The Stand-In Read online

  ‘Think so?’ said Lila. ‘I think it’s kind of dumb.’

  I blushed. ‘Well – it’s fun anyway.’ Tony passed by, in his dress; we watched him take off a high-heeled sandal, groan and rub his foot. ‘A real Tootsie role,’ I said.

  Lila turned to me eagerly. ‘Know where I can get them?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tootsie rolls?’

  ‘Pardon?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve searched all over,’ said Lila. ‘I’m a junk-food junkie.’

  Malcolm took her arm. ‘I’m sure we can find you some, Miss Dune. We’ll get it sent to your hotel. Leave it to us.’ And he steered her away.

  Do you know, my heart was thumping? When I unclenched my fingers, my palms were damp. It was ridiculous. She was only a woman. And yet, when I lifted the newspaper again, my hands were trembling.

  She was incredibly pretty, of course. Beautiful, really. I wasn’t prepared for the effect she would have on me, close up. It’s hard to describe her – as Tolstoy nearly said, all beautiful people are the same, but the rest of us are not-quite-beautiful in different ways.

  Despite the thick make-up she was more fine-boned than I had expected, more delicate. Her arms were slender and honey-tanned; her eyes wide-spaced, and she had the most wonderful mouth – full and inviting. Her mascara was slightly smudged; she looked just slightly awry. On her cheek, just where it should be, was a beauty spot.

  Though she had the vulnerable face of a young girl, she also looked her age; this, I’m sure, had improved her, it made her face more defined and interesting. There were faint laughter-lines around her eyes, and at the corners of her mouth.

  Next to her, I felt drained and colourless, a foolish imposter in my Lila wig. I felt like a foliage plant next to a lustrous, over-scented hothouse bloom. There was something slightly sluttish and over-ripe about her, something very sexy.

  But it was more than this. She was famous.

  I had met well known actors before, but Lila was different. She was a star. Second-division, maybe, but still a star. It’s the perfect word: star. It implies that they exist above us, breathing different air. It doesn’t even imply – it takes for granted.

  Oh, it’s beyond reason. I mean, I didn’t even particularly admire her work – give me Vanessa Redgrave any day, now there’s an actress’s actress. Lila had been so-so in the takes I had seen; she had no range. She didn’t even appear in the sort of films I liked.

  I couldn’t really explain it. I just felt uncomfortable, as if I had slightly betrayed myself. Why had I sucked up to her, telling her what a terrific story it was? I was probably twice as intelligent as Lila, yet I felt so stupid. I suppose, just for a moment, I was star-struck. What a cliché. Like, when I describe her it comes out a cliché – honey-tanned, wide-spaced eyes. I’ll be going on about her spun-gold hair next.

  When you are in love you speak in clichés. He swept me off my feet. Our hearts were one. I felt I’d known him all my life. Tired, battered old phrases you have despised for years; suddenly, in a rush, they are yours, you welcome them back like lost possessions.

  My father despised clichés. He hated sloppiness. He admired precision; he sought words which knocked together and produced sparks. But then my father had never lost control; he had never dared to love.

  That night, in bed, I told Trev that I’d shaken Lila Dune’s hand.

  ‘I’ll touch you,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll never wash again.’

  He took my hand and pushed it down between his thighs.

  That night I dreamed that I was trying to reach my father, but he couldn’t hear my cries because I was trapped between two doors. Then I realised they weren’t doors, they were two sides of a bun. All that gristle, he said. It’s disgusting. And he turned away.

  When I woke I tried to tell it to Trev. But I wasn’t really speaking to him. Telling a dream is entirely selfish; you are just trying to fix it in your mind, like dipping a photograph in the chemicals of speech and waiting for the picture to appear.

  The one thing I’m glad about, now, is that my father died before any of this happened. He is the one person I couldn’t have faced.

  Five

  FOR THE NEXT couple of days I hardly spoke to Lila. By the nature of my job, in fact, I found myself working more closely with the crew than with the other actors. I became friendly with Nobby; he was one of the grips and had rosy cheeks and a beer belly. He was the only person who seemed to know I was an actress.

  ‘Saw you on Grange Hill,’ he said. ‘My kids were watching it. Didn’t you play some school inspector?’

  I nodded. ‘Twenty lines, and they cut them to five.’

  He ruffled my hair. ‘Never mind, ducks, it might happen one gay.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Anyway, Grange Hill is bleeding Von Stroheim compared to this.’

  ‘It is kind of dumb,’ I agreed, and then I suddenly realised that this was what Lila had said.

  I had to stand in a shop. We were filming in Burlington Arcade. It was a scene where Adelaide, the scientist’s wife, was buying her lover a Burberry. By now I had been given a copy of the script; I guessed that Adelaide should be played flirtatious and excited, as she was at the corner shop the week before. Such considerations, however, were none of my business. I was simply a shop accessory, as lifeless as the racks of coats, to be placed in the composition and framed by Jock, the cinematographer. He was the finicky one who had demanded the wig.

  I felt as inert as a banana in a still life. This should have been restful, but I ached with frustration. I was at work, and yet wasn’t working at all. I was simply standing there, with my mind wandering – do I need more bin liners? What do I have to video tonight? This battled against my instincts as an actress, which were to empty myself of my own preoccupations and think myself into Adelaide’s: I am guilty; I am married to an old man of whom I am fond; I am spending too much of his money on a raincoat for my lover. I am acting in a deeply silly film.

  ‘OK. Thank you, Jules. Call Miss Dune.’

  There was a stir in the crowd. For some reason I didn’t want to see Lila. Perspiring from the lights, I moved out of the shop. As I walked down the arcade my sweat dried and I became just another shopper. I pulled off the wig and paused outside Fortnum & Mason. In the window, jars of caviar were stacked in a pyramid. Sexbusters was being filmed in a London that was unknown to most Londoners. With an eye on the American market its scenes were being shot in the corny tourist areas – Bond Street, St James’s Park. The unworldly old scientist happened to live in a million-pound mansion, with a butler and maid. His wife had a tryst in a corner shop that was straight out of Dickens, complete with toffee apples. What rubbish! I gazed at a leather suit in a shop window. It cost six times my entire salary for Middlemarch, the show that nobody came to see.

  Half London, however, wanted to see Lila Dune. Apparently she had recently starred in some ghastly American mini-series on TV. When we finished she was engulfed by a crowd of autograph hunters. Her blonde hair matched the wig that hung like a dead mammal from my hand. A limo was waiting, its engine running. It filled the street with exhaust fumes. Lila, still signing, was ushered away by her secretary – a square fierce Hungarian called Irma. The limo drove off. On the pavement the murmurs subsided, like diminishing ripples on the shore of a lake when a sailing ship had passed by, and out of sight.

  As I turned to go, I felt a hand on my arm.

  ‘Weren’t you in the film too?’ asked a woman.

  I paused. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lila Dune,’ said the woman. ‘Do you get to speak to her?’

  I paused. Then I shrugged. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Really?’ the woman breathed.

  ‘We’re quite close,’ I said. ‘You get close, of course, when you’re working with someone.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said the woman, bright-eyed. She hesitated, then took out the sheet of paper with Lila’s signature on it. She tore a piece o
ff the bottom and passed it to me.

  ‘Go on, do us a favour.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sign your name.’

  I paused. Stupidly, I blushed. ‘Of course,’ I said graciously, and signed.

  ‘The camera loves her,’ said Nobby. ‘It’s as simple as that. Some women have it, like Marilyn Monroe, and some don’t. It’s, like, a glow from inside. Nothing to do with looks. Nothing to do with acting ability. But put her in front of a camera and – pow!’

  ‘Do you find her attractive?’ I asked.

  He thought for a moment. ‘Bit out of my depth.’

  ‘Too glamorous, you mean? Too spoilt?’

  He shook his head. ‘She’s amazingly unspoilt, considering who she is. I mean, too screwed up.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Don’t you ever read the magazines?’

  ‘Not that sort.’

  Tempers were short that day. Malcolm, the AD, was setting up the afternoon’s shoot. Rex, the director, was noticeably absent. Officially he was having a meeting with the producers, who hadn’t liked yesterday’s rushes. But Lorraine, the young actress, was not around either. Lila was kicking up a fuss, apparently, about a dress that didn’t fit; Natasha, the dresser, was in tears. Or perhaps it was Lila who was crying. Nobody seemed to know what was going on. Irma was stomping around, demanding fresh orange juice for her employer. She kept telling everyone that in New York you could get fresh orange juice anyplace, day or night.

  We were shooting interiors in the lover’s house, a luxurious mews cottage just off Belgrave Square. Malcolm was in a flap. He was gangly and curiously asexual, he didn’t have Rex’s charisma. He wore a sweat-stained t-shirt, with the title of another movie he had worked on, Hell to Pay, printed on the front. We were supposed to be shooting a showdown scene, when Adelaide accuses her lover of treachery.

  An actress, who was playing the lover’s ex-girlfriend, had arrived. She sat outside in the cobbled street, knitting a long and unseasonable scarf. I seemed to have been hanging about for hours. Film-making, I had long ago realised, was mind-numbingly dull, with odd pockets of panic. Orson Welles had said: Anybody can be a film director, as long as they can stay awake. It was hot. I sat, my back against the warm wall of the cottage. I heard the robot chatter of a walkie-talkie. Nearby the unit photographer was swopping recipes with the continuity girl. On film shoots people talk about food all the time.

  ‘I pop it in uncooked,’ she said. ‘But I take the bones out first.’

  ‘My flatmate cooks it with mozzarella.’

  ‘Mozzarella?’

  And then I was summoned indoors, to sit on a suede settee. I wondered what was happening between Lila and Rex. Like Lila, I didn’t trust the director. You couldn’t rely on a middle-aged man who wore such tight jeans that his crotch bulged. And that lumberjack’s cap! Lila was a star; surely she could do better than that?

  Tony Chandler’s stand-in sat down beside me. Minutes passed; everybody was restless. It was a large, open-plan room, lavishly furnished with zebra-skin rugs and glass tables.

  I whispered, ‘So this is his pad? Looks more like a porn king’s hideaway.’

  ‘Listen, toots, if it’s verisimilitude you want you’re in the wrong movie.’ He was called Rod. He had a mid-Atlantic accent, like a disc jockey. He passed me a wad of gum. ‘We all are.’

  ‘How’s Tony getting on with Lila?’

  ‘She hates his guts.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘Because he only fancies boys.’

  I chewed. ‘I see.’

  ‘She seems to take it personally.’ He chomped for a moment. ‘She is one insecure lady.’

  ‘How could she be? She’s got everything.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘Doesn’t it help?’

  He turned to me. ‘Lila’s a junkie. She wants every man in the world to fall in love with her. And then some more.’

  ‘They probably do.’

  ‘But when they do, she thinks they must be crazy.’ He blew a bubble, and cracked it back into his mouth. ‘So she can only get her rocks off with real jerks, like Rex.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘When it comes to men, she’s as screwy as all getout.’ He smiled faintly. ‘But then, I suppose, so am I.’

  More minutes passed. Then we heard the sound of a car, stopping. The door slammed; high heels tapped on the polished floorboards. Lila came in, flanked by Irma and Malcolm. She wore a tight yellow dress with a flounce around the collar. As she drew nearer, I saw that her eyes were pink and her face heavily made-up.

  ‘Honey, you’re my size.’

  I jumped. Lila was looking at me.

  ‘You’d wear an outfit like this?’ Lila asked. She turned her back. ‘My ass looks like a Minnesota meat-packer’s.’

  I shook my head. ‘You look great.’

  ‘Get this – they wanted me to wear yellow pantyhose!’

  I laughed. ‘Like Malvolio.’

  ‘Huh? What they want me to look like, scrambled eggs?’ She closed her eyes and sat down in an armchair. Her hands were trembling. ‘Jesus, do I have a headache.’

  ‘Darling –’ Irma moved closer.

  ‘Aw, get off!’

  Irma moved back. Hurt, she turned and glared at the clapper-loader.

  Malcolm diffidently suggested they start working. I went outside and sat down on the cobbles. The sun, for once, felt even hotter than the lights indoors. I pulled off my wig.

  The knitting actress had gone to make-up; the enclosed little street was quiet, just for the moment. The only sound was the hum of the generator in the lighting trailer. Leaning against the wall, I fingered the yellow shawl that they had put around my shoulders for the colour reading. I had this flimsy, fabric link with Lila; it gave us a spurious closeness.

  Once I had a crush on a girl at school called Jo-Jo. One afternoon I stole Jo-Jo’s games skirt and took it home. That night I had slept with it on my pillow. When I woke I found that I had stuffed a corner of it into my mouth. The serge was damp. I had felt as ashamed as a boy, waking up after a wet dream.

  You’re my size. Lila, swooping dose, suddenly intimate. In fact, Nobby was the only person so far who had remarked on our resemblance. ‘You do look alike,’ he’d said, his head on one side. ‘Much more than Sandy did. I know – you look like her long-lost cousin, the family swot.’ ‘Thanks a bunch!’ I had retorted.

  The cables, bound with tape, lay heavily on the cobbles. If I narrowed my eyes I could imagine them pulsing. I closed my eyes. Trev’s flesh was in my mouth, and my jawbone ached. It’s very low-calorie. I thought: I hate him. I’m besotted.

  I thought of Lila, temporarily twinned with me in yellow. Lila was irritable as they zipped up her dress; in despair, she snapped at Irma. She can only get her rocks off with real jerks. Perhaps Lila and I had more in common than we guessed.

  Six

  IT WAS THE Cotswolds that brought Lila and me closer. Earlier shooting there had been disrupted by rain. Now that the long-promised heatwave had arrived the Sexbusters schedule had been rearranged. Cast and crew were going to a village called Much Wallop for two days’ filming.

  ‘Much Wallop?’ Trev laughed. ‘So it’s a spanking picture, is it?’

  It was Wednesday, the night before I was due to leave. I had picked up Trev after a performance of Use Me, which was into its second week and playing to poor houses. To comfort him I had blamed the weather. Theatre people always blame the weather for poor houses – it’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s too rainy, it’s summer, it’s winter. When a play is doing good business this never crosses anybody’s mind.

  He unlocked the door of his bedsit and we went in. I hoped he would ask me to stay the night; in fact, I had secretly packed my things in the boot of my car, because I had an early start. As we entered the room I glanced at his answerphone. It was on 4. But he never played back his messages when I was there. I didn’t mention this; I mustn’t be cramping, I mu
stn’t be possessive. Most days I didn’t know where he was. We lurched from night to night; sometimes the thread between us had snapped and I had to start getting to know him all over again. Even in my company he could be absent, slapping his pockets, looking at his watch, searching for a lost phone number. Sometimes I felt as if I had taken in a stray dog, a beautiful one like a whippet. One moment he was licking me, the next scratching at the door.

  Tonight he was preoccupied. I tried to get his attention.

  ‘You’re right,’ I murmured. ‘It is a skin flick. I didn’t want you to know. And it features me.’ I came up behind him and slid my hand between the buttons of his shirt. ‘We did this scene today, there was this house full of fur rugs, zebra skins, and I’m wearing these boots . . . they’re long, black boots, shiny boots, right up my thighs . . .’ I rubbed against him, breathing into his ear. Under his shirt, I stroked his chest. ‘I’m wearing this tight leather dress, very expensive, Bond Street . . . but then I’m very expensive, I’m the star of this picture because nobody can do it like I do . . . you know that . . . nobody in the world . . .’ I rubbed myself against him, pulling off his shirt.

  Abstracted, he patted my buttocks in a ‘there-there’ kind of way.

  ‘Haven’t you spoken to the producers yet?’ he asked.

  ‘I haven’t even met them. I don’t even know who they are.’

  ‘Can’t you get anyone to come and see my frigging play?’

  Hurt, I moved away. He went to the fridge, took out a can of lager, cracked it open and drank.

  ‘Think of their budget!’ he said. He’d had to sell his van to help finance his play. ‘It’s diabolical.’ He passed me a can. ‘It’s immoral.’

  I laughed. ‘People always call money immoral when they’re not getting any.’ I went up to him. ‘I’m sorry.’ I stroked his back. He had the most beautiful back of any man I had known, smooth and hard as wood.

  ‘My play’s worth ten times your escapist crap.’

  ‘Not mine. Theirs. Of course it is.’

  ‘Get someone to come and see it, Jules. We’ve only got a week left.’