Man of Patience

By Curtis Bausse

Who controls your life? You? Think again…

 

Three men reunited fifty years after the Event. So long ago now - it's gone, forgotten, insignificant. But a fourth man remembers only too well…

And now it's payback time.

 

Three men who went their separate ways, lived their own lives, took their own decisions - or so they thought. But what if someone else was deciding for them? Steering them in a direction chosen by him, luring them day by day, inch by inch towards the final reckoning. The anniversary. The celebration. The end.

But what is an anniversary without guests? Puzzled, bewildered, anxious, Melanie watches as the game unfolds, drawn into its grim, inexorable logic. As she finally grasps the horror that has shaped her life, she wonders if the future will ever be hers to decide. Or is she doomed to follow a course set in advance by forces beyond her control? Robbed of her belief that we act of our own free will, shaken to the core of her identity, will she ever be the person she thought she was? She only knows that she must count on no one but herself.

 

Unless, perhaps, she finds a companion she can trust.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Curtis Bausse
• Release date: Mar 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215740118

Curtis Bausse

I grew up in Wales, was educated in England and have spent most of my life in France. I've been writing since the age of 10, when my first poem was sent to a competition by my English teacher. After moving to France, I ran a café-theatre till it got demolished, whereupon I scratched my head, wondering what to do next. Eventually I became a university lecturer, specialising in Second Language Acquisition, even though (apart, obviously, from French) I've spectacularly failed to learn any languages (I'm currently trying Dutch and can already say 'The turtle eats the sandwich', which is very encouraging). I spent two years in Mayotte, a tiny, unknown island in the Indian Ocean, which France bought for 1000 piastres in 1842. Magali Rousseau (my heroine) got into a lot of trouble there, but now, like me, she's back in Provence, where she jogs, paints, and catches murderers. You can find out more about us at curtisbaussebooks.com.

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MAN OF PATIENCE

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Curtis Bausse

Copyright © Curtis Bausse 2023

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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. No part of the contents relate to any real person or persons, living or dead.

I will suppose that some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me.

René Descartes

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Turrells,

Weighley,

Staffs

Sunday June 25th, 1972

Dear Mummy,

I can’t stay here, please will you come and fetch me? Please say yes, Mummy. Please come as soon as you get this letter. You must come, Mummy, please. You must. I can’t stay here. Please don’t tell Daddy, he’ll make me stay if you do. Promise me you’ll come, Mummy, please.

Love from,

Timmy

8th June 2022

17 days before

Chapter 1

I don’t believe in horoscopes except on the days when I do. I don’t really choose them, it’s just some days I think there’s a better chance than others. Today’s one of those days.

Trust that you know what you need to know. You’ve got the experience you need to succeed. Now is a good time to count your blessings, and prepare yourself for more.

The Daily Mail is the crappiest paper ever but the only one in Kyria with a horoscope, so let’s count.

It’s a blessing just to be here. To have got this far. By rights I shouldn’t have. Right from the start it was like I’d been singled out to be a victim, which is what I thought I was until Ryan. No, what I knew I was. No way out. Born with the biggest, lousiest load of cosmic karma ever.

There were ways out of course and I often got close to taking them, but every time Ryan brought me back from the edge. So really there’s only one blessing. Without him I’d never have survived.

My pride and joy. A cliché, yeah, but true. When I think of how he might have turned out, and I see him happy, well-balanced, with a bunch of mates, good at school, and hey, bilingual, I think that’s me, Melanie Cunningham, I did that, all on my own. So yeah, I’m really proud.

Poppy comes back from the kitchen and plonks a cardboard Kyria box on the counter. ‘Chocolate cherry,’ she says. ‘Always a hit.’

I take a quick peek. ‘It’s massive! I told you not to.’

‘Since when does the boss take orders from the bloody staff?’

She’s a blessing too. The coolest employer on the planet. We’re not exactly friends because she belongs to a different world but I don’t think of her as my boss either, or only in the sense of getting paid to work for her. And even then it’s way above the minimum wage and the hours are fixed round my needs, nine-thirty to four, and whenever something crops up, a doctor’s appointment or whatever, she calls in her sister Melia. Sure, it’s a long commute but I’ve worked enough shitty places to know I’ll never find anything else as good.

‘You’re an angel, Poppy.’ I give her a hug and return the cake to the fridge. ‘I’ll take it back tomorrow. It’s French class today.’

I set about making the sandwiches. It’s a tiny place on Limerston Street, Kyria Coffee’n’Cake, with half a dozen tables, a couple more outside in the summer and a few stools by the window, but at lunch the queue stretches practically down to the King’s Road. 

I go in to put a tray of sandwiches on the counter and Poppy comes up to me and hisses, ‘You know what that man just said?’ She points to a man going out. ‘The carrot cake’s disgusting and the place should be called Killya Cakes instead.’ She spreads her arms. ‘What’s with these bloody people?’

She says ‘bloody’ a lot but in her accent she makes it sound like some exotic flower drenched in sunlight. Her name’s Kyriaku, which explains the name of the café. She comes from Thessaloniki but she’s been here ages. Her husband’s some big shot in international finance.

‘Don’t worry about it. Some people are just like that.’

‘Bloody jerk!’ As the man walks out she sticks up a finger to his back, then puts her hands on her hips and sighs. ‘Nice-looking though. Bet he thinks he’s God’s gift to women. Oh, by the way, how did it go last night?’

It takes me a moment to realise what she means. ‘Oh. It didn’t. I mean nothing. No.’

She gives me a wag of her finger. ‘I bet you didn’t even go.’

‘Yes, I did. But I’m not going to find the love of my life at a neighbourhood party. I’ve known them all for years.’

‘Aren’t there any new ones?’

‘Sure. Two married couples. So no dice, Poppy, I’m sorry.’

Another sigh. Yesterday the horoscope had me ‘bringing romantic energy to the table’, or some such nonsense, and it was time to ‘capitalise on my charms’. Poppy was all excited.

‘I think I used up my capital long ago, Poppy,’ I say and get back into the kitchen.

It doesn’t bother me. Supper for Ryan, go over his homework, chat with Denise next door, watch a film if it’s not too long, read a couple of pages, sleep. That’s fine by me.

It’s not like I don’t have charms but these days I keep them under wraps. Oh, I dress OK, I have to in the café, and I can smile and be friendly too, but there’ll be a point where it stops. Welcome the customers, yes. Flirt with them, never. All the more so at a neighbourhood party. It was a sort of thing to try and keep the Jubilee spirit going, but the country’s back to normal now and the spirit wasn’t there.

It’s nice of her to care though. ‘He looks nice,’ she’ll say when a film star type walks in, as if I ought to go and chat him up. She’s flirty herself, goes in for lots of banter with the regulars, but she knows how to keep it just for laughs. She’s married, two kids, she’d never jeopardise that. Me, she thinks there’s something missing from my life. Maybe there is but I just shrug it off. She doesn’t know about all the crap I’ve been through.

When I look at Poppy, I think she has everything. A husband, a house, two children, a sister, a business. She doesn’t even have to work, her husband earns loads. She does it so as not to be bored. It’s not that I envy her - her life’s too far away from mine to make any sense. Too far for me to even dream of.

It’s only a few minutes to Mulberry Walk, where the French lesson is, and I don’t have time to dawdle, but for once I’d like to. Yesterday’s horoscope was rubbish but today’s...  Prepare yourself for more blessings. Why not?

Life is OK. It could be better of course, but it could also be a lot worse. It still has its ups and downs but today I’m happy. Today is a good mood day.

Nine candles tomorrow! We’ve come through all right. We’ve come through the times when I really regretted having him, and now he’s old enough to support me as much as the other way round.

He won’t actually get the cake till Saturday when all his mates come round. A couple of girls too, but for now they don’t feature. I sometimes wonder what his first romance will be like and I have to pinch myself to believe it.

Saturday he’ll get the birthday surprise too. A ride on the Queen Elizabeth Line and then on the London Eye. We should have done the Eye last year but the oven broke just before so it had to wait. I’ve already started saving for his tenth. A day at Chessington World of Adventures doesn’t come cheap.

Poppy says I’m over-protective. Whenever the topic comes up, it’s ‘Lighten up, Melanie!’ or ‘Melanie, give him some slack - let him live!’ Guilty as charged, I admit, but hey, he’s all I’ve got. This is the first year I’ve let him come back from school on his own, or rather with his mate Jamie who’s been doing it two years already. Just on Wednesdays that is, the rest of the week it’s me. It’s only a ten-minute walk, not even that. My excuses weren’t working any more. It’s a busy road. ‘There’s a zebra crossing with traffic lights, Mum.’ The river’s only fifty yards away. He looked at me like Seriously? The river? When I said London’s full of strange people, he pointed out that the only strange person we know is Mr. Fuller in the next block who’s got a nervous tic and sneezes louder than a hand grenade.

The trickiest years are still to come, I know, but I swore to myself I’d see him through to the other side and I won’t breathe easy till I have. I read somewhere that kids aren’t actually a source of happiness, or only when they’re young. Sometimes I wish he could stay nine forever.

Poppy tells me to lighten up, he’s passed the test, let him go back every day like Jamie and give more French lessons instead. I’m thinking about it for next year. This year was just a test and I can’t deny he’s come through with flying colours. The extra dosh would be welcome too, but I’m useless at teaching French. I actually prefer the coffee shop. Yeah, it gets stressful but not in the same way. It gives me a buzz to rush around doing ten different things at once but I can’t teach French. All I do is talk. I hated grammar at school. Before Jessica there was a woman who asked all sorts of questions and I got so confused she looked for someone else.

This one goes OK though. It’s the last before her A-level oral. She wants to be a diplomat. We get on fine and her parents are nice but I still haven’t got used to being in their house. It feels like another planet. It is another planet. This whole area, when I walk around, I feel like I’m trespassing, like someone’s going to come up ask me what I’m doing there. It’s actually quite a relief to be back on the Tube, surrounded by normal people.

I get back home at six-thirty. When he gets back on Wednesdays he goes to Denise next door and plays with Tommy, her youngest, who’s twelve. I count Denise among my blessings too, we get on really well. I take my time getting Ryan’s supper ready, listening to the news, which seems to get more frightening every day. Then I knock on Denise’s door. 

‘Hi, Denise. Can you tell Ryan supper’s ready?’

She makes wide eyes at me. ‘Ryan? I haven’t seen him.’

Chapter 2

Invigilating exams isn’t exactly John Mott’s favourite activity, but neither does he dislike it. Boring certainly, and you can’t get away with reading a book because they cheat like crazy if you do. But there are compensations. Dozens, in fact, in the form of beautiful girls in skimpy summer clothes, so absorbed in their work that they don’t even notice you getting an eyeful. He saunters up and down the aisles of the lecture hall, peering into the wondrous scenery of cleavages. There aren’t many lines of work that offer this as a perk.

‘Time’s up. Stop writing now.’

They never do. You have to go round snatching the papers away from them, though he generally grants a few more minutes to the prettiest ones. In a place like Toulouse there are many.

He checks he’s got the right number, signs the invigilation sheet, and carries them round to the exam secretary’s office. Another signature, and she gives him the packet he’ll be marking himself. Taking, keeping, and losing: the dynamics of control in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Several hours of mind-numbing nonsense to plough through. Oh, well. Buckle down to it straightaway. At least the summer holiday starts soon.

He takes the lift to the staffroom, where he’s photocopying the answer sheet for his fellow examiners when Michel Ponty comes in. They compare their respective burdens - Michel’s bundle of nonsense is on Contemporary British Society - then move on to the price of oil and the latest manoeuvres of Putin. John has of course been following events, and is never short of opinions, but he’s more or less stopped caring about the future of humanity, and Michel’s mastery of the details impresses him. But then Michel did his PhD on Burgess and Maclean, acolytes to the British double agent Kim Philby, so there isn’t much he doesn’t know about Russians and skulduggery.

Michel checks his locker and before turning to go, asks, ‘How’s Phyllis?’

‘Well enough.’ His stock response when he hasn’t the time or inclination to go any further into the tortuous chaos that is Phyllis.

Sometimes John is annoyed that Michel takes such an interest in his life. There’s an element of gloating in it, peeping at the Motts’ dysfunctional setup from the fully functioning, happy comfort of his own. More often than not, though, John is flattered, and many an evening has been spent at Michel’s house regaling him over bottles of wine with tragicomic tales of Phyllis’s antics. But now isn’t the time. The sooner he gets the marking done, the sooner he’ll be on holiday. At the end of the month it’s Tuscany, where one of Phyllis’s friends has arranged a home exchange. Hopefully it will go better than last year, when Phyllis caught him chatting up a waitress and embarked on one of her indefatigable sulks. Life with Phyllis is nothing if not eventful.

Over the past decade, he has made a determined effort to be faithful. A colleague, two students, a car salesman’s wife and a librarian, none of them lasting more than a couple of months. And of course the rather naughty one-off he prefers not to think about. He prides himself on the achievement. Compared to his life pre-Phyllis, he’s been positively monastic.

‘Any news of her daughter, by the way?’

‘Good god, no. Whatever makes you ask that?’

‘I don’t know, just... I was thinking of her the other day. Can’t remember why.’

John makes wide eyes, then grunts and shakes his head. Nothing more to be said. There’s been no news of Melanie for nine years. She could be dead for all they know.

‘Well, see you around.’ Michel points to the exam papers. ‘Give me a call when you’ve finished. We’ll grab a drink to celebrate.’

‘Will do.’ John raises a hand, heading already for his locker. The minutes of the last department meeting, two more meetings planned for next week, and a letter from the UK with his university address printed on a sticker. On opening it he’s confused, as if time has abruptly shifted, plunging him decades into a past that he takes several seconds to bring into focus. The card pinned above his desk at Balliol! At least until it mysteriously vanished one day. A gift from his girlfriend at the time - what was her name? It’s on the tip of his tongue. Judy? Lucy? The face, yes, he sees it clearly - open and trusting, touchingly innocent, with strawberry blond hair and freckles. They bonded over Yeats and Eliot, he remembers that, and went to see plays together hand in hand.

He turns the card over. Nothing is written on the back. He looks at the envelope. Postmarked Colchester. Not much help to him either. He examines the drawing again: a caricature of himself, a long-haired backpacker hitching on a country road. A car has just screeched to a halt, and John is running through a cloud of dust to get in. In the driver’s seat, scythe protruding through the window, is the Grim Reaper. Below the drawing are the words from Emily Dickinson’s poem:

Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me.

Chapter 3

‘There’s a bomb on this plane.’

As Nick Chancey shuffles along the aisle to his seat, a man whispers in his ear, and when Nick turns round in astonishment, the man breaks into a hearty laugh. ‘I always say that when I fly.’ He pats Nick’s shoulder as if they’re old friends. ‘You know why? Because the chance of there being one bomb on a plane is already tiny, so two...’ He grins again, topping it with a wink and saying, ‘Enjoy your flight,’ before moving on.

What extraordinary behaviour! Some people are just unhinged.

Nick stares after him for a moment, then shrugs. He settles into his seat and does up the belt.

Just some clever clogs trying to be funny. But as they rise above Nairobi, he finds himself gripping his armrest, and later, hitting turbulence over the Med, he closes his eyes, his lips moving in silent prayer. His belief in God is vague and half-hearted, but something about that man has unnerved him.

He says to himself that at least it will be over quickly, and with luck some part of what he once was will be found amongst the wreckage, something that might allow his family to hold a ceremony. He will be put to rest and there will be closure and everyone can move on.

He shakes his head. Nonsense! He’s feeling bilious from last night’s sambusa - it must have upset the balance in his brain, making him amplify the incident. When he gets up to go to the toilet, he catches the man’s eye on his way back. He turns away quickly, repelled by the ghoulish grin and an ostentatious thumbs-up.

The plane, as it happens, lands without incident. As he waits for his luggage, he allows himself a silent celebration: God has granted him a reprieve and he must make good use of it.

Perhaps the morbid train of thought has something to do with the fire. He’d taken out a photograph album, one he hadn’t looked at for many years, and it was still on his desk, connected to his cigar by the Sunday paper, when he fell asleep. There was no damage apart from a few blackened pictures and the molten plastic of the album, but it brought to him a sobering awareness of passing time.

He’d been looking at the album because of the upcoming trip. He hadn’t been back to Nairobi for almost fifty years, and he knew it had changed of course, but he fancied he’d rediscover the thrill and fascination of his boyhood visits. He’d connect the city to the photographs and the past would meet up with the present, and in some almost mystical way confirm that he was the person he’d set out to be.

But nothing was left of his childhood. The snarling city of today had lost every trace of magic. Not that he’d been there often, except to board a plane at the end of the school holidays, but he did remember a week in 1970, captured in the photos he’d looked at in his study. They stayed at the Hilton, recently built and modern, but the New Stanley stood out better in his memory, the message board in the Thorn Tree, and the cool, long-haired boys and pretty girls. Now it’s the Sarova Stanley, where Nick has just spent five nights, and though it still has the message board, the messages hold not a hint of excitement and adventure. In Uhuru Park, he looked for the spot where his parents fell asleep and he wandered off and came across a stork with a wounded leg and went looking for a gardener and got lost. The park was still there, intact, but he found it disturbing, not aligned as it should be, as if something had shifted and he’d stepped into someone else’s dream. Would it be the same in Nandi? He was tempted to visit, but the tea estate he grew up in was a six hour drive, and he was afraid the magic had gone from there too.

He left Nairobi this morning, mission accomplished. He may not have found the charm of his youth but he’d overseen, to the satisfaction of both parties, a draft contract between the management consultancy firm Bexall Wike, where Nick is the Chief Financial Officer, and the Kenyan government. Thanks to Nick’s visit, the country’s participation in the high-speed railway network projected by the African Union has been detailed, costed out, and sent to the Transport Ministry for approval. And he’ll get a pat on the back from CEO Tom Rushbrook and a nice little end of year bonus. 

When he’s in the taxi, he gets out his phone to call Sonya, but then he holds it in his lap without tapping the screen. The man with the bomb is still preying on his mind and he’d like to tell her about it but he knows she won’t understand. She’ll tell him not to be silly and change the subject. The person he really wants to tell is Anne, but he never phones Anne, there’s no need. Their affair is regular as clockwork, Thursday lunchtime. He’ll put it off till then. She’ll listen. What would be dismissed in two minutes with Sonya could take half an hour with Anne.

He enters the house quietly, almost surreptitiously, and is overwhelmed by its softness. It’s early evening, and Sonya’s playing the piano with the wall lights low, her eyes half closed, and she doesn’t hear him come in. Brahms, he thinks. There’s an expression of bliss on her face. He stands on the threshold to the drawing room, not wanting or daring to disturb.

He goes back into the corridor and stands for a moment at the foot of the stairs, frowning at the picture he passes so often and gives not a second thought to. Inexorable, by George Frederic Watts: a white-robed Death, seen from behind, slowly advances to snuff out the youthful figure of Love, powerless to prevent it.

The intimation of death comes upon him again. But this time it is sweet, mixed with the fragrance of the flowers in the hall and the music coming from the drawing room.

He tiptoes into the living room again, and now Sonya sees him and gets up and kisses him. ‘I thought you’d been delayed – you didn’t call. How was the trip?’

‘Fine,’ he says, and follows her into the kitchen.

She opens the oven and takes out a dish of stuffed aubergine. ‘Charbel’s gone out,’ she tells him. ‘Just the two of us.’

He doesn’t ask where Charbel has gone. What his son gets up to is of minor interest to him.

He isn’t hungry but he eats a bit to accompany her and tells her about Nairobi. She asks if it’s changed much and he describes what it’s like now. As they talk, he thinks again about the man on the plane, but doesn’t mention it. She tells him what she’s done herself, and by the time they clear the plates away, the comfort of routine has been restored.

‘Angela’s got a new contract,’ she says as they go back into the drawing room. ‘Some up and coming pop star whose name I can’t remember. But she’s very excited about it. And she’s putting Liam down for Turrells. She’s arranging a visit.’

‘I’ll give her a call.’ His daughter lives in Finchley with her husband and her son, somehow finding the time to run an interior decorating firm.

The family news over, Sonya switches on the television while he looks through the mail that has arrived in his absence. Bills, special offers, bank statement, The Economist, and a padded brown envelope with something bulky inside. Setting the rest aside, he opens the envelope and takes out an old, scratched, brown leather spectacle case.

He stares at it in amazement, then opens it as you might a box of precious jewels. The glasses he lost in the library! How many years ago? Forty? He clearly remembers the moment, if not the date. He took them off to go to the toilet, and when he came back they were gone. Not just the glasses, the case too, which meant that someone had deliberately put the glasses in the case and made off with it. A few tables away was a girl who said she’d seen someone walk past but she hadn’t paid any attention. Nick looked all round the library, reminded of how he used to be teased at school. This was the sort of prank they might get up to. But this was University College, and he spotted no one he knew who might have played a joke on him. In the end he concluded that it was a mistake.

There’s no indication in the case of who sent it. Nick looks at the envelope. It bears their address, handwritten, but no stamp, so someone must have delivered it themselves. He shakes the envelope and a small card tumbles out. It bears a picture of a wrecked plane with a single word beneath: Inexorable.

Chapter 4

‘You’re sure? You’re sure you haven’t seen him?’

Denise shakes her head. ‘No. I mean, no, I haven’t seen