2 The Imposter (5 page)

“Good afternoon,” she said.

“Good afternoon, sister. I’m here to see Richard Stern.”

“And you are?”

“I’m a friend of his son.”

“Your name?”

“Peter Broom.”

“I don’t think we knew he had a son.”

“He’s been in Burma. The war. I served with him. I was demobbed last week.”

The nurse warmed visibly. “Bless you,” she said. “You boys don’t get the credit you deserve.”

“Thank you.”

Her smile became sad. “I’m afraid your friend’s father is not a well man. He has a progressive disease. We do our best to make him comfortable.”

“It’s his birthday today,” Edward said. “His son asked me to bring him a cake. I’ll give him a slice now if that’s alright and leave the rest next to his bed.”

“You know you won’t be able to take a knife into his room?”

“Oh, no, of course not––don’t worry, I sliced it last night. I wonder if you’d be so kind to ask one of the nurses to give him another slice for his tea?”

“Of course,” the sister said. “I’ll let the girls know. Here––let me take you to him.”

She led the way along the corridor: half a dozen rooms were arranged on each side, the open doors betraying the smells of urine and disinfectant. It was quiet, save for the mumbling of an old man who sat on the edge of his chair, rocking gently. His father’s room was at the end. There was a fire in the grate and the remnants of a meal––a dirty bowl, an empty cup––rested on a small table next to an armchair. The walls were painted in pastel shades, the furniture looked comfortable and the early afternoon sunlight poured in through the wide window. His father was in bed, propped up by pillows. His eyes lolled hopelessly, never focussing, and a streamer of drool dripped down from the corner of his mouth. Edward took out his handkerchief and wiped it away.

“It’s a side-effect of the drugs,” the sister told him. “I’ll leave you together.”

His father was wearing a dressing gown over a pair of pyjamas. Spilt soup from his lunch had spattered across the fabric. He had not shaved, and his whiskers––white, the same colour as his wild shocks of hair––lent him an unkempt, dishevelled air. He wore a pair of spectacles with thick lenses, the glass magnifying his eyes so that they seemed to bulge from their sockets. The old man looked as if he were about to say something but frowned with confusion again, the thought passing unsaid.

“Happy birthday, father,” he said quietly, sitting down in the chair next to the bed. The old man said nothing, chewed, his eyes unfocused.

Edward opened his bag and took out the cake tin and the carton of candles. He opened the tin, and took out the cake; it was a Victoria Sponge, a recipe he had clipped out of the
Sketch.
The first effort had been a failure; he’d used normal flour rather than self-raising and the mixture had failed to rise. The second effort was a little better. He planted a handful of candles around the edge, lit them with his lighter and lifted the cake closer to his father’s mouth. The old man looked at it, dumbly, as if unsure what it was; the candles flickered in and out with his breath. He coughed for a moment, his breath thin and reedy. Edward blew the candles out for him, set the cake down on the bedside table, unwrapped the skirt, and took out two slices. He took one and held it to his father’s mouth. The old man took a bite, chewed absent-mindedly, crumbs showering onto his day blanket. Edward bit into it. It was brittle and dry, a bit flavourless. He hadn’t been able to afford the vanilla essence the recipe suggested and the cake missed it. He was no cook, that was for sure, but it’d have to do.

The old man turned his head and gazed out of the window onto the pretty garden beyond, his eyes glazing and, as Edward watched, bubbles of saliva gathered at the edge of his mouth and slowly trailing their way through the bristles on his chin. Edward took a handkerchief and dabbed the spittle away.

Edward said, “How’ve you been?” The old man looked at him, nothing in his eyes. “Did you get my letters?” Nothing. “I’ve been abroad. I’ve been in Burma, fighting the Japs. Jimmy has been writing to me, though, so I’ve been kept abreast of how you are. And I sent you cards at Christmas and your birthday. I expect the nurses put them up for you? I’m sorry it’s been so long. You don’t mind much, do you? I know you understand––you always wanted me to join the army, didn’t you? Anyway, I’m getting you a nice new pair of slippers for your present. Good ones they are, proper fur inside, look nice and comfy. They’re in the shop, I’ll bring them when I’ve saved up the rest. You can wear them when you go to the bathroom.”

The corridor outside was still: the other patients were either asleep or out in the grounds with their relatives. Wan sunlight filtered through dusty windows; Edward watched motes of dust turning in the shafts. He would be his father’s only visitor today. Save Jimmy, there was no-one else. It was just the three of them now.

He kept talking. “Things are hard at the restaurant. Ingredients are hard to find what with all this rationing. I think Jimmy has been having a tough time of it. I’m back now, though. I’ll find some money for him.”

His father sat quietly. The change in him had been rapid: he’d been a big man, before, played prop forward on Sundays, but Jimmy said that within six months of the diagnosis he’d lost his weight and all his muscle. He was just a husk now, unrecognisable. His father turned his head away, nodding. Edward felt bad leaving him stuck here but there was nothing else for it. He had provided Jimmy with a lump sum before he left the country, but that had run out months ago. Jimmy had somehow found enough to keep the hospital sweet, but it was a constant battle. Edward was going to have to find money from somewhere. Better care––a room of his own, more comfortable surroundings––he couldn’t even begin to think about things like that yet.

There was a gramophone record on the sideboard. Edward had remitted the money for Jimmy to buy it––his father loved music and it seemed as if it was the least he could do. The old man had always had a particularly fondness for Beethoven, and Edward slipped
Symphony No. 5
from its dust jacket, rested the phonograph on the platter and lowered the tone arm. The ominous First Movement played, the famous main theme opening loud and dynamically, the crescendos and diminuendos putting Edward in mind of tension, stress and a feeling of impending doom. He tried to ignore it but he could not. He needed to hear something optimistic, something creative. He would have chosen something by Vivaldi––the
Four Seasons
, perhaps. He was in a difficult spot. He was in need of optimism.

“Alright, Dad,” he said, standing. “Got to run. I’m helping in the kitchen again this evening.” He took his jacket and put it on. He took his hat from the hatstand and set it on his head. His father’s rheumy eyes wandered across him, flickered to the window. “I’ve told the sister it’s your birthday today, she’ll get the nurse to give you another slice for your tea. You’ll be alright, won’t you? I’ll come and see you again on Monday.” Edward put the rest of the cake into its tin, replaced the lid and left it in the bedside table. The record kept playing. “Happy birthday,” he said as he leaned in, kissing wrinkled skin that smelt of the ointment he had sent two months ago. His father’s face suddenly broke out into a wide, open smile. While it lasted, its warmth seemed to peel away the canker of the illness and age and Edward saw him as he remembered him. The moment did not last and he felt an empty feeling of helplessness as he smiled to the nurse on the way out. His father was dying before his eyes, and there was nothing he could do to make it easier for him. Even the meagre comfort that they had managed to find for him was under threat. He needed money.

6

EDWARD SLEPT IN THE STORE CUPBOARD for a week but it was obvious that things could not go on as they were. The restaurant could not afford to pay him a salary and so he drew 15s. 3d. from the taxpayer instead. This required a weekly trip to the Pentonville Labour Exchange, a vast one-storey barn that was permanently surrounded by a four-deep queue of bad-tempered, foul-smelling men. It often took several hours for him to reach the counter where applicants were required to sign the book and make themselves available for the array of menial jobs that required filling. He did not disclose that he was working at the restaurant, for that would have disqualified him from receiving aid. The Exchange put him forward for several unsuitable posts. In order that he might perpetuate the lie that he was actively looking for employment he endured several embarrassing interviews during which he made no effort whatsoever to evince the enthusiasm that might make him attractive to potential employers. He was rejected for positions as a hotel doorman, a cleaner, and then, most embarrassingly of all, as the pot boy in a restaurant around the corner from the Shangri-La. The clerks at the Exchange must surely have realised that he was abusing their best efforts but he wasn’t alone in that and, thankfully, his pitiful income was never interrupted.

He took a room for 6s. a week in a boarding house on Brewer Street. It was a terrible, dingy place, a sorting-office and clearing house for the jails, the casual wards, the lunatic asylums and the mortuary slabs. The place belonged to an ancient theatrical agent, a superannuated old queen who, Edward suspected, rented rooms to young ex-soldiers in the hope that a romantic entanglement might ensue, or, more achieveably, so that he might bump into them after they had bathed in one of his two filthy bathrooms.

Edward was allotted the attic. It was reached by way of a bleak staircase with linoleum steps smelling of wax, the grey-striped wallpaper stained with damp and peeling. It smelt of stale frying, with a dirty old gas cooker in what little space there was and a couple of penny-in-the-slot meters. It was long enough to lie down in but would not have been wide enough for that purpose and it was too low for him to stand. There was a narrow single bed, a washstand with a jug and basin on it and a little trunk in which he stored his meagre possessions. The ceiling was painted in a checkerboard of pink and yellow, the colours weighing down on the small space. There was a window through which he could scrabble out onto the roof and he would sit on the foot-wide parapet that ran around it and gaze out across the snaggle-toothed Soho rooftops, smoking a cigarette and miserably contemplating his lot.

If he was careful Edward was able to spread his tiny income to just about cover his vital needs. He would buy a loaf of bread, a pint of milk and a hunk of black chocolate so hard that the confectioner could only break it with a small axe he kept solely for this purpose. He would consume his feast lying down on his tiny bed, sucking each bitter square of chocolate to make it last longer.

* * *

THE SUMMER PASSED SLOWLY. Edward spent his days in the restaurant, arriving at six to begin the day’s preparation and often staying until midnight. The work was difficult, tiring and unremunerative. They would tally up the takings after they had closed the doors for the night. A good day would be enough to keep their heads above the water. A bad day would see them sink deeper into the financial mire, relying on the continued goodwill of their bank manager for the restaurant’s existence as a going concern and the payment of Dickie Stern’s hospital bills. Unfortunately, the bad days came more often than the good ones, and the letters from the bank grew ever more concerned.

Edward settled into this dispiriting routine. The longer it went on, the more difficult it was to escape. He was essentially providing the restaurant with free labour. It allowed Jimmy to save money by trimming the hours of the other staff, something he was loathe to do (for none of the others were earning enough to live comfortably) but it was unavoidable if they were to keep going. As the accounts grew graver and graver, Edward’s labour became more valuable. He knew that if he left, the business would fail.

Even with Edward’s budget cut back to the bare minimum, his expenses still outweighed his income. The state of his finances worsened until he was left with no recourse but to attempt desperate measures. One afternoon towards the end of June he found himself hauling his only suitcase outside MacCulloch’s, an establishment halfway down the Tottenham Court Road. It shared the same characteristics as all pawnshops: austere, with a pitiful collection of goods arranged in the window and a sense of bitterness in the air so thick as to be almost cloying. He paused and regarded the shop front. This one had the usual array: second-hand fountain pens, engagement rings, musical instruments, silver candlesticks and cutlery. There was a doorway for buyers and a doorway for sellers, one grand and the other plain. He opened the shabby door and went inside.

He hauled the suitcase onto the counter. “I wonder if you wouldn’t mind lending me as much as you can on this until Friday?” The clerk opened the suitcase and rummaged through the contents. It was, by and large, the sum total of his worldly goods: a pair of trousers, a pair of shoes, a collection of books, a magnifying glass in a real morocco case and a couple of old copper saucepans from the restaurant that they rarely used.

The clerk opened the trousers out and examined them. Edward had prepared them carefully, rubbing out the spots with an old handkerchief and a pennyworth of petrol. But when the clerk brushed his fingers over the cloth the old stains came back. At the touch of a finger the buttonhole disintegrated and then the clerk opened out the cuffs at the ankles and discovered the split lining Edward hoped he might miss. He turned up his nose and shook his head, no doubt disappointed that Edward thought he might be gulled by such elementary deceptions.

The clerk examined the shoes––which were holed––and put them aside, then the magnifying glass, then the books. None of them detained his attention. “I can’t give you anything for any of this.”

“Nothing?”

He shrugged expressively. “Ten bob, that’s the best I can do.”

“Ten bob? Those trousers cost four guineas.”

“So you say. Ten bob.”

“I was hoping for a couple of pounds.”

The man laughed harshly. “Out of the question. I can’t let you have more than that, and I don’t want the saucepans.”