Potential

Keith Bradbrook

Description

A young boy's creative potential, crushed by prejudice and cruelty, is reawakened decades later following a terrorist attack in Paris. Now an international bodyguard, he feels compelled to trace his childhood friend - a quest that re-ignites his genius. Finally he is able to produce a masterpiece which will unleash the potential of anyone who experiences it. Potential is the story of two 1960's schoolchildren bound together by the Greenwich Meridian - the Line that splits the globe into East and West. The girl who fulfils her destiny, the boy-artist in love with the beauty of colours who has his stolen before it can flower.A future Oscar-winner projected to fame, a legendary American painter regaining his mastery - how art can inspire and re-inspire greatness. London's National Gallery, Barbara Streisand's last West End performance, the 1966 World Cup, all dovetail in a tantalising journey to find the long-lost potential of a great artist who will change the world.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 janvier 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838597115
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Keith Bradbrook

Louis-Leopold Boilly. A Girl at a Window. © The National Gallery, London. Bequeathed by Emilie Yznaga, 1945.

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.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Matador
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ISBN 9781838597115

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

Louis-Leopold Boilly. A Gril at a Window. © The National Gallery, London. Bequeathed by Emilie Yznaga, 1945.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

For my beloved family

Daryle – Elliot, Sarah and Reiss – Tom, Beth,
Tommy and Betsy.

And in memory of Uncle Bert – for the chess
and the stories.

‘Every child is an artist.’
Pablo Picasso

‘Man needs colour to live; it’s just as necessary an element as fire and water.’
Fernand Léger
Contents
Part One
November 2006
October 1965
December 2006
October 1965
Molly at the centre of B’s world
16 July 1966
Molly at the centre of B’s world
16 July 1966
Molly at the centre of B’s world
16 July 1966
The many colours of B
December 2006
The many colours of B
23 July 1966
The many colours of B
23 July 1966
Sometime in 2003 – then December 2006
30 July 1966
December 2006
30 July 1966
September 1966
December 2006

Part Two
The colours of the world

Part Three
1966 – 2006
June 2007
December 2006
June 2007
1996-2006
June 2007
21 May 2007 and the day after
June 2007
July 2008
June 2007
Times in 2007 and 2008
June 2007
The many colours of summer 2009

The Line to the End of the World
Summer 2010
Acknowledgements

Part One
November 2006
West, north, east, south, then west again.
On and on into the night.
Driving, the driving rain. The car, foot down, fantastic shapes in the headlight beams. Tears blinding his eyes. The drive to get away, get anywhere, get away from the red.
Out of the old harbour town, the glare from its multicoloured night lights distorting in the late autumn storm, B swings right at each junction, no knowing why. Speeding away, spray jetting out behind along the roads hugging the coast. A dark Atlantic pounding away somewhere out there. Waves smashing the shores. Turmoil crashing inside him.
Get away from the red.
The red of the little boy’s blood, trickling and oozing out of his limp body. A red shadow of a long-ago day on a Belfast street, re-enacted with equally grim results on a Parisian boulevard. The past blasting into the present. A dark memory exploding into the now. A memory as black as the ocean battering the beaches and rocks beyond the rain-washed car windscreen.
More turns, more blind choices on the road and B stays right. Iron-hard rain pounding down. His field of vision cut to a few phantom metres but not enough to stop such reckless speed.
Get away. Get away from the red.
Blood running through his fingers, dripping silently onto the ground. Blood, the colour of a lady’s lipstick, another echo in time. The little boy and his mother lying on the pavement, his head twisted at a sickening angle, her arm and half a leg hanging over the curb, a handbag’s contents scattered across the road. Victims of clashing worlds, politics and religions. Ancient rivalries played out in the everyday life of the French capital. That city of romance, degenerating into a metropolis of death in a few seconds of thunderous gunfire.
Town and village signs rushing towards him, gripping the wheel even harder. Words flying past unnoticed in his extremis. Flashing place names momentarily lit up on a Normandy road to nowhere.
Pennedepie, Villerville, Hennequeville …
B had reached his bolthole, a little apartment in Honfleur, thinking he could take time out and try to come to terms with the terrible events in Paris. A friend’s keys to the one-bedroom sanctuary in Rue Haute, just a stone’s throw from the peaceful cafes and quaint restaurants overlooking the boats at rest in Le Vieux Bassin , he hoped for some peace, some calm, to gather his savaged nerves and put things into a kind of perspective.
Perhaps there was a chance of plotting a way ahead, a forward course. Perhaps it was just possible to salvage something from his life, his job. For, as he knew all too well, they had always been the same thing. Guardian and protector, the job he had lived in various guises since joining the army at sixteen. That day he left his mother, the market town on the two rivers, the mystical colours of his beloved lakes and hills and his terrible anger to serve Queen and country. The red, white and blue of the flag.
And for a while the charm of the little French port two hundred kilometres north-west from Paris had worked its quiet magic. Sipping an espresso, a beer or two, another cognac while the peaceful life of Honfleur passed him by, B was indeed comforted. There were shades of sympathy in the fresh sea colours and bustle of the hardy post-season tourists strolling in and out of shops, patisseries and bars. Boats bobbed, the sky-blue sky was unseasonably cloudless and a cold, yet benign, sun shone down on the little harbour, each day giving way to evocative moonlight glistening off the historic quais .
Six days of ease had lulled him and B’s world began to wear a softer face. A man of reserve, preferring solitude to crowds, a seeker of detachment not engagement, he even surprised himself on this unsought sojourn. On two occasions, once at a bar in the early afternoon, and later at dinner, without any invitation B had struck up conversations with total strangers. First a German with a military background, no doubt detecting a kindred spirit. Then a recently widowed Englishwoman delicately putting her toe back into the outside world. From the outset, B realised a more physical engagement with the widow was eminently possible and, who knows, this may have been welcome therapy for them both. But at the pivotal moment after coffee he shut the idea off. It had been a long time and mourning was not yet done.
But suddenly, following a light lunch on the Quai Sainte Catherine , this fleeting, fragile, picture-postcard seaside cameo dissolved in an instant and sad, bruising reality crash-landed. Wednesday afternoon, the sun gleaming, a slight breeze, B saw red. Strolling along, hands in pockets, thinking about nothing in particular, a little girl no more than six or seven passed him by.
Wearing a red sweatshirt and white shorts with little red dots on them, the blonde-haired youngster was pulling on her father’s hand. Perhaps she had been denied a present or an ice cream, it wasn’t even a serious show of petulance, more a momentary moan, but the father’s response was so savage, so out of proportion and brazen, B was hand-to-his-mouth shocked. Yes, B, who had seen plenty of violence in the army and then more plying a highly successful career in the international world of personal security. A career, his life, culminating in crushing, guilt-ridden death in Paris.
B watched almost in slow motion as the father, his face remaining perfectly impassive, brought his hand up high and smashed it down on the little girl’s temple. In a moment the strike was repeated, then repeated again, the force of the last blow driving the girl’s little frame five feet away into a shop doorway – stunned, bleeding and silent.
Completely emotionally separated, the father stood perfectly still telling the girl to rise and come to him. Yet even as these words left his mouth, the full force of a fist drove into his face, jaw cracking and teeth popping. B acting in disgust and an instinctive need to protect. The slender little girl in red. The powerful, callous man.
Punches continued to rain down as wild, pent-up frustration and pulsating grief exploded. B saw and felt enraged by red, his favourite colour, the colour of action and at that moment the red of intense and uncontrollable retribution. Punch after punch, the man’s nose pumping blood, the dull thud of his head striking a shop wall, his groans as he reeled at the mercy of a strong, highly-trained professional.
In real time the attack lasted only about fifteen seconds but the man’s life would surely have been in danger had a shrieking voice not pierced B’s red bubble. Glimpsing a woman in the doorway with her arms around the little girl, the madness in his mind flew back to his Principal’s wife lying in the street – victims, violence, mothers.
The punching stopped, the screaming halted, the man slumped deadweight to the ground and cuddling each other tightly the woman and the girl cried in mutual distress. B looked down at his bloodied hands, saw the red, and after a few seconds held