Saturday. Except it was finished. He had drilled and tapped it, polished it to a deep warm shine, and fitted a short threaded stud. And around the flat face, in small, careful, stamped letters, it said: IAN'S BISCUITS.

It is a knob. A brass knob, for the lid of my biscuit tin.

I did not know what to say. I think I said thank you three times. Tiny shrugged, the way very large men shrug when they have done something kind and want it to be over quickly, and said, "You turned it. I just finished it."

I fitted it to the tin this morning. It is perfect. It is ridiculous. It is the best present anyone has given me in years.

The Chief Officer reacts

I took the tin up to the bridge for dawn coffee as usual. Priya saw the knob immediately. She picked up the tin, turned it in the light, read the lettering, and looked at me.

"Ian's biscuits," she said.

"It says so on the tin."

She opened it by the knob, took a biscuit, closed it again, and handed it back with a smile that was all eyes and no apology.

"I can read," she said. "I just do not see a lock."

Tiny, when I told him at lunch, laughed so loudly that somebody on the foredeck looked up. He said that next time he would make a lock. I said I did not think a lock would help. He said, "No. Probably not," and looked at me in a way I chose not to examine too closely.