The Pretender (17 page)

‘You had no right to sell those papers of mine.’

Paul was unflurried by my attack. ‘I told you, Mark. They haven’t been sold. That was publicity flim flam. You want them back? I could get them. There’d be some explaining to do, which might be a little awkward for you, given your current position.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re responsible for an archive containing rare manuscripts by famous writers, a potential gold mine you don’t want to compromise.’

‘That’s not why I’m...’

Paul laughed.‘Then why else are you here? Out of love?’

‘Love? In a way.’ Naively, I thought he meant love of literature, but I didn’t get the chance to explain this.

‘Let me ask you a question, Mark. How old are you?’

‘I...’

‘You see, I thought you were nearly the same age as Helen. That watch. Didn’t we give it you for your twentieth birthday? But when Tony and I were talking before you arrived, your boss called you a very bright teenager. Is that part of your con, Mark? Getting Tony to think that you’re younger than you are?’

‘No.’ This was such a minor fib that I decided to come clean. ‘I lied about my age to Helen, so that she’d respect me more. I’m not twenty until March.’

‘So what you and Tony are doing has to be kept hush hush.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Oh come on, Mark. It’s obvious what you’re up to. Tony can do you a lot of good. Get you published. Introduce you to the right people. Maybe he’ll even put you in his will. Then there are all those rare papers.You should have seen the look on your face when you realised that I knew all about them.’

‘You’ve got entirely the wrong end of the stick,’ I said.

‘Don’t take me for a fool. Why else are you with Tony? It can’t be for the sake of that crappy little room above the office. No doubt you spend most of your time at his flat.’

‘I never...’

‘Gay sex under the age of twenty-one is illegal in this country, isn’t it?’

I began to stand. ‘I don’t. I’m not...’

Tony, returning from the toilet, saw that I was uncomfortable. ‘Are you all right, old son?’ he asked me.

‘I don’t think those oysters agreed with me.’ Angry, I left the room. Tony had never made the slightest move on me. Paul, by contrast, was sick enough to seduce his own stepdaughter.

When I got back to the table, Paul was tucking into his kidneys. Between bites, he was telling Tony an anecdote about Roald Dahl and Playboy magazine. I realised that Tony must have mentioned
The Woman Who Married Herself
.

‘
Playboy
published a lot of his stuff — cynical little things that appealed to jaded readers taking a break before they had the energy to jack off again. So Dahl publishes this story there — not long back, around eighty-seven or so:
The Bookseller
, I think it was called. It’s a neat little idea. This bookseller goes through the obits, finding married men who’ve just died. And he sends the dead man a bill for magazines that are clearly hard core porn. The widow always pays up, to avoid any embarrassment. A neat scam. Only, one day, he tries to pull the trick on the widow of a blind man...’ Tony guffawed. I smirked. A typical Dahl plot, I thought, simple and satisfying. But then Paul added the second twist.

‘So I read this story in
Playboy
and thought, hang on, I’ve seen this before. Sure enough, I track it down in some paperback anthology came out when I was a kid.
Clerical Error
was the original name. Only the author wasn’t Dahl. He’d — what’s the word you guys use? — nicked it. A whole bunch of people wrote to
Playboy
to point out where he’d stolen it from. The magazine protected him, didn’t print any of the letters.’

I felt a surge of relief. Dahl, whom I had forged, was himself a plagiarist, though possibly an unconscious one. It made me feel better about what I’d done.

‘What’s this story of his you’re using?’ Paul asked.

‘You tell it, Mark,’ Tony said.

‘I’d rather you did.’

So Tony told the story. He missed bits out, but got the essence of it. When he’d finished, Paul clapped his hands together.

‘You don’t recognise the story, I hope?’ Tony asked, mildly teasing our American host.

‘No, but I recognise a good property when I hear one. I’m surprised Dahl didn’t dig that one out for Playboy. You know, it has serious movie potential. You’re going to put it in your five hundredth issue?’

‘Possibly.’

‘I’ll tell you what I’d do,’ Paul said, and paused. Tony was carefully separating some sea bass from the bone, so he couldn’t see the American’s face. ‘I’d take Dahl’s name off that story,’ Paul went on, ‘put yours under it — or, even better...’ Paul paused and winked at me. ‘Use young Mark’s name — and sell it to Hollywood. You’d cash in.’

‘What an intriguing idea,’ Tony said, as my blood froze. I understood the implications of that wink. My forgeries were no longer a secret.

‘What did you think of him?’ Tony asked the next day. I had left the French House before they’d finished eating, claiming my stomach ache was worse.

‘I didn’t trust him,’ I replied without hesitation. Tony smiled.

‘Me neither, but he could be what we need. Why didn’t you like him?’

‘Too smooth, too well dressed.’

‘I know what you mean. My father used to say you should be with someone at least a minute before you can tell that they’re well dressed. Any sooner, and they’re either a fop or a fraud. To be sure about Mercer, I made a couple of calls to friends in the States last night. They’d both heard of him. He married a stepdaughter half his age and there was a splash in the papers. Apart from that, the word is that Mercer knows his way about the literary manuscripts world. He’s the man who found those Hemingway typescripts in Paris... do you remember my showing you the story in the
TLS
?’

I gave the smallest of nods and Tony continued.

‘Mercer’s handled some Joyce letters too. My friends reckon he has a good eye for authors who are likely to be collectable in the future. He wasn’t over here to see me, you know. It was a flying visit to try and get VS Pritchett to flog him his first drafts. The old man told him to get stuffed so he popped in on us instead.’

Tony was impressed, I could see. How could Paul know so much about Literature, I wondered? He hadn’t struck me as at all literary when we were in Paris. But then, he wasn’t trying to impress me. One thing I was sure of: Paul was not a litterateur, he was a salesman, only in it for the money.

‘He’s made an offer for the entire archive. Seventy-five thousand pounds. That’s pretty generous, wouldn’t you say?’

I had no idea, and said so.

‘According to him, there are three ways of going about it. I could put the lot up for auction, which might net me the most, but, if the right number of bidders didn’t appear, might only raise ten or twenty thousand. I could sell the archive to a university using him as a middle man, for which he would expect fifteen or twenty per cent. But that would take several months. He reckoned that he could probably get a hundred thousand, more or less. Or I could sell the archive to him outright, for the seventy-five, and he would then sell it on when he thought the market was at its best. What do you think?’

I thought Paul was using the money he’d made from my Hemingway stories to buy up Tony’s life’s work, but I couldn’t say this.

‘If I were you,’ I told him ‘I’d get a second opinion.’

‘That’s in hand. A man from Christie’s is coming tomorrow. But I’m inclined to sell the archive to Mercer outright. That way, I might lose a few thousand in the long run, but I’d get the final issue out more or less on time. The magazine’s reputation wouldn’t suffer.’

I noted that phrase ‘final issue’ and my heart sank.

‘Is that it, then?’ I asked Tony. ‘Do you plan to close down?’

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘We’ll go out with a giant fuck you to the Arts Board: a staggering list of contents, top quality production and an introduction naming names, full of bile. What do you think?’

In a way it seemed appropriate that my forgeries should indirectly pay for the final issue of the
Little Review
, but I couldn’t say this.

‘I’d have thought you’d want to retire with something more dignified than a fart in the face of the Arts Board.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Tony said, ‘but allow me the luxury of imagining it for a while first.’

I didn’t ask Tony the other question on my mind. What would happen to the office and my flat above? His lease ran until the end of 1994, which would have seen me comfortably to the end of my University career, if I made it that far. I supposed Tony would sell or sublet, but maybe I would be able to hang onto the flat. I was used to living in Soho, in the middle of things, even though my home was meagre and I couldn’t afford to make much use of the West End’s shops, theatres and restaurants. Now and then I got a cheap standby ticket for the theatre, or went along with Tony to a club or gallery. And I never bought books. Rather, I sold review copies for food and still had more than enough to read. All that would stop when the magazine closed down.

The other thing I’d miss was ‘literary’ London. I sometimes went to book launches and the like.Tony could no longer be bothered with them. The free food and drink were the main appeal, but they also gave me a glimpse of the world I aspired to join, one more glamorous and mysterious than the
Little Review
’s.

‘When do you have to decide by?’ I asked Tony.

‘Mercer will be back in London in a week.’

‘You mean he’s already gone?’

‘Back to New York on a morning flight, yes.’

My secret was safe for now.

‘Going to the Richard Mayfield launch tonight, are you?’ Tony asked, later, seeing the invitation I’d left on top of a pile of submissions. It was a book launch at the Groucho club.The club was only a stone’s throw from our office, but I’d never been inside (you needed to be a member, or to be with one) and was interested in seeing it, especially as such invitations weren’t likely to come my way for much longer.

‘I think so.’

‘I turned him down two or three times. Precocious brat. Talented, though. Be interested to see what you make of him.’

If Mayfield, with a novel published straight after he left university, was irritatingly precocious, what was I, who had been mistaken for Hemingway and Greene? When Tony left for home, I went upstairs, where I through the complicated business of having a thorough wash with only a small sink in which to do so. By the time I’d dried my hair and ironed my best clothes, the book launch would be under way.

Or so I thought. I showed up at the time advertised, presented my invitation at the door and was directed to a large room upstairs. I expected my customary clothing (black, black and black) to keep me anonymous. In London, outside the office, I always felt anonymous, more like a ghost than a participant. However, I was one of the first to arrive.As I reached for a glass, a sleek, skinny publicist pounced on me. She was also dressed entirely in black, though I knew the labels inside would shame my basement store bargains.

‘Are you
The Face
?’ she asked.

‘No. I’m...’

‘
Dazed And Confused
?’

‘All the time,’ I joked. No laugh. ‘Is that a magazine?’

‘Yes,’ she said. This was already the longest conversation I’d sustained at a literary launch. I generally stood around, deliberately fading into the background, eating canapés, getting mildly drunk on free wine. But the woman didn’t go away.

‘I’m from the
LR
,’ I said.

‘
London
...?’

‘
Little Review
.’

‘Oh.’ She glanced at the door with the classic look over the shoulder in search of someone more interesting, more useful.

This action was not considered rude, Tony told me once. Literature was, after all, a business, and we were the smallest fish in the sea. But hardly anybody had arrived yet, so she returned her attention to me.

‘Would you like to meet the author?’ she asked.

I wanted to say ‘no’, but could hardly say that I was only there for the free food.

‘Which is he?’ I asked.

She pointed towards a bloke in a velvet jacket who couldn’t be much older than I was. Then she took my elbow and guided me towards him.

‘Richard, I’d like you to meet Mark Trace, from the
Little Magazine
. He’s a great admirer of your work.’

‘She meant
Little Review
,’ I corrected once the publicist had floated away.

‘A
great admirer
, eh?’ Richard Mayfield had long, curly hair and a frilly shirt beneath his scarlet smoking jacket. ‘Such a great admirer that you bastards never published me.’

The intensity of the bitterness in his voice took me aback.

‘I’ve only been working there for nine months,’ I said. ‘I don’t recall any of your stuff coming through.’

‘I stopped sending it out once I got a publishing contract,’ Richard told me.Then he offered me his hand and I shook it. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘These things make me edgy. I don’t know what I’m doing here.’

He went silent and I realised that I had to make conversation. What to say? I hadn’t read any of his books and certainly wasn’t going to confront him with what Tony had said about him.

‘Tony reckons that nobody serious writes anything interesting before they’re thirty,’ I said, and immediately worried that even this might sound insulting.

‘So I have to wait another seven years before he’ll publish me?’ Mayfield asked, his tone inquisitorial.

‘I hope he’s wrong,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I’ve got over a decade to go.’

‘What do you do there?’ the author asked.

‘Editorial assistant. Archivist. Dogsbody. That kind of thing.’

‘Published anything?’

‘A couple of reviews.’

‘And you’re... what, twenty?’

‘In a few weeks.’

‘Come to many of these beanos?’

‘Only for the free wine.’

The author smiled. ‘A man after my own heart. Come on. Drain that and have another. I need to be pissed before I can read in front of people.’

As we refilled our drinks, the hordes arrived. We were quickly separated. Richard Mayfield gave a brief reading, which was well received, but impossible to concentrate on. The room was full of people who seemed to know each other. I recognised a few but not to talk to. After a few minutes, I realised that Richard was equally out of his depth. We gravitated towards each other. He asked how come I was working for the
LR
and I told him about being kicked out of university.