La Decouverte: Discovery

By Rex Bradley Smith

Marcel arrives in London, from New Zealand, ready to start a new job and a new life away from the painful losses that he has experienced. The first day of work, he meets his bosss wife, Kate, who becomes an important friend to him. When one of his friends, Paul, is injured in a freak accident, Marcel must weigh the meaning of his life.

Along the way we also meet Kristi, with whom Marcel had a failed relationship and who has now reentered his life, this time as a friend. Or is she? And Jeisa, a teacher who encounters a violent parent who makes her pay because his son is not able to learn effectively. The theme of La Decouverte is our carnal and spiritual nature and through our central character, Marcel - and five other important people with whom Marcel relates, we learn what this means.

Through the discussions between Marcel and his friends, their dreams, and some mysterious deaths, we discover that spiritual enlightenment may be the eventual revelation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Feb 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466907997

Rex Bradley Smith

Rex Bradley Smith is married, with five children and five grandchildren. He is a dentist by profession and a specialist in Restorative Dentistry. He has written this book to share some of his beliefs, in a fictional work, with family and friends. He lives with his family, outside of Auckland.

Book preview

Contents

PEOPLE

Mandy

England

Kristi

Paul

Kate

Jeisa

Dinner

Wales

Paul and Ross

Boy On The Beach

EXPERIENCE

Snowdonia

The Dream

Dollmarsch

The Pub

Hospital

Convalescence

India

The Ashram

Challenges

The Far North

Maori Land

Prosperity

TRUTH

Shock

A New Day

A Revelation

The Revelation

PEOPLE

Mandy

Like a leaf in a storm. Mandy had disappeared in the seething current beyond the white water and the rocks, twenty metres ahead of their raft.

The rubber hull careered on through the rapids. Josh, the guide, dived into the deeper water and Marcel stood up to follow. Two men restrained him.

‘We have too many overboard. Josh will get her.’

Marcel cursed them and fell half over the side watching the guide, as he bobbed about downstream.

‘I have her.’ A call came from Josh. Someone up front thanked God and the five remaining on board paddled towards the bank where Josh had dragged Mandy.

…………………

The movement of her bare feet, floating in the water, contrasted the motionless body supported in the long grass. She lay on her back, her head to one side, partly covered by her long hair. She was only ten—beautiful, but the once golden hair was now matted with blood—dark red around the right temple, lighter and diluted as it coloured the water running across her neck.

‘Do you love me Daddy? then touch me,’ she often teased him.

Marcel turned her head gently, but to-day her eyes stared through and beyond him. He fell sobbing across her. She was dead. His best friend was gone.

…………………

‘You stupid wanker,’ said Diane, when Marcel phoned his wife. ‘Fucked now aren’t you without your crutch.’

‘Diane, are you sad?’

‘Should I be?’ she answered, ‘Mandy will be organizing God right now, as she managed my house. And what did you do to save her life anyway?’

‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’

‘That follows,’ she went on relentlessly. ‘I’m going out to have a drink with Rob.’

‘But I am coming home,’ said Marcel. ‘We must talk—please!’

‘Do what you like. Organize a funeral—I’ll probably be sober by then.’

‘I thought this might be more important than Rob.’

‘He’s my boss and a man. God knows what you are.’

Marcel tried again. ‘Did you ever love Mandy?’

‘You try and guess,’ and the line went dead.

‘A woman is it? You’ll get over it in six months, take it from me.’

The statement came from a muscular guy lying on the beach a few metres away.

‘That’s what my wife told me,’ Marcel replied, wondering why he was speaking to a stranger.

‘My name’s Matt,’ said the man. ‘You’re not going back—forget her. They ain’t worth the trouble.’ Matt picked up the bottle of tanning lotion beside him.

‘I guess,’ Marcel replied. ‘But how could you tell?’

‘You look a million miles away and you’re wearing dumb gear for the beach. This is Honolulu mate.’

Three U.S. jets flew low overhead. The bottle fell on the sand.

Marcel reflected. The child in his thoughts was not the picture his new neighbour had described—and he had considered the Hawaian shirt and baggy shorts quite beachy. His pale body and black hair probably were not. A transient here but in London he would look like a native.

‘Where you from mate?’ Matt resumed

‘New Zealand,’ said Marcel.

‘You speak English real good. Is it your second language?’

Marcel wandered off.

A hundred metres along the beach, a no entry sign interested him. The short path beside it led to a private area with a pool, a bar and the entrance to twenty stories of apartments. A paradise for bodies—fat middle-aged men believing the brochures; skinny young women wanting the experience. The reward for endeavour and intellect—to court and copulate. He found a chair facing the inland hills.

‘A drink sir?’ Marcel declined. It had presented itself with invisible hands and practised courtesy. He shut his eyes to escape the sham. All the worries under those lids—so tired… .

‘Love is all around you. You are lucky Marcel,’ his mother had said. The eyes remained shut. A drowned child and a stuffed up marriage—how lucky!

Mandy’s image stilled his thoughts. Peace and hope amidst despair. Even now, four years later, a frequent soliloquy.

Mandy had been Marcel’s only daughter. Her life had brightened his marriage with Diane and her death had slowly extinguished it. Through professional advice he and Diane had tried to recover their past. It had been futile—irritating and expensive professionals. A psychiatrist, who wrote incessantly but couldn’t look at Marcel; a counsellor who gave advice with a self portrait nearby; a hypnotherapist, who after five sessions approached Marcel with his bisexuality; their alcoholic lawyer, so keen to wine and dine Diane; and a medical friend sorry to inform Marcel of his probable schizophrenia.

Pitiable folk who could not change his enduring grief.

…………………

The Waimariri River was not known to be treacherous but everyone had worn life jackets and the rapids had been fun. They were still smiling, leading into a stretch of flat water. The bush there was steep on both sides, creating a silence in which to listen.

‘Be ready to hang on,’ their stern man shouted.

Mandy began laughing as the boat first swayed and then lurched forward. Down a steep incline at speed, then straightening to approach a narrow passage between rocks. One side hit and Mandy was thrown out. Marcel clutched at her right foot but held only a jandal. Her hair was floating beside a patch of blood. A hand stretched upwards before a torrent of white water crashed over her, smothering life there might have been in her broken head.

As if it had not happened, the deep calm of the river surrounded them once again.

Marcel sat with her body laid out on the shore. His finger touched the beauty spot between her eyes. Her soul had departed.

‘Can I drive you to school to-morrow? Will you play the piano to me again? Who will talk to me about God? Who will stroke the roosters, walk in the bush, listen to my boring stories, look into my eyes and say, ‘Don’t worry Daddy?’

They took her away—Where? To heaven?

Marcel had tried to understand. Would she be nearer to him in England?

It had become dark. The plane to London would leave in two hours.

He stood at attention, acknowledging the monolith which towered above him—sterile surroundings. He walked out into the street to hail a taxi.

‘Do taxi drivers care?’ He wondered.

England

So cold-black coats. More ladies than women in the streets of London. Pale faces with blue veins. White smoke in the sky—a sign of clean air, but collars were filthy.

Asthma stirred in the grime of the underground. Above, taxis and tall red buses directed the people.

In the midst of this, Marcel was lost. In a maze on a flat landscape. Feet scuttled past empty parks, bordered by neat iron fences. Who had the keys?

Beyond and above the rush, gray buildings cast imposing shadows—tranquility without harmony; strength without morality. Artists and writers had survived here and some kind of life still thrived—would he?

Who did he know? Paul of course and Kristi, an old flame somewhere in Hampstead. Not to-day, too hard.

He trudged north along Oxford Street to a narrow three-storied building where he rented a room. The old lift made him feel comfortable. Its wooden doors banged shut and the metal box rattled terribly on its slow climb to the third floor.

Marcel’s room was large. It had green walls, an old gray carpet and one window, without curtains—the view, twenty feet to a neighbouring concrete wall.

It was only 5p.m. and the room was dark. Dinner was simple—a bottle of red wine.

Recent images penetrated Marcel’s unconscious, wisps of sanity floating through the rubble. Another shudder and sanity escaped.

…………………

The light attached to the ceiling overhead had a beam which covered not only the working area but also dandruff in her hair and the contours of breasts under a dental bib. Marcel’s focus was on the margins around four porcelain crowns on the front teeth—a bit unclear and shadowed.

He raised his left hand and moved the light. The casting snapped and a face was smashed. Her nose crushed, an eye popped. Those shiny crowns disappeared under the blood which splashed from the face into her mouth, overflowing down her neck on to the floor. Her reclined body was still. The dentist broke the silence.

‘Do you find this work rewarding?’ he said to the nurse, all in white.

A skinny little fellow was ushered in by a pale Mum. When Marcel looked into the mouth, Mum fainted.

‘Doctor there is no oxygen for the gas machine,’ said the nurse.

‘Give me some ether and a mask!’

Off to sleep. But he didn’t wake up.

‘Don’t think he’s breathing,’ said the nurse in white.

‘Who knows,—and where’s the tooth?’

‘It was on the pack.’

‘Hold his ankles up by your shoulders,’ to the saint in white.

Empty stomach—thank God. A whack on the back and a tooth fell out. The little fellow coughed.

Mum recovered about then, to see a very peaceful son.

Time for lunch.

Marcel woke and turned out the light.

Kristi

If you don’t like deep holes don’t come up from Hampstead station—a filthy tunnel in the bowels of the earth, accessed by a well to infinity.

Willow road, a short walk from the eerie exit, represented conservatism—a long row of weather-beaten cars, three-storied residences, locked doors and no visible people. Peek Road, where Kristi lived, was a small side street; an aberration and intrusion into the mother road.

A ninety second hug, cold hands on his neck and Kristi’s mouth upon uncertain lips, welcomed Marcel.

‘I can’t believe you are here,’ she said, ‘and so pale, you almost look English. How long have you been in London?’

‘Two days and one awful night,’ he replied.

‘How do you mean?’ She passed him a drink. Marcel noticed that she moved like a model, her pelvis a little ahead of her nose.

‘Haven’t slept. Too many grotesque dreams,’ he answered honestly.

Kristi perched on the end of a black leather couch—a beautiful woman, her blonde hair tied back in dignified restraint.

‘Marcel, you must be exhausted. I can make you coffee but would you rather rest a while. We can talk later. I have some spreadsheets that I should be checking.’

He took her arm, quite ready to be led. The bed was soft and he was asleep almost before she had removed his second shoe.

Reality is a dream no doubt.

‘Are you all right Daddy?’ said a small girl beside a man in a long white robe.

‘You lied, you bastard,’ said Kristi.

‘How?’

‘Last time, back home, remember all the anguish. You couldn’t do it. A medical problem, you said. What bullshit! How do you feel now, pointing heavenwards, or maybe for you it’s hell.’ She moved confidently. His fingers dug into her legs.

The view, the whole world for the moment, was Kristi. Her breasts, filled the frame above.

Kristi’s eyes were not heavenward. Instead, their light blue gaze, compelling and curious, explored Marcel’s face.

‘Planning an escape,’ she cooed. ‘Don’t fancy your chances.’

‘She laughed. ‘I think I shall have a shower now. Then you can take me to dinner.’

Kristi sang in her shower and Marcel sat on the edge of a woman’s bed, wondering how Samson had felt in his degradation.

An hour later Kristi’s high speed driving had Marcel lost somewhere in the north west.

‘There it is,’ she smiled in the dark. Lights on their right lit up Laeford restaurant. They turned into a long driveway bordered with gardens and ponds. Under a marble archway a gentleman waved his gloved hand.

‘I will take your car sir and you may enter over here.’

‘The Taj Mahal and I am your Queen,’ Kristi gestured.

‘And two thousand workers died for your memory.’

Kristi was a step ahead, immaculate in black. Fitting trousers outlined her figure. Her glowing hair rested upon the shawl across her shoulders. Sheepishly, Marcel looked at his casual baggy trousers and jacket. The cream linen shirt wasn’t too bad.

Marcel drank red wine at the bar, Kristi some bubbly. She became drunk; he did not.

They were very relaxed when eventually shown to their table. ‘We have fresh fish to-night—a delight for your palate,’ said a robotic waiter. ‘They are this moment swimming in the tank behind you.’

And they were—many coloured beautiful creatures on display to be eaten. Marcel coughed into his serviette.

‘Delightful specimens are they not,’ the waiter continued. ‘May I get you another napkin sir?

Kristi hardly noticed, her glass wavering between their reddening faces, as she recalled the past.

‘Remember, darling, when we met. I picked you up at the train. You were my billet for that boring university hockey tournament. Bet you didn’t think a minister’s daughter would be like me.’ Her eyes were tearful and far away.

‘We rode my bicycle through the park the next day, screaming our heads off. Stupid, I guess, as we finished up in a pond. I could have made love right there.’

‘I do remember,’ said Marcel. ‘Your glasses came off and you looked prettier.’

‘Your first compliment,’ said Kristi. ‘You didn’t know anything about women then, did you? When I came down to Dunedin you never missed an art class when I was modelling. You really were a pawn, but so unromantic.’

They danced. Not a performance—swaying, touching and gazing, to music.

‘But I never conquered you, Marcel,’

‘Kristi, do you really like it over here—London and all that. Why don’t you go home?’

‘I love it. I am free.’ The music stopped and they sat down on a small couch. Marcel still held her hand.

‘Do you have any close friends here?’ he said.

‘I have acquaintances—business men, film stars, some criminals probably, and a bishop. Nobody cares, unless you are in debt. With my degree there are plenty of jobs and I get paid heaps.’

‘With modelling on the side,’ he said, becoming irritated.

‘And why not?’ she glared. Actually, I work for a group out of the U.S. who have been teaching on line investing in the American market.

‘How to go broke, I would say,’ Marcel smirked.

‘A temporary decline, for sure, so our seminars are now orientated towards foreign exchange marketing. I occasionally travel to the States.’

‘But you majored in history. You loved it.’

‘Once, I did. I thought there were great characters in our past. My thesis on Marx and Lenin was an attempt to prove it. Do you know what I found? . . . . That many famous men have wished to cleanse mankind of fault and as the philosophy of each gained credence, mass annihilation of human life followed.

Enlightenment was the goal—brutality, the result. Millions and millions have died amidst wars and crimes to create a superior breed. The Nazis, the Russians, the Chinese, African states, the French revolutionaries, the Romans and the Greeks. They all did it. Is there any time in history without slaughter?

I have another degree now Marcel. In business management—

where conversation is about prosperity and I no longer have nightmares about religious and political mayhem.’

‘Just simple greed instead,’ said Marcel. ‘Terrorists may gobble you and your American friends up one day.’

‘Maybe, why would you care anyway?’ she said.

‘Still trying to understand a complex woman, I suppose.’

Kristi’s make-up was looking patchy from the heat.

‘It’s bloody simple,’ she raised her voice. ‘I like living amongst rich people—in fact the more the better. I also like being admired both for my looks and my brains. What gives you a buzz hollow eyes—something must be fascinating, no?’

Marcel dropped his gaze to the fish in their tank. ‘Reincarnation does for sure.’

‘You are weird,’—she was laughing now, ‘which reminds me, I met your old friend Paul in Oxford Street last week. Now, he really was strange but he could paint a bit.’

‘You’ve met him here? Wonderful! He stopped writing to me. What’s he up to?’

‘Curator of a private gallery in Bayswater. Black and gay—what a combination. He would have to believe in reincarnation wouldn’t he. She tossed the hair back from her glistening face and smiled impishly. Maybe you could fall in love with him.’

‘Do I notice a tinge of kindness Kristi?’

‘I am all kindness if it gets me what I want. You, I want and Paul is no threat.’

‘You are a flatterer,’ he said standing up. ‘Shall we go. I should like to be at Pinechester for work to-morrow morning. Will I be sleeping at your place?’

‘You will—providing I let you sleep.’

The drive home was slower and almost uneventful. Kristi had been chattering away when they hit a patch of black ice. The car slid off the road but stopped safely after crushing a few small trees. After the last bump they both started laughing.

‘Déjà vu,’ Kristi exclaimed.

‘Not quite,’ Marcel replied. ‘We didn’t get wet.’

Marcel enjoyed travelling alone on the train. Solitude, only interrupted by an occasional conductor or a polite waitress adding to the sound of wheels on rails.

The old town of Pinechester was quaint. Marcel’s room at the pub was one floor up and cantilevered over the footpath below. Another pub, the Red Lion stood directly opposite in the narrow street. Cars parked outside the town’s Roman walls.

He bumped his head on the ceiling of his room and twice more, as he made his way down the stairs to the street.

‘Will yer be paying yer keep on Fridays sir?’ said a fat woman at a desk near the door.

…………………

Dr. Petherick’s dental surgery was in the next block. Marcel glanced at the sign as he wandered past.

‘Bunch a’ daffs fur yer lady sir! I’ll bwing sunshine inta ‘er life sir!’

‘Yes please,’ something for the fat one at the hotel, Marcel thought.

The man wrapped the flowers very quickly with his very large hands, all the while leaning against a flimsy kerbside cart.

‘Do you have a good business? ‘Marcel asked

‘Yes sir,’ he beamed, ‘but I only does afternoons ‘ere, an all me mornings a’ Colchester. Big town sir, ten miles from ‘ere.’

‘I might pay a visit.’

‘You should sir.’

Marcel strolled around the village square in about twenty minutes. Only a few people took any notice of him. They all had the hotel manager’s features—comfortable, vacant but cheery. He sat down under a tree on a long bench with a table. An old man looked up at him from his lunch—so very old he did not speak. Food seemed wasted on his body.

Marcel wondered about the considerable molecular activity that must still occur in an almost lifeless being. Were molecules just as busy in a rock? A dead leaf fell into his tea.

The entrance to Dr petherick’s surgery was unfashionable.

Flakes of ceiling paint had stuck to the wooden chairs.

The plump receptionist smiled at Marcel.

‘Hullo, I have come for the locum interview,’ he said.

‘Oh, Dr Petherick’s assistant—good!’

The front door opened and a red faced gentleman shuffled the few steps to reception.

‘Melissa, am I late?’ he questioned.

‘Only forty minutes Dr Petherick,’ Melissa offered, in her languid voice. ‘This is Dr Marcel, from New Zealand.’

‘Lovely to meet you my dear old chap,’ Dr Petherick said affably, and he put a hand like a warm sausage into Marcel’s. ‘From New Zealand? Nearly went there once but my leg was playing up. Are you a native Marcel?’

‘No, they are the Maoris,’ Marcel replied.

‘Maoris, ah yes! Cannibals I suppose.’

‘No, not any more.’

‘Have to watch yourself my goodness,’ he continued, still holding Marcel’s hand for support and puffing alcohol in his face. ‘What does your Maori prime minister do with the cannibals?’

‘She is not Maori!’

‘A woman prime minister eh! That is great. Evolution is a wonderful thing. I remember now, she gave our queen a canoe or something. Well Michael, welcome aboard. We might have had a drink but I must attend to some pressing paper work before my next patient’—and he left, aiming for his office door.

Melissa glanced Marcel’s way, then at the wall clock for inspiration.

‘Seems I’ve got to send two patients away. He’s gone in there to have a sleep.’

…………………

Marcel pulled out his phone to ring London.

‘I’m coming home.’

‘Home?’ said Kristi on the other end. ‘That sounds nice.’

‘Bloody hopeless here—the guy’s a creep. I shall be back tonight, if that’s OK. There is another job I can look at in Lambeth tomorrow and I could meet up with Paul too.’

‘Guess you will be late,’ Kristi answered. ‘A couple of hours drive I think. Anyway I am feeling gorgeous, so hurry.’

…………………

‘Marcel, I had an audience of fifty men today. They all think I am stunning. Why do I need you?’

Kristi blurted out the information before he was through the doorway.

‘Maybe you don’t,’ Marcel replied squeezing past. ‘We do hook up with strange people, but thanks for rescuing me tonight.’

‘Your potential fascinates me,’ Kristi continued. ‘I want to be there if any of the unlikely things you believe, ever happen. I would like your baby though.’

‘Careful Kristi, you’re quivering with kindness.’

‘Pulsating you mean. Let’s get to bed and you can check.’

It was comfortable to lie beside her again. She moved closer.

‘Oh God, are you doing that impotent thing again.’

‘Sorry Kristi, I am tired. It’s been a long day.’

"Crap! Your mind has buggered off, who knows where—do you?’

‘No… .’ suddenly he was suffocating.

‘Christ, what now!’ she screamed, as he threw off the sheet and staggered to the open window.

Kristi stroked his back. ‘Can I help?’ God! Marcel, you are frightening me. How often do you do this?’

‘I am frightened too,’ he said quietly, the grip on his chest lessening. ‘It is happening quite frequently—two nights ago and several times in the past year. There is always peace afterwards.

‘Could that include me, strange man?’

Paul

A note for Marcel lay on the kitchen table.

Kristi had remembered an appointment. ‘Two Americans for breakfast.’ Did she mean what she had written? Probably—he thought. ‘See you after work darling. Sleep all day if you like,’ the note finished.

Marcel turned it over and sketched his plans—to visit Paul, look at a job and find digs.

Thanking Kristi occurred to him but he wrote, ‘I’ll keep in touch.’

A big day—maybe too ambitious. But today he felt more capable than yesterday.

…………………

Marcel walked the few blocks from Oxford Circus to Paul’s gallery in Little Portland Street. Paul had loved to paint in his spare time. Had he found his niche?

One step above the pavement, Soliloquy was engraved in silver across double glass doors. A foyer led into the narrow room displaying about fifteen paintings. To one side a fireplace offered warmth. Beyond, was a small office and a coffee area.

Paul, with his back to Marcel was indicating the virtues within one frame, to an elegant blonde viewer. He appeared unaware of her exaggerated femininity and she, unaware of his homosexuality. Marcel slipped past with a ‘Good morning,’ which Paul acknowledged, unseeing.

At a few paces from them Marcel studied the sculpture of a bird’s egg on the upper curvature of a human womb during gestation.

‘Christ, Marcel, it’s you!’ Paul shrieked. ‘Excuse me madam.’

She glared with practised disappointment and strutted towards the exit.

‘Can’t believe my optics. You are an illusion.’ He hugged Marcel warmly. Smiling white teeth in a black face. Black arms in a white silk shirt.

‘The unutterable Kristi must have directed you thus far. My errant friend, here you are from the antipodes to assuage or shatter, I wonder. Soliloquy you have seen, is my temple of creations; where I am visited by fatuous ladies and droll men.’

‘Paul, such a torrent of words and I understand very little. But you are blinking a lot, so I know that you are happy.’

‘The always knowing and intrepid Marcel. I am blessed and delighted that you are here. Of the words, hyperbole surrounds us, but to hear one’s own voice is to grow confidence. If one half of my words are misplaced, does it matter, for I shall know them better on the next occasion. He laughed very loud. Let us now exit the gallery—a cadence before coffee.’

‘It is good of you Paul to give me your time,’ said Marcel.

‘The day is yours if you wish,’ he continued graciously. ‘James, my assistant will arrive at 10.36. The ambience he projects rivals my own. We shall not be missed.’

Paul marched along the inside of the narrow footpath, whilst Marcel tried to match his pace, sidestepping poles, boxes and electrical installations along the way to Margaret Street.

‘Be assured, the coffee will be superb,’ said Paul.

The two sat down as if in Paul’s own lounge. He smiled imperiously around him, but to Marcel a wink and a chuckle.

‘I must buy you some more appropriate clothes.’ He pointed at Marcel’s chest. ‘I know a tailor in Sackville Street who will sew you a warm suit in two days.’

‘If you say so,’