The Stand-In Page 5

‘Even if I have to give the director a blow-job in my trailer?’

  He walked to the window. ‘Yep.’ But it was too dark to see if he was joking.

  Much Wallop was greatly in demand for film shoots. It was a picturesque old stone village that rambled up and down a hill.

  ‘Unchanged for centuries, it’s been preserved in aspic for TV costume dramas, historical romances and brown bread commercials,’ intoned Effie, the continuity girl. ‘They’re so bleeding blasé here. The locals make a fortune as extras. In fact, they’re either on the dole or else employed at the brake-linings factory, but they’re so used to becoming professional yokels that they subscribe to Screen International so they know what films are going into production. These darling, quaint old shops’ve had their names changed so often that nobody can remember what they’re actually called.’ We were sitting outside the pub, in the sunshine. ‘Isn’t it a hoot?’ she said. ‘When the estate agent sells a cottage, he just shows an old movie clip of it.’

  Effie was a plain, bouncy, upper-class girl, the sort of person who said ‘beg your parsnips’ and ‘mind you own beeswax’. I liked her because she knew everybody’s secrets.

  Away from London, the atmosphere had changed. For a start, the unit seemed smaller, and most of the cast weren’t needed for these two days and had been given time off. The rest of us drew together; we were staying at the pub. Although we were working there was a feeling of truancy; just to get out of London, in a heatwave, made the whole enterprise feel like a jaunt.

  It was one o’clock. Across the lane the horse-chestnuts stood, heavy and dusty in the sun. It was a golden, late-summer day; wasps dawdled dozily around the table, attracted by the damp beer patches.

  ‘May I join you charming young ladies?’ Sir Joshua Broome sat down, mopping his brow. He carried a large scotch. Taking out a packet of Players, he asked, ‘Gasper, anyone?’

  Sir Joshua was the old stage actor who played the scientist. With a few drinks inside him he was a fund of anecdotes about the good old days, about Wolfit and Larry, about long-dead actresses’ indiscretions, and about eccentric theatrical landladies in whose digs he had stayed when he had toured the country, playing Shakespeare and Shaw in the days before the TV set, as he put it, had become a twinkle in anybody’s lounge. Though repetitive, he was listened to with a certain respect by the crew. To film people, overpaid and compromised, there is something admirable about the theatre. It spells integrity. Struggle. Art. I myself had even felt this; ‘How do you manage?’ I had been asked, twice already, when it was discovered that I mainly worked in the theatre.

  Broome jerked his head towards the pub. ‘Sweetlings, you could cut the atmosphere in there with a knife. Our friend Rex is giving Miss Dune a post mortem on this morning’s performance.’

  ‘In bed?’ asked Effie.

  ‘My dear girl, no doubt that is what they nowadays call the sub-text. Young men in jeans on Channel 4. I am speaking of her acting ability. She’s not, how shall I say, focused.’

  ‘Rex keeps criticising her,’ said Effie. ‘She’s instinctive. He’s handling her all wrong. He’s humiliating her.’

  ‘As long as she doesn’t hit the bottle.’

  ‘What happens then?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t know yet. She’s on the wagon. Doctor’s orders.’ He lit his cigarette. ‘There’ll be trouble ahead, you mark my words.’ He looked up at the blue sky. ‘Blow, winds and crack your cheeks! You cataracts and hurricanes, spout till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!’ He started coughing. ‘Drown’d the cocks!’

  ‘Drown them at birth,’ I said. ‘They’re nothing but trouble.’

  That evening I had my first real conversation with Lila. What Effie called the nobs were having dinner elsewhere, guests of one of the producer’s friends who had a knighthood and an enormous house nearby. I had eaten in the pub, with various members of the crew. Afterwards I went upstairs. To my surprise I met Lila in the corridor. It was 9.30; she looked as if she had just come out of the bath. She wore a black and gold bathrobe, and had bound up her hair in a turban.

  ‘Honey,’ she said, ‘you got anything for sunburn?’

  ‘I thought you’d gone out.’

  Lila shook her head. ‘I need some sleep.’

  ‘I’ve only got Nivea.’

  ‘I got Nivea. Irma has some other stuff.’ She sighed. ‘Do I need her tonight.’

  Irma, her secretary, had succumbed to the changeable English climate and had stayed in London, suffering from flu.

  ‘I’m feeling real stressed; I get lonely when she’s not around.’ Lila paused. Her face was scrubbed clean. Without make-up, her skin was pale and surprisingly freckly. She looked bare and defenceless, and even more lovely.

  ‘Take a look at my hands.’ She lifted her hands; they were trembling.

  We paused for a moment in the pink corridor. I felt like a teenage boy. Should I ask her into my room?

  ‘Irma’s been with me for fifteen years. She was my masseuse, I’ve always had this back problem, that’s how we started. I’m all she’s got.’ She suddenly looked at me; her eyes narrowed. ‘You have anything in your room?’

  ‘Only Nivea.’

  She laughed. ‘Liquor’s what I mean.’

  ‘Oh. No. Sorry.’ I felt like the school goody-goody, in the dorm.

  Lila sat down on the window seat. She looked at her hands again, as if they belonged to somebody else. ‘My granny, she was an old lady. Real old. She was Polish. She had this loose skin on her hands and she let me push it around. She didn’t give a damn.’

  I looked down at my own hands. ‘Ours aren’t quite like that,’ I smiled. ‘Not yet.’

  There was a silence. Perhaps I had been too presumptuous, to link my age with Lila’s; to link myself at all. Below, I could hear muffled laughter and the bleep of a video game.

  ‘I always wanted to come to Britain,’ said Lila. ‘Know this is the first picture I’ve made here? It’s so – historical, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’ve only seen the historical bits.’

  ‘I thought, I’m thirty-eight and I’m still playing dumb blondes.’

  ‘I’m thirty-eight too!’ I said. ‘Snap!’

  ‘My agent, he said Lila, you can’t play bimbos for ever, you’ve got to develop as a comedienne. You’ll be playing a woman in her prime, she’s honest, she’s funny, she’s sensitive, she’s gutsy. He said, you’ll be working with Rex Benson. He’s one of the best, he made Hula Hoop and The Big Thrill . . .’ She sighed, then smiled. ‘And he’s made Suzy and Annie and Lorraine. . . . That shithead, he needs a revolving door in his bedroom.’ She stood up. ‘It’s been great talking to you.’ She flashed me a smile and disappeared down the corridor.

  I sat down on the window seat, its fabric warmed by Lila. I felt stirred by my sudden status as confidante. Then I thought: perhaps she calls me honey because she can’t remember my name.

  Lila’s relationship with her director was visibly deteriorating. Without Irma to protect her she seemed more vulnerable, though I hardly had a chance to speak to her the next day. By the nature of my job, I saw little of Lila on the set. We simply exchanged places – when I was there, during the set-up, Lila was absent, and when it was time for Lila to come on I was sent away. In fact, I had realised by now that I was more a member of the crew than the cast. I was not an artist; I was a technician.

  Besides, film stars are seldom alone. If it wasn’t the make-up girl or the hairstylist with Lila, it was Joshua Broome who had become an avuncular figure; he sympathised with her and, a heavy drinker himself, regaled her with anecdotes about boozing with Richard Burton. If it wasn’t Broome it was Malcolm, the AD, who was growing increasingly harassed and attentive. If it wasn’t Malcolm it was a publicity photographer who wanted to take stills of her in various picturesque rural settings, or a local newspaper reporter who wanted an interview. I didn’t know where Lila ate; when we broke for lunch she disappeared. The sound man said she binged on chocolates; Effi
e said she was popping pills. She was bingeing, she was dieting, she was putting on her face pack, going to bed and reading all her old press cuttings. Screwing Rex was also suggested, but he was discovered sitting in his Mercedes listening to the Test Match results. When famous people disappear it is like a lamp fusing; the room becomes dimmer. I thought: if I disappeared, nobody would notice that anything had happened at all.

  In fact, Lila had been phoning. After lunch, I went to my room to fetch my book and met Lila halfway up the stairs.

  ‘Your British Telecom,’ she said. ‘Know how many times it took me to get through to New York?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She laughed. ‘It’s not your fault, honey.’ She sighed. ‘Gee, you’re nice. Why can’t I ever meet a man who’s as nice as a woman?’

  I blushed. ‘It’s only because we’re always saying we’re sorry.’

  ‘You’re so right!’

  ‘We’re masochists.’ I suddenly had a vision of the woman in Use Me, being slapped by her plumber.

  ‘I was telling my therapist, only the damned operator kept interrupting, I was telling him why do I always get involved with assholes?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I know why,’ she said. ‘It’s, like, I’m trying to get closer to him.’

  ‘To who?’

  Lila looked at me, puzzled. People had listened to her for so many years that she no longer knew what they did or didn’t know about her. Her life was so public that she could no longer distinguish what was private about it. I had my first inkling of this, on the stairs that day.

  ‘My father, he left me when I was small,’ said Lila. ‘I can only have relationships with older men who’ll dump me too, on account of losing my father. My therapist, he says it’s the only way I can stay close to him.’

  ‘Your father, or your therapist?’

  Lila laughed. ‘That’s some question. Know something? You’re in the wrong job.’

  I felt myself blushing, deeper.

  ‘I have these dependencies,’ said Lila. ‘I’m trying to work through them. You look like a grounded person.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I’m sure as hell not.’ She smiled. ‘Martin Luther King, you know him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He said, “I have a dream.” Know what mine is?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s this guy, who loves me for myself. Who doesn’t get off on all this shit.’ She gestured at the staircase, vaguely. ‘The money, all that shit. Who doesn’t get off on, like, I’ve screwed Lila Dune. And I don’t get off on him despising me.’ She closed her eyes. ‘And then, when I find him, we’ll settle down together and we’ll have a kid. I’d really like a kid. Kids are so great, aren’t they?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You got any?’ Lila asked.

  I shook my head. On the landing, the grandfather clock chimed twice.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Lila.

  The next day, Friday, we were going back to London. I was sorry to leave; I was already feeling nostalgia-in-advance for these two golden days. I scrunched across the gravel to my car, which was parked behind the pub. It was 10.30. I looked across the hedge. Already the roses had been unpinned from the porch of the neighbouring mansion; its dream life was being dismantled. Its owner was washing his BMW; life was returning to normal. By teatime it would be as if we had never existed in this village, and all that remained would be two signed photos of Broome and Lila, joining the celebrity collection in the Ploughman’s Bar.

  There was only one more week’s filming left, indoors on a sound stage. By next weekend it would all be over. Trev’s play, too, would be closing. Its set would be struck, its furniture disposed of, the long-suffering kitchen table returned to its owners. There would be nothing left except a few reviews, one of which (Blitz) called it ‘promising’.

  Trev and I would be back to square one. So much for big breaks. I hadn’t even met the producers of Sexbusters, let alone spoken to them; the director hardly knew my name. Lila had confided in me, but then Lila seemed profligate with her confidences. Everyone from her hairstylist to her driver seemed to know about her problems with sleeping, her fluid retention, her cravings for candy and her painful and irregular menstrual cycle. Depending on whether they liked her or not people found this either relentlessly egotistical or endearingly indiscreet.

  I climbed into my car and turned the key. The engine groaned. I tried again. I pushed the choke in and out, fast – an old trick. The car wouldn’t start. After ten minutes the battery ran down.

  I got out, kicked the door, opened the bonnet and looked inside. The engine was its usual mass of furred pipes.

  ‘You have a problem?’

  I turned round. I had seen Lila’s limo – long and shiny – parked the other end of the car park. Now I saw her walking towards me. She was dressed in her public disguise – dark glasses, with a scarf wrapped around her hair.

  ‘It’s done this before.’ I kicked it again. I glanced from my car, a Renault 5, to the limousine.

  ‘You travelling to London?’ Lila asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Want a ride with us?’

  Did I want a ride? What a question!

  Know what I did? I just took my car keys to the pub and gave them to the man behind the bar. I told him to phone a garage. It was because I had Lila beside me. I felt so bold, you see. I drew my strength from her. I knew the publican would agree to do this, simply because I was standing beside a film star. She made me powerful.

  And he did, with a smile. Just for a moment, I felt special.

  Lila’s driver had already put my suitcase into the boot of the Daimler. I knew I should be staying in the village and seeing to my car; I would have to come back for it another day. What the hell.

  It was like falling in love. The sudden recklessness; the half-lies. Wasn’t that ridiculous?

  I sat in the back with Lila. The door closed. I smelt perfume and warm leather. We slid through the village. Lila stretched out her legs. She was wearing white slacks, a pink blouse and, as always, one too many gold bracelets. When she shifted, her necklace tinkled. I thought: she’s like a field of oilseed rape. So dazzling that she hurts your eyes. The rest of the countryside, the rest of us, we’re dimmed into obscurity.

  ‘That sonofabitch says he’s got to visit his mother in Cheltenham. Think he’s lying?’

  ‘Lots of people have mothers there,’ I replied. ‘That’s what Cheltenham’s for.’

  She touched my knee. ‘You’re so sweet.’ She took away her hand, her bangles chiming, and looked out of the window. A row of stone cottages slid past, then a steep field of cows. ‘It’s all so pretty. It’s so small! You feel, like, it’s on account of it’s an island. You’ve got to fit it all in. I used to see the map and I’d think, they’ll all talk like somebody in a Shakespeare play. I’ll find myself a real gentleman there.’

  ‘Not any more you won’t.’

  ‘You’re darned right.’ She laughed. Then she looked at me. ‘Neat pants. Where did you buy them?’

  ‘I made them myself. I make most of my clothes.’

  But she wasn’t listening. She said, ‘That fink, know what he said? He said she’s had an operation so he’s got to stay overnight. And then he’s got to be at the studio tomorrow, all day, with the set designer. What’s he think I’m going to do?’

  ‘You must know lots of people in London.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well . . .’ I shrugged. ‘You just must.’

  ‘Honey, when I have a call I go to bed early. I have this problem with sleep, see, so I take these pills. They’re the strongest you can get, they’d knock out a baseball team. And if I don’t have a call, like tonight . . .’ She shrugged again.

  ‘You’re so damned polite, you British.’

  ‘You mean standoffish?’

  ‘It’s like, you don’t want to intrude.’

  ‘Katherine Hepburn, apparently she lived in London for two yea
rs and she got lonely. Nobody liked to talk to her in case they seemed to be sucking up.’

  ‘Sucking up! What a great word.’

  Suddenly I felt like a radiator. The heat rose up the stem of my neck and spread over my face. I turned to look out of the window. ‘Why don’t we go out tonight?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I could show you London.’ I cleared my throat. ‘It might be fun.’

  ‘Hey, we could visit Covent Garden, everyone says it’s great, they have these little shops.’

  ‘Not that London.’ I took another breath. I had an idea. My heart thumped. A field slid by; it was steep and green. At the top stood two horses, nose to tail. ‘I mean, no offence, but you haven’t seen the real place at all. The real countryside, the real London. You’ve just seen what the tourists see, what the Americans see. Cashmere sweaters and shortbread. You’ve just seen a set of picture postcards.’ I paused, breathing heavily. ‘England’s not like that any more. In fact, it never was.’

  ‘So where do we go?’

  ‘I’ve just heard about this brilliant new play. Not one of those star-studded revivals, not one of these safe, West End jobs. But a real play, with no Japanese in the audience. Let’s go and see it.’

  ‘Gee. What’s it called?’

  I paused, as if trying to remember. ‘Ah yes. It’s called Use Me.’

  Seven

  IT WAS TREV’S birthday today. I realised this when a man came in to mend the faucet. A man! I’ve forgotten the smell of them. The bulk. The stubble. What a surprise! He said, would you believe, ‘Have a nice day.’ I said, ‘Thank you, and you have a nice day too.’ But I said it in an American accent. Otherwise he would have started all those questions.

  I went outside just now. Three women were sitting in the watery sunshine; two black, one white. They were all overweight – gross, in fact. This seems to be an American problem. They need to comfort themselves, all the time. It’s a gargantuan need. I, on the other hand, have gotten thinner (note the gotten).

  They were doing nothing, just sitting there. They didn’t know Trev’s birthday had come and nearly gone.

  My last birthday, nobody knew either, or the birthday before. I spent all day in a hotel in Los Angeles. You can never get out of Los Angeles, there seems no end to it. I could see a faint ridge of hills, a smudge in the smog, but there was no reaching them.