The Pretender

by David Belbin

  I can still picture Helen during those early afternoons together. She was waspish one minute, gossipy and flirtatious the next. In the hotel room, after that first meeting when she’d come from the shower, she always dressed simply and kept her hair tied back, making her profile more angular. She had high cheekbones, but her nose was roman and her brown eyes were a little too close together, a detail that stopped her from being a classic beauty. Yet this fault only made me the more obsessed with her. I decided I could only love flawed things.

  Weeks passed. I made little headway as a potential boyfriend. When I enquired of Helen what she did in the evenings, she was vague to the point of becoming irritating. I don’t want to give the impression that she was stupid. The opposite. Helen picked up French quickly and had opinions about most things she’d read, heard or seen. I lent her books and we’d talk about them. I couldn’t converse with her about TV shows, but she was keen on movies, so, after a fortnight, I suggested that we go to one together. ‘It’s a good way to pick up more French,’ I added. ‘All the Hollywood films are dubbed into French.’

  Helen thought this was a good idea. However, instead of going in the evenings, as I suggested, she insisted that we go during our lesson times. ‘Paul will be fine with it. Don’t worry’. I never checked whether Paul was ‘fine with it’, as I only saw him on Mondays now. This was when he paid me, a week in advance. Helen gave the impression she could wrap her father around her little finger, so we started going to matinees: first once, then twice a week.

  In the cinema, our legs didn’t brush close together. We didn’t hold hands. Even in scary or suspense filled scenes, there was no physical contact. Helen was unshockable. Sometimes, though, she would hook her arm through mine as we walked back to the hotel.

  ‘I try to get Paul to go to the movies,’ she told me, as we left the engrossing Monsieur Hire, one of the few French movies I persuaded her to see, ‘but he says his French isn’t up to it. I tell him, it’s all about the images anyway. I mean, he takes me to the opera, though neither of us speaks a word of Italian.’

  ‘Maybe I should teach him too,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, like he’d allow anyone to teach him anything. Listen, you want to go see the Rolling Stones? Paul was going to take me but he’s got some thing in Milan. I don’t want to go on my own. It’s at the Parc des Princes.’

  I’d seen the posters and knew the date.

  ‘It’s on my birthday,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh, then I guess you have plans.’

  ‘No, I’d love to.’

  Six

  While I had a crush on Helen, a fourteen year old called Francine had a crush on me. I’d picked up some more tuition work from my connection with Mme Blanc. I spent an hour two lunchtimes a week with her friend, Philippe, a travel agent. We met in a cafe not far from Helen’s hotel, so I could go straight from one job to another. It was Philippe who put me on to Francine’s parents, both of whom had jobs in the government. Their daughter needed to catch up on her English because she’d lost six months of school after a scare with meningitis. ‘She’s a pretty girl,’ Philippe warned me, ‘An only child, so they’re overprotective. But don’t worry, I’ve told the father you’re homosexual.’

  I blushed and he added, ‘you are, aren’t you?’

  I shook my head. Was this why I had so little luck with girls? Did they see my long hair, my fresh, innocent face, and, like Philippe, assume that I was gay?

  ‘Don’t tell them that,’ Philippe warned, ‘or you’ll lose the job.’

  I went to Francine’s every Tuesday and Thursday evening, from seven to nine. Having three jobs meant I was now earning enough money to put some aside for university. Francine was pretty, in a tomboyish way. She was tall and thin, with long brown hair. Faint freckles and the last remnants of puppy fat were fast disappearing from her face. She wasn’t what I thought of as my type, even if I hadn’t already been hung up on Helen. I went for women who were mysterious and Francine was frighteningly straightforward. But she had admirers. Boys often showed up when I was round there, though they were never allowed through the door. Before long, I was sure, they would be knocking it down.

  Francine was shy at first. Working with her was less fulfilling than working with Helen, whose French improved in leaps and bounds, making our conversations more of a challenge for me. At first, Francine’s English was hard to stretch beyond simple grammar and phrases she’d picked up from TV and films.

  Initially Francine’s parents would be in the next room, looking in now and then. As the weeks went by, however, their busy social and professional lives meant that they often went out shortly after my arrival. When we were alone in the house, Francine became giggly and — as her English improved — flirtatious. Her main interests were getting me to do her homework for her and ‘curing’ me of my homosexuality, which her parents had told her about. She would ‘accidentally’ brush against me or lean over me to look at a passage, making sure that her small breasts pressed against my upper arm. As a teacher, I should have stopped her, but I didn’t know how to. Anyway, I enjoyed it.

  Philippe told me that Francine had a crush on me.

  ‘Her parents have noticed and they are worried. I had to — assure? reassure? — them that you are not bisexuel. You haven’t done anything with her, have you?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  But I could have, if I’d wanted to. Francine became more worldly by the week. She asked about my other students. When I mentioned Philippe, she told me he was having an affair with her mother. ‘I’ve heard Mum and Dad arguing about him.’

  ‘I thought the French were meant to be liberal about that kind of thing?’

  ‘That’s a — what was the word you taught me? Stereotype. My mother is relaxed about sex, but my father’s parents were Jesuits. He wants me to stay a virgin until I am married.’

  She burst into hysterical laughter, which I didn’t join in. The way my love life was going, she would lose her virginity before I did.

  When I had to cancel a lesson because of the Stones concert, Francine threw a playful fit.

  ‘Why can’t you take me? Who are you going with?’

  ‘The friend who gave me the ticket.’

  ‘Un ami ou une amie?’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘Because if it’s une amie, I’ll kill her!’

  I changed the subject, before the game we were playing got out of hand.

  On our way to the concert I told Helen about Francine and asked for her advice. I was hoping another girl’s interest in me might make spark some jealousy in Helen.

  ‘Is she attractive?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Physically mature?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then have an affair with her.’

  ‘She’s not fifteen yet. It’s against the law.’

  The age of consent was fifteen in France, but such details didn’t bother Helen. She sighed with exasperation. ‘Lots of things are against the law. It makes doing them more interesting.’

  Our seats for the concert were poor. Helen said it was like watching a video on a TV set placed two hundred yards away in an open field. Half an hour in, she suggested we leave.

  ‘Where do you want to eat?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘I can cook, you know. That’s one of the things I miss about living in a hotel. Have you got a kitchen?’

  ‘I share one, yes. But I don’t have much food in.’

  ‘There are supermarkets that open late.’

  Having Helen cook for me wasn’t an appealing prospect. I’d been looking forward to a candlelit, romantic meal. Yet, if I got her back to my room, possibilities might present themselves.

  ‘My place isn’t up to much,’ I told her.

  ‘I should hope not, or we’d be paying you too well.’ We took the Metro to Clichy and found a small branch of Champion that opened late. Helen bought mushrooms and button onions, rice, steak, a red pep
per, garlic, a can of tomatoes, soured cream, three kinds of cheese and two bottles of red wine. We ambled back to my room, with Helen talking about Henry Miller and Anais Nin and me talking about Hemingway. She was halfway through the Meyer biography I’d pressed on her.

  ‘This isn’t so bad,’ she said, as I turned on the timed light on the ground floor.

  ‘It gets worse.’

  I ushered Helen straight into the cramped, grimy kitchen and told her I was going to put the heating on in my room. There, I removed the three eighteenth birthday cards I’d got from home, made the bed, and quickly cleared my small table so we could eat on it. I was putting the gas fire on when Helen wandered in, holding both bottles of wine.

  ‘This is cosy,’ she said. ‘But only a single bed. Poor you. I was looking for some plain flour. Do you have any?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry the kitchen’s so basic.’

  ‘I’ll manage somehow,’ Helen told me, handing over the wine. ‘Open one of these and put them both by the fire. You can’t drink red wine cold.’

  I managed to find a packet of flour in somebody else’s cupboard, then helped Helen to chop vegetables. The kitchen was chilly, so she kept her leather jacket on. When she splattered herself opening a can, I had to dab tomato juice off it. This was the closest we came to touching.

  ‘Cooking always makes me ravenous,’ she said. ‘Let’s have some cheese.’

  While we cooked, we ate hard cheese and drank cold wine, some of which went into the pot.After twenty minutes or so, we’d finished preparing the stew. Helen said it would take at least an hour to cook. The cheese and wine had taken me past hunger, into drunken arousal. Maybe it had had the same effect on Helen. I would never have a better chance than this. Helen followed me into my room.

  ‘You weren’t kidding,’ Helen said. ‘No TV.’

  She fiddled with the radio until she found a jazz station she liked. Then she noticed something. Some sheets of paper had fallen onto the floor when I moved the typewriter from the table.

  ‘What’s this?’

  She picked them up and looked at the papers before I could think of an excuse to stop her.

  ‘It’s Hemingway, isn’t it?’

  They were pages from the stories I’d forged earlier in the year. I said nothing. Looking at her looking at them, I felt my credibility sink. I had mentioned to Helen that I planned to be a writer. But this was the work of a copyist. I tried to find the words for an explanation. What was the point? I could see how absurd it would sound — I was copying Hemingway from memory to improve my style.

  ‘Where did you get these?’ Helen asked.

  ‘I found them,’ I lied. The typewriter was tucked away under my bed, so this story might stand up.

  ‘Where?’ She was alert with interest now, flicking through the pages. ‘I recognise this first one. It’s in an anthology we had to do at school. Where’s the other from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled, for the ‘other’ was all my own work, the story I’d given up. The words were bound to be trite, an obvious pastiche.

  ‘It’s probably not by Hemingway,’ I added. ‘It isn’t in any of the collections I’ve come across.’

  Helen was reading intently. ‘It’s obviously Hemingway,’ she said. ‘The style sticks out a mile. Where did you say you found these?’

  ‘I didn’t. A flea market. They were tucked inside some old magazines.’

  This story was feeble, but it was the best I could come up with at such short notice. Helen seemed satisfied.

  ‘That explains why the paper feels old, but the print looks quite fresh. You know what these are, don’t you? It’s in that biography you lent me.’

  Helen told me the story of Hadley leaving the briefcase on the train.

  ‘Do you know how important these could be? We’ve got to find the rest. Where was the flea market? What magazines were they in?’

  I tried to obfuscate but Helen always got what she wanted. Soon we had arranged to meet on Sunday, when we would go the flea market and look for 1950’s issues of Paris Match. Helen poured more wine.

  ‘Can I take these home with me to read properly?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I found her an A4 envelope. Helen carefully put the pages into it, then inserted the envelope into a thick magazine so that the stories wouldn’t get creased. She drained her glass.

  ‘Now you’d better walk me to the Metro.’

  ‘But we haven’t eaten. The trains run for another hour yet.’

  ‘I’m excited,’ Helen said, drunkenly. ‘I’ve lost my appetite. Anyway, old Paul will be angry if he gets back and I’m not home. We don’t want him thinking that you and me have been up to any hanky-panky, do we?’

  This was the first time that she’d allowed the possibility of our being romantically connected.

  ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘Now that we’re the same age?’

  She gave me a look that was sad yet somehow scornful. Did she knew how much I wanted her?

  ‘I’ll be twenty-one soon,’ was all she said.

  It was the same thing as at school. Girls always wanted someone older than them.

  I walked Helen to the Metro and waited with her for the train to come in. As it pulled to a halt, she kissed me on the forehead. ‘Enjoy your ragout, birthday boy.’

  Then she left with my stories.

  The flame on the stove couldn’t be turned down really low, so the stew had nearly boiled dry by the time I got back. I stirred in the last of the wine and ate a bowlful with a hunk of bread. Helen, it turned out, was a good cook. Still, I couldn’t finish my meal, which was far too rich for me.

  Next day, when I arrived at the hotel, at two the next day, Paul was in the suite, with Carlos Baker’s Hemingway biography open in front of him. Helen was nowhere in sight. Before speaking, Paul looked me up and down, as if sizing me up for a new set of clothes. His voice took on a warm, fraternal tone.

  ‘I’d like you to tell me more about how you found these stories, son.’

  Seven

  I don’t know how convinced Paul was by my cock and bull story about the stories falling out from old copies of Paris Match. Nevertheless, he said he’d accompany Helen and I to the flea market on Sunday morning.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Are you a big Hemingway fan, too?’

  He gave me a puzzled but undoubtedly suspicious look.

  ‘Mark,’ he said, ‘Have you any idea how much those manuscripts might be worth?’

  ‘No.’ I couldn’t see how a few typewritten sheets could have any monetary value.

  ‘I’ve rung the States, checking out those short stories. That second, untitled one, it was never published.’

  ‘Maybe he changed the title.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think he forgot about it, never rewrote it. If the manuscript’s genuine, an awful lot of people will be interested in reading that story.’

  ‘Genuine? Who’d forge a Hemingway story and hide it in an old magazine?’ I asked, looking for a hint of suspicion on his face, but seeing none.

  ‘Makes no sense to me, son. That’s why I want to go and see if we can find some more. Maybe if we find the seller, we’ll get an explanation.’ I nodded, preoccupied with how to handle the situation on Sunday.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Paul went on,‘but I’ve passed the stories on to a man I know who can do certain tests on them — age of paper, all that kind of thing.’ That was it then. The paper and the typewriter might be old enough, but the pages were freshly typed. That was bound to show. By Sunday, Paul would know that I’d faked them.

  Should I tell him now?

  Maybe I would have done had it not been that, just then, Helen walked in. For the first time during an afternoon, her hair was down. She wore a long dress and looked ravishing. ‘I thought we might go to a movie,’ she said.

  Paul smiled his assent.‘You kids have fun. Oh, and Mark, I gather that it was your birthday yesterday. You’re not a teenager any more.’


  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Congratulations. Here, I want you to have this.’

  He handed me a small, oblong box, which I opened. Inside was a gold plated, Swiss watch, a hundred times better than the scratched Timex I was wearing.

  ‘Turn it over,’ Helen said.

  Engraved on the back in were the words: Happy 20th, Mark, from H & P.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ I said, wondering how I would ever explain the inscription to my mother. Paul grinned. Helen kissed me on the cheek. Last night the forehead, today the cheek — at least she was getting closer to the lips.

  The two of us went to see a blockbuster on Boulevard Montparnasse. I think it must have been dubbed into French but there was so little dialogue, I hardly noticed what language it was in. As I walked Helen back to the hotel, I had the sensation that we were being followed. I meant to look back, but just then Helen put her arm through mine. I wished I had the courage to slip my arm around her waist, but I didn’t.

  Next day, Paul telephoned to say that he and Helen had been called away. Helen would have to miss two lessons, but they would be back to meet me on Sunday, as planned.

  Eight

  ‘Nice watch,’ Francine said, in English, when I went to deliver her lesson that night. ‘Did your rich boyfriend give it to you?’

  ‘I don’t have a boyfriend,’ I told her.

  ‘Poor you. Take it off. Let me have a proper look.’

  She reached over and grabbed my wrist just as her mother opened the door to say that she was on her way out. Mme Gabin gave me a funny look.

  ‘Look at Mark’s watch!’ Francine said, and Mme Gabin smiled, because she was using English. I told her it was a birthday present.

  ‘You had a birthday? Your eighteenth?’

  The agency had told the Gabins my real age.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we should give you a pay rise. I’ll discuss it with my husband. Congratulations, Mark. Francine, cherie, we’ll be back very late.’