Going It Alone Read Free Page A

in a sense, the entire theatrical profession. And doesn’t every child delight in dressing up? But all that was play ; was imitation, mimesis , willing suspensions of disbelief. To plan veritably to foist an imposture on others was quite a different thing. Crooks of various kinds did it soberly – and probably joylessly – in the way of business. Crooks who got any pleasure out of it were to be found mainly in storybooks. Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull, for instance: there, certainly, had been a chap with plenty of élan to bring to the job. But Gilbert Averell was no Felix Krull. (Nor was meant to be, the Prince de Silistrie might have added from his abundant store of English literary references.) Yet conceivably every Averell has a Krull inside him, hollering to be let out. Perhaps this was what had happened. And ‘had happened’ got it just right, since he knew quite positively, if mysteriously, that he was committed to the outrageous charade.
    He had been seeing the element of full-scale, one hundred per cent impersonation as lasting for about thirty seconds at either end of the adventure: for just so long, in fact, as he was displaying that passport beneath a notice reading ‘Other EEC Nationals’, or something of the sort. He’d be himself in England.
    He’d be himself in England – hiring a car at Heathrow (if he decided to fly rather than travel by rail and sea) and simply driving down to his elder sister’s house in Berkshire. He’d have sent a telegram ahead of him, and his visit would occasion no surprise. His sister certainly kept no account of his regular English sojournings; it would never occur to her that anything irregular was afoot; the little visit would be the most normal, the pleasantest thing in the world. Then he’d return as he had arrived, and collect the proceeds of his wager. There hadn’t of course been a wager. But the thing felt that way – and it was probably the best way to feel about it.
    Yet all this precisely lacked the panache which would alone render the exploit other than feeble. He knew that he’d better keep it that way. The alternative was to sail (or tack or wallow) through a week in London as the Prince de Silistrie; to throw himself into the part for the benefit of porters and hotel clerks and waiters; to drop into French when some difficult English idiom appeared to elude him: every kind of nonsense of that sort. He found himself wishing that Georges wasn’t a prince. To be a prince in France didn’t mean all that. The younger sons of a duc – he vaguely seemed to recall – often perplexingly ran to the title of prince . But in England it sounded very grand. Something to be stared at.
    Thus was Gilbert Averell still meditating when he got back to his own apartment in the rue Lafitte. And there a variety of small practical problems at once beset him. Was he to book himself out of France in his friend’s name? There might be something slightly tricky about that. Was he to pocket a substantial sum in francs in the reasonable confidence that nobody was going to ask to see his wallet? If he did, and if he then changed them into pounds sterling even in small batches in England, would this involve his producing what purported to be Georges’ signature? What about his suitcases, which were so boldly stamped GA ? He knew that in all these minor matters there lay no substantial difficulty. They were harassing, all the same. He felt he wasn’t really well cast in the role of adventurer.
    Yet anything that added to the effect of challenge ought to be reckoned as a gain. The more of a pushover the thing was, the sillier would it be. He ought even to be looking forward to the sudden bobbing up of unexpected emergency, such as would require a quick wit to cope with. But what about the blankly not-to-be-coped-with sort? Suppose he fell gravely ill. Suppose he was knocked down by a bus. The game would be up – and not to the effect that he had simply been out-staying his