Missing Baluster

Patrice Saiman

Description

The Missing Baluster is Patrice Saiman's exceptional tale, from crib to a young adult. Patrice was the product of a one-night stand between Raoul (47) and Marcelle (24), who went on to marry in 1951. Both parents had a complicated past. Raoul was Jewish, and a decorated soldier under General de Gaulle's French Free Forces and had lost his wife in the war. He was father to their teenage daughter, and now in a relationship with Marianne, with whom he had a baby daughter. Marcelle was a Catholic, separated from Jean, and mother to a 6-year-old daughter. Marcelle had been in a relationship with a German commandant during the Occupation of Paris, who had looked after her and her daughter. Raoul wanted a son and Marcelle wanted security. Patrice was adored by his father and Marcelle had finally got the identity and security she craved. She had become Madame Saiman, the wife of a prolific Paris lawyer and distinguished soldier. The first four years and three months of Patrice's life were seemingly idyllic until Raoul's sudden death aged fifty-three... Those years defined Patrice's future and character. His childhood was spent at ten different schools and boarding schools and living alone in Paris as a 17-year-old, his teenage life was consumed by feeling responsible for his mother. From market seller to door to door salesman, from washer up to waiter, from acting in student plays and on Lebanese television, to helping in his mother's soon-to-go-bankrupt hotel, it was all a long way from the first four years and three months of his life. An escape from his mother to Bristol - where his half-sister was working illegally - would further define Patrice's future. At the age of 22 nothing could frighten him. Possibly...

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 18 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800469174
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Missing Baluster




A BALUSTER CLOSES THE GAPS BETWEEN POSTS
PROVIDING SAFETY FEATURES BY ELIMINATING
EXCESS SPACE THROUGH WHICH
A CHILD COULD FALL



Copyright © 2021 Patrice Saiman

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 978 1800469 174

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd


About the Author
Patrice Saiman was born in Paris in 1948. At the age of 17, and following a rather unconventional childhood, he left France, came to England… and remained. With no qualifications and virtually penniless, he worked as a waiter and door-to-door salesman. Then, in his early twenties, he got his big break, embarking on a career in international steel trading. When he was just 41-years-old, Patrice led a management buyout of a company worth £73 million and with 14 offices around the globe. Today, he still works and enjoys tennis, flying, skiing and keeping fit. Mostly, however, he enjoys his family life in Hampstead, north London, with his wife Liz, and with their three adult children, Nathalie, Sophie and Oliver, and grandchildren, Harriet, Sebastien, Grace and Raphael.




This memoir is dedicated to Liz, my wife
Nathalie, Sophie, Oliver, our children,
Our grandchildren,
Hattie, Sebbie, Grace, Raphael
And one more to come

With all my love and care


Contents
Prologue

One
Champagne and Coffee
Two
Marcelle and the Apple
Three
Raoul and the Topaz
Four
The Goldenberg Avengers
Five
Two Halves
Six
The Terrible Mistake
Seven
A Chalet in the Alps
Eight
Maurice, the Secret
Nine
Claude
Ten
The Papa Lie
Eleven
The Vanishing Au Pair
Twelve
The Lover Leaves
Thirteen
Stardom in the Lebanon
Fourteen
Escape
Fifteen
La Bonne Auberge
Sixteen
Captured
Seventeen
The Bristol Act
Eighteen
The Lunch that Changed Life
Nineteen
Patricia
Twenty
Crying for Help
Twenty-One
Lemmy’s Boys
Twenty-Two
The Flat
Twenty-Three
‘Do you speak French?’
Twenty-Four
The Wedding
Twenty-Five
Au Revoir

Epilogue
Acknowledgements


Prologue
For many years, my childhood was locked away in the dusty past. I did not search for the key. Instead my time and energy were invested mostly in the present, the now. I focused on what I might do in order to improve the future for my family, my staff and my business.
When I had set my heart on accomplishing success and its pleasures, I was not inspired by my childhood which, by the way, was predominantly spent in Paris. In fact, the more I achieved, the further I seemed to move away from my childhood: I left France and came to live in Britain; I tried to give to my children what I had not been given as a child; in terms of career, I was in my early forties when I took the helm of a multi-million-pound business.
As a boy, I had felt that I was invisible. My life lacked stability. As a man, it was almost as if I became visible and, in time, there came the precious stability of family – Liz, and our children, Nathalie, Sophie and Oliver.
I thought that I was distancing myself from my childhood but I was, inadvertently, moving back towards it. Allow me to clarify.
One day – or two, actually – I came close to death. Afterwards, and during a slow recovery, I was encouraged to reassess my life, my journey – to stop and look back. I saw that the path of my childhood certainly had not been an easy one to tread. You shall see this, too.
Yet it is that same path which led me to the success and triumphs of later life. Without one, would I have the other? There I had been, as an adult, escaping my childhood. I did not acknowledge that, at the same time, I was also savouring the fruits of my own misfortune decades earlier. Maybe the point is that in order to fully know an adult, you must first take a long look at his or her childhood.
*
‘The unexplained life,’ wrote Socrates, ‘is not worth living.’ My life needed some explaining, and that’s around about the time I embarked on a self-set assignment. I wanted to piece together the jigsaw of my existence, beginning with my early years in France of the 1950s and 60s.
One by one, the pieces came together, the picture became clearer than ever. There was the fascinating and poignant story of my mother and father, and also of the Jews in Paris, who had survived the concentration camps. There were the war years before my birth, and the lustful German commandant. There was a murder, and then there was Paris, struggling to rebuild her romantic self after the Nazi Occupation. (As I write, I notice the date. The Germans surrendered Paris to the Allied troops, on this very day seventy-six years ago.) This was an all-consuming tale of conflict and glamour, and driven by profound versions of two human traits that I would know well when I began as a trader: greed and fear.
What for me began as a project with a purpose – a tale that might be enjoyed by my children and grandchildren – gradually became a mission with greater meaning. So much so, that now you are at the beginning of a manuscript. It has been a fresh challenge, putting pen to paper to share the memories of the first part of my life, specifically my childhood, which was by no means a normal one. Much of it was written during the lockdown that took place during the coronavirus pandemic, in the spring and summer months of 2020.
We can be sure of two things: we cannot escape our childhood and uncertainty is a certainty. Therefore we should embrace uncertainty as if it is a gift, like a puzzle to solve, a challenge to surmount. Despite the uncertainties of my life – and the traumas and upheaval – there have been people who helped me to get where I am today. I am grateful to them, and will be for the rest of my life. Helping others, especially the young in their careers, has been a bit of a hobby of mine, and it is incredibly rewarding. Today, at the age of seventy-one, I believe that I know as much as I will ever know about myself and my achievements.
C’est tout . I will leave you to begin this memoir which, I hope, helps to explain how an extraordinary childhood can lead to an extraordinary life. This is not a self-help book. It is a true story of what happened and what followed. However, if it gives the reader fresh ideas, then I’d be delighted. If just one person feels inspired by the story – inspired to search for the key to their past, or to see that the seemingly impossible is achievable – then my mission has been accomplished, and it has all been worthwhile.


Patrice Saiman
25 th August, 2020


One
Champagne and Coffee
So often extraordinary things happen in ordinary moments. Two incidents come to mind. The first occurred one evening, as I drank a glass of champagne. The second happened one morning, as I made a cup of coffee. On both occasions my life could have ended. Ultimately, these two episodes took me on a journey, beginning with recovery and then, I suppose, further on, towards a destination of discovery.
It was September 1996, and Liz and I had been invited for supper at the home of our friends, Martin and Sheila Shaw. At that time Martin was my boss, and we had known each other for a couple of decades. Liz and I arrived at their house in north London, and were looking forward to a jolly, relaxed evening, just the four of us. The aromas of cooking wafted from the kitchen, and Marti