The Pretender (16 page)

The nights were long. It was too noisy to get to sleep until late and too cold to walk the streets of Soho, ‘researching’ material for my novel about London life. I watched my mother’s old portable TV, though the reception was bad. I became addicted to American cop shows and Coronation Street. I let my hair grow long because I couldn’t afford a haircut. All of my clothes were beginning to look shabby. I hadn’t bought new ones since Mum’s death. I talked to myself a lot. I was, without realising it, rapidly sinking.

As was the magazine. The next Arts Board meeting was cancelled, our grant further delayed. There then followed a long silence. The absent Tony kept getting phone calls from the small printers he’d been using since 1972.

‘He owes us nearly four thousand. That’s a month’s payroll.’

The
Little Review
had been run on a shoe string for years. Nominally, it paid people, but most contributors waived payment. Tony, assuming that his annual grant would be renewed, had been juggling debtors to keep the cash flow going. Doubtless he’d done this a hundred times before. In the early days, he once told me proudly, ‘There were no grants, and I made a small profit, out of which I paid myself. In those days, you see, people had a real appetite for literature.’

But those days were long gone. Without a grant, there wasn’t a single literary magazine that could survive, unless you counted the small offset jobs that looked like bad photocopies and were produced by angry, unemployed men in northern towns. And maybe they were the only ones that deserved to survive, though I was too tactful to say this to Tony. I’d been brought up to believe in being self sufficient, and hated drawing the dole. Wasn’t a grant a kind of dole for magazines? Wouldn’t it be better to use the money to pay budding authors forty quid a week on a job creation scheme? I did try that one on Tony.

‘Half the scroungers on the streets would claim to be writers,’ he objected.

‘Then make them produce a hundred pages every three months or they lose their money,’ I suggested. ‘That’d cure a writer’s block.’

‘The trouble is,’ Tony told me, changing tack, ‘what we need are fewer writers, not more. The ones we have can’t make a living.’

The printers threatened to take him to court. Tony had nearly gone bankrupt in the late seventies. He was getting too old to be put through that again. He began to pester Naomi Finch, the Arts Board officer responsible for the
Little Review
’s funding. After a week of daily phone calls, Finch invited Tony to a meeting. When he came back, he was lower than I’d seen him before.

‘They’re pulling the plug,’ he told me. ‘Magazine support budgets are being slashed and we’re the biggest to go. This is what she said to me:
magazines have a time when they’re vital — a couple of years, five at the most — after which they become like an aging slag who’s slept with everybody but never had the sense to get married and settle down
. She’s always trying to pull the new talent, not realising that, in satisfying her jaded appetites, she’s depriving somebody else of a good fuck.

‘Then she told me formally that the board felt it was time for the
Little Review
to make way for new magazines. What new magazines? I said to her. She couldn’t answer, of course. So I started my spiel about the five hundredth issue, all the people who were going to be in it and you know what she said? Why don’t you write to them all? See if they’ll stump up for the printing bill and go out with a bang? As if I could humiliate myself by...’

He burst into tears and, awkwardly, I hugged him, feeling useless and sorry for my friend. Sorry for myself too, for soon I would be out of a job.

Tony began to take the magazine very seriously indeed. He started coming in at ten, opening the mail and answering the phone himself. He wrote to a handful of people: rich benefactors who had come through in the past and authors who had made it big (fewer than you might think: most successful writers still earned less than school teachers). He needed ten thousand pounds to cover the overdue printing bill and the costs of the final issue. I suggested he go to Francis Bacon, who was, reputedly, a millionaire. His cover sketch alone was worth many times the amount needed. Tony wouldn’t hear of it. He wouldn’t sell art, and he wouldn’t put himself in an embarrassing position with a friend.

‘Do you know the hoops I had to jump through to get Francis to volunteer an illustration for the cover without actually asking him for one?’

‘Couldn’t you mention your problems in the Colony? Surely he’d offer...’

‘People aren’t naive, Mark. Not nice, either, most of them. I can just hear one or two people’s sneering tones should I even bring it up.
Bracken’s on his uppers. Watch out, Francis,Tony’s after a loan. Didn’t you give him a picture already?
I’ll get the money somehow, even if I have to sell the lease on this place. Ten grand’s not that much.’

‘Sell the lease?’

I didn’t know that the
Little Review
owned the lease to the building, but the prospect of being homeless sharpened my mind. I asked Tony to explain the situation. It turned out that he owned the lease to the whole building, subletting to the porn shop below, which effectively paid the
LR
’s rent, rates and heating bills.

‘The lease runs out in four years. I was planning to pack up then, sell the archive, maybe publish the occasional chapbook of poetry, but basically retire.’

‘Couldn’t you sell the archive now?’ I asked.

‘Hardly.These things take months, years even, to negotiate. The archive isn’t catalogued to anywhere near the necessary standards. I want the five hundredth issue to come out this year. Anyway, I’m not sure it’s worth a great deal. I suppose the unpublished Dahl story would be the icing on the cake for anybody buying it. But that would depend on it being properly authenticated.’

I looked away. The Chinese supermarket down the road was busy today. Four or five customers were queuing to pay. However, the narrow road was at that moment blocked by their vegetable supplier’s mini-van. A taxi was sounding its horn. Tony coughed.

‘What will you do about the Dahl?’ I asked.

‘It would be foolish not to try and publish,’ Tony told me. So I’ve decided to get it set in print. I’ll send a set of proofs to Dahl’s home to cover myself...’

‘And if somebody objects?’

‘Take legal advice, I suppose.’

‘Shouldn’t you do that first?’ I asked.

Tony gave me a condescending look. ‘Legal advice costs,’ was all he said.

‘But shouldn’t we make a profit on the final issue?’ I asked, trying to be optimistic. Then I realised what I’d done. The unsayable had slipped out, that the next issue would be the last one ever. My face must have reddened. Tony, seeing my embarrassment, didn’t comment on my mistake.

‘Theoretically, the last issue made a profit,’ he said. ‘But it will be months before we know how much money came in. Lots of shops we haven’t dealt with before took copies. That isn’t to say that they’ll pay us for them. The distributors took an extra thousand, but they only pay us forty-seven percent of the cover price. If you don’t take our grants into account, we lose money on those sales. By putting up the cover price of the five hundredth issue, I can get around that, but we probably won’t sell as many copies.’

He lit a cigarette. ‘There isn’t much money to be made in this game, Mark. Take my advice. While you’re waiting to become a writer, don’t start a magazine. It will suck up all the energy you need to make a real career out of writing. Your best years go and you don’t even notice because you’re too busy, keeping the thing going, giving other writers their break. And what thanks do you get? Bugger all. You’re seen as a bloodsucker by the grant giving bodies, who can’t wait to get rid of you and reward someone newer. Most writers hate you, because you won’t publish them. Or if you do, you take too long, or don’t take the next one, and they resent you for building them up, then knocking them down. It’s a mug’s game.’

‘You must have got something out of it,’ I said, weakly.

‘I never paid myself more than a token amount. I used to get laid a little — not a lot, but enough to make it seem worthwhile. And my own work has always been noticed, quite well reviewed — nobody wants to make an enemy out of a well known editor. Nobody wants to praise you too much, either, in case it looks like toadying. Then there’s the satisfaction of the magazine itself, of course. Seeing it in the shops, on people’s shelves, perfect bound and shining with promise. But that doesn’t compare with the satisfaction of having a real writing career.’

‘Why have you kept at it, then?’ I asked. ‘I mean... forty years.’

‘I’d have thought that was obvious,’Tony told me, pouring himself a glass of Famous Grouse. ‘It’s the only thing I know how to do.’

He offered me a drink, which I refused.

‘There’s one good side to all this,’ Tony said, as I went upstairs to work. ‘At least I’ll never have to send out another rejection slip.’

When I went back downstairs it was dark.Tony never worked this late, but there was a light on in the office, so I looked in on my way out for something to eat.Tony was still there, glass of whisky in one hand, cigarette in the other. He wasn’t alone. Tony raised his glass and called my name.

‘There’s somebody I want you to meet.’

There, in the chair that I normally occupied, was a middle-aged man with a red face and an expensive suit. It was Paul Mercer.

‘Mark, this is Paul Mercer. Paul, I’d like you to meet my editorial assistant and archivist, Mark Trace.’

Paul stood up and shook my hand. Should I reveal at once how I used to work for Paul and he’d ripped me off over the Hemingway manuscripts? It would be the open way to behave. Tony would understand why I’d never mentioned it before. But he’d also work out what other manuscripts I’d forged.

By hesitating, I let the moment pass.

‘Paul acts as an agent for various American university libraries,’ Tony told me. ‘He’s interested in buying our archive.’

‘Really?’ I said. Again, Paul had come to steal. This time not from me, but from Tony.

‘Tony tells me that most of the stuff is in the flat upstairs,’ Paul said in his brash, booming voice.

‘I think Paul would like to see it,’ said Tony.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Now?’

‘If you don’t mind...’

I didn’t mind. This way, I would get Paul on his own, for Tony disliked the climb. I led Paul up the steep stairs to the box room.

‘Helen sends her love,’ Paul told me, once we were out of earshot. ‘She was very keen to know how you’re getting on. Next time I come, I’ll bring her over. Right now, though, she’s real busy with her studies at NYU.’

I didn’t take the bait and ask how Helen was or what she was studying. Seeing Paul, overweight and overconfident, thinking of him having her, made me want to vomit.

‘Here it is.’ I showed him the box room where the magazine’s archives were arranged in a semblance of order. For the next half hour, with a librarian’s detachment, I ran through some of the highlights of what was there: Albee, Auden, Beckett, Pinter, Plath, Sherwin...

Paul didn’t hide his mounting delight.

‘I can think of institutions that’ll cream their jeans to get their hands on this lot,’ he told me, in a rancid, insinuating voice that expected me to share his jubilation. ‘I’ll take photocopies back to the States with me.’

‘We don’t have a photocopier,’ I said. I wasn’t going to let any of this stuff out of the building, not after what had happened to my Hemingway stories.

‘A magazine with no copier! How awfully British!’

‘You owe me some money,’ I told him, annoyed by his attitude, his very presence. ‘Those stories of mine you took.’

Paul became serious. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t get a proper chance to discuss that,’ he told me. ‘The truth is, the money on offer was never what it said in the papers. There were some doubts about authenticity...’

He hesitated. I tried to keep a poker face. Did he know I’d forged them?

‘The upshot is I haven’t been paid yet. When I do, I’ll send you half.’

‘Half?’ I stepped out of the boxroom and Paul followed me.

‘Fifty-fifty’s the usual deal on stuff like this.’

‘Is that what you’ll be charging Tony?’ I asked, shutting the box room door.

‘No. Tony’s archive is fully documented and authenticated. That makes a great deal of difference in the rare manuscripts world. By the way, Mark...’

‘Yes?’

‘I presume your... friend doesn’t know about the Paris manuscripts?’

‘Not about my connection with them, no,’ I replied, with my back to him.

‘I see.’ He said nothing more, but followed me down the stairs. In the office, he greeted Tony ebulliently. ‘I think we’ve got the makings of a great partnership. You know, you ought to have better security for your archives.’

‘Mark’s my watchdog,’ Tony told Paul.

‘How about I take you two for a meal? My treat?’

‘Most kind.’ Tony rarely turned down a free meal, but I hesitated. I had to set my discomfort against wanting to know how Paul would play Tony, what information he’d give to him. With Tony’s weak bladder, there were bound to be further opportunities for me to press Paul about the Hemingway manuscripts. Also, I hadn’t had a good meal in weeks.

‘Are you coming, Mark?’ Paul asked.

‘If I’m welcome,’ I said.

‘Is there somewhere near you can suggest? Paul asked Tony.

‘I’ll give the French House a ring, see if they can fit us in.’

While Tony was on the phone, Paul looked at me appraisingly. His expression reminded me that we both knew something Tony didn’t. It felt like a betrayal.

The small upstairs restaurant was crowded but Tony was a regular, so a table was soon found. Paul, at Tony’s suggestion, ordered oysters and kidneys, a house speciality. I had oysters, too, since Paul was paying and I’d never had them before. I remember the slippery texture of the shellfish and the way it was spoilt for me by a smutty joke Paul made about the clitoris.

When Tony went downstairs to use the loo I challenged Paul about the manuscripts again.