The Pretender

by David Belbin

  ‘We’re right by my flat,’ I said. ‘Let’s go there.’

  Helen didn’t look at me. ‘It’s not much further to the hotel,’ she said.

  ‘You spend most of your life in hotels,’ I told her. ‘Come to the flat. There’s a bottle of whisky in the office.’

  ‘There’s a mini-bar in the room,’ Helen told me. ‘I’d feel more comfortable there, Mark. Please.’

  That please did it. In silence, we walked along the Strand. When we got to the hotel, the doormen in their top hats and Victorian coats were enough to intimidate me.

  ‘I don’t belong in there,’ I told Helen.

  ‘You must come in,’ she said, insistently.

  ‘No. Let’s say goodbye here,’ I told her.

  ‘I don’t want to say goodbye,’ she said, then kissed me fully on the mouth.

  I wavered and she took my hand, guiding me towards the glass door that glided open for us. We crossed the lobby and were in the lift, alone, kissing again. Helen’s hands were all over me.Too eager. She had become the awkward one.

  How many times since have I replayed in my head what happened next? The room is huge, with two beds, which is a relief because it allows me to think that Helen and Paul don’t sleep in the same bed, that they haven’t had sex in either one. Helen gets a bottle of champagne from the mini-bar and I’m all for opening it right away but Helen tells me to wait. So we kiss and caress and completely undress. Horniness makes me commandeering or maybe it’s that Helen is so submissive I feel able to thrust myself on her but she’s experienced and knows how to stop me from entering her and it’s just starting to occur to me that maybe this is some enormous set up and Paul is going to walk in at any moment freshly arrived from Scotland and shoot me or something like that when I hear Big Ben in the distance, chiming midnight and Helen is out from under me, removing the champagne from the fridge.As the last chime sounds, the glasses are full and, resplendently naked, she holds one out to me and says ‘Happy Birthday’.

  I am twenty years old. My birthday is something I’ve avoided thinking about since Helen told me she’d be gone by today and she will be gone but right now she’s here, giving me champagne kisses, telling me it’s time for my present, and I’m amazed that she’s remembered, after all it’s been nearly two years and I ask her what my present is, although I already know.

  Afterwards, Helen pours the last of the chilled champagne, tells me I must take a bath with her. We get into the large, freestanding bath, filled with bubbles that begin to overflow onto the tiles below, and we sip champagne while washing each other. Now that I’m sated with sex, brilliant sex, Helen no longer seems older than me. She is only very beautiful, and vulnerable. And later, when we are holding each other in bed, I try to talk to Helen about the future, and leaving her husband. But she puts her finger to my lips and we begin to make love for a second time that threatens to last forever, yet doesn’t.

  Then Helen is sleeping, but I’m not. I’m wide awake. I want to shout, and sing, and I pull out my notebook and fill it with nonsense, all about Helen. Then I try to sleep, but can’t. It’s gone four in the morning. Helen’s made no promises to me. We’ve not discussed the future. Maybe it would be best if I go. Only, when I try to leave the bed, her arm reaches over and squeezes my shoulder, as if asking me to stay.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she murmurs.

  ‘I’m fine, but I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Talk to me then,’ she says, though her eyes aren’t open.

  I know what I want to say, but I can’t. Helen wouldn’t leave Paul for me. Looking at her, I’m not even sure that I’d want her to. I have no idea where I’m going next. The magazine’s over and I’ve lost interest in returning to university. I’ve still got most of the money Helen gave me. Maybe it’s time to travel. I’m not ready to write yet, so what I need to do is have experiences, gather material.

  ‘Why did you try to buy that book, earlier?’ I ask her.

  ‘What book?’ She’s not really awake.

  ‘User.’

  ‘Paul rang earlier. He wanted me to find him a copy.’

  Her husband’s name sends a chill through me. ‘Did he say why?’ I ask, but she’s gone back to sleep. I wash and dress. Helen doesn’t stir again. I kiss the nape of her neck, then let myself out of the room.

  Downstairs, the doorman does not wish me ‘goodnight’ as I leave. Maybe he thinks I’m a gigolo who’s been servicing a wealthy guest.This thought amuses me and I get an idea for a story that I’ll start to write as soon as I get home.

  Only that isn’t possible for, as I walk through Leicester Square at five in the morning, I’m conscious of commotion, sirens, large vehicles trying to move through narrow alleys. There’s a fire engine jammed between the Chinese super market and the triple X video store. I see a ladder rammed up the outer wall of the office. A policeman tells me to get back and I tell him that I live there, on the top floor. His attitude changes.

  ‘Anybody else likely to be inside?’

  ‘Not at night, no.’

  ‘You’re very lucky,’ he tells me.‘If you’d been asleep upstairs when this lot started, you’d be a goner by now.’

  This news has no effect on me, for I am already certain about who was responsible for this fire, someone who knew I would not be home. ‘Insured, are you?’ I shake my head. While I have lost a few paltry possessions, Tony has lost his nest egg, his legacy. He will be devastated.

  ‘Pity,’ the officer says, before going off to tell the firefighters that nobody’s burning to death inside. I stare in horror when, on the top floor, there’s a sudden conflagration. Flames shoot into the clear, cloudless, Soho sky. A small part of the history of English Literature is consumed, translated into smoke, never to be seen again.

  Thirty-nine

  Tony arrived a few minutes after me, frantic with worry that I was trapped inside. I called Helen at the hotel. Reception refused to put me through, saying they had instructions not to disturb her. By the time Tony and I made it back to his Highgate flat, early in the afternoon, there was a message from Paul on the answering machine.

  ‘Heard what happened.That’s really tough. Can’t talk. Got a flight to catch. Ciao.’

  ‘I’m a fool,’ Tony said. ‘If only I’d kept the stuff here. But it’s only paper, in the end. You’ve lost everything.’

  ‘At least I wasn’t hurt,’ I told him, adding, ‘and I’ve still got most of the thousand Paul gave me in the bank.’

  ‘I’ll help as much as I can,’ Tony told me. ‘Stay here as long as you want.’

  I thanked him. Tony was my partner in crime, my surrogate father, but I still had no desire to live with him.

  ‘I think I’ll go back to Leam for a while,’ I said.

  The next day found me there. I hadn’t written ahead to say I was coming. Tim and Magneta had said I was welcome any time. I hoped they really meant it.

  Spring arrived later in Leam than London. There were still bluebells in the small flower bed at the front of the cottage. Its front door was newly painted in a rich green. Magneta answered my knock. Her hair was longer and wilder and she had put on weight. She shrieked with delight and hugged me.

  ‘We were only talking about you this morning,’ she said, ushering me inside. ‘We read about it in the papers.’

  ‘You read about it?’ I didn’t realise that the fire had been reported.

  ‘Yes. You were a big fan of his, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I was. Am.’ Now I thought she meant Sherwin.

  ‘And so soon after him giving the story to the magazine.’

  ‘How did you know about that?’ I still thought she meant Sherwin. Magneta looked perplexed.

  ‘I know because Tim was in the same issue. Mark, you do know what I’m talking about? It’s just been on the radio. Graham Greene’s dead. He died in Switzerland, yesterday. Mark, are you all right?’

  My face must have gone pale. Greene had been ill for ages.

  He’d died, more or
less, of old age. Even so, at that moment, I felt that I’d murdered him.

  Forty

  ‘Is this all the stuff you’ve brought?’

  ‘It is.’ My belongings fitted, with room to spare, into an old flight bag of Tony’s. I was travelling light. ‘Something happened.’

  I told Magneta about the fire, how it had destroyed my flat, the archive, even the typewriter that Graham Greene had once written on.

  ‘Was any of it insured?’

  ‘I never bothered with insurance. Tony told me when I moved in that contents insurance cost too much. It was one reason he wanted me there.’

  ‘What about your computer?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘With all your writing?’

  ‘That was on discs, but they were in the fire, too.’

  ‘Oh, Mark. All your work!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ I found myself telling the story of Hemingway in Paris, how Hadley lost all of his stories on the train, so he had to rewrite them.

  ‘And in the end, you see, it worked out fine, because the rewritten stories were probably better than the originals.’

  Only probably,’ Magneta said. ‘You can rewrite too much. Now we’ll never know. Anyway, as I recall, Hemingway didn’t rewrite everything he lost, not by a long shot. Didn’t a couple of those stories turn up?’

  ‘In Paris, yes.’

  ‘I remember. Found by this shady literary dealer who married his foster daughter...’

  ‘Step daughter. Funnily enough, I know them.’ Hesitantly, because there was so much I had to leave out, I told Magneta how Paul Mercer had been on the verge of buying the LR’s archives when the office burnt down.

  ‘Don’t you find that suspicious?’ Magneta asked when I’d finished.

  I found it suspicious.There was nothing about Paul Mercer that wasn’t suspicious. But I couldn’t tell Magneta how I knew that, nor where I was on the night of the fire. It was too embarrassing.

  ‘I suggested the same to Tony, but he told me I was being paranoid. “What motive would Paul have for burning down the building?” he said.’

  ‘He could have taken the archive first.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t be able to sell it. He’d be caught first time he tried. Paul wouldn’t risk his reputation. No, I think we have to put it down to coincidence. The police reckon the fire started in the porn shop on the ground floor.’

  I wasn’t sure I believed this, but Magneta seemed to accept it.

  ‘You’re lucky you woke up,’ she said. ‘Were you in danger?’

  ‘I wasn’t there,’ I admitted.

  ‘You weren’t... oh, Mark Trace, have you finally got a girlfriend?’

  I shook my head, ‘Only sort of.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning she’s married and her husband was out of town.’

  ‘Mark!’ Magneta gave me a look I hadn’t seen before, one that mixed admiration with disdain.

  I was still avoiding questions about this girlfriend when Tim came in. He was wearing a pale blue uniform. Seeing me, he whooped enthusiastically.

  ‘You look well,’ he told me.

  ‘He’s got a girlfriend,’ Magneta whispered, sotto voce.

  ‘It shows. Did you hear about Greene?’

  ‘I heard. What’s with the postman’s uniform?’

  ‘I’ve just finished work. I’m still writing. Don’t worry. But with the baby on the way, we couldn’t get by on what Magneta makes from her dirty books.’

  ‘Baby?’

  ‘She hasn’t told you?’

  ‘I thought he’d notice,’ Magneta interjected, ‘but he’s only been here a few minutes.’

  It was too much to take in: destruction, death, birth, going on all around me. I congratulated them from the bottom of my forger’s heart.

  That evening, we talked about what I would do next. I wanted to remain in London. I could always stay with Tony for a while. I should study for my first year retakes, then, in the autumn, begin my second year at university. Maybe I would switch courses. Maybe not. Money might be a problem, unless I managed to find work on another magazine.

  ‘We should pay you more rent,’ Magneta suggested.

  ‘You’re looking after the house, improving it. That’s all I want.’

  The day before I returned to London, the final issue of the Little Review arrived in the post. Tim and Magneta pored over it.

  ‘He could still pull it off, ’Tim said, gratifyingly, after reading my Sherwin story. ‘I hope there’s more where this came from.’

  ‘So do I,’ I said, though I would be worried if there was. The appearance of an extensive section of A Commune might demonstrate — especially if Sherwin had changed his style — that my version was a fake.

  That night, Tim bought a bottle of scotch and we got drunk. Tim and I talked about our literary ambitions, about novels we wanted to write and the scene we wanted to be part of. Drink gave us confidence — our time would come. Maybe not until the next century.We were young, we could accept that. Possibly the novels we wanted to write were old fashioned, but then the form was an old one. We’d find ways to freshen it up, make our claim. Life, we agreed, was an inexhaustible subject.

  As Tim got excited, he put CDs on: loud, punky music. He and Magneta danced. Fifteen minutes later, Tim flaked out. It was after ten and he’d been up since five. Magneta and I had to help him upstairs to bed.When that was done, I thought she’d join him, but neither of us was tired. So we went downstairs and talked, continuing the conversation in a more measured, cautious register.

  ‘You haven’t said much about your writing,’ I ventured.

  ‘The bottom’s fallen out of the women’s erotic novel,’ Magneta told me. ‘I’m not getting any new commissions.’

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ I said. ‘What about your real writing? It’s ages since you sent anything to the LR. I know Tony asked you to contribute something for the final issue...’

  Magneta sighed. ‘All that’s gone,’ she said. ‘I was never a real writer. I’ve got a bit of talent and I can give people what they want, whether it’s a wank fantasy or a surreal, confessional monologue that makes editors like Tony think there’s something there worth encouraging. But it’s all fake. Tim’s a real writer, working on his stuff every spare moment he can find, not bothered about who’s going to buy it. I’m just a hack. I see a market and sell to it. When I try and write for myself, there’s nothing there.’

  I didn’t know how to reply. ‘You don’t really mean that,’ was all I said.

  ‘I’ve been doing this for ten years. If I was on to something, I’d know by now.’

  Forty-one

  James Sherwin’s memorial service was well attended. I recognised many of the people there. There were faces I’d either seen at literary events or recognised from dust jackets and newspapers. Amongst them were several young writers who couldn’t possibly have known Sherwin, and whom you wouldn’t have guessed could have been influenced by him. Maybe they weren’t and, to them, the memorial service was just another literary beano, where it was important to see and be seen, before retiring to the Coach and Horses to network and catch up on gossip. Richard Mayfield walked straight past me without so much as a nod. Maybe he was lost in thought or perhaps he had been so drunk the evening we spent together that he’d forgotten my face. I preferred these scenarios to the more cynical one, that he was seeking out more influential people than me to sit next to.

  It was the first service of this kind that I’d been to. As people arrived, there was taped music by (according to the order of service) the Grateful Dead and the Pink Floyd. Tony said a few words about Sherwin. A well known actor read the passage about death from Stargazer. This was followed by an excruciating attempt to get everyone to sing Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowing In The Wind’.

  ‘The publisher’s suggestion,’Tony whispered to me. An organ played Bach, restoring calm, and we all filed out.

  It was then I noticed him. Paul Mercer, not accompanied by
his wife, walked rapidly out of the building. He ignored me and gave Tony only a brusque nod of the head. Paul was making a beeline for the chief mourner, Sonia Sherwin. We watched as he offered his sympathies.

  ‘I’ll bet the shit’s after Jim’s manuscripts,’ Tony whispered.

  There’d been some doubt as to whether Sonia could cope with leaving Greece to attend this service. Tony, who’d organised the event, hadn’t known that Sonia was coming until she showed up in the front row of the church. I watched her now, pleased to see her give Paul short shrift, although she accepted the business card he proffered.

  ‘I suppose I ought to introduce myself,’ Tony said, when Paul left her. ‘Would you like to meet the widow Sherwin?’

  There was an informal queue of people wanting to offer their sympathies. We waited for it to clear.

  Sonia Sherwin’s body language was twitchy. She gave the impression she would prefer to be anywhere but where she was. Just as she thought she was clear of well wishers, Tony approached her. The widow flinched at having to talk to somebody else. When Tony introduced himself, she relaxed, but only a little.

  ‘Thank you so much for organising this. I wouldn’t have known where to begin. And thank you for sending Jim’s manuscript. It was very interesting.’

  Tony murmured a few words of sympathy, then introduced me.

  ‘Mark Trace, my editorial assistant. He’s a great admirer of your husband’s writing.’

  Mrs Sherwin held out a black gloved hand and I shook it.

  ‘I’d appreciate it if we could meet before I return to Greece, Mr Bracken. Would you have the time?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I could see I wasn’t wanted, so melted into the background. Paul Mercer was still nearby, his red face standing out all the more because of his black suit and tie. Impulsively, I decided to speak to him. I might glean whether he was behind the fire. Also, Tony had made inquiries on my behalf: the Hemingway manuscripts had been sold for a large sum, if not quite what was reported in the newspapers. I ought to tap Paul up for more money. And I wanted to know if he knew I’d slept with his wife.