The Quick Brown Fox Read online

  Title Page

  THE QUICK BROWN FOX

  by

  Stan Mason

  Publisher Information

  Published in 2014 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  The right of Stan Mason to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998

  Copyright © 2014 Stan Mason

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  In a world of reality it was never going to happen. In his heart he wanted it to be so but, in truth, the situation was hopelessly impossible. There was no doubt in his mind that Zelda was beautiful, intelligent, exquisite and sophisticated. At the same time it was clear to him that she could have the pick of any man she wanted. Contrarily, he was obese, ugly, timid, became tongue-tied, was not worldly-wise and sometimes he acted stupidly. And when it came to romance, he was a complete dud. People often thought of him as a fool and he became the subject of ridicule although he didn’t really warrant harsh criticism of that kind. He knew all about his deficiencies, deploring them, recognising that, when all was said and done, he had no chance whatsoever of claiming the heart of a woman of Zelda’s calibre to advance his romantic intentions to a higher level. Yet, for a long time, he had loved her from afar even though she had probably forgotten ever to have know him.

  To step back into the past, they had been in the same class at school together yet, despite the fact that he spent most of the week only a few yards from her, she had hardly ever spoken to him from one term to the next. There was one particular occasion when she had dropped her schoolbooks and, gallantly, he had picked them up. His reward was a wonderful smile which he nursed in his mind for years afterwards. She had touched his heart and he reckoned that he had fallen irrevocably in love with her at that precise moment.

  The problem was that he was extremely shy into the bargain, wholeheartedly reticent and very much backward in the ways of life His inactions were totally unlike some of the other male members in his class who seemed to be able to talk to the girls and woo them over in a junior kind of way. It was something he always wanted to do but it fell outside his ability. Furthermore, they seemed to know exactly what was needed for them to progress in the world after they had left school. They were all certainly worldly-wise. Unfortunately, Don was never afforded such advantages. Destiny had made him awkward, unsociable, wretched and particularly ugly. In addition, he always held back, was forever tongue-tied, regularly ridiculed by many other pupils in his class at school for his obesity and he was bullied by one particular schoolboy who made fun of him all the time. He was a pariah without any hope of happiness or satisfaction in his future life. As a result, Don was never going to enjoy his schooldays, let alone his youth, and, as far as the rest of his life was concerned, he was destined to become a failure. Nonetheless, his knowledge and ability to study was anything but impaired. In fact he was quite adept at a number of subjects at school eventually continuing his studies at a university with all the fees being helpfully paid for by his father, who was a doctor, and also by his mother, who taught English literature at a public school. However, despite parentage, nothing ever rubbed off on him and he was left to pursue his studies on his own.

  Despite all the adversity, he never lost his feelings for Zelda being obsessed continually with his love for her. Admittedly when they were at school together, she was a skinny redhead but he knew that, in time, the pupa had turned into a beautiful butterfly as she matured, becoming well sought after by many men within the confines of her social life. Sadly, this fact was of no comfort to him, He was seriously affected by a number of deficiencies and he had no idea how it was possible for him to overcome them. It was a heavily weighted yoke that he would always have to bear.

  After leaving university, he started working at Universal Energy Inc. an international conglomerate. He was appointed to the London branch which was a subsidiary of the major company having been formed to try to find a new means of energy. Naturally, it was a very small unit which depended a great deal on brainstorming sessions and testing out theories on the science bench, and it suited him very well. There were only two of them employed to undertake the task controlled by a senior officer who never seemed to be available., Little was expected for the tiny amount of expense required to run the unit as it was totally experimental but there was always the hope that a new invention would come to mind or there would be the element of an idea that would provide a new source of energy for the future. His partner in the unit was a man called Bob Harris, a quiet thoughtful scientist who had come to grief at another company and had found shelter with an appointment at Universal Energy Inc. The two men spoke very little to each other even though they had spent over two years working together. Their main aim was to find something related to magnetism which would establish an energy system capable of being useful in transport enabling trains to reach massive speeds safely, firing rockets into space instead of them having to use up heavy loads of fuel to lift off, or for being some use in industrial processes allowing products to come off the line more swiftly. However despite meeting twice each week to put their heads and thoughts together, they had come up with nothing to help the company. Nonetheless this was to change rapidly because over the past month, Robert Harris had started working on a new idea discarding the work they had done on magnetism. Clearly they were not going to make any kind of a breakthrough so the idea was left as a failure. They continued to try out a number of other ideas without success with Harris going into a shell, as he concentrated his mind and his efforts on a new project which he kept secret for a while to himself.

  ***

  Even though some years had past, Don had applied to a dating agency for reason that were really beyond g his ken and through some dint of irregularity, they matched him with Zelda. It had to be a mistake but he readily recognised that no two women could be called Zelda and that he had been connected with his old school friend. Consequently he was able to make contact with her and he continued to do so in writing. One winter evening he sat at the table in his bedsit with a blank sheet of paper set out in front of him. He stared at it bleakly wondering what to write. Words did not come easily to him and he would have loved to write a beautiful poem but it was not within his power to do so. After a short while, he gave a long sigh and picked up his fountain pen preparing to start writing. Although he had not met Zelda since their schooldays, a fair amount of correspondence had passed between them containing many passages of personal attributes, minor achievements, and literary expressions that would have charmed the masters. Sadly they all came from her; none of them from him. Yet, despite the bluntness of his approach on paper, and the intimacy of thoughts they shared, he had not seen her for a long time... had never touched her... had never held her in his arms... nor had he ever kissed her. He paused to reflect the lack of those incidents and, for a moment, his concentration wandered and he looked up to watch the snow drifting gently past the window. Christmas was nigh and he felt that he couldn’t postpone meeting her any longer but what was he to say or do when they came into contact with each other.
His mouth would go dry... he would start to become tongue-tied... he would utter the most ridiculous things in a jerky manner and she would laugh at him... ridiculing him for his failure to communicate properly. He would never be able to win her over. To get her to fall in love him was truly a mission impossible.

  They had written to each other since the beginning of the year and he realised that if he failed to act positively now, they would both revert back to the point at which they started. She would tire of writing to him with no future in mind and that would be the end of it. He was twenty-seven years old, fairly short, very overweight, not interesting to talk to, an extremely dull person, a creature of habit, totally un-worldly-wise and he was still unmarried with no hope on the horizon. In truth, the matter of marriage had never raised its head seriously in the whole of his life for he had always been in love with Zelda and had never considered an involvement or a relationship with anyone else. In any case, women failed to find him charming, or stimulating, exciting, or desirable in any sense of the word, so he had crawled into a shell and had stayed there unattached and unaffected. Very much the same pattern applied to the rest of his life. He hadn’t achieved anything of merit... hadn’t done anything which would cause eyebrows to be raised... hadn’t graduated from university with an Honours Degree... and hadn’t pursued any venture which attracted public interest. Life had been extremely dull and very wretched. Yet, when all was said and done, he had not been totally dissatisfied with the outcome. Admittedly, his life was tiresome at times and he was considered to be a total bore and a target for amusement, but he had accumulated a fair amount of money, found interests such as stamp collecting which took up much of his time, enjoyed his independence and, of greater importance, because he never became involved with women, he recognised that he would never be hurt emotionally. However there was one serious blot on the landscape of his life. Over the years, everything had become extremely narrow in his social life and he began to experience a large element of loneliness. This was the sadder part of his existence about which his grandfather had once warned him... and it was happening to him now!

  Zelda’s letter initially had come out of the blue. On reflection, he believed it had been intended for another person which may not have been far from the truth because they had both applied to the same dating agency at practically the same time. It was one of those remarkable twists of fate that defied statistics. Certainly the agency remained silent on the match, failing to make any reference to an error that was intended to bring two people together from the information provided. It suited Don not to comment or complain about the error for he knew there could be only one woman named Zelda who was the same age as himself. The agency had matched him with his old school friend. Within the confines of his home, he could write to the woman matched with him without the need to interface. In other words, he could write what he liked but he didn’t have to face her. He could do it in his own time, slowly and thoughtfully. Before she came into contact with him, he had worked on his lap-top computer seeking out someone with whom he might share his life with but his efforts had failed miserably. It was a learning curve that he failed to follow because he typed out all the information about himself only to receive a reply which stated: ‘I only go out with my own species... goodbye!’ He then recalled a song sung by Dean Martin which had a first line that went: ‘How do you like your eggs in the morning?’. It was an outrageous suggestion but he felt it might be avante garde, something modern to say, so he typed it out with someone else he found on the Internet data base to receive a reply which said: ‘Unfertilised if you don’t mind! Another time he keyed in: ‘Whisky and sofa?’ The response was: ‘No gin and platonic!’ It quickly became clear to him that he wasn’t going to get anywhere by this system. The women were all far too clever for him but he persisted for a while longer and sent a stupid message which read: ‘If saw you naked, I’d die happy.’ The reply was so pernicious that it almost finished him with his cause. It went: ‘If I saw you naked, I’d die laughing!’ The harsh reply struck a nerve and he felt very deeply amount it saying to himself constantly: ‘Sticks and stone may break my bones but names will never hurt me!’

  He tried one final time and became serious asking: ‘What do you do for a living?’ The reply was ‘I’m a female impersonator!’ That comment, after all the others, was enough for him to end his efforts to find someone on the Internet with whom he might share his life. It was all too surrealistic, too cold and calculating for him to bear.

  In time, however, communication between him and Zelda developed until the best part of a year had flown by. He mused regularly on the many features about her that he imagined he liked so much. Apart from the fact that, in his mind, she was so beautiful, she had a natural wit, her convictions were sound, and there was an air of freshness in the way she wrote. He picked up one of her letters that had become his favourite. It was beginning to show signs of wear and tear from so much handling, but how it touched his heart each time his eyes ran over the words!

  ‘I laugh in the face of adversity. Set my heart for joy. Seek love in the company of others. Look not to judge the errors or weaknesses of people, and close my ears to criticism of their faults . I fear not the deeds which affect the world, and heed not ill thoughts. I seek out nature for its goodness and its legacy of life in the pursuit of happiness and contentment. For each one of us is a child in the sight of God.’

  From all of her letters, Zelda had proved to him that she was a lovely person in both thought and deed. One hardly needed to be a genius to recognise it. It was known to Don that she had married at the age of eighteen, was gifted with a daughter named Debbie, but that she was later divorced. He had gleaned the information from the sheet provided by the dating agency but he never mentioned anything about her private life in any of his letters, not wishing to embarrass her with personal questions about her past. At the same time, Zelda was reluctant to delve into her background and so he learned nothing about the reasons for the divorce. Her daughter was now eight years old and Zelda never divulged why she had approached the dating agency to seek a companion or form a relationship. Don was confused by her action. Her letters showed that she was such a lovely person... sensible... beautiful... why was she so alone? Why hadn’t she met someone else and then married them? There had to be hosts of men lining up to marry such a wonderful woman. Perhaps it was the fact she had a young daughter which meant there was baggage to carry on with a new relationship preventing it from blooming naturally... or maybe it was the fact that she had been divorced and had been badly hurt which clouded the issue. Such assumptions were not for him to say and he chided himself for questioning her intentions or judging her character unfairly. In his opinion, she was always in the right. It had to be that her husband was having an affair with another woman. After all, circumstances often dictated personal situations. Nonetheless, he felt uncomfortable that she seemed to have existed in a vacuum for some years otherwise she would not have contacted the dating agency. Then he reproached himself for getting caught up in a web of his own making. She was right as she had written in the letter! Look not to judge the errors and weaknesses of people. It was a sound philosophy... if only one could be righteous enough to follow it!

  His mind drifted for a moment until his eyes came to rest on the ornate mirror hanging on the wall of his lounge. It was too high for him to gaze at his own reflection while seated at the table... not that he particularly wanted to see his ugly face in the mirror. That was a symptom of the problem. He had become so sensitive about his unattractiveness that he had insisted fervently in his letters they should avoid sending photographs of themselves to each other. She agreed without making a fuss but he felt bitter that his mediocre appearance had forced him to take such action. Some nights, he had gone to bed, laying fully awake with his hands folded behind his head on the pillow dreaming what she might look like after all these years and he kept visualising her lovely smile when he had gallantly picked up her schoolb
ooks after she had dropped them, He was desperately curious to know the truth and he allowed his imagination complete freedom. In his mind she assumed the face of an angel, the body of a beauty queen, and the sophistication of a princess. He had often dreamed that she was in his arms and that they were kissing each other and removing each other’s clothing slowly and sensuously before starting to make passionate love together. They would continue to make love to each other in a most erotic manner, satisfying each other to the full. However dreaming was one thing... reality another.

  He needed to understand that the dating agency operated solely for people seeking relationships as companionship or something much more permanent. It was not a society for married men or women seeking affairs or for those who merely wanted to become pen-pals. Inevitably he and Zelda would have to meet eventually or they would have to stop writing to each other altogether. The second option was far less acceptable. He had spent a large part of his life over the past year building up a sound, almost intimate, relationship with her by post. Admittedly she was a person he hadn’t met for a long time, but if the writing stopped and she was lost to him he would suffer a deep self-inflicted wound. There would be a great deal of pain and the experience of severe loss. Worse still, he would almost certainly return into his shell again. No... the die was cast. It was imperative that they arranged to meet. The only questions was when and where.

  He examined the dates on the calendar carefully. It would soon be Christmas Eve. What better day than Christmas Eve for their meeting! His image of her was set in his mind like a computer programme, yet it was as fragile as glass. More than likely, after they had met, it would be shattered into a million pieces, and his fate would be to live with those fragments of that disasters for the rest of his life. Yet, having thought about the situation very carefully, there was a method by which he could minimise his difficulty the moment they came face to face. In an ideal world, they would arrange to meet at a small hotel for dinner. He would saunter in casually and sit opposite her, presenting her with a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates, in a cool, suave manner intending to sweep her off her feet with a volley of ardent comments about her face, her eyes, her hair and her figure, and tell her the way he felt about her. It was all very simple really... as it ought to be. But Don knew that he would never be able to carry it off. His blood-pressure would rise and he would mumble and bumble in his usual way, stuttering badly, becoming completely tongue-tied, using the wrong body language, and make a complete fool of himself. However an idea grew in his head which he believed would help him to find a way out of his dilemma, In the real world, he planned to dress up as Father Christmas, with a long white beard, and a red festive outfit, enter the hotel with a collection box in his hand, and look at her in the cold light of day giving himself time to adjust to the situation. Then he could leave the restaurant without her knowing who he was, compose himself, and return shortly afterwards, in normal clothing, without the long white beard, to meet her as scheduled. She would never know the difference and he would have had time to adjust him mind and put aside his fears. For once in his life Don became immodest, conceding that he had conceived a brilliant idea.