It was my sister who first told me I was a fraud. It was an unpleasant truth, made all the more uncomfortably real by the fact that it was uncovered by someone whose opinion I could hardly dismiss. The conclusion came after she'd heard my voice on the radio.
"Your voice sounds so funny," she said. "It's not bad - no - it's good. it's just not what I think you sound like."
"What do I sound like?"
"I don't know, not like you do on the radio."
She was right of course. My accent has changed.
I'm 18. I leave Edinburgh and move to France. After nine or so months of twisting the French
language to fit the vocabulary of sounds, my Scottish upbringing had supplied, something odd happened. It clicked. In order to speak a foreign language, I'd have to be somebody completely different. Suddenly I could be anybody I chose. I acquired a northern accent in Cambridge, a Cambridge accent in Paris, a Paris accent in Nantes. Being an outsider in all these places, I stuck close to the other outsiders and failed miserably ever to produce the right intonation at the right time.
In Manhattan seven years ago, I find myself caught suddenly in the centre of an imminent, intoxicated brawl. "Heeeyyyy" I said, finding with ease an accent I had shaken off with such speed, stretching a three letter, one syllable word to several seconds, in a voice I hoped would say "This man is Scottish. As far as you know, this man could be from Easterhouse , and he could well be carrying a razor." Unfortunately for me on the lower side of Manhattan my accent said only one thing "This man is a tourist." I stepped back, spun on my heel and ran. A fraud and a coward.
What's more, a Scots accent is perfect for a fraudster. Try being enthusiastic in a Scottish accent. It can't be done. The tartan tone lends itself only to sarcasm, to irony, to deflation, to putting down. If you want the simple phrase "that was really good" to mean precisely the opposite, say it in a Scots accent.
I suppose if you can no longer remember what is true, then the next option is to be as honest as
you can about your dishonesty. A fraud still, but no longer such a coward - maybe.
