Past Present

Norman Burslem

Description

A divorced couple seek financial benefit from an elderly, infirm, close relative. Both impoverished divorcees compete against each other for their future security using a similar tactic.
Alex Stone is unemployed, divorced and broke. In his desperation he remembers how he and his now ex-wife thought of a ploy to obtain a very valuable wrist watch from his father before their divorce. Unfortunately his father is now resident in a care home suffering from dementia. Alex leaves the hostel where he is living and makes his way to North Wales where he finds work and a place to live, sharing an apartment with a youngish woman who works at the home. She is seeking romance; Alex isn’t.
Alex’s ex-wife, Judith, has the same idea. She persuades her new partner and daughter to accompany her to North Wales. Both she and Alex plan to use their daughter’s forthcoming eighteenth birthday as the reason for James Stone to relinquish the watch. Both are desperate for money and a competition ensues. James has lost the watch. This fact leads the competitors to put pressure on care home staff, the local police and the local vicar. The watch is finally found but problems only multiply especially after James dies. Surprisingly the final outcome is positive for James and his daughter.

Sujets

• Relationship
• Family
• Family Life
• Self
• Home
• Fiction
• Divorce

Informations

• Publié par: Balboa Press UK
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781982286750
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

PAST PRESENT
NORMAN BURSLEM


Copyright © 2022 Norman Burslem.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events is purely coincidental.
 
 
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
ISBN: 978-1-9822-8674-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-9822-8675-0 (e)
 
Balboa Press rev. date: 11/29/2022
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
 
Glossary
About The Author

BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
Novels
Family Ways (Austin McCauley)
Nits and other Afflictions (A.H. Stockwell)
Residual Waste (Ditto)
A Cold Awakening (Ditto)
Pengele (Ditto)
Poetry
Poems included in:
3 Novum (Novum Publishing)
5Novum (Ditto)
Circle of Life (Forward Poetry)
Miscellaneous
Tactile and Personal (Novum Publishing)
ONE
S urely that was the Kent coast; so thought Jimmy Stone as he sat in an armchair gazing through the lounge window of the Min-y-Don Care Home in North Wales. He decided to ask the woman sitting next to him, Mrs Whatever, Jimmy couldn’t remember her proper name. She was asleep so he asked Penny who was pouring cups of tea. “Is that the Kent coast dear?” Penny Jones smiled, “No Jimmy we’re in North Wales, don’t you remember? We’re here in Rhys-on-Sea.” Rhys what? Jimmy asked himself, some foreign place then, how had he got here and why? He’d better ask Lizzie, his wife.
The Royalty Disco in Southgate, now he did remember that. Back in the seventies it was, and yes, he had first noticed Lizzie sitting with her friends at a table by the bar. He had lacked the courage to approach her while all her friends were present, but when the dancing started, and most of her friends had been invited to take the floor, he had plucked up the courage to request a dance, after all he was in his best gear, very glam rock with a shiny jacket, new jeans, his brand new trainers, not to mention his expensive haircut. Lizzie had looked him up and down then accepted.
“Nice here isn’t it?” Not the most original chat up line, but she had smiled self-consciously, “I thought you might ask me if I come here often.”
“I know you do,” he had told her, “I’ve seen you here several times before.”
“Oh”.
“Good here, isn’t it?”
“Yes”.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a nursery teacher and you?”
“I’m a student at...” A voice interrupted him, “Jimmy, I’ve brought your tea.”
“Lizzie?” No, it was Penny. “I thought you were...”
“Take your tea darling please.” He did as she asked, the disco event had evaporated, Lizzie with it. The tea was too hot to drink; Jimmy placed it on the table beside his chair and gazed out of the window; now was that the Kent coast? Suddenly he felt tired.
“Jimmy, Jimmy, your tea’s gone cold; I suppose you don’t want it now.” He shook his head. “You’ll be the death of me, James Stone”. Jimmy shook his head again, closed his eyes and slept.
They woke him for the evening meal. Sachin helped him get up and supported him on the way to the dining room. “Liverpool is playing Arsenal tonight, it’s on television,” Sachin told him.
“Arsenal, what’s Arsenal?”
“Football, Jimmy.”
Football? “Ah you mean Bangor City.”
“Well no Jimmy, they haven’t played football for years.”
“Yes they bloody well have, I saw them play Rhyl only last week.”
“If you say so Jimmy.”
They sat him by Mrs Whatever and another woman. This other woman squelched as she walked. “Are you alright dear?” Jimmy asked, “You’re making a funny noise.”
“It’s this catheter thing love; I’ve got this tube from my bladder to a bag attached to my thigh.”
“Now, now Megan, that’s too much information, especially at meal time,” Sachin told her.
“You must be really peed off dear,” Jimmy remarked.
“Right Jimmy, let’s all concentrate on eating, it’s salmon tonight,” Sachin informed them all while suppressing a laugh.
Much later something woke Jimmy up; he looked round his bedroom; that woman was in the room again, “Hey you, what are you doing?”
“Breakfast, Jimmy,”
He looked out of the window, “Is that the Kent coast?” The woman looked bewildered and didn’t answer. A bloody foreigner thought Jimmy, what the hell’s she doing here in Sussex?
He was in the lift; he disliked lifts because on one holiday he and Lizzie had had a nasty experience in one. Yes, he remembered, they were in France, Montauban it was; there was a lift in the art gallery; the lift had broken down between floors, Lizzie and he were trapped. He remembered pressing the emergency button and attempting to explain in French what had happened. It got hotter, both of them had panicked; he had shouted, Lizzie had screamed. Twenty minutes later they had been freed by the sapeurs pompiers. “Thank you monsieur,” Lizzie had said. “De rien,” the fireman had said with a grin on his face. Where was Lizzie now?
There was a slight jolt. “Lizzie, are we stuck again?” Sachin answered for the nonexistent Lizzie.
“No Jimmy, the lift always does that, don’t you remember? Here we are, breakfast.”
Jimmy looked out of the dining room’s main window. Sachin knew what was coming, “Jimmy, that is not the Kent coast, we’re in North Wales.”
They sat him opposite that woman; now what was her name? She spoke, “good morning Mr. erm...erm.”
“Yes, good morning Mrs.....” Now what the hell was the woman’s name? Breakfast passed in silence then he was taken to the lounge. He looked out; there was a seagull on the lawn; it was a herring gull, but where was Dick Turnbull? He and Dick often went collecting birds’ eggs. They had climbed up about thirty feet on to the Great Orme; it was pretty sheer and the sea was below them; Dick screamed as he lost his grip. “Help! help!” Jimmy shouted out loud. A voice cut in, “What on earth’s the matter, Jimmy?”
“Dick’s fallen, get help.”
“Who’s Dick?”
A face filled his vision. “Jimmy you’re in the lounge, don’t you remember; you’ve just had breakfast.”
“Dick’s hurt.”
“Dick’s not here Jimmy.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Chandra, don’t you remember me?”
“There was a funeral, I remember, his mum cried.”
“Now come on Jimmy, I’ve got to smarten you up because Doctor Cresswell is coming to see you.”
“Why, can he help Dick?”
No, Jimmy he’s coming to help you.”
“No good then.”
Chandra ran a comb through his hair. “You still got plenty of hair Jimmy.”
They had always said that and then they said, “You were born with your head in a bucket, your hair’s gone rusty.”
Jimmy pushed out with both hands. “Careful Jimmy, you could have knocked me over.”
“Don’t call me a member of the awkward squad who has spots.”
“Jimmy, I didn’t.”
“Well somebody did.”
Chandra finished combing Jimmy’s hair. “There you are Jimmy; you look really smart; Doctor Cresswell will be here soon so we must take you to your room.”
“Don’t want to, must stay here by Dick.”
A different voice cut in, “It’s okay Jimmy, we’ve taken Dick up to your room already.”
“Will Lizzie be there?”
“She may be on her way.”
Jimmy relaxed and let them help him into a wheelchair. He didn’t hear the whispered conversation between Chandra and Sachin. “Don’t worry,” murmured Sachin, “he’ll have forgotten all about Dick and Lizzie by the time we get him to his room.”
“Who is this Dick?”
“A boy he was friends with sixty years ago. They were stealing birds’ eggs on the Great Orme when Dick fell; he was killed outright when he hit the rocks. Jimmy often mentions him.”
Jimmy was alone when someone entered his room. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Doctor Edwards, I’ve just taken over from Doctor Cresswell; he’s retired, lucky chap. Now I want to examine you and