The Pretender (14 page)

‘But I saw him, I saw him...’ The boy’s voice faded as he hurried away. I thought that I was safe. But the man hadn’t gone. Anxious to escape, I nearly walked into him. Luckily, he had his back to me. He spoke to the woman. She was rather beautiful, and this made me all the more guilty for my intrusion.

‘Let’s take a look,’ he said.

The door was opened. Still I didn’t dare move. I pressed my ear against the wall of the shed as they moved about.

‘See that muck on the floor? I swept it clean before.’

‘We probably walked it in ourselves just now.’

‘Is there a typewriter in here?’

‘I don’t think so.’

There was a silence, followed by the man again.

‘Feel this lamp. It’s warm!’

A longer pause.

‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing’s been taken.’

‘But... what happened?’

‘Nothing happened. Let’s go.’

Once I’d heard the door being locked behind them I counted to a hundred then got out of the garden the way I’d got in. Shaking off twigs and dirt, I walked back to the station.

I didn’t dare check the manuscript on the journey home. I thought through the plot I’d created, looking for holes, and couldn’t find any. Once I got back to the empty
LR
office, I read the typescript carefully. The title gave a little of the plot away, but I was stuck with it. I wouldn’t get near Dahl’s typewriter again. The typewriter might not be the same as the one used for the earlier story. I couldn’t be sure about this, but it didn’t matter. I’d used Dahl’s typewriter, after all. Elated by my achievement, I took the ancient paper clip from the old story and put it on the new one, which I then inserted into a manila envelope from the files marked ‘1951: miscellaneous’. I hoped my forgery would acquire an early 1950’s aroma by Monday, when I would show it to Tony.

Tony didn’t come into the office on Monday morning. This sometimes happened when he’d had a big weekend. I wasn’t sure what his ‘big weekends’ involved, but could always tell when he’d had one by the bags beneath his eyes. On a good day, Tony could pass for his late fifties. On a bad day, he looked every one of his sixty-seven years. There was the usual huge pile of manuscripts, Saturdays being when most part-time scribblers felt the need to unburden their souls in brown, heavy duty, A5 envelopes. I took my time sorting through them. Amidst the usual rubbish I found that Tim had sent a story,
New Moon
, about four strangers who spend the night in a strange hotel where the staff all disappear. It was too soon to send a story, in the sense that Tim had a piece in the current issue. Yet, given his five year wait for that to appear, it was high time to consider him again.

I read the story at once. Tim’s style had developed, changed. Did it work? I couldn’t tell. I was friendly with its author. How could I separate the words on the page from the person I knew? I wanted to like the story because I was spending Christmas with Tim. So I liked it a lot. But I had no idea what Tony would think.

Lunchtime was long over and Tony still hadn’t shown up, so, for the first time in the year I’d been at the magazine, I rang him at home. He was ex-directory, otherwise he would have been bothered by contributors, but had given me the number ‘for emergencies’. Was this an emergency? There was nobody, to my knowledge, who would notice if Tony had been taken ill. The phone rang and rang, which was odd, because I knew he had an answering machine. It was probably nothing, but I was getting worried. I left it an hour, then located his address in an A to Z and took a tube to Highgate.

Tony lived in a ground floor flat. What would I do if, when I got there, nobody answered the door? Call a neighbour, or the police? I didn’t know. The street he lived on was less expensive looking than I’d imagined. His house was one of the more dilapidated ones. The windows were dirty. It was a dingy day and the windows had net curtains, not something I’d have associated with Tony. It was impossible to see anything going on inside. I rang the bell and waited. No reply. I rang again. Still nothing. I wondered whether his neighbours worked. I’d never heard Tony mention either of them. Which bell should I ring next: the top or ground floor? I was about to press the lower one when a voice hissed over the intercom.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Tony? It’s me, Mark. You didn’t answer your phone, so...’

A buzzer sounded and I pushed the front door open. In the dark hall, mail was piled on top of a doorless cupboard that housed three electricity meters. There were several letters for Tony. I picked them up. What was wrong with him if he couldn’t even make it to the front door?

The door to his flat badly needed painting. I knocked lightly and it opened.

‘I’m sorry you had to drag yourself out here.’

Tony was wearing a red, silk dressing gown. I stepped onto thick pile carpet. His flat had crimson painted walls festooned with an odd mishmash of paintings. But it was Tony who claimed my attention. His left eye had been blackened and his jaw was swollen. A recent spurt of blood stained his upper lip.

‘Have you seen a doctor?’ I asked. ‘Been to Casualty?’

Tony shook his head. ‘Too humiliating.’

‘You don’t have to say how it happened.’

‘Dear boy, they take one look at me and they know.’

‘My mum taught me first aid. Let me take a proper look, clean you up.’

‘There’s no need...’ Tony murmured.

‘It’s either that or I call a taxi this minute and get you to Casualty.’

‘Very well. But...’

‘No buts. Where’s your medicine cupboard?’

As I located iodine, TCP, Savlon, cotton wool and sticking plasters, I felt myself going into role. The calming voice I used with Tony was my mother’s, the one she used with me when I’d been beaten up by bullies.

‘Did he take much?’ I asked, as I finished cleaning his cuts and bruises.

‘Money. A radio. A few CDs. Nothing really valuable.’

Tony was naked beneath his gown. He’d put cream on the bruises he could reach. I applied more, turning a blind eye to the way his wrinkled penis hardened as I rubbed the Deep Heat lotion into his bruised thighs. After making a cup of tea and getting him to go back to bed, I gave him the good news.

‘I found the Dahl story you didn’t use.’

‘You did?’ Tony managed a strange smile. ‘That’s very good.’

‘Having read it, I think I know why Dahl never published it.’

‘Never published it, you say? That’s a stroke of luck. Why would that be?’

‘Too clever-clever for its time, almost post modern. Read it for yourself when you’re back in the office. I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you.’

For the first time, Tony smiled properly, revealing that his attacker had knocked out one of his front teeth. ‘Who’s to say that I don’t remember it from all those years ago?’

I told him the title. ‘Ring any bells?’

Tony shook his head. ‘Mark, I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

Before I left, when he was himself again, Tony told me. ‘Take the rest of the month off. I intend to. I need a holiday, somewhere hot.’

‘I’m going away for Christmas. But until then, I’ll mind the office. What do you want me to do with submissions?’

‘Send them all back, tell them we’re full up until 1999, I don’t care. Unless they’re from people we’ve asked to be in the five hundredth issue.’

‘OK.’ I was disappointed that he wasn’t rushing to read my Dahl story.

‘Thanks for coming here,’ Tony said, ‘for helping. I owe...’

‘Nonsense,’ I told him. ‘You’d do the same for me.’

Tony nodded. ‘We’ve neither of us got anybody,’ he started to say, in the voice he used when he was being wise, paternal. But then he burst into tears, spoiling the effect. I felt awkward. After handing him a tissue, I made my escape.

Back at the office, I was in sole charge of the
Little Review
. I sent Tim a card acknowledging his story and explaining that it would be a while before he heard. Then I rejected the rest of the pile with the appropriate lie. There were two weeks to go before Christmas and I had nothing much to do. I returned to my room and did the only thing I knew how to do. I wrote.

Pretending, as usual, to be somebody else.

Magneta bought an ancient but roadworthy Morris Traveller, into which we loaded all of her and Tim’s stuff. There was no room left for Tim and me, so we travelled by train, arriving in Leam two days before Christmas. This was, Tim confided in me, the first Christmas that he’d not spent with his family in Reading.

‘I’ve never even been to Lancashire before,’ he said, as though there were something romantic about the county. We walked away from the station into a cold wind, pressing on through street after street of grey stone terraced houses and small shops festooned with Christmas decorations. I pointed out the library where my mother used to work. Tim asked me about her. I told him the barest details.

‘What about your father?’ Tim asked.

‘I never knew him.’

‘But who was he?’

I gave the old answer. ‘A fellow student, I think. I don’t know if he buggered off or my mum decided not to tell him she was pregnant by him. Either way, he was never mentioned.’

Sensing my discomfort, Tim changed the subject. ‘Everywhere you look, it’s like stepping back into the fifties. What a great place to write!’

It was true. After fifteen months in London, returning to Leam was like going through a time warp.

‘This is it,’ I told Tim, as we turned into the semicircle of alms cottages. Curtains twitched as I fumbled the key to the front door. I wondered how many of our neighbours had died since I was last here. As a child, I’d got used to death. Every winter took one or two of our neighbours away. My mother couldn’t hide where they’d gone.

At the front door, Mum’s death assaulted me afresh. For a moment, as I stepped inside, I could smell her, sense her, as if she still occupied this dark, dingy house. But then I switched on a light and Tim commented on the mildew. I hurried to the gas fire, promising that we’d get the walls dried out before Magneta arrived in the car.

‘This place is terrific!’ Tim announced, a wild grin spreading across his face. ‘It’s just right for us.’

I went upstairs and dumped my stuff in my old bedroom. The mattress on my single bed felt damp. I fetched an old electric blanket from the attic. Back downstairs, Tim had the kettle on. There was a pile of mail two feet high for me to sort through. The only letter I opened was from Mr Darkland, the solicitor. He informed me of the legal ramifications of my letting the house to friends and suggested I give them a short term assured six month renewable tenancy at a peppercorn rent, so that there could be no issue of their getting squatters’ rights. I put the letter aside, intending to ignore it.

Tim poured tea and began to enthuse about all the writing he meant to get done. My room, once I’d returned to London, would become his study. Magneta would use the living room.

‘Or the other way round, if she prefers.’

By the time Magneta arrived, the house was, at least, warm, though much of the heat fled as we unloaded her and Tim’s possessions from the car. Magneta immediately professed herself in love with the place and amazed that I hadn’t returned before.

‘It’s not home since Mum died. It’s just the place where I grew up.’

‘Have you got a lot of friends to catch up with?’ she asked.

‘I’ve not stayed in touch with anyone.’

Since leaving school, over two years before, I hadn’t seen any of the handful of people I used to hang out with. The only friends I’d made in London were Tony, Tim and Magneta. They seemed to sense this, for Magneta didn’t pursue the subject. Instead, the three of us planned Christmas. There were ten days before I had to be in London to sign on again, though I wasn’t sure whether I should stay that long. While I read some of the mail, Tim and Magneta went shopping.

Soon, ten days seemed too short. We slept late, ate big meals, drank, smoked dope, listened to music and watched television. Seeing Tim and Magneta together, I began to understand something of how intimacy between a man and a woman worked. At first I worried, because they either bickered and teased each other or hardly seemed to talk to the other at all (though both would talk at length with me.) At times, Magneta seemed to dominate Tim. But I couldn’t help hearing them in bed, at night. The Magneta I heard in the next room sounded vulnerable, in love, nothing like the dominatrix I’d imagined.

That Christmas, Magneta’s looks were changing. She’d stopped dying her hair. Her roots, as they appeared, were a gingery brown. Without the gothic make-up, she looked younger. Magneta was, Tim told me when I finally found a tactful way to ask the question, twenty-nine, only two and a half years older than him. That the couple didn’t have long conversations when I was around, I slowly realised, was out of politeness, and because they didn’t need to. They had absolute faith in each other. They chose not to draw attention to their self sufficiency because to do so would only serve to emphasise my loneliness.

Magneta and Tim quickly made friends with the old folks who surrounded us. Magneta proudly told them that Tim was a proper writer, while she wrote dirty books to support him. The neighbours loved this. Magneta had a far more impressive track record than Tim, but she played it down.

New Year came and went and it was time for me to return to London, to my cold flat above the
LR
office, to nine more months before I began my University studies again. I would have preferred to stay in Leam. But Tim and Magneta were ready to begin their new life together and I needed to start over.

‘We insist on paying you some rent,’Tim said, as they drove me to the station.‘No argument or we won’t stay.’

I acquiesced.‘Whatever you can afford.’

Both hugged me goodbye.

‘Come back and visit any time,’ Magneta said, and I promised that I would.

Soho was windy and icy, so much so that it was almost denuded of tourists. The office was as I’d left it. Tony, it seemed, was still on holiday. There was a week before term started, and I could — if I chose — attend the lectures I’d skipped the previous year. After my Christmas with Tim and Magneta, I felt more rounded, as though I were ready for anything.