The Pretender (13 page)

Timms finds writing erotica much easier than he does the literary fiction he publishes under his own name. As Hamden’s success builds, the impulse to write more serious fiction deserts Timms. Cranstone suggests that he take on a second nom de plume. Timms comes up with Veronica Bendix (using the first and last names of two movie stars of the era). Under that name, he writes a series of ‘memoirs’ about an amoral female spy in the war just finished. The Bendix books become an even bigger success than the Hamden ones. Veronica Bendix, indeed, becomes the talk of London. Everybody in society wants to know who she is.

At this point of the story I got stuck. I knew that I had to deal with Edward Timms’ love life. What sort of relationships did a man who wrote erotic fiction have? If Magneta was anything to go by, perfectly normal ones. I had given Edward a bum leg, like Jake in Hemingway’s
The Sun Also Rises
. So he might have trouble finding a girlfriend. Or women might find his injury romantic. I could hint that he was impotent. That would get me out of having to describe his sexual conquests.

I was out of my depth. I kept writing, hoping a solution would present itself. I wrote a cameo appearance for Maurice Cranstone, using what little I knew of Jack Kahane, throwing in a few of Tony’s characteristics. But I didn’t have a plot, only a situation. I created a woman, Valerie, whom the writer wanted to impress. I based her on Helen Mercer. Valerie was a manipulative, frigid bitch like many women in Dahl’s work. She ignored Edward at first, but, as he became wealthier and wealthier, began to attend his flash parties, even accepted his lavish gifts. Still, despite his entreaties, she would not sleep with him.

One night I had the writer, frustrated to the end of his wits, break into her house. He means to seduce her, or, if that fails, to take her by force. When he gets to her bedroom, however, he finds the object of his desire naked, only partially covered by sheets. I hinted that, with one hand out of sight, Valerie was playing with herself.

Yes, that was the taboo twist I needed: masturbation. Even now, decades after
Portnoy’s Complaint
, many writers wouldn’t discuss it. In 1950, it would have offended most readers. Also, masturbation was the only kind of sex I had any experience of, and could write about convincingly. Would Dahl have written something so explicit? Why not? He liked to shock. No mainstream magazine would have taken the story. Hence he sent it to the
Little Review
, a small subscription literary journal that published risk-taking fiction.

I wrote furiously, ignoring my dry throat and the late hour. Edward interrupts Valerie. He begins a forceful speech. If she will not submit to him, he will have no choice but to take her by force. Then he sees what she’s reading and stumbles over his words. It’s one of Veronica Bendix’s ‘memoirs’. He blurts out his authorship, proving his tale by telling her what happens next. Valerie, to his surprise, is not shocked. She tells Edward that if he’s half as good a lover as the men he writes about, she’ll give him a try.

What would my character do in such circumstances? Run, or risk the humiliation of sexual failure? How would Dahl end the story? I would decide tomorrow. As dawn broke over Soho, I drank a pint of water, which made me feel drunk again, and went to bed. Later, I would have to work out how to forge a convincing manuscript.

The next day was a Friday. After my exertions of the night before, I didn’t get up until Tony had left the office. He never came back after lunch on a Friday. He’d left his newspaper open at the obituaries page. At the bottom right, in small print, were the details of Roald Dahl’s funeral. I noticed that it was to take place the next day, in Great Missenden, the village where Dahl lived. Which meant, in all likelihood, that his house would be empty.

I was thinking like a burglar. The house would be locked, doubtless well secured. But what about the hut, where, according to the obituary, Dahl did all his writing, sitting in an old armchair? How secure could a hut be? According to the obituary, Dahl wrote his first drafts in pencil on yellow foolscap. Even so, he must type them up afterwards. His typewriter, in all likelihood, would still be there. I would never have a better chance to convincingly forge a Roald Dahl story.

The train from Marylebone was late, allowing me little room for error. On the forty minute journey, I thought of all sorts of problems that might interfere with my plan. Even supposing I got into the writing hut, and the typewriter was still there, it would take me a good hour and a half to type out the four thousand word story. My best typing speed was fifty words a minute. I had to get used to an old typewriter and avoid making mistakes. Also, I had barely enough old paper to type the story onto. If I botched a couple of pages and had to start over, I might run out.

The easiest solution would be to steal the typewriter. But there were problems with that. I might get caught, which would make me a common criminal. There’d be publicity, which could destroy my future and reflect badly on the
Little Review
. Even if I wasn’t caught, the typewriter’s theft would alert Dahl’s executors to the possibility of forgery. I’d never get away with placing my story in the
LR
. If I was caught typing in the hut, however, what could anyone do? I’d be taken for a nutter, pretending to be Dahl, my childhood hero. I wasn’t stealing anything. I’d be an embarrassment, spoiling the day of the funeral. But nobody would want to get the police involved. The family would throw me out on my ear, no doubt, and they would have every right to.

The Aylesbury train took me all the way to Great Missenden, I hurried down the High Street then along the lane that led to Gypsy House. It stood alone in five acres of land on the far side of the train line. The funeral was about to start. Surely there’d be no-one home. I walked around the house’s perimeter, looking for a way in.

A thick hedge surrounded the back garden. I peered through it, trying to make out the hut. When I failed I wasn’t sure what to do. I had to allow for the risk of being spotted by servants, or guard dogs. It would be suspicious for me to walk around the boundary again. I wore a heavy denim jacket and jeans. My paper was in a sturdy folder. I zipped it inside my jacket and looked down the lane. Nobody in sight. I tucked my bare hands into the sleeves of my jacket and charged into the hedge.

It hurt far more than I’d expected. Worse, I almost got stuck in the middle. My left knee banged against solid branch. Sharp twigs scratched my face. I half twisted my right ankle as I crashed through the other side, falling onto wet grass where I landed awkwardly on my rump. Slowly, I stood up. At least no guard dog had launched itself at me. I ached all over. My face was bleeding. Bits of hedge stuck to me. But I was through. And there, at the edge of an orchard, was the brick hut, with its white walls and yellow door.

The door opened on the left.There was no key in the lock. I might be able to kick it in, but I wasn’t a vandal, and, anyway, to do so would make my presence obvious. I tried the handle, expecting to find the door firmly locked. It wasn’t. I pushed open the door.

The hut was dark. There was a small entrance area, then another shadowy doorway. To my right, there were filing cabinets. The large window was covered by a plastic sheet encrusted with grime. There was barely enough light for me to see clearly. On my left, there was a wing-backed armchair with a green felt writing board leaning on it. To the left of that was a small table with an old-fashioned angle poise type lamp, an ashtray and a fairly modern phone. Where was the typewriter? I turned on the lamp. There was no room for a typewriter on the desk to the right of the armchair. This was covered with objects including model aeroplanes, fossils, a cup containing several Dixon Ticonderoga pencils, a little ball of silver foil, a ceramic beetle, a round stone, antique knives and a sword. There were pictures everywhere, but no typewriter.

I stood in the gloom, taking in the atmosphere of the space where a real writer had worked. All his money, yet he had chosen to work in a hut, without basic comforts. I should be able to learn from that.

I was about to go when I saw it. There, on top of one of the black filing cabinets, was an old canvas cover. I reached up. Beneath the cover was a typewriter. I lifted it onto the table by Dahl’s armchair, making room by moving the phone. I removed the cover and switched on the lamp, then squatted awkwardly in order to type. I tested my luck with a new sheet of paper.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
. I typed this a handful of times until my fingers were sure of the keys. Then I put the piece of paper aside. If I were to be caught, this was the sheet I wanted my captors to see. Now I placed a sheet of 1950’s paper from the
LR
archive under the roller. I had memorised the layout Dahl used, and was careful to reproduce it. There were no common errors for me to imitate, as there had been with Hemingway. All I had to aim for was accuracy.

It was cold for early December. But that didn’t matter .As I typed, scrunched up awkwardly, barely visible through the large window, I picked up speed and became confident of my chances. I made small embellishments to my original. After a while I began to add new sentences and dialogue. It was as if Dahl was there, in me.

I lost all sense of time. While I was, in a sense, copy typing, I was also thinking ahead. The ending I’d come up with the day before wasn’t good enough. What I’d written in Soho didn’t feel like Dahl. Masturbation was too tacky a denouement and the twist wasn’t clever enough. Still I typed, improving as I went, while a newly discovered part of my brain schemed. As I got to the middle of the story, something happened. A woman appears at the club, accompanied by Timms’ friend, Barker. The new character I wrote was still based on Helen, but a decade or so older and only moderately vampish. Timms is immediately taken with her, and wonders how Barker has snagged her. Then his friend introduces the pair. Her name, he says, is Veronica Bendix.

I had my twist. Timms can’t call the woman’s bluff without revealing that he himself is Bendix. Anyway, he’s intrigued as to why this woman, an adventurer if ever there was one, is pretending to be his pseudonym. He wants to be with her. So he contrives to get rid of Barker and invites ‘Veronica’ to dinner. She agrees enthusiastically.

The next night, they meet. ‘Veronica’, it transpires, is a great fan of Edward’s literary work, dismissing her ‘own’ novels as insignificant twaddle. Timms quizzes her about whether her wartime memoirs have any basis in reality. She asks him whether it would bother him if they weren’t true. He admits that it would bother him more if they were.

They would be back from the funeral by now, I was sure. But what reason would anyone have to come to this shed? I had to keep writing. I had to find out what happened next. As I continued to type, developing a romance in which both parties were lying to the other, I began to get an inkling of how the story should end. ‘Veronica’ and Edward become lovers. I wrote a scene where Timms goes to see his publisher, Cranstone, to deliver the latest French maid book, and tells him that he is unable to write any more of the Bendix spy memoirs. Cranstone says he’s mad. The Bendix books are outselling his others by ten to one and, with the relaxation of censorship imminent in the UK, sales could go through the roof. But Timms is adamant.

When he proposes to Veronica, she is unable to consider his offer she says, until he knows the truth. She admits that she is not really Veronica Bendix, that she took on that identity as a lark for his friend, but fell for Edward and couldn’t work out how to escape the situation. He replies that it’s all right, he knew all along that she was lying, because...

There was a noise from the far end of the garden, but it was too late to stop now. I knew how my story must end. Dahl was dictating the story to me through his typewriter. I was merely his amanuensis, tapping out the words with scarcely a mistake. Veronica agrees to marry Timms, but on one condition, that he resume writing the novels that had drawn her to him in the first place. But what would they live on, he asks. You’re forgetting, she tells him, that you’re marrying the best selling writer, Veronica Bendix. Your friends will envy you and, with your help, I can become the writer we both pretended to be.

Was this too rosy an ending? I could think of another twist or two, but too many twists might prevent the story resonating with the reader. Anyway, only one blank sheet of paper remained. I typed a title page:
The Woman Who Married Herself by Roald Dahl
, in the same format as the story Dahl submitted to the
Little Review
. Once I finished typing, I could hear movement outside. I checked my watch. I’d been in the shed for more than two hours.

I was replacing the typewriter when I saw a young face outside the dirty window. Too late, I turned off the light. The lad was running to the house. What had he seen? I must look like a scarecrow, for I was still covered in bits from the hedge. As I shoved the papers into my folder I could hear the boy screaming. I opened the door. No-one was in sight.

I was girding myself to jump back through the hedge when I heard rapid footsteps. At least two sets, possibly three. If I jumped through the hedge, I’d be heard. The only place to hide was behind the shed.

‘I’m telling you,’ a child’s voice said, ‘I saw Grandpa’s ghost!’

‘Now, now, you’re imagining things,’ a woman’s voice told him. ‘Grandpa’s gone to heaven.’

‘Grandpa didn’t believe in heaven. He told me. I know it was him. I heard the typewriter. He had his light on.’

‘It’s not on now. Doesn’t look as though anybody’s been in here. The window’s so filthy I’m surprised you could see a thing.’

‘I’m telling you, I saw Grandpa, only he didn’t look old. He had hair, but there were twigs and things in it, like he’d dug his way out of the ground.’

‘That isn’t funny. It sounds to me, young man, as if you’ve inherited your grandfather’s bizarre sense of humour. Now, he can’t have dug his way out of the ground, because we buried him not half an hour ago. Get back to the house and play with your cousins if you know what’s good for you!’