The Pretence

by Linus Peters

  Frances, what have you done to me? What the hell

  have I become? Write to me. I beg you. Write me

  to me soon.

  All my love forever

  Simon

  Believe it or not, my biggest nightmare became the Underground. Thank God, I don’t use it that often. I just got this scenario in my head, and once it was there, try as hard as I might, no way could I prise it out again. I was on the train, pulling out of the station, and just as we were about to enter the tunnel, I saw her on the platform. What the hell would I do? Get off at the next stop, catch the train back, and hope she was still there? Get off at the next stop, wait at the same point she’d been on the platform, and hopefully join the next train in the same carriage? Or just panic and punch the damn emergency button? It got to the point that I couldn’t even bear to look out the window. I’d stare at the floor, hide in a book or newspaper, even close my eyes, anything but risk seeing her.

  But I couldn’t close my eyes everywhere. I saw her in pubs, restaurants, passing cars. Even on TV. If I was watching the news, some sporting event, any outside broadcast, I’d catch a glimpse of someone in the background and swear it was her. She was everywhere. Though, of course, the painful truth was, as far as I was concerned, she was nowhere. Yet by now I was writing to her several times a week, and I guess you’re wondering how?

  It started with places, just like Paris, where I knew she’d been, where she might be, but I didn’t really know the address. Her old college friend in Newmarket, her half-brother in Bournemouth, her cousin in New York. I just filled in as much as I could remember, and then made up the rest. Sometimes I didn’t even do that. I’d just describe stuff:

  ‘Frances Lock (the beautiful black girl)

  Third or fourth house on the left

  Next street after the Indian restaurant

  with the gold awning

  The middle of Bournemouth’

  Sometimes I put return addresses on them, sometimes I didn’t. Just depended how guilty, how much of a sad fuck, I was feeling that day.

  But, of course, after a while, the inevitable happened. I ran out of ideas. Out of places she’d mentioned or had any contact with. So I just made up the whole thing.

  I remember the first one quite clearly: ’Frances Lock, 54 Bridge Street, Sydney, Australia - Jesus, I don’t know! I don’t know anything about the place. I do remember her saying once she thought it looked a nice country. From then on, I sent them all over. UK and overseas. Though after a while I became more and more convinced she’d gone abroad. I’d just write the letter, make up an address, and stick it in the post: Frances Lock, via Columbus 14/92, Genoa, Italy; Frances Lock, 1952 Peron Bvd, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Frances Lock, Apt 21, 123-123 Strauss Ave, Vienna, Austria.

  I’ve never been much of a traveller - I tend to just gravitate towards something or somewhere and stay there - but suddenly my knowledge of the world increased overnight. I went through all the states of America and sent a letter to every capital, including Anchorage and Honolulu. Then I did the same with the countries of Europe, from the Baltic states to the principalities. I posted my pain to Africa, my tears to India, my heartache to the Caribbean. God knows, how many letters I sent.

  Occasionally I’d still get the odd ‘return to sender’, even though they were going overseas. Do you know that in Russia they reverse the address? ‘England, London N5, 17B Villiers Lane, Simon Clayton’. Makes a lot of sense in some ways. However, the vast majority of them, I guess, ended up stacked and rotting somewhere, down the end of long and dingy corridors, in dead letter rooms, where old messages go to die and be cremated.

  Or maybe, by some strange coincidence, some of the addresses turned out to be real, or close enough, and bewildered people came down in the morning to be confronted by the intimacies of Frances and my relationship. Sleepily sitting there at the breakfast table, frowns on their faces, looking repeatedly at who the letter was addressed to and who it was written by. That is, of course, if they could read English. Maybe they just shrugged, screwed it up and threw it away. Never knowing, nor caring, that my blood was now on their hands.

  I’m not going to pretend it was normal behaviour. Certainly not for me it wasn’t. All I cared about was that the letters allowed me a drop of hope. Enough to fuel the remotest of dreams. That they’d somehow assist me to a point in the future where I’d be able to get over all this. When I’d finally be able to be myself again.

  Maybe it was the fact that I did feel a little comforted, my mind less under siege, that I phoned Clara and asked if she remembered me and fancied going to see a film some time. From then on it became a regular feature that once a week we did something together. In that way that relationships you’re not sure of often seem to develop; where you won’t let go, nor grasp any tighter. More often than not it was Thursday. Don’t ask me why. And most times the cinema, though occasionally it was a meal or a play. Despite the fact that I did a fair bit of acting when I was at university, I’ve always found live theatre the least satisfying of the arts. Call me a philistine, but I’d rather be entertained than made to feel worthy. Nevertheless, several times she dragged me to see the latest hot ticket, and we’d usually end up fighting good-naturedly over it afterwards.

  It didn’t take us long to become lovers. It felt strange. I was so familiar with Frances’s body. I knew how it felt, how it smelt, what it liked. The thought of starting all over again with someone new, learning a whole different person, seemed incredibly daunting. Yet Clara’s a very attractive woman, passionate, caring, comfortable to be with, and I guess somewhere I was telling myself to just get on with it. That this was the way it was now, and actually, I should think myself damn lucky.

  One Saturday evening I invited her and Luca round for my usual Spaghetti Bolognese. I hadn’t seen that much of him outside of the office recently and I wanted to catch up. I’d also guessed that his elusiveness meant there was someone new on the scene. Sure enough, he turned up with this unusually boisterous Swede, all glowing pink-skinned sincerity and tumbling blonde hair, who he introduced as Anne Sofie, a nurse working at the Royal Free.

  Incidentally, if you’re wondering why I present an Italian food writer, albeit a small-time one, with my version of Spaghetti Bolognese, on average, once a month, let me assure you, it has nothing to do with confidence in my cooking, and everything to do with the fact that it’s the only thing I make that more or less ends up looking as it should. And too bad if he teases me about it every time.

  “Are you sure you have all the right ingredients?” he would always ask, quizzically examining the contents of his bowl.

  “Yes,” I answered patiently.

  “Fresh garlic?”

  “Of course.” I lied.

  “Oregano?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “Ah! I know what it is. You have forgotten the love!” he said, in that maddening way that foreigners have a habit of turning cooking into a romantic and mystical experience.

  “It’s very nice.” said Anne Sofie politely.

  “It is English! “ Luca protested.

  “Spaghetti Bolognese?” she asked, rather surprised.

  “No, no! This is not Spaghetti Bolognese! This is Spaghetti Crouch End! I will cook spaghetti for you one night,” he purred, making it sound like an experience several steps up the pleasure ladder from sex.

  I have to tell you that, after, literally, years of promising, one night Luca did cook spaghetti for me. The ‘real way’. The ‘Italian way’. I also have to tell you that it tasted almost exactly the same as every other decent Spaghetti Bolognese I’ve ever eaten.

  Yet the more the evening unwound, the more wine we drank, the more relaxed and pleasant it became. At one point the surprising Anne Sofie insisted on showing us the famous Swedish mid-summer folk dance, which apparently involves imitating a frog and hopping around in circles. Whilst Luca and Clara reciprocated by singing, not opera - which Luca assured me no one in Italy likes, though Clara said he
was talking ‘bollocks’, in that wonderful way she has of turning every English swear word into something to linger touchingly over - but the Beatles. Meanwhile, of course, I sat there grinning like a stupid uptight Englishman and refused to do anything but laugh and applaud at the miracle of people who found such uninhibited behaviour completely natural.

  And yet ... and yet ... even then. Even on such a light and laughter-filled evening, and in the company of my current lover and dearest friend, I knew it couldn’t be denied. This feeling I had of someone missing, of an empty chair, of wanting to ask where she was.

  “Time to go,” Luca declared. “Ann Sofie has to get her uniform.”

  “I thought you said she was off this weekend?” I asked.

  “Yes but ... she still needs her uniform,” Luca smiled.

  Only he could get away with it. If I said that it would sound so crass, I’d be deservedly ostracised from any decent company for the rest of my life. Yet Luca left with a flurry of hugs and kisses, knowing he had charmed one and all, and accompanied by a beautiful young woman who obviously adored him. I smiled and shook my head, closing the door behind him, hearing their laughter fading down the stairs.

  Immediately Clara started to clear up.

  “It’s all right. Don’t bother,” I said.

  “No problem,” she assured me, carrying on.

  “Clara!” I said, a little more severely than I’d meant. “I can do it.”

  She made a face like she didn’t understand, then retrieved her glass of wine and sat down. “Do you want me to go?”

  “No. Course not.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Let’s go to bed,” I eventually said.

  Later we made love with a drunken passion that somewhere along the line exhausted itself. So that we didn’t even finish, just paused for breath, ready to ascend the next peak, yet ended up falling asleep. I dreamt of Frances. As I do most nights. What can I say? You can blame me for a lot of things, but not that.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Not a lot of point in me talking then, is there?”

  “I love you.”

  “I know you do.”

  Kick.

  “Not the answer anymore though, is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kick.

  “Do you love me?”

  “Think so.”

  Kick.

  I tried, but in the end I had to stop seeing Clara. It wasn’t right. Her feelings for me were as direct and honest as they could be, whereas mine for her were a result of my reaction to Frances. You can’t have a relationship with a person based on the premise that they could never hurt you as much as someone else. For several days I felt surprisingly sad about it. Not only because I really had genuinely liked her, but also because it seemed to confirm the fact that I was damaged beyond repair. I mean, Clara’s special. Another time, another place, I would’ve killed for her. Any normal person would.

  BIG GUYS

  14 Maverick Ave

  Dayton

  Ohio

  USA

  Dear Simon,

  This letter is kind

  of difficult, but I just thought you

  should know that Frances isn’t here.

  In fact, we’re a menswear store, with only

  a small staff, and no-one seems to have

  heard of her, so I think you must have

  the wrong address.

  I didn’t mean to pry, Simon, but I had

  to read your letter to find a return

  address. Forgive me saying so, but I

  know how you’re feeling. I had my

  heart broken once. My husband was

  unfaithful to me and got killed in an

  auto accident on the same night. Never

  knew whether to cry or die. But life

  goes on, Simon. Believe me. In the end,

  on it rolls.

  Anyway, if you’re ever in these parts,

  drop in and see us. We’re doing a

  real special line in 18 and 19 inch

  collar sports shirts at the moment.

  Yours,

  Mrs R. Newman

  It was my first proper response. I had a few others. A referral to a self-help group in Stockholm, a long rambling letter from someone in Cardiff accusing me of all manner of crimes, the least heinous being emotional blackmail, and someone in Berlin sent back a letter covered in hundreds of question marks scrawled in different coloured inks. But, by and large, my pleas went as unanswered by the world as they did by Frances.

  Not that I’d been expecting anything else. Nor really wanted it. It changed things when people replied: inputted another reality, asked unwanted questions. In fact, after the letter from Ohio, I did briefly consider giving up. I was down to one, or even less, letters a week, another year had slipped by, and I thought perhaps I could finally let go.

  I don’t often get to go on junkets. Not at my level of journalism. You can forget all about Tunisia for the release of the new Land Cruiser, or the south of Spain for the latest Euro Ford. However, I do get the odd day out. Like when I was invited to Brands Hatch for the UK release of the new baby BMW. Very nice it is, too. Even I could tell that. Course I didn’t get up to any of the nonsense that some did. I didn’t ride the clutch at 7000 revs for over half a kilometre, do my best to burn it out, just so I could say that something smelt a bit hot. I didn’t rush headlong at corners, jam the brakes on as hard as I could, and then complain about more skid marks than in a retirement home laundry. Mind you, I did have a few controversial comments to make about the ashtrays, which, in my opinion, needed to be a good quarter of an inch deeper. And sure as hell, that upholstery must’ve been inspired by the floors on the last night of the Octoberfest. But the ‘Great Rear or Front Wheel Drive’ debate - forget it.

  No, I just took a nice brisk spin in the lowest spec 1.1 for ten minutes, made one or two approving comments, then lingered all afternoon over lunch with fellow journalists who started off talking about the relative merits of cars, but soon moved onto the more engaging attractions of the many pretty young women hanging around on PR duty.

  Strange that in this day and age cars and women still seem unavoidably synonymous, that some men still use the same expressions, the same vocabulary, for both. I know this guy at ‘CAR’ who even classifies women by makes and models. ‘Tough as a Toyota - Vicious as a Viper - Fucks like a Ferrari (which apparently means a bit highly-strung, but once she gets going, she does it like no one’s business)’. Well, what can I say? Boys will be boys. Especially, it seems, when they’re on their own and there are plenty of toys around.

  Anyway, forgive, but it was a very pleasant afternoon. The sun shone, the world blissfully rotated, insects sang and daisies danced, and God obviously thought he deserved a peaceful nap.

  Later I drove home thinking that human existence was about a pleasant a state as a state could be. Yes, I was a touch over the limit, yes, I could’ve lost my licence and my job, no, it doesn’t make any sense at all for wine to be available at these things. But in all honesty, I felt more relaxed, more at ease with myself, than I’d been in a very long time. As if my body was saying enough is enough; take this, take this hiatus into your soul, remember the way life used to be, and suffer no more.

  I got back to Crouch End, singing, if you please, as I bounded up the stairs to my flat. There was some post inside the door. A couple of bills, a letter from somewhere I didn’t recognise. I tell you, I just didn’t see it coming. Not for one moment. I can remember glancing in the mirror as I tore the letter open and being pleasantly gratified to see this slightly sunburnt and refreshingly healthy looking face reflected back at me. Almost as if it was only by the dropping of my guard, by the reaching of this point where everything that had happened over the last few years was temporarily forgotten, that this could finally happen.

  I started to read, carelessly a
t first, just skipping over the first few sentences. Then suddenly I stopped, my grip tightening on the page, and all that healthy colour drained from my face and I began to shake.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was a bit like when the old type of film used to break at the cinema. Everything suddenly grinding to a halt, freezing, flicking, a blank screen, the story gone, the moment arrested. I was reading the damn thing, I could see the words before me, almost arrange them into some kind of thought process, but I couldn’t absorb a single phrase. I went through it once, then a second time, put it down, picked it up, tried to read it once more. Again I inadvertently caught my reflection in the mirror, only this time there was a very different expression on my face. Astonished. Pleading. As if I was begging myself to make some sense of this, to understand it even for a moment. Help me. Help me, please. What the hell’s going on here?

  It was from Frances. I mean, I don’t expect you to believe it, but it was. By some coincidence that must verge on the supernatural, one of the letters I’d sent had found her. In Amsterdam. I picked up the envelope and looked at the stamp, to check, even though she’d told me, even though I knew it had to be true, yet needing some kind of tangible evidence to help me believe the unbelievable. I did remember sending a letter there. A month or so back but ... was it possible? Could I really have sent a letter to the exact address where she lived? I didn’t know whether to collapse with astonishment or scream out with joy.

  I picked up the letter and read it through again. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. There had to be another explanation.

  Dear Simon,

  I don’t know how many times I’ve

  written this letter. Maybe six or seven. Nothing

  anyone has ever said to me has upset me as much as

  your letter did. I never realised I hurt you that

  much. I never realised that you would still be

  hurting after all this time. Believe me, if I could

  take away the pain, today’s or yesterday’s, I