The Pretence

by Linus Peters

  She was gone before I could react. Long languid legs striding up the steps to the hotel, shiny sleeked-back hair, as if it were iced, catching the entrance hall light. I felt the cabbie’s eyes looking at me in the rear-vision mirror as he pulled away. I knew exactly what he was thinking. Oh yes ... Yes, indeed. You are so right, sir ... Tonight I am the luckiest bastard in this whole damn city.

  The following day I called her a little before ten, fearing it might be too early, that she’d still be asleep, yet the phone was answered so quickly, she must’ve had it in her hand.

  “Erm ... Frances?” I ventured, in that moment, at that time of day, the name, the whole pretence, suddenly seeming slightly foolish.

  “Hi!” she said.

  “I er ... I wondered if you wanted to have lunch and go for a walk on the Heath?”

  “Yes! Yes!” she said, in such a way it made it sound like she would’ve agreed to anything from a picnic at the local sewage treatment plant to a festival of Morris Dancing.

  “Are you okay?” I asked

  “I thought you weren’t going to call,” she confessed.

  “Of course I was. I told you I would,” I reassured her. “... Frances?”

  “I know, I know. I just thought you weren’t going to.”

  I chuckled a little uneasily, overwhelmingly aware of how much of a stranger she suddenly seemed, not really knowing what I could say, how someone so beautiful could possibly have such moments of insecurity. “Looks like it might rain,” I eventually commented.

  “I don’t care,” she told me. “As long as I’m with you.”

  I was right. It did rain. On and off. Inconsistency from a uniformly grey sky. I picked her up from the hotel. Waiting by the door in this Puegeot I had out on test, watching her emerge, still not able to believe I even knew her, let alone was having some kind of relationship with her.

  She wore black again, but a long raincoat rather than the short leather. Everything was in impeccable taste, expensive looking, undoubtedly the product of personality designers, yet served her like a slave. Again her blonde hair was pulled back, and as she got in the car and turned to me, the fact that she was wearing no make-up, only went to accentuate what a phenomenon she was. She put her umbrella in the back, marvelling when I told her I didn’t even own one, but then, realising it made her sound like a foreigner, immediately changed the subject.

  A new day had brought new energy, new perspective, and as we made our way up to Hampstead for lunch, our conversation moved effortlessly to the background rhythm of the windscreen wipers. I had a CD of Crowded House playing, and she began to sing along with it, and I remembered what I’d told her in the letter, that she’d always been a big fan, and though I should’ve felt guilty about it, actually, it made me feel pretty good, that we really did share a past.

  Later, after lunch, we took advantage of a brief cessation in the rain to make our way out onto the windy heath; arms about each other, me trying to hang onto her umbrella as it was buffeted from side to side. At the top of Parliament Hill we stopped for a while and sat on a bench, hugging each other for warmth, looking out across the city, from Canary Wharf to the West End.

  “Simon, I want to come home,” she suddenly announced.

  I turned to her, not sure what she meant. “Sorry?”

  “Back to England.”

  “Oh.”

  She stared at me as if she was expecting me to say something, but I wasn’t entirely sure what I could say. “You don’t want me to?” she asked.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Actually, I wasn’t so sure. I mean, I wanted this thing, whatever it was, that was already decided, that I’d just blindly reach out and grab it, but it was very early days to be talking about changing countries.

  “I want to be with you,” she told me, resting her head on my shoulder.

  For a while I sat there without saying another word, aware of the slight stiffness of her gelled hair on my neck, of how unfamiliar her smell seemed, trying to catch up with what she’d just told me, what it might mean.

  “Do you mind?” she said, lifting her slightly pink-edged face to mine.

  “No,” I said, laughing partly at the absurd politeness of her question, and partly at how delirious I suddenly felt. “Not at all.”

  Love isn’t sitting on a bench on Hampstead Heath, any more than it’s walking the water’s edge on an idyllic beach on Goa, or kissing on the Bridge of Sighs, but if you really want love, it’s a damn fine place to get started. And I guess what I realised that day was ... I really wanted love. That I’d been lonely for too long. Never mind the bizarreness of the situation, how unsure I was of this young woman, how damaged I feared she might turn out to be. All I could see was the way she was staring at me, urging me to join her in making our individual mutual deception, in whatever we might create together, and I simply capitulated to it.

  “I want to be with you, too,” I said.

  She hugged me for a moment, then drew back, looked me squarely in the eyes, and I knew we were about to kiss. She did it slowly. Oh-so slowly. Her face gradually drawing closer and closer to mine, as if she wanted us both to memorise every split-second, every thought, feeling and detail of our first kiss.

  In the end, when our lips finally touched, it was almost a disappointment. There were no explosions, no spiralling crescendos, no fusing universes, just two pairs of cold lips meeting on a Spring day. Yet when I drew back, when I looked into her eyes, when I saw who those lips belonged to, I had to do it again. And again. As if our lips had been as stunned as our minds had been, and now needed to be resuscitated, to be kissed back into warmth and life.

  “I love you,” she said.

  I smiled at her. Momentarily incapable of being able to do anything else, unable to believe this situation, to even deliver the expected response. What the fuck was going on here? Who was this woman? And why don’t I just ask her? Get it over with? The sooner I do, the sooner we’re straight with each other, the sooner we have a chance of building a proper relationship? Yet what if by doing so I lose her? What if she can only love me in the character of Frances? It was just too much of a risk.

  “I love you too, Frances,” I replied.

  Later we returned to Hampstead Village, went to a movie, and afterwards looked for somewhere for a drink. It wasn’t exactly what the situation called for, but there didn’t seem to be a great deal of choice, and we ended up in this psuedo-artie bar, filled with the constant call of mobiles and the frequent hunt for sex.

  It was the kind of place where she was going to be stared at right from the moment she entered, and at times it seemed as if we were surrounded by a pack of malnourished wolves, and she quickly became uncomfortable about it.

  “Can we go?” she asked.

  I glanced at my barely touched drink, then back at her. “Yes, sure ... Right away?”

  “Please.”

  You could see the irritation, the gathering anger, on her flushed face as she pushed her way out. One wrong word and I wouldn’t have cared to have guessed the consequences.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, once we were outside, not wanting to look too closely but suspecting she had tears in her eyes. She made a kind of low groaning sound, as if she’d been wounded somehow, and began to walk. “Frances?”

  For a while she said nothing, as if she was trying to suppress her feelings, yet if she was, she plainly lost the battle.

  “I hate fucking men! I fucking hate them!” she growled.

  It gave me quite a shock. Not only because it reminded me of just how little I knew her, but also because, she said it with such venom, I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t included.

  “Oh.”

  “What right do they have to look at you that way?”

  I didn’t say anything, just continued to walk alongside her, aware of the people passing by, of how unstable she seemed, but not really caring.

  “Frances
, you are very, very beautiful.”

  “So fucking what!” she shouted, and this time I did back off a little.

  We walked in silence for a while, two young men approached from the opposite direction but thankfully didn’t look her way.

  “I’m sorry,” I eventually muttered, in that helpless way we all do when we can’t think of anything else to say.

  She took a deep breath, finally managing to calm herself. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I’m still sorry,” I said, and she turned and gave me this slightly reluctant smile.

  “Why did you take me in there?” she asked.

  “There was nowhere else.”

  Suddenly she stopped in the middle of the pavement, grabbed hold of me, and kissed me so hard on the lips, it almost hurt. “I only want to be with you,” she told me.

  Believe it or not, after that we went to McDonald’s for a thick shake. She was a lot happier there, smiling at families, competing with one little boy who could slurp their drink the loudest, opening up that special emotional reserve many of us keep just for children.

  “Do you want to take him home with you?” I asked, as we went to leave.

  She smiled at me. “No, I’ll wait for my own,” she said, jokingly making a face to indicate I might be involved. Or leastways, I think she was joking.

  Again I left her at her hotel, but I wasn’t so sure about not inviting her back as I’d been the night before. We kissed passionately, our hands not wandering as such, but seemingly stirring, flexing, getting into shape for coming expeditions.

  She waved to me from the hotel entrance as I drove away. Halfway down the road, stopped at some traffic lights, I suddenly let out this long loud whoop of excitement, drumming on the steering-wheel. I was crazy about her! Truly I was! What had started out as a game, as a pretence, was developing into the real thing. Okay, so I had some reservations. A degree of concern. But if it looks like love, and it feels like love, then dammit, as far as I’m concerned, that’s what it must be.

  And, Frances – the real Frances - you can go screw yourself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Despite the fact that it was almost midnight, on the way home I couldn’t stop myself from detouring to call in on Luca. Unfortunately, for once in his life, he’d decided to have an early night and came to the door looking uncharacteristically dishevelled.

  “Luca, I’m sorry. Look, I’ll go.”

  “No, no, come in,” he said, standing aside. “It must be important.”

  “No! ... No, really, it’s nothing. Well, kind of.”

  “Sounds interesting,” he yawned, leading me through to the kitchen. “I phoned you earlier.”

  “Sorry. Been out all day.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes,” I replied, the fact that I’d been too embarrassed to have mentioned the subject before, that he knew nothing about my meetings with the new Frances, making me a little hesitant to bring it up now. “I’ve er ... I’ve seen her.”

  He stopped in his efforts to find some coffee, immediately realising who I meant. “You haven’t?”

  I nodded.

  “Well? ... Tell me!” he said, obviously intrigued.

  I took a deep breath. “Luca’s, she’s incredible. Probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever been in the company of. I’m crazy about her.”

  For a moment he just stared. “You’re kidding?”

  “No.”

  “How old?” he asked, as if in his mind that would settle everything.

  “I don’t know. Twenty seven-twenty eight. Maybe a little older.”

  “Really?”

  “Looks like Grace Kelly. Oozes class, bit of an edge but nice to be with, and most of all, she really does seem to love me.”

  “What do you mean, she loves you?” he sneered. “She doesn’t even know you!”

  “She does know me, Luca. That’s the irony of this situation. She may be a perfect stranger, but the fact is, she knows my most private thoughts. She knows what’s going on in my head and heart better than anyone else in this world ... Well, with one possible exception.”

  He paused in mid-movement, coffee in one hand, spoon in the other, as if he was about to conduct an orchestra. “And what about Frances? The real one?”

  I hesitated, knowing the question would come but confident I could now answer it. “Well .. you’ve said it. Everyone’s said it. I’ve got to move on.”

  Luca gave a long exasperated groan.

  “What?”

  “Are you sure this is ‘moving on’?” he asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Frances broke your heart, smashed it and left it in tiny pieces all over the world. Now you’re in love with a woman who’s pretending to be her?”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “Oh, Simon!”

  “Wait till you meet her!” I told him. “You’ll understand.”

  “I don’t want to meet her!”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s still ‘Frances’?” he asked, as if seeking clarification.

  “Yes.”

  “I’d laugh in her face! ... ‘Oh, hello, Frances, how are you?” he said, waving his hands in the air like some old time disco dancer. “Long time no see. In fact, now I think about it, no time no see’. It’s crazy! ... Are they similar?”

  “She’s blonde, blue-eyed and about three inches taller.”

  “Oh, stronza!” he cried.

  He gave me my coffee and the two of us went into the sitting room, him stretching out on the sofa, me the armchair.

  “Simon, I really don’t understand this,” he told me.

  “You think I do.”

  “How can you love her?”

  “I don’t know. But I do.”

  “As much as the real Frances?” he challenged.

  I shrugged. “It’s different.”

  In the end, maybe because I felt the need to justify myself, I told him the whole story. Every detail, right from the first moment we met. He listened like a man allowing his political opponent freedom of expression, with a show of good grace, yet never once giving the impression he might ever change his views on the subject. I was crazy. No doubt about it. So upset by what had happened with the old Frances, I had crudely transferred my affections to the new one. Nothing could be more obvious.

  “It’s not like that!” I kept telling him. “Honestly.”

  “So ask her who she really is?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t.”

  “Simon, do you think this is normal?”

  “Define normal?”

  “What most people think is acceptable. Now, do you think most people would think this was acceptable?”

  “I don’t know. And nor, frankly, do I care.”

  We carried on in the same vein for a while, until finally I decided it was time I took my leave. Not only did I feel I’d intruded enough, but, in truth, his attitude was beginning to undermine me. I could hardly blame Luca for being suspicious, not after everything he’d had to listen to over the last few years, but he was wrong. There was no transference here. I loved the new Frances in her own right, no matter how much of an irony it might be. But I did have to keep playing the game. Or at least until I was absolutely confident that I would risk nothing by stopping.

  When I got home, the phone was ringing. I actually heard it from the street, and rushed in, up the stairs, unlocking the door and dashing down the hallway, expecting at any moment for it to go dead, yet thankfully managed to reach it in time.

  “Hello.”

  “Where have you been?” asked a voice I instantly recognised.

  “Oh. I stopped off to see Luca for a while.” She didn’t reply and I wondered what was going on. “You okay?”

  “Why don’t you get a mobile? Everyone has a mobile,” she told me, with just a touch of petulance.

  “Sorry.”

  There was another pause, only this time when s
he spoke, she sounded more like her normal self. “I can’t sleep.”

  “Oh,” I said, tempted to flirt with her, to make some kind of sexual reference, but thinking better of it. “I just needed someone to talk to, that’s all,” I told her.

  “About us?”

  “About how happy I am.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was a little surprised but .. really pleased,” I lied.

  “I love you,” she said, and I wondered if the fact that she said it so often was because she’d never had the opportunity before, or if there was another explanation, an even greater need?

  “Why?” I asked, the question that always sprung to mind when she said those words, on this occasion refusing to be denied.

  “Because you’re what you are.”

  I grunted to myself, having a little trouble understanding the reasoning. “And what are you exactly?” I asked.

  “Just a girl,” she said. “A young woman.”

  “Yes, and the Taj Mahal is just a building,” I commented.

  “It’s not what’s on the outside that matters, Simon,” she replied, and simultaneously two thoughts struggled through my mind like a couple of fat old pensioners trying to pass down a narrow corridor. The first, that such trite idealism betrayed her youth; and the second, that it was one helluva stroke of luck for me that she felt that way.

  “I’m going to sleep now,” she said, and I heard the teasing sound of fresh bed linen crunching around that wonderful body of hers. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes. I’ll try to get back earlier, but it’ll probably be after two.”

  “Okay. Goodnight.”

  We both waited an agonising moment or two, I had a distinct flashback to my time as a spotty-faced teenager, then finally I laughed and replaced the receiver.

  For a long time I just stood there looking in the hall mirror, a big fat smile on my face, as if my reflection and I were congratulating each other. I say, haven’t we done well, eh? My word, yes. Together we suffered, we survived, and now we’ve snatched victory from the most interminable of defeats.

  For the next few days it was the same story. ‘Frances’ and I getting to know each other through the pretence of reacquainting ourselves after a long break. She changed her flight. She was supposed to have gone home after four days, but stayed on, while I did everything I could to keep my time in the office down to a minimum.