Counterfeit

As you check your mail, you notice a letter that makes you stop in your tracks. Somehow I just know that even though it’s on a screen, you’ll still refer to it as a letter. That’s part of your “old-fashioned charm” I suppose. Still, even I did a double take when a radio channel referred to an “old-fashioned email”! 

     I hope you do notice the letter, but I’m pretty sure you will. It’s safely crafted, even the subject heading, Old-fashioned Girl Seeks Gentleman. That will appeal to you.

     I imagine you sitting at a desk top. Maybe even one of those towers.  Of course, I realise this could be entirely wide of the mark and that you could well be a technical wizard with the most up to date 5G Smartphone. 

     We can be what we like online can’t we? You know that as well as I do. Let’s not be precious about this. Show me the person who claims not to have told even the tiniest white lie in Internet World and I’ll suspect either a person who is too good for this world or – well, a liar! 

     For all I know it could be totally true that you own a manor house – even if it is a dilapidated one – in the Welsh Mountains. And just as true that you have sung tenor with the English National Opera and used to be a firefighter. That picture could be a genuine likeness of you. Soulful eyes, high cheek bones and all. 

     Fair do’s, I tweaked my own photo a bit, and affected an interest in “heritage” that has more to do with watching Bargain Hunt when it’s raining and I have a cold (or even when it isn’t and I don’t) than with any serious study. It’s tempting, even when there isn’t any reason.

     Yes, it is possible that every word you have said is true. I very much doubt it, but I don’t have a sixth sense. Well, not really.

     It’s far more likely that you’re a harmless fantasist sitting in your lonely bedsit or in your bedroom at your Mum’s house. Online dating agencies can’t filter such things out, and there’s no point to them pretending they can. If that’s the case I feel quite sorry for you with that condescending sympathy that comes when we realise that the object of our pity isn’t intrinsically that different from ourselves. 

     But something is still nagging at me. And that’s why the old-fashioned girl is seeking her self-proclaimed gentleman.

     All going according to plan! You’ve replied more or less by what we still (and not just old-fashioned girls and gentlemen!) call, by habit and default, return of post. You have, you tell me, received umpteen replies, but mine has “spoken to your heart” and you think you may very well have found your “soulmate”.  You have also sent me another “more personal” photo (which seems to mean your hair is floppier and your eyes have become even more studiedly soulful) and a sample of your poetry because you are also a poet. Credit where it’s due, you haven’t plagiarised, or at least not any poet that I recognise. Somehow, I don’t think, even allowing for adjustments to make it reflect modern technology, that Keats or Wordsworth would have written:

We loved each other still unseen,

As if that love had always been

And now I kiss the blessed screen

For love is old though ways are new,

and a true heart is always true

and every hour I think of you.

What, just every hour? Not every second when love beckoned? Or every minute when love bloomed in it? I really should apply for a job at a Greetings Cards company; I have the knack! But for the time being I will limit my literary talent (!) to writing to you. But I’ll take it slow and steady when it comes to the poetry as you obviously entirely eclipse my own humble efforts. Oh yes, I have the trowel with which to lay it on, Bernard! 

     You have gone into raptures over my nom de plume of Verity Vermont, telling me that Verity means truth (well, you don’t say!) and that though some may think of my surname as a mere geographical reference, you think of a lush green hill. Maybe I missed a trick there and should have appealed to your apparent operatic talent by making it Monteverdi! 

     My friend Cassie, one of the few who is “in on it” veers between amusement and a certain anxiety. She still expects regular reports.

     There were some hard decisions to make. In the end I decided not to pose as a much younger person. Instinct – and it could be wrong – tells me that for all my suspicions, you wouldn’t do that. I’m not a great expert, but there weren’t any words in your profile that flagged up that risk or temptation. Anyway, Hearts Online officially doesn’t allow anyone under 18 to participate, but you will know as well as I do that such rules can be ignored or circumvented. If anything, you seem to have a taste for slightly older women, though you use words such as “wise” and “old-fashioned values”. 

     Even though there is a serious purpose behind this, I may as well admit I’m enjoying it. On the surface, your persona is quite engaging, if only in its studied contradictions. You are very self-effacing and given to phrases like “not that I know much about such things” or “I am, of course, wholly ignorant on such matters” but there is always the implication that it is because they are beneath you rather than above you. Yet you are not shy when it comes to your achievements, whether on the operatic stage or rescuing children from burning buildings. You are also very widely travelled and an expert chess player. Now be careful there, Bernard! I haven’t mentioned it (I don’t know why) but though I’m no grand master, I am a pretty good chess player, though I’ve probably gone downhill in the decades since I got to the semi-finals of the Eastern Counties Under 14s Chess Challenge! If you challenge me to playing online you might just get more than you bargained for. Some nasty little imp of mischief makes me want to call your bluff and challenge you but I don’t want to scare you off. 

     “And what new talent or achievement has Bernard the Beautiful revealed to you today?” Cassie asked this morning. 

     “His travels,” I told her, entirely truthfully. Because, oh, Bernard, you’re a regular little globe-trotter, aren’t you? You make Phinneas Fogg look like a positive stay at home. And you are just as at home in luxury hotels and desert encampments. I’ve told you that I would love to travel more and you have said it is a great and wonderful and marvellous thing (you rarely use one adjective when three will do) but now you are more than happy to settle down in your little cottage (er – what’s happened to the mansion?) in the shadow of the majestic, towering, inspiring Welsh mountains. But you admit your Wanderlust isn’t entirely gone. It goes without saying that you have Wanderlust and nothing as prosaic and vaguely distasteful as itchy feet. Oh, and you have your dream of opening a bookshop. An old-fashioned bookshop, of course. Oddly, you admit to being currently unemployed, though of course you never actually use that word. I keep expecting you to say you are “resting” (I suppose opera singers use that expression at least as much as straight actors, if either do in real life!) but you have referred to a period of contemplation and deciding on your next stage in life’s journey. You’re rather fond of the phrase life’s journey. 

     Well, I saw it coming. Easy to say now it’s come! You wonder if I could lend you some money just to tide you over while you get the bookshop up and running. “I hate to ask you, Verity, my darling, it’s not the kind of thing a gentleman would do, but my heart tells me I can be frank with you, and just in the immediate, transient, inconvenient moment, I am a little financially embarrassed. Isn’t it one of the most cruel, ironic, trying twists of fate that such things happen just when a new door is on the point of opening!” What, not new and fresh and exciting? You’re losing your touch, Bernard! 

     Now the point is, and this is what makes it just a bit awkward, you still haven’t done anything illegal. Not really. I mean, if telling porkies online were an arrestable offence there’d have to be the most massive prison building programme in the history of the universe. Of course I say that I am glad to help you. You reply by return of post again. As if rather embarrassed by the whole thing you admit that your builder likes to be paid cash. “I’m sure he’s as honest as the day is long, but he’s old-fashioned in his ways; and so far as I’m concerned, that’s part of his appeal!”  Well it would be, wouldn’t it?

     I’m still not sure about this, but the more I think about it the more tempting it gets if I can pull it off. Malicious? Possibly! But that’ll teach him to ask me for money sent special delivery through the post. Rather to my surprise, he has trusted me with an actual address. Well, he needn’t think he’s getting mine. Yes, they ask for it in the Post Office, but I’ll go to the one in Nottingham when I’m next there. I’m pretty sure they don’t ask for proof, which could be potentially embarrassing. 

     It was surprising just how easy it was to get the necessary means to carry this through. Almost too easy. Now it’s done I feel vaguely guilty, but not enough to wish I hadn’t done it. It’s very easy to think myself into campaigning heroine mode and think about all the heartache I’m sparing other women. If there’s the very slim chance that your photo was at least quasi-genuine there’ll certainly be a different expression in those soulful eyes when you try to bank that money, or maybe a couple of weeks later if they’re not over-careful in the bank.

Cassie has said she will get me a lawyer. “But you must admit, it looks bad,” she said, fretfully. “I DID warn you!”

     Technically, she didn’t. She didn’t warn me about an undercover plain clothes officer from the South Wales Fraud Squad having me arrested for handling counterfeit cash.

     This wasn’t supposed to happen, Bernard! This wasn’t supposed to happen at all!