The Pretender

by David Belbin

  ‘We should have a drink to celebrate,’ Francine said, when they’d gone.

  ‘My birthday was two days ago.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘You’re too young to drink,’ I said, then felt stupid, because Francine had probably been drinking wine since she was a child.

  Francine left the room without speaking. I started looking at the homework she’d done for me, correcting it closely. I found where she was up to in her English textbook from school. Her marks were improving. I hardly noticed that ten minutes had passed since Francine had gone out. Then she came back in.

  Francine had brushed her hair and put on make-up. Her jeans had been replaced by a short black skirt with a tight dark blouse to match. I had never seen her like this before — fourteen going on twenty-five. In her hands were a bottle of champagne and two flute glasses.

  ‘Do you know how to open it?’ she asked.

  ‘Your parents will miss the bottle,’ I said.

  ‘They have plenty. I’ve already replaced the one in the fridge. They wouldn’t care... I mean, mind... anyway. We have champagne on special occasions. An eighteenth birthday is a special occasion, is it not?’

  ‘I guess it is.’

  Francine was right. I ought to celebrate.Tuesday night had been a wash-out. Helen had been more interested in the Hemingway manuscript than she was in me. But I wasn’t as naive as she and her ‘Art dealer’ father thought. The watch was a bribe, not a present. They wanted me to lead them to the rest of the Hemingway stories. They’d sell them and keep most of the proceeds. Maybe I should fool them, type up a couple more stories then hide them in some old magazines...

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ Francine asked, as we drank champagne.

  I don’t know why I told her. It could have been because the champagne had gone straight to my head. More likely I was desperate for someone to confide in. Anyway, I told her the whole thing, gesturing wildly or switching into French if the details got confusing. Francine listened with understanding. She didn’t seem to think my imitating Hemingway was pathetic, or deceitful. It amused her.

  ‘A pity I threw the others away,’ I said. ‘Mind you, Paul was having them tested. He’s probably found out that they’re fake by now.’

  ‘Why, if the paper was old and the typewriter was old and the ink was old?’ Francine asked. She had a point. I poured more champagne.

  ‘This... Helen, are you in love with her?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I told her. ‘She’s tres jolie, mais...’

  ‘She’s too old for you.’

  I admitted as much.

  ‘And tortueux, too.’

  ‘Maybe. But I think that’s more her father.’

  ‘And you are not a pede?’

  ‘Philippe thought that was what your father wanted to hear, in case...’ I blushed. ‘You look very nice tonight.’

  Francine blushed too.

  We looked at each other and I made up my mind. I’d been thinking of Francine as a girl, but she was nearly a woman. And she wanted me. Yet I hesitated.

  ‘Your parents.’ I said.

  ‘They won’t be back until very late. Let me show you my bedroom.’

  She picked up the champagne bottle and led me upstairs, glass in hand. I am eighteen years old, I told myself.There was something shameful about my still being a virgin. I was a romantic, too. I wanted to be in love with the first woman I slept with. But Francine knew I wasn’t in love with her and she didn’t mind. Why should I feel bad about it? I finished my second glass of champagne and stepped through the door.

  Nine

  Pre-twentieth century novelists have a big advantage over those who arrived later. They’re not expected to describe sex. There was a time when I got confused reading old books, because a male character would be described as ‘making love’ to a female character in an almost matter of fact way. After a while, I worked out that, prior to about 1930, ‘making love’ meant trying to get off with, while, after that date, it meant intercourse. Between the wars, though, you can’t be sure what the word signifies, not unless you know what generation the author comes from as well as which generation they are writing for.

  Some things are spoilt by putting them into words. This was the first time either Francine or I had been naked in bed with another person. We had all the time we needed. We spent it enjoying each other, edging nearer and nearer to the moment of no return, murmuring sweet nothings. With each new kind of caress, we began laughing like children who were sagging off school for the first time.

  The door burst open as I was tearing the wrapper from a condom. Francine’s father had been taken ill and come home alone. Concerned that his daughter and I weren’t downstairs,

  M. Gabin jumped to the obvious, correct conclusion. In Francine’s bedroom, his face contorted with rage and paternal hurt. Before he could act, Francine jumped between us. Rather than remove his naked daughter, M. Gabin stood back and told us both to get dressed. I babbled apologies in broken French, while Francine protested that we had done nothing wrong, which only made things worse. Moments later, I was running out of the house, while M. Gabin informed me that, if he had his way, I would be imprisoned, deported, or both. As I ran along the avenue, the street echoed with Francine, announcing to the whole neighbourhood that she was in love with me.

  Next day, in our lesson, Philippe advised me to leave the country.

  ‘M. Gabin has connections. He could make life uncomfortable for you.’

  ‘I can’t quit my other job,’ I told him.

  ‘Then at least change your address. I’m afraid I have to stop coming to you, too. Mme Gabin is my boss. I have to be loyal.’

  ‘According to Francine,’ I said, brave now that I’d been sacked, ‘she’s more than your boss.’

  Philippe didn’t deny it. ‘I hope Francine was worth it,’ he said, glancing back as he walked away. ‘If she’s anything like her mother...’ I missed the rest.

  I didn’t take Philippe’s advice about moving house. This was a mistake, because the Sûreté turned up that afternoon and searched my room from top to bottom. They took away the typewriter and my watch, which, they said, matched the description of a consignment that had recently been stolen. I wasn’t worried. The typewriter had been bought legitimately and Paul would be able to produce the receipt for the watch when he returned to Paris. I rang the Mercers’ hotel and was told that they’d checked out. Not knowing where they were staying didn’t disturb me either. I was meeting them the day after next. The Sûreté, meanwhile, advised me to leave the country before they found more charges to throw at me, making dark hints about my indecently assaulting a minor.

  The sensible thing to do was leave right away. I didn’t need the typewriter in England and I would have had trouble explaining the inscription on the watch. But I was reluctant to give up Helen. She would be back by Sunday morning at the latest. I would wait until then.

  Ten

  The police hauled me in again in the late afternoon on Saturday. They returned the typewriter, having accepted that the receipt was genuine, but hung onto the watch, which they again questioned me about. Outside, the sky was beginning to get dark when one of the officers produced a photo of Paul, looking ten years younger.

  ‘Do you know this man?’

  ‘Yes, that’s him, Paul Mercer.’ I hesitated. ‘Is he wanted for something?’

  One officer murmured something that sounded like ‘kidnap’. The other hushed him. Now they questioned me about Paul and Helen, wanting to know everything from what rooms they slept in to how Paul made his money. As I spoke, I realised that Paul paid for everything, not just my services, in cash.

  I didn’t tell the police I was meeting Helen and Paul the following morning. Nor did I mention the Hemingway manuscripts. It was beginning to occur to me that I was in more than one kind of trouble. First, there was my being caught with Francine. Secondly, my connection with the Mercers might have led me into receiving stolen goods. Thirdly, I
was solely responsible for the forging of valuable manuscripts. Tomorrow, I decided, I would tell Helen and Paul where the Hemingway stories had really come from, then get the hell out of Paris.

  When the police released me, it was gone eight. I went to a bar I liked, where I drank a couple of glasses of Pelforth Blonde and played pinball until I was nearly in a state of equilibrium. Then I caught the Metro home. There was a note poking out of my door. It read: I stayed as long as I could. I need to be sure you are safe. You must not call. I will come again tomorrow. I love you. F

  I was touched and a little embarrassed by Francine’s final declaration, but her return was the last thing I wanted. The police were looking for the smallest excuse to lock me up. I wrote a note, saying I was sorry, but the police were after me and I’d had to leave Paris. Then I packed my stuff ready for the morning and went to bed.

  I slept fitfully, waking at least once every hour, before I drifted into a deep sleep just as I ought to be waking up. It was gone ten when I dragged myself out of bed and dressed, expecting Helen and Paul at any moment. But they didn’t come. I made tea, spread jam on dry bread and waited for them. Still they didn’t come. By eleven, I was worried. Perhaps they had been arrested. Perhaps they were on the run and couldn’t return to Paris. By now I had to get going. I quit my small room for the last time, leaving nothing but the typewriter on which I’d written the note for Francine. In my hurry, I forgot to wedge the note in the door as she’d done with the one for me. She would never find my goodbye where I’d left it, on top of the typewriter I was forced to leave behind.

  The flea market was on my way to the Metro, so I looked in. Madame Devonier, the old lady who’d sold me the typewriter, was there again. I asked her if she’d seen a young, attractive American woman with a middle aged man. She had. Helen and Paul had been there at nine, before the market was officially open, looking for very old copies of Paris Match. Nobody had had any to sell.

  I got out of Paris as quickly as I could.

  Eleven

  I caught a train to Boulogne, where I took the cross channel ferry, on which I found myself surrounded by boisterous Brits. They were returning from their Easter holidays laden with cheap booze. I felt alienated from this loud, badly dressed crowd, but they left me with nothing to feel smug about. After seven months in Paris, I spoke the language better, but had hardly penetrated the culture. I hadn’t made one close French friend, unless you counted Francine, my pupil. Furthermore, in trying to relive the experience of expatriate Americans some sixty years earlier, I’d turned myself into a kind of forger.

  I hadn’t written to Mum in over a month. She wasn’t expecting me back until late July or August. Of late, her letters to me had become briefer, almost guarded. I had no idea why. I took the train to Leam where I splashed out on a taxi. I had the driver sound his horn as we pulled up outside my home.

  No-one came to the door. Maybe the library had started opening on Saturday afternoons. I called out as I opened the door, then dragged my heavy bags into the front room, where the day’s mail still lay on the carpet. Had Mum gone away? There were no relatives for her to visit. I knew of no old friends who she might go and see. I wondered whether, worried about me, she might have gone over to Paris. How disastrous if we had crisscrossed each other on the channel! But she had been ill when she last wrote and might still be. I went upstairs to her bedroom.

  I found her in bed, watching her portable television. Hearing me come up the stairs, calling her name, she was trying to get out of bed in order to hide the damn thing. At first I made a joke of it.

  ‘What’s this? Your substitute son?’

  Then I hugged her and at once I could feel that she was wasting away. The diagnosis had been suspected before Christmas and confirmed soon after, but she’d delayed telling me, she said, so as not to ruin my time in Paris. Mum was more ashamed of the TV than of her illness, which was cancer. She had, at most, six months to live.

  I used to resent my mother for all sorts of things. Not giving me a father, for a start. She wouldn’t even tell me who he was. I resented her for not making up a story, which meant that I spent my whole childhood inventing my own: spaceman, soldier, bank robber, millionaire. For a while, I became convinced that my father was the Prince of Wales (Mum had said something nice about him when he was being slagged off on the radio). My best guess was that he had been a student at university. Mum dropped out in her second year in order to have me.

  I resented Mum for not having many friends, for being the single daughter of a single mother. Most of the kids around had extended families of some kind. The nearest that I came to an extended family was the other women who worked with Mum in the branch library.

  I even resented Mum for not having steady boyfriends. She should, I thought, be bringing blokes home to provide me with a male role model, a stepfather, even. I wanted someone clever enough to impress me and famous enough to impress the kids who bullied me at school.

  Most embarrassing, I resented Mum for being what I thought of as poor. Many of the kids at school not only had TVs in their rooms — they wore the latest clothes and went on two holidays a year. I was lucky to get a week in Wales.

  All Mum would have had to have done, back when she was nineteen, scarcely a year older than I was now, was to have an abortion. Her life would have taken a different course. She had meant to be a writer herself, or a university lecturer, writing about other writers. Now I was the only vessel for her ambitions. Worse, I had deserted her in her time of need. She had no-one else, her own parents having died when I was a child, too young for me to remember them.

  I put my life on hold and determined to make her last days as fulfilled as possible.

  Our lives took on a routine. Mum would get up for an hour or two, occasionally leaving the house to get to the corner shop or the doctor’s. Then she would move to the sofa, where she would read or I would read to her.There would be sandwiches or soup for lunch. In the evening, I would cook a meal to her directions. During her last months, she taught me to cook, and how to iron, and budget.The house wasn’t paid off but she had an endowment mortgage, which meant that, when she died, I would own it outright. This was, she said, her only legacy to me. I told her that this was the least important thing she’d given to me. In that, as in so many things, I was wrong.

  After I’d been home a fortnight, I got a letter from Francine. I hadn’t left her my address, but she’d obtained it from Mme Blanc at the agency. Francine had got into my room and found the note, so knew that I had not meant to leave without saying goodbye. She had even recovered the typewriter for me. She gave the address of a friend who would act as a poste restante and pass my letters on.

  I wrote back, glad to unburden myself. I put nothing in my letters that would have caused her parents to blush, while her letters to me were oddly formal, as if she were trying to impress on me how mature she’d become. Perhaps this odd quality was because we both wrote in the other’s language, a decision we each made independently. It was as though our lessons were continuing and we were pretending that the bedroom incident had never taken place. Now that our brief clinch was in the past, though, I was glad it had happened, that somebody had wanted me so much. In my miserable mood, I doubted anybody would ever want me again.

  Mum slept a lot. During these times, I tried to write, but all I managed were pathetic, rhyming poems and self pitying journal entries. The best periods were when I read to Mum. We read biographies of Sylvia Plath and Daphne Du Maurier, a couple of novels by Graham Greene that she’d never got around to, before rereading her favourite, The Quiet American. She requested parts of James Sherwin’s strange, psychedelic masterpiece I, Singer, as well as new novels by her favourite writers, Toni Morrison and Patricia Highsmith.

  The doctor told me Mum’s decline had slowed since I came home. I broached the subject of deferring my university place for another year, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

  Summer came early. For a few weeks, she was able to sit in our sma
ll yard while I read to her.Then she was too ill to get out of bed. In August, when they took her into hospital, we both knew that she would not be coming out again.

  I cleared the house while Mum was still alive. I wouldn’t be able to face doing it once she was dead. I would want rid. Also, though I didn’t tell her this, I was looking for some clue to my father’s identity. I needed something to do. If I found something, Mum would still be there to explain it to me.

  I was still searching for something significant in the clutter on the Sunday morning when the hospital rang to tell me that Mum had died, peacefully, in her sleep, a few minutes before.

  Twelve

  A small life insurance policy paid the funeral costs and left me enough money to make a start in London. Mum and I had discussed what to do with the house. She thought it would be best for me to rent it out while I was at university. That way, I would have a steady stream of income to supplement my grant. (There were still grants, then, but you couldn’t get by in London on a student grant alone.) When I finished my course, I would have a place to live in or a financial cushion to fall back on. I’d gone along with this to keep Mum happy but I meant to sell the house. I wanted to cut all ties with the past and begin a new life in London.

  I visited Mum’s solicitor, Jon Darkland, in his office. He was a small man, Paul Mercer’s age or a little older. But where Paul was ruddy and fleshy, Darkland was lean, with a high forehead and jet black eyebrows. He been mum’s solicitor since the death of her parents, not long after I was born.

  ‘Your mother desired that you would rent out the house to provide you with some funds while you attend university. I can advise you on suitable agencies,’ Darkland said.

  ‘I think I’d rather sell. I’ve no intention of returning to Leam.’

  ‘You may be right to do so. The housing market boom can’t last forever, while rental demand isn’t high in this part of Lancashire. But I should warn you that the proceeds from the house won’t buy you the proverbial shoe box in London.’